Oversoul
The Tentacled One
I believe that the very first time I saw a Magic card, it was Teremko Griffin from Mirage, at some point in early 1997. I was visiting a small game store a mile and a half from my house, looking for figures for Warhammer Quest. Martin McKenna's art drew me in, but it was the layout of the cards themselves and their sheer variety that intrigued me. I didn't learn much about the game in that visit, and I didn't buy any cards, but it served as a kind of entry point. Later that year, my mother, seeing my interest, my mother learned that a set meant for beginners, Portal, was scheduled to release soon. She asked if I'd be interested and got me a starter set. Unbeknownst to me, just as I was getting my first taste of the game, professional players were discovering the broken potential of a card from the most recent mainline Magic expansion: Squandered Resources.
Mark Rosewater has noted that some professional players at the time insisted that R&D must have deliberately inserted cards into Visions in order to make the Prosperous Bloom deck possible. They felt that it seemed engineered, a claim that WotC themselves have always denied. For my part, I never doubted that the confluence of card designs were organic and that WotC were being forthright about this. But I can kind of see why a player at the time might have thought the interactions seemed deliberately tailored to enable the Prosperous Bloom deck.
A lot of information has come out about behind-the-scenes set design surrounding the story of how WotC had a planned expansion called "Menagerie." Although they never completed this set, it was used to create Mirage and Visions. This was a kind of precursor to the block system, so there wasn't very much thought put into which cards would go into the large set and which ones would go into the small set. It mostly feels like Mirage/Visions is just one super-expansion. But to savvy players at the time, it must have seemed like Visions conveniently provided all of the tools to unlock the potential of combo gameplay in Type 2. And while several cards came together to make this engine work, the card that started it all was Squandered Resources.
Combo decks had been done in the past, but they were generally fueled by broken cards from the original core set like the Power 9. Also, DCI card bans made some of these decks short-lived. Most such decks were what I called "Pattern A" in the Comboist Manifesto. "A" is for "aggregate." These decks relied on assembling certain, highly specific card interactions with low functionality taken separately. The most iconic was Channel + Fireball, which got Channel restricted in Type 1 in 1994 and banned in Type 2 in 1995. Other examples include Time Vault + Animate Artifact + Instill Energy and Lich + Mirror Universe. But Type 2 was policed so effectively that no combo decks really emerged. The Standard format had no Black Lotus, no Wheel of Fortune, no Regrowth, no Power Artifact, etc.
Squandered Resources allows players to sacrifice lands for a burst of mana. By itself, this is potentially powerful, but somewhat limited in terms of scope, given the other tools available in Standard. The presence of Natural Balance in Mirage amplified this into a rapid mana production engine and enabled easy access to mana of any color. This burst of mana could allow a deck to get ahead of the aggro decks available at the time. Squandered Resources on turn 2 could, with no missed land drops, lead to six mana on turn 3, which Natural Balance could then turn into up to 12 mana. With Infernal Contract from Mirage and both Vampiric Tutor and Impulse from Visions, the deck could then resolve Cadaverous Bloom from Mirage and use it with the blue mana provided by Squandered Resources to fuel increasing X-values of Prosperity from Visions, which could generate copious mana for Drain Life, reprinted in Mirage. Under the rules at the time, this enabled players to go all the way to 0 life with Infernal Contract, but go back to a positive life total with Drain Life for the win. This whole thing is more like what I have called "Pattern C" in the Comboist Manifesto. "C" is for "chains." Spells and abilities from different cards interact for powerful synergies. The aggegate of Cadaverous Bloom + Prosperity is what draws so many cards and makes so much mana, but it only gets there because it was supported along the way by things like Infernal Contract, Three Wishes, Vampiric Tutor, Impulse, and Elven Cache. But it's Squandered Resources that enables all of this to move quickly enough to outrace beatdown. When WotC created the Block Constructed format, Squandered Resources was banned in order to stop the ProsBloom deck from dominating the format.
Mark Rosewater has noted that some professional players at the time insisted that R&D must have deliberately inserted cards into Visions in order to make the Prosperous Bloom deck possible. They felt that it seemed engineered, a claim that WotC themselves have always denied. For my part, I never doubted that the confluence of card designs were organic and that WotC were being forthright about this. But I can kind of see why a player at the time might have thought the interactions seemed deliberately tailored to enable the Prosperous Bloom deck.
A lot of information has come out about behind-the-scenes set design surrounding the story of how WotC had a planned expansion called "Menagerie." Although they never completed this set, it was used to create Mirage and Visions. This was a kind of precursor to the block system, so there wasn't very much thought put into which cards would go into the large set and which ones would go into the small set. It mostly feels like Mirage/Visions is just one super-expansion. But to savvy players at the time, it must have seemed like Visions conveniently provided all of the tools to unlock the potential of combo gameplay in Type 2. And while several cards came together to make this engine work, the card that started it all was Squandered Resources.
Combo decks had been done in the past, but they were generally fueled by broken cards from the original core set like the Power 9. Also, DCI card bans made some of these decks short-lived. Most such decks were what I called "Pattern A" in the Comboist Manifesto. "A" is for "aggregate." These decks relied on assembling certain, highly specific card interactions with low functionality taken separately. The most iconic was Channel + Fireball, which got Channel restricted in Type 1 in 1994 and banned in Type 2 in 1995. Other examples include Time Vault + Animate Artifact + Instill Energy and Lich + Mirror Universe. But Type 2 was policed so effectively that no combo decks really emerged. The Standard format had no Black Lotus, no Wheel of Fortune, no Regrowth, no Power Artifact, etc.
Squandered Resources allows players to sacrifice lands for a burst of mana. By itself, this is potentially powerful, but somewhat limited in terms of scope, given the other tools available in Standard. The presence of Natural Balance in Mirage amplified this into a rapid mana production engine and enabled easy access to mana of any color. This burst of mana could allow a deck to get ahead of the aggro decks available at the time. Squandered Resources on turn 2 could, with no missed land drops, lead to six mana on turn 3, which Natural Balance could then turn into up to 12 mana. With Infernal Contract from Mirage and both Vampiric Tutor and Impulse from Visions, the deck could then resolve Cadaverous Bloom from Mirage and use it with the blue mana provided by Squandered Resources to fuel increasing X-values of Prosperity from Visions, which could generate copious mana for Drain Life, reprinted in Mirage. Under the rules at the time, this enabled players to go all the way to 0 life with Infernal Contract, but go back to a positive life total with Drain Life for the win. This whole thing is more like what I have called "Pattern C" in the Comboist Manifesto. "C" is for "chains." Spells and abilities from different cards interact for powerful synergies. The aggegate of Cadaverous Bloom + Prosperity is what draws so many cards and makes so much mana, but it only gets there because it was supported along the way by things like Infernal Contract, Three Wishes, Vampiric Tutor, Impulse, and Elven Cache. But it's Squandered Resources that enables all of this to move quickly enough to outrace beatdown. When WotC created the Block Constructed format, Squandered Resources was banned in order to stop the ProsBloom deck from dominating the format.