Bad cards

[Oversoul]

In the Dominaria previews thread, the topic of Mark Rosewater's 2002 "When Cards to Bad" article came up. This topic has been revisited by Mark Rosewater in various media many times, and I can kind of see why.

Our context was a bit muddled: I wasn't actually citing any cards as "bad cards." That's not to say there aren't any bad cards in the set. But the pair of cards I was criticizing aren't ones to which I'd append the label "bad cards." Hell, Wizard's Retort is strictly better than Cancel. I was referring to my disappointment that they chose a design I do not feel will offer players something exciting. Basically, Dominaria as a set is kind of a big deal because it represents the "return" to where the game grew up. My preference would be for the power level to be pushed, for more risks to be taken in order to live up to the expectations set by classic Dominiarian sets. But even if that option is off the table, I'd at least hope the card design would offer players something tantalizing, something that at least shows the potential to do something powerful, even if the actual implementation means the set isn't pushed on the basis of overall tournament power-level. The point I was getting at, which may have been lost in all this, is that it's possible to have a card that is middle-of-the-road in terms of its overall "power" and to have that card offer something enticing. One of the examples I gave was Galvanic Blast. It's not some amazing card sweeping Legacy gameplay by storm or anything. But it's a fairly flexible direct damage spell with a bonus befitting the theme of the set it comes from, and that bonus offers a high power level. In contrast, Wizard's Lightning looks more like it evokes a sensation of "Instead of Lightning Bolt take this conditional Lightning Bolt." It's perhaps too subtle a distinction, but a card that feels like it's OK on its own and rewards you under the right circumstances is more fun than a card that feels kinda lame on its own and goes back to the "normal" level of power under the right circumstances.

In any case, I'm trying not to be too hyped up over Dominaria what with the context of the set and the return of Richard Garfield and all that. No sense responding to an otherwise "OK" set in the wrong way and being dejected that it's not the best thing ever. I do wish they'd erred on the side of pushing boundaries here and they seem to have chosen not to do that, but the set might still be fine. Those "Wizard's" spells won't be the best cards in the set and they won't be the worst, but they struck me as a bold example of approaching cards in a grandiose way with the art, the flavor text, the role they'll presumably serve within the set, and then only delivering dull designs. That really doesn't have much to do with outright bad cards, but we wound up on that tangent because Spiderman is always willing to check what I'm saying and question whether it's right. When it comes to the Dominaria stuff, he seems to be more reserving judgment (can't fault that!), and perhaps he's not invested in the set too much anyway. We'll see how that part goes, I guess...

But then there's the issue of bad cards. Years ago, I was listening to Mark Rosewater's podcast (based on the article I linked to) on this and at some point, something he said set me off and I was trying to argue with him while I was driving to work. Alas, the recording of Mark Rosewater did not magically respond to my feedback. I forget what the exact bone of contention was in that instance. Whatever it was, I think the article itself is worth a read. He responds very eloquently to the question and insightfully breaks the issue down into categories, into different explanations for why a card might seem "bad." I won't attempt to comprehensively address his categories or come up with my own. I suspect that in theory there should probably be more categories. But that's not where I'm going with this. His main points are these...

1. Some cards will always be stronger than others, so by definition there will always be a worst card or cards.
2. Different cards are made with different people in mind. A card you can't use might be a real gem to someone else.
3. The experience of comprehending for oneself that a card is bad is an important step in learning the game.
4. Some cards are "diamonds in the rough" and only seem bad until one day they don't.
5. Having cards of varying power levels rewards the players who correctly ascertain which ones are better.
6. Some players are driven to try to "break" seemingly bad cards that no one else can find a use for.
7. Sometimes WotC just plain mess up.

Those are my rough summaries, of course. He worded it differently. I think, and hope, I'm fairly capturing his message, but I encourage you to read the article yourself if you're at all interested in the topic and you haven't already. And here are my reactions to those points...

1: I agree with this. It's fundamentally true.
2: I agree with this as well. Card "quality" depends on context. A card I might scoff at could be just what someone else is looking for in that player's EDH deck or something.
3: I do not see how this notion holds water at all. Pretty sure I could teach a reasonably intelligent person the game using only Mark Rosewater's hypothetical "all good cards" set. Like, he reasoned that new players were drawn to cards such as Throne of Bone and only came to realize, over time, that the cards were bad and that this learning experience was why they kept putting the cards in the core set. I think that's wrong. I do not like it at all. I contend that it is completely unnecessary.
4: His explanation for this one is terse and I'd stipulate nuances and caveats and blah, blah, blah. But I mostly agree with him on this one.
5: His explanation on this one is really geared toward draft formats, which aren't my specialty. Perhaps I'm missing something here and I forget how he put it in the podcast, but I don't like this one. The notion seems to be that you, as a skilled player, need to have hidden bad cards in the draft pool so that your less-skilled opponents will be tricked into picking those bad cards. Then you'll beat them because you are more skilled. Well, in that case, if you're so skilled, can't you beat them without some cheap trick?
6: I agree with this one.
7: Well, here's where it gets troublesome...

At the time I heard the podcast, the card that was on my mind was this little common from the then-current core set...

It was originally printed in Legions and made its way into a whopping four core sets as a common. Lots of people opened this card in packs of M15, and while I can't speak for all of them, none of them liked it. Oh wait, I guess I can speak for all of them. I just did. But it's true! This card had nothing going for it. Ignoring the art and I guess the flavor text, there's nothing about this card that would appeal to anyone. That's why the Gatherer comments on older printings of the card (from when Gatherer comments were still available) are almost exclusively sarcastic.

Now, Merfolk of the Pearl Trident is also a 1/1 with no abilities for U. Other than arguably being less useful due to tribal mechanics, Fugitive Wizard isn't really worse. In principle how bad is a 1/1 for a single blue mana? Is it a bad card? Well, I do agree with Mark Rosewater that these things are relative. It's not as bad as some other cards. It's also more bad than some other cards. I mean, duh? I'd argue that its place on the spectrum should probably be somewhere in whatever part of the spectrum is generally "bad." Certainly not "good."

 

[Oversoul]

In context is where it's a problem. To start with, it's just awkward to have a wizard with no abilities. Something, even an only marginally useful ability, could indicate that yes, it's a wizard because it does magic and that ability represents the magic it does. So it's kind of an annoying flavor failure. But also, M15 was a reasonably strong core set overall, in a reasonably strong and well-developed time period for Magic. This wasn't the ancient days of yore with The Dark or Homelands and card designers just not having a good grasp on the game. This was 2014 and WotC ostensibly had teams of dedicated professionals working on this stuff. And one of the cards they picked to reprint was...Fugitive...Wizard? How did that help anyone? I was trying to be fairly active in the game at game stores and stuff around this time. Fugitive Wizard seemed to be the most hated common in the set, from what I saw. No one had a use for it and I couldn't even imagine someone having a use for it. It's not like wizard tribal had been pushed for Standard in that environment. Established players ignored it. Drafters last-picked it and didn't incorporate it into their draft decks, then they threw it in the garbage. Even new players weren't interested? Why would a new player want a wizard with no abilities? New players are new, not stupid! The card struck me as an utterly wasted slot. I forget why it was on my mind when that podcast was playing. I don't think Mark Rosewater even brought it up. Maybe the day before I'd heard people deriding Fugitive Wizard. So I was running through his different categories in my head. Is it a bad card because of...

1? There has to be a worst card? I mean, yes it's true, but you don't have to set out to establish a rock-bottom. Let it be organic. Don't pick a crappy card to reprint in your set and say, "Now we have our worst card and everything else shall be better by comparison." That's just wasteful.

2? There isn't an environment in which Fugitive Wizard shines. It can't. It has no abilities. Legacy players sure weren't even thinking about using it. Standard players had no use for it. But this isn't one of those "Well, it's not good in Constructed but it is good in Limited" examples. The drafters were the ones who hated it the most, on account of it was a common and they kept opening it up and seeing it, wishing that it were a better common. I know sometimes cards I do not like are supposedly justified because they "balance drafts" but that little copout can't work in this situation because people weren't playing the card if drafts either, or if they were it was a sign that their pool didn't come together for them and they were sad.

3? I'm comfortable going out on a limb here and saying that none of the players who learned to play Magic around 2014 will ever look back fondly on the time they gained enough experience to glean by virtue of their own comprehension of game mechanics that Fugitive Wizard was a bad card. Maybe that's too presumptuous of me and I should track down and interview those people, just to check and see if they aren't nostalgic for the halcyon days of their awakening. I mean, one could argue that the revelation of Fugitive Wizard's mediocrity is some universal experience for Magic players, some transcendental truth that unites us all in our utter lack of interest in the boring common. But I really think I can get away with saying, "Nah, that's a load of crap."

4? Nope, no one ever discovered the secret for how to break Fugitive Wizard and no one ever will. It's not a once-thought-to-be-bad-but-waiting-to-be-discovered card. It's just a bad card. Pretty confident I can this one.

5? I do not not think it likely that bungling drafters were lulled into picking this card over something better. And if they were, I contend that this circumstance does not justify the card's place within the set.

6? It has no abilities! No one's going to unlock its secrets. There aren't any. There can't be. It's completely impossible in this case.

7? While Mark Rosewater's explanation on this point sounds good, it really can't account for choices like Fugitive Wizard. It had been in the core set on three prior occasions. The card is simple. It's as simple as they come. There wasn't really any circumstance to mislead R&D or cause them confusion here. They don't get plausible deniability on that one. Unless the explanation is "Oops, we put the wrong common in that slot because of a typo" or something, I'm pretty sure they knew a bad card was going there.

Well, that's a lot of focus on one unremarkable card. And really this isn't about Fugitive Wizard. But I used it as my example because it was the card I had in mind when I listened to the podcast. The fact is, there are lots of cards way worse than Fugitive Wizard. Cards like Great Wall and Adventurer's Guildhouse and Wood Elemental and Mogg Squad and Melting. But also, there are two things about that I find to be really important...

1. The number of such cards so truly narrow in their applicability as to be essentially useless has gone down. Modern sets have some duds, but not as many of them and they're aren't quite as egregiously bad as some of the old bad cards. Mark Rosewater realistically could have said, "We make mistakes but we're doing a better job now." For some reason, he didn't talk about improvement.
2. Mark Rosewater got lots of questions along these lines and chose to publicly respond to one that gave (at the time) marginally useful cards as examples: Okk and Lion's Eye Diamond. Okk is generally mediocre, but does reasonably fit Mark Rosewater's #2 and #6. The card is probably weaker than it should have been, but it has some potential and there will always be players out there who want to try to exploit the concept of a big, cheap goblin. And Lion's Eye Diamond is, ironically, the epitome of "diamond in the rough." The year after that article was published, the card would go on to be restricted in Vintage. Maybe this is too harsh, but he could have picked his target at any time. Is it uncharitable of me to wonder if he didn't pick the guy asking him why they'd print a card as bad as Malignant Growth or Pale Moon because it's easier to undermine the case for Okk and LED being bad cards?

On the one hand, I consider the distinctions he makes (except for his third point and maybe his fifth) to be important, and he does very obligingly and respectfully tackle a question that comes across as borderline-belligerent. On the other hand, I've noticed a trend in which Mark Rosewater cites this article in his other works as being "the time I explained why bad cards are necessary." And I'm like, "No, you didn't!" The article is more about why sometimes players mistakenly dismiss cards as bad when really those cards just aren't for them or are undervalued. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? Personally, I do not care for Brass's Bounty. The card is overcosted and I do not like that. I think it is a waste of space and would prefer if it had been designed differently. But I can appreciate that some other people out there might like it! The effect is big and splashy, and maybe some players are hoping to find a way to make it work for them. And that's fine! But take, for instance, almost any of the cards inducted into the Hall of Shame (not Thought Lash—you guys got that one wrong). There are cards so absurdly situational that Mark Rosewater's various explanations just don't work. Rakalite isn't merely "not for me." It's not for anyone. And while, "Oops, we messed up" may often be the correct answer, that only goes so far. Doesn't really work when you then turn around and tell the audience that you've previously written article explaining why bad cards are necessary. Mistakes aren't necessity: they're mistakes!

 

[Psarketos]

3. is a long time design tenet of D&D, mention by the designers all the way through 3rd edition. Oh have there been firestorms on message boards about its application and relevance to game design! While I have always appreciated the arguments that way to some extent, I believe that throwing it out as a concept as you suggest leads to better (though more thought and testing intensive) design. 4th edition explicitly threw it out, and is in my opinion the best iteration of the game.

I tried to salvage Rakalite on principle. Wow is that a bad card.

 

[Spiderman]

Well, I feel compelled to respond (a little) since I kind of created the tangent in the other thread but...

I'll preface this with what I said the other time: I haven't given this a whole lot of thought because I don't really play anymore, except here on the forums. And I didn't revisit the link as your summaries by point seem reasonable to me from what I do remember. But off the top of my head:

I hate to repeat myself and it probably seems a cop out, but I'm of the opinion that if you don't go through the design process multiple times and have to juggle what cards are coming down the pike in future releases and basically everything that goes in the design and development process, you can't really "know" the "why" or reasons why cards were included when on release, they look "bad". You may get the hindsight later of when they release the comments about cards in the Friday article or other "behind the scenes" articles later though.

But to take your example of Fugitive Wizard: it's a vanilla blue 1cc creature that's 1/1. I seem to remember another design article from Mark or someone that when a set is designed, there are certain "slots" for certain types of cards. Obviously I'm guessing, but this card seems to fit one of those "slots" - namely, put out something for 1cc in blue that's just 1/1 (because blue isn't particularly known for 1cc creatures that are 1/1 and have anything else, unlike the other colors). And thus, it's usefulness seems more geared in Draft or Limited when you need a creature to round out the mana curve and have a limited choice of what you can pick/use/take. Now, I'm not certain how you know it wasn't used in drafts from your following statements about it in #2 so if you have hard data that says it was never used by players using blue and despite being opened, then yeah, it seems a failure and perhaps that's why it was pulled. <shrug>

It's funny you mention Mogg Squad because that was actually a card I used in my mana denial decks when Tempest was released. A 3/3 for 2 mana? You just need to keep the board clear of creatures which wasn't that hard to do since you're playing red to begin with (and back then). I certainly don't think it's "worse" than Fugitive Wizard.

It's also funny you mentioned Throne of Bone. Obviously times are different and people "know more", but when I first started playing, I thought Throne and its ilk were great cards. I mean, if you're playing the color, you just pay 1 and get a life! And more life means my opponent needs to hit me more than I need to hit him! See how the thinking was there? Yeah, now I know it wasted a space for other cards that were more effective, but it certainly captured me as a beginning player.

 

[Oversoul]

3. is a long time design tenet of D&D, mention by the designers all the way through 3rd edition. Oh have there been firestorms on message boards about its application and relevance to game design! While I have always appreciated the arguments that way to some extent, I believe that throwing it out as a concept as you suggest leads to better (though more thought and testing intensive) design. 4th edition explicitly threw it out, and is in my opinion the best iteration of the game.

I hadn't even thought of the same principle being used in other games! I don't know if it's a coincidence or what...

I tried to salvage Rakalite on principle. Wow is that a bad card.

Right. And the point I want to emphasize there is that it's a very old card too. It came from a time when everyone, including WotC, knew less about the general consequences of different effects at different costs, the flow of the game, etc. It'd be silly to blame them for Rakalite these days because they've gotten better. I can't quantitatively that there's a trend in this direction, but I do think that it makes sense.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, I feel compelled to respond (a little) since I kind of created the tangent in the other thread but...

I'll preface this with what I said the other time: I haven't given this a whole lot of thought because I don't really play anymore, except here on the forums. And I didn't revisit the link as your summaries by point seem reasonable to me from what I do remember. But off the top of my head:

I hate to repeat myself and it probably seems a cop out, but I'm of the opinion that if you don't go through the design process multiple times and have to juggle what cards are coming down the pike in future releases and basically everything that goes in the design and development process, you can't really "know" the "why" or reasons why cards were included when on release, they look "bad". You may get the hindsight later of when they release the comments about cards in the Friday article or other "behind the scenes" articles later though.

Hm, I'm glad you point that out. I actually agree with that. It's true that someone, myself for instance, not being privy to the inside minutiae, can't really know the full significance of the motivations behind the various decisions going on when cards and sets are designed. On that point, we concur.

However, what I was trying to get at was a context in which I do not think the inside baseball matters. At all. If I open a booster pack with a "bad" card, or if I think that a particular concept or execution is "bad design" then that's my reaction. I might be swayed in my response to learn that even though the card isn't my cup of tea, it compensates for that by being useful to others. If cards are lackluster in Constructed formats but strong in Limited play, I might be wary of that excuse being pushed over the top, but in principle I can appreciate that different people have different needs or whatever. I don't have a great example off the top of my head, but I really do think that I've gone softer on certain cards I didn't care for after learning how they were really meaningful to other people in contexts that don't apply to me (like if they fill a much-needed niche in some popular Commander archetypes that don't suit my playstyle). What doesn't really affect my assessment of these things is the prospect that I'm missing out on something significant because I don't know how the sausage is made. The people who ultimately judge what the details of the cards will be are WotC, and the poeple who ultimately judge the value of the cards are the customers. If everyone at the company likes the cards they're making and most of the players hate them, that's going to negatively affect their business. We don't need to read their minds to get more information. We don't need to know their vision for how the cards would be played. We don't need to know their hopes and dreams. If they fail, then they fail, and the ideas they had, but didn't tell us about, are irrelevant in that context.

One bad card isn't going to ruin the game, of course. But I'm taking this to what is I think it's logical conclusion to make a point. There's a lot about the details behind the decisions that WotC staff deal with before the final product is presented to the public. There's a lot we'll presumably never know about why they took the approaches they took, about what they tried and abandoned, etc. But it's the final product that the players will judge. That other stuff falls into the domain of how the sausage is made. We don't need to see it to make our own judgments. We can critique the results without knowing anything about the work that went into them. I happen to be one of those people who does have an interest in knowing how the sausage is made. I do find that kind of information interesting. But for the purposes of analyzing cards or mechanics, I don't think I need such information.

But to take your example of Fugitive Wizard: it's a vanilla blue 1cc creature that's 1/1. I seem to remember another design article from Mark or someone that when a set is designed, there are certain "slots" for certain types of cards. Obviously I'm guessing, but this card seems to fit one of those "slots" - namely, put out something for 1cc in blue that's just 1/1 (because blue isn't particularly known for 1cc creatures that are 1/1 and have anything else, unlike the other colors). And thus, it's usefulness seems more geared in Draft or Limited when you need a creature to round out the mana curve and have a limited choice of what you can pick/use/take. Now, I'm not certain how you know it wasn't used in drafts from your following statements about it in #2 so if you have hard data that says it was never used by players using blue and despite being opened, then yeah, it seems a failure and perhaps that's why it was pulled. <shrug>

I brought it up because it was the specific example "in the air" when I listened to that podcast. I don't think Mark Rosewater said anything about the card specifically. When it comes to "bad cards" I actually would prefer to steer clear of 1/1 creatures with no drawbacks because hey, chump blockers may not be thrilling, but they have at least some use. Certainly not worst of the worst. But, and perhaps I should have said this earlier, the reason I stuck with that example was that I do not believe it to be true that sets need vanilla one-mana 1/1 creatures to fill any sort of slots. I think that WotC should never make another new set with any such cards.

And I didn't say it was never used in drafts. I said the drafters I knew hated it because it was a common so they kept seeing it and it annoyed them to keep passing over a 1/1 with no abilities when there could have been something worth picking there. In my limited experience, and WotC are really into Booster Draft as a format and should know much better than I do, players gravitate toward a kind of middle ground in card-drafting decision-making. Make things too simple and they lack meaningful decisions. Make things too complicated and they get frustrated because they can't mentally track all of the variables that they want to. That's one of the reasons Rochester Draft fell out of favor (some WotC-authored articles have cited this, although I can't remember which ones). Players found it too hard to both memorize what draft decisions had been made and simultaneously evaluate the abilities of the remaining cards in the draft pool. My intuition is that the drafters disliked Fugitive Wizard in part because its low utility (no abilities) was so obvious that they felt no meaningful decision had to be made. Drafting is a kind of strategic contest, and to enjoy the experience, you don't want to be overwhelmed by information overload and you don't want to feel like you're on autopilot because it's trivially easy to rule out the bad decisions and zero in on the good ones. A vanilla 1/1 is pretty easy to assess and usually gets passed around the table unless you're really hurting for small creatures to fit your mana curve.

 

[Oversoul]

It's funny you mention Mogg Squad because that was actually a card I used in my mana denial decks when Tempest was released. A 3/3 for 2 mana? You just need to keep the board clear of creatures which wasn't that hard to do since you're playing red to begin with (and back then). I certainly don't think it's "worse" than Fugitive Wizard.

Hm, I remember we discussed Mogg Squad in the Hall of Shame stuff, but the bulk of that discussion was on a broader topic. I do think that Mogg Squad is among the worst cards of all time and that people who think they see value in its efficiency for its mana cost are severely underestimating the depth of its drawback. I haven't seen the deck that you're talking about and I wouldn't simply assert that you couldn't possibly make the card work or that your decision to use it was wrong. It does seem like one of us must be wrong about that card, but that there's no way to definitely prove it either way.

It's also funny you mentioned Throne of Bone. Obviously times are different and people "know more", but when I first started playing, I thought Throne and its ilk were great cards. I mean, if you're playing the color, you just pay 1 and get a life! And more life means my opponent needs to hit me more than I need to hit him! See how the thinking was there? Yeah, now I know it wasted a space for other cards that were more effective, but it certainly captured me as a beginning player.

The smiley makes me guess that you fully grasped the context, but to be clear, Throne of Bone wasn't my example. It was Mark Rosewater's. He stated that they kept putting the card in the core set deliberately even though it had extremely low value to established players (it was in the upcoming 8th Edition, so when he wrote the article it was still a core set staple, but they'd actually go on to stop putting it in after that). The reasoning was that new players were attracted to the repeatable lifegain, just like you've noted. Then eventually they'd learn that it was better to use those deckbuilding slots on more potent cards, and they'd essentially graduate from using such cards.

My problem with that argument is that I simply don't think it's a valuable contribution to the experience of the game. New players will always have learning experiences out there. There will always be revelations for them to have. I've been playing the game for over 20 years and I still make new discoveries. While most of Mark Rosewater's other explanations for "bad cards" strike me as valid, at least with some caveats, I don't see the point behind this one. He seems to be arguing that bad cards are necessary in order for new players to learn. I disagree with that. I think new players could quite easily learn without ever needing to build a deck with Throne of Bone.

Really, I'm not even clear on how much Mark Rosewater still supports this position. Throne of Bone and friends were dropped from the core set and replaced with two subsequent cycles of similar lifegain cards that were overall stronger than the old ones: first the cycle with Demon's Horn, and then later the one with Staff of the Death Magus. My interpretation of those changes is that they decided the original cycle was too weak after all, and they were looking for something to fill similar "slots" in the core set, but they wanted something actually worth playing, at least in casual Magic and in drafts and stuff.

 

[Spiderman]

If I open a booster pack with a "bad" card, or if I think that a particular concept or execution is "bad design" then that's my reaction.

(and everything that followed....)

I agree. Your reaction is your own. Looking back on this and my posts in the other thread, I guess I sort of jumped to the defense of WOTC "reflexively"? "instinctively"? I'm not sure of the right word(s), but I think the point I was trying to make/say overall was that in the design/development, there must have been some reason for the card to be included and make it all the way through... but as you say, how the player community reacts/uses that card is a different matter.

I haven't seen the deck that you're talking about and I wouldn't simply assert that you couldn't possibly make the card work or that your decision to use it was wrong. It does seem like one of us must be wrong about that card, but that there's no way to definitely prove it either way.

I'm not sure about what your definition of "make the card work" is; I mean, it certainly wasn't the "centerpiece" or key card in the deck, just a cog. The deck just made it difficult for my opponent to cast spells (mana accelerators like Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, artifact mana) via Manabarbs and Armageddon and Mogg Squad was a low casting creature with a great power (relative) that could put early pressure on and allowed me not to get hurt by my deck (as much, if any).

But I guess the point is, what one person thinks is "trash" (or "worse", to use the terminology we've been using here), another person may not.

The smiley makes me guess that you fully grasped the context...

yes

Throne of Bone and friends were dropped from the core set and replaced with two subsequent cycles of similar lifegain cards that were overall stronger than the old ones... My interpretation of those changes is that they decided the original cycle was too weak after all, and they were looking for something to fill similar "slots" in the core set, but they wanted something actually worth playing

I agree and again, it kind of goes back to the design/development information - speculating (obviously) but maybe those kinds of cards really weren't high up on the "we should redesign/revisit these cards" list at first and as it become more and more noticeable that they were staying in despite their "nonusefulness except to beginner players", they got bumped up in priority to be replaced. And the time was right to fit in five common artifact cards. Stuff like that.

 

[Oversoul]

I'm not sure about what your definition of "make the card work" is; I mean, it certainly wasn't the "centerpiece" or key card in the deck, just a cog. The deck just made it difficult for my opponent to cast spells (mana accelerators like Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, artifact mana) via Manabarbs and Armageddon and Mogg Squad was a low casting creature with a great power (relative) that could put early pressure on and allowed me not to get hurt by my deck (as much, if any).

But I guess the point is, what one person thinks is "trash" (or "worse", to use the terminology we've been using here), another person may not.

Definitely. I think it's kind of a combination of Mark Rosewater's points 2 & 4. Some cards just won't ever appeal to one person, but are useful to another. And sometimes people just understimate a card. I remember at one point quietly objecting to a player dismissing Cloud of Faeries as a bad card. This person wasn't brand-new to the game, but I suspected at the time that it was naivete and lack of experience, that she'd never seen the kind of decks that took advantage of Cloud of Faeries. Then a few years later I saw the same player using Cloud of Faeries. Sometimes it's different players who see value in different cards. But it could also be the same person over time. For that reason, although I know the generic label "bad" gets thrown around a lot, I'm increasingly striving to be more specific about these things. A lot of cards that get called "bad" aren't really that bad. It depends on the context. It's easy for a Legacy player to see certain options within the game as being inefficient compared to the cards used in competitive Legacy play, and to dismiss them. But a card that's "bad" in Legacy might be good in Modern. Perhaps a card that's bad in Modern is good in Legacy! I'm never going on a crusade against the word "bad." But a lot of the time it probably isn't the most helpful descriptor. Badness is dependent on the situation.

Just for fun I started looking at the old "The 100 Worst Cards of All Time" series of articles at Star City Games. I saw familiar bad cards like Melting, Great Wall, Wintermoon Mesa, Mogg Squad (again), Cathedral of Serra, etc. But what struck me was that some of the cards on his list would later go on to become valued by a lot of people. Not very many of the cards that I'm browsing here! But I'm spotting a few. He thought Manabond was one of the worst cards ever, and that's been a long-term regular slot in Legacy Lands decks. Carnival of Souls was used in Skullclamp decks in the old Type 1.5. Divining Witch was used to combo out with Laboratory Maniac. Didgeridoo is of course sought-after for tribal minotaurs decks. There a couple of others that I know have seen considerable use, perhaps even competitive tournament play. Some of those odd selections might just be down to the author's lack of appreciation for cards that were already decent, but I suspect most of it came from increased synergies as the pool of Magic cards grew over the years.

Perhaps when it comes to Mogg Squad as a kind of Steel Golem imitator, I'm just too blinded by how the game has evolved: Brood Birthing automatically kills Mogg Squad! I don't think it would have been viable even back in 1997, even in a casual setting. But apparently, your mileage varied on that one. Color me baffled.

One thing that occurred to me is that some of the ire I've seen other players demonstrate toward Mogg Squad is probably born out of the same source that generated some of the ire for Fugitive Wizard, and that's a sense of incongruity in the sense of flavor and prior expectations that players come with. It's not much of a factor in my own analysis, but it really irritates some people, actually makes them angry at the existence of these cards. I'm more laid-back about it and I suspect that you're even less affected than I am by this issue. But like I said, the fact that Fugitive Wizard was a wizard with no abilities really bugged some of the people I knew. In principle, a wizard with no abilities isn't any worse than Eager Cadet, Dwarven Trader, Muck Rats, Willow Elf, etc. But players think of "wizard" as "dude with magical power." So the lack of an ability is more off-putting.

In the case of Mogg Squad, it's a goblin card. Players have the prior understanding that goblins are an aggressive creature type, able to overwhelm opponents with numbers and destructive abilities. Tribal goblins decks weren't even good yet when Tempest was new, but even back then, the understanding was the goblins were used in creature swarms. So players were annoyed that this was a goblin card that was useless in such a creature swarm deck. I know some of the complaints I've seen and heard regarding the card are more along the lines of bewilderment that WotC would make a goblin that's bad with other goblins, as it runs counter to other depictions of goblins in the game.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, I thought was done with this, but lo and behold...

It's a little long, but kind of odd with the timing since I happened to bring up Fugitive Wizard in the first place.

Toward the end, Melissa DeTora recapitulates Mark Rosewater's points #3 and #5, which is a bit frustrating for me because those are the two I take issue with (like I said earlier). I can, to an extent, accept the other points, but those were the two I found to be implausible. Kind of uncanny that it worked out that way.

It's not an experiment I can perform, but I truly believe that if I were given a group of brand-new players to introduce the game to and I curated the cards they'd have available, I could have them learning all of the important things about gameplay without ever needing to introduce "bad" cards. And if you're more skilled than someone else, you can leverage that skill in all sorts of ways. I just don't see value in the notion that having bad cards as options might help me because a less skilled player than myself might mistakenly use them. If I'm already more skilled, I don't need some weird handicap!