Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Well, this is going to be a big one. I don’t know when we’re going to get our hands on these cards. The current pandemic has messed with Magic set release scheduling. After some consideration, I’m consolidating the reports for Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths and Commander 2020. Looking back on last year, Commander sets aren’t normally that big of a deal for us, and this one is thematically tied to Ikoria anyway. It looks like there will be more large sets in the future that come with smaller product releases associated with them. We already know that the next core set is going to be tied to a smaller special set called “Jumpstart.” And I remain uncertain as to how to approach future reports. However, I can already tell, as I start this report, that it was going to be a big one anyway. Even if I’d split the Commander stuff into a separate report, the one for the regular Ikoria set would be larger than normal. Rather than write a big report and immediately follow it up with a small report for the Commander set, especially knowing that we’ll probably have access to all of these cards at the same time anyway, I figure it’s best to just consolidate them into one even-bigger report. It will presumably be much longer than my other reports for this year. We’ll just get it out of the way. I blame the virus.
Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths takes us to a brand new plane, one full of monsters. Refreshingly, this set is themed around the “wedge” color combinations, known in this set as “triomes”, and centers them around the “enemy” color this time, which makes much more sense than the old way of doing this. So while the Sultai cards in the Tarkir Block used black as a core color with blue and green as support, the Zagoth cards in Ikoria use green as a core color, with blue and black as support. In practice, this is usually a very minor distinction. But it can matter, and I think that this way is better. Shouldn’t affect Tribal decks much, though.
This is a power-packed set for Tribal gameplay, but before I get into the tribes themselves, there’s a major issue, which has already had drastic effects on other formats, and which will undoubtedly continue to do so. With that in mind, it’s prudent to lead with something about the “Companion” mechanic. I don’t want to. I’d much rather talk about the contents of the set. But the mechanic isn’t going away. I know this next part is going to be too long, in a report that will already be unusually long. I’m sorry.
The Companion Digression
I’ve always tried to frame these reports as an advisory analysis to a hypothetical council, the people who’d be making the real decisions. I try to evaluate every pertinent detail that I can think of, and convert it into something I could confidently submit for consideration. We’d already stopped playing Tribal games at the CPA before I ever started writing these, so really it’s all just for fun. While I’ve never lost sight of that, I do try to take the premise of the format seriously. Generally, since this is all just in good fun anyway (or my twisted sense of it, anyway), I’m fine with throwing in my own remarks, joking about things I like or don’t like when it comes to tribes. But the more relevant a new card or mechanic is, the more it would mean a serious effect on our hypothetical tribal format, the more serious and dispassionate I try to be. Even though this stuff is all make-believe anyway, I want to present a sober, responsible analysis of what effects new sets have for Tribal gameplay. And now, for the first time, the implications of a new mechanic have circled all the way back around to the point where it’s impossible for me to honestly analyze things without talking about my own position. That’s why this is a digression.
This all started with Ring of Ma'rûf. When I was 13 years old, I bought a copy of Ring of Ma'rûf from a local game store for $20. It was one of the only Arabian Nights cards in my small collection, but it was my favorite card from the set. I was transfixed with the idea of being able to fetch any card in my collection from outside the game. At the time, my whole collection could fit in a shoebox, so bringing all of my cards with me and pulling out the one I wanted was a very real option (and I did as much at my after-school game club). This was probably about what Richard Garfield had in mind when he designed the card. But I also took other approaches. Ring of Ma'rûf only removed itself from the game “after use” and so I’d cast Boomerang (or use Obelisk of Undoing) to put it back in my hand in response to activating it. While errata did change that part, I tried to find ways around it anyway. This culminated in my “Relentless Pony” deck, which I think was the first deck that I built with help from the CPA. The idea was to make lots of token copies of Ring of Ma'rûf with an infinite loop and to put my entire Magic: the Gathering collection into my hand. I was really proud of it. Back then, the rules had no provision for stopping me from bringing ante cards in from outside the game, so I took advantage of that (not that it really mattered). And I’ll always remember using Opalescence to make 15 copies of Snowfall into 3/3 creatures and killing an opponent by attacking for 45 damage. Also relevant, albeit less frequent, was the ability of Ring of Ma'rûf to bring a card back into the game after it had been removed by some effect. If your creature had been hit by Swords to Plowshares, this was, for many years, the only way to get it back.
Although Ring of Ma'rûf was never cost-effective enough for competitive play, its function wasn’t really practical to allow in tournaments (official tournaments didn’t exist back when Richard Garfield designed the card). To address this, Wizards of the Coast didn’t modify the card itself, but imposed a rule on its then-unique effect: it could only be used on cards that were in your sideboard or cards that had been in your deck, but had been removed from the game. Later, the rules would formalize this with the removed-from-the-game zone. And of course, it laid the groundwork for other cards with similar effects. The first of these were the “Wish” spells in Judgment. Four out of five were successful in tournaments (Golden Wish is bad) and gave rise to the term “Wishboard” for decks that dedicate sideboard slots to Wish targets. Although the use of Burning Wish to reliably pull Yawgmoth’s Will from one’s sideboard was, for a time, deemed too powerful in Vintage, the Wish cards were otherwise reined in by only being able to grab cards from the sideboard and the removed-from-the-game zone. In casual games, things could get more hectic, but from what I’ve experienced and heard myself, this was rarely an issue. In theory, if I’m playing a non-tournament game of Magic in my house, I could use Cunning Wish to search for any instant card in my entire collection of Magic cards, but so what? I’m probably going to have one of a few specific targets in mind anyway, and it’d be more practical just to build what would look like a “Wishboard” anyway.
In 2009, Wizards of the Coast changed the rules so that suddenly none of these cards could pull cards from exile, the new replacement for the removed-from-the-game-zone. For tournament play, this change was minor because retrieving “exiled” cards had only ever been a backup usage for Wish spells, and sideboards were the main attraction. However, I never got over this change because it was effectively a power-level erratum on Ring of Ma'rûf. I was and am against this ruling. The original five Wish cards and a couple of other versions (Glittering Wish and half of the split card Research//Development) were originally designed with the full understanding that in tournament play they would be able to target cards in sideboards or cards in the removed-from-the-game zone. Pull from Eternity and Riftsweeper were deliberately templated differently, and this was reflected in how cheap they were. While nerfing the Wish cards was unnecessary and inconsistent with the philosophy of, where possible, allowing cards to function as originally intended, it’s not nearly as egregious as doing the same thing to Ring of Ma'rûf: the original printed text on the card makes it explicitly clear that it’s supposed to be able to work on a card in what would become known as the “exile zone.” It may be an archaic phraseology for Magic rules today, but it’s not remotely ambiguous. To add insult to injury, Wizards of the Coast would go on to make new cards that did have the same type of function they took away from Ring of Ma'rûf, those being Coax from the Blind Eternities and Karn, the Great Creator. How rude.
Yes, I just wrote multiple paragraphs about something only tangential to the Companion mechanic, and you’re probably thinking it’s irrelevant and silly. Well, it’s kind of a full disclosure sort of thing. I am emotionally invested in what I see as an affront, but it’s something most people, probably including you, don’t think about at all. The vast majority of Magic players do not care that Ring of Ma'rûf was changed. If pressed, they might have one opinion or another about the nuances of the exile zone and the history of rules changes there, but it certainly doesn’t bother them. It bothers me. I am weird. I recognize that I’m highly unusual in this respect. And now that we come to the Companion mechanic, I have to emphasize that I’m biased. The mechanic has already caused problems, and we’ll come to that, but my personal take on it is colored by my own weird obsession with this whole issue of how WotC treats “outside the game” in the rules. Whatever your thoughts on Companion, for or against it, your response might not be as vehement, as annoyed, as mine. If you weren’t disgusted with the printing of Coax from the Blind Eternities because it was a reminder of a past offense, then your objection to Companion cards just isn’t going to be as severe as mine. And when I report on the implications of the Companion mechanic on Tribal gameplay I want to temper my evaluation and set aside my own prejudice. But it’s hard!
The Ikoria companion cards are the first cards that bring themselves in from outside the game. And this means that other than the deckbuilding restrictions each companion imposes, there’s no reason not to use whichever one is best for your deck if your deck can use it. The first question to ask is: “Does the deckbuilding limitation outweigh the benefits of the companion?” At the time I write this, while the physical set has yet been released, MTGO data already indicates that for top decks in every major competitive format, the answer is often a strong affirmative. Also, we see that different individual companions perform well in different environments. Notably, in the Brawl and Commander formats, one of these cards has been preemptively banned. Other bans may follow, but it’s too early to know how this will turn out.
In the Canadian Highlander format, which is organized by its own community and isn’t tied to WotC, they stipulate that sideboards are not used and that “outside the game” cards do not function. The Commander format used a similar rule, but Wizards of the Coast intervened to specify that companions were an exception. Canadian Highlander doesn’t recognize this exception. I haven’t been following other popular community-governed formats, but they might handle this in different ways. I’ve never really been happy with Magic formats just making rules that Ring of Ma'rûf and cards like it don’t work. Ring of Ma'rûf is older than any of those formats! It’s part of the game. Allowing the official tournament “sideboard” modification is fine.
I don’t think that we’ve ever formally addressed the issue of sideboards or “from outside the game” effects for Tribal games at the CPA. So far, we’ve just let them work in the default way for casual games. I forget how often they’ve been used, but there was one time when Mooseman had Burning Wish in his Dwarf Tribal deck and used it to grab Apocalypse from outside the game!
I have to acknowledge that “Wish” cards are pretty ridiculously flexible if no limits are imposed on them, such as setting up a sideboard. Still I don’t feel motivated to advocate for limiting these cards to their tournament functionality for a casual format. And even if we did that, it wouldn’t address the issue of companions anyway, because each deck can only have one companion.
My personal preference would almost be to give in to frustration and just ban the Companion mechanic from working. The individual cards are fine, if they’re in a maindeck. It’s being able to cast them from outside the game that’s the problem. But I wouldn’t want to go down the road of just ignoring aspects of Magic that I don’t like, or of imposing houserules that cancel out what WotC has done. I strongly believe that this mechanic is a horrible mistake. But it’s a mistake that we’ll just have to live with. One solution might be to ban the companions that are problematic. I’ve given the matter some thought, and I won’t be advocating for a ban on any companions at this time. But I am very wary of them. There are ten companions, one for each of the two-color combinations. Because they use hybrid mana, they could fit into a deck that uses either of their colors. Data from other formats shows that different companions flourish in different environments. I can’t think of anything that completely rules out any of them for Tribal gameplay, although some are more obviously viable than others. For instance, Umori pretty much rules out support spells for a Tribal deck, which seems harsh. Meanwhile, Lutri gets most of the way toward the format imposing its restriction on decks anyway if one is using the CPA Tribal Lowlander deckbuilding rules.
Out of the ten companions, the one that stands out for Tribal usage is Kaheera, the Orphanguard. It has synergies with cats, elementals, nightmares, dinosaurs, and beasts. I’d imagine that it basically becomes a default companion for almost any deck in any of those tribes. It would seem that all five of those tribes receive a substantial boost.
Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths takes us to a brand new plane, one full of monsters. Refreshingly, this set is themed around the “wedge” color combinations, known in this set as “triomes”, and centers them around the “enemy” color this time, which makes much more sense than the old way of doing this. So while the Sultai cards in the Tarkir Block used black as a core color with blue and green as support, the Zagoth cards in Ikoria use green as a core color, with blue and black as support. In practice, this is usually a very minor distinction. But it can matter, and I think that this way is better. Shouldn’t affect Tribal decks much, though.
This is a power-packed set for Tribal gameplay, but before I get into the tribes themselves, there’s a major issue, which has already had drastic effects on other formats, and which will undoubtedly continue to do so. With that in mind, it’s prudent to lead with something about the “Companion” mechanic. I don’t want to. I’d much rather talk about the contents of the set. But the mechanic isn’t going away. I know this next part is going to be too long, in a report that will already be unusually long. I’m sorry.
The Companion Digression
I’ve always tried to frame these reports as an advisory analysis to a hypothetical council, the people who’d be making the real decisions. I try to evaluate every pertinent detail that I can think of, and convert it into something I could confidently submit for consideration. We’d already stopped playing Tribal games at the CPA before I ever started writing these, so really it’s all just for fun. While I’ve never lost sight of that, I do try to take the premise of the format seriously. Generally, since this is all just in good fun anyway (or my twisted sense of it, anyway), I’m fine with throwing in my own remarks, joking about things I like or don’t like when it comes to tribes. But the more relevant a new card or mechanic is, the more it would mean a serious effect on our hypothetical tribal format, the more serious and dispassionate I try to be. Even though this stuff is all make-believe anyway, I want to present a sober, responsible analysis of what effects new sets have for Tribal gameplay. And now, for the first time, the implications of a new mechanic have circled all the way back around to the point where it’s impossible for me to honestly analyze things without talking about my own position. That’s why this is a digression.
This all started with Ring of Ma'rûf. When I was 13 years old, I bought a copy of Ring of Ma'rûf from a local game store for $20. It was one of the only Arabian Nights cards in my small collection, but it was my favorite card from the set. I was transfixed with the idea of being able to fetch any card in my collection from outside the game. At the time, my whole collection could fit in a shoebox, so bringing all of my cards with me and pulling out the one I wanted was a very real option (and I did as much at my after-school game club). This was probably about what Richard Garfield had in mind when he designed the card. But I also took other approaches. Ring of Ma'rûf only removed itself from the game “after use” and so I’d cast Boomerang (or use Obelisk of Undoing) to put it back in my hand in response to activating it. While errata did change that part, I tried to find ways around it anyway. This culminated in my “Relentless Pony” deck, which I think was the first deck that I built with help from the CPA. The idea was to make lots of token copies of Ring of Ma'rûf with an infinite loop and to put my entire Magic: the Gathering collection into my hand. I was really proud of it. Back then, the rules had no provision for stopping me from bringing ante cards in from outside the game, so I took advantage of that (not that it really mattered). And I’ll always remember using Opalescence to make 15 copies of Snowfall into 3/3 creatures and killing an opponent by attacking for 45 damage. Also relevant, albeit less frequent, was the ability of Ring of Ma'rûf to bring a card back into the game after it had been removed by some effect. If your creature had been hit by Swords to Plowshares, this was, for many years, the only way to get it back.
Although Ring of Ma'rûf was never cost-effective enough for competitive play, its function wasn’t really practical to allow in tournaments (official tournaments didn’t exist back when Richard Garfield designed the card). To address this, Wizards of the Coast didn’t modify the card itself, but imposed a rule on its then-unique effect: it could only be used on cards that were in your sideboard or cards that had been in your deck, but had been removed from the game. Later, the rules would formalize this with the removed-from-the-game zone. And of course, it laid the groundwork for other cards with similar effects. The first of these were the “Wish” spells in Judgment. Four out of five were successful in tournaments (Golden Wish is bad) and gave rise to the term “Wishboard” for decks that dedicate sideboard slots to Wish targets. Although the use of Burning Wish to reliably pull Yawgmoth’s Will from one’s sideboard was, for a time, deemed too powerful in Vintage, the Wish cards were otherwise reined in by only being able to grab cards from the sideboard and the removed-from-the-game zone. In casual games, things could get more hectic, but from what I’ve experienced and heard myself, this was rarely an issue. In theory, if I’m playing a non-tournament game of Magic in my house, I could use Cunning Wish to search for any instant card in my entire collection of Magic cards, but so what? I’m probably going to have one of a few specific targets in mind anyway, and it’d be more practical just to build what would look like a “Wishboard” anyway.
In 2009, Wizards of the Coast changed the rules so that suddenly none of these cards could pull cards from exile, the new replacement for the removed-from-the-game-zone. For tournament play, this change was minor because retrieving “exiled” cards had only ever been a backup usage for Wish spells, and sideboards were the main attraction. However, I never got over this change because it was effectively a power-level erratum on Ring of Ma'rûf. I was and am against this ruling. The original five Wish cards and a couple of other versions (Glittering Wish and half of the split card Research//Development) were originally designed with the full understanding that in tournament play they would be able to target cards in sideboards or cards in the removed-from-the-game zone. Pull from Eternity and Riftsweeper were deliberately templated differently, and this was reflected in how cheap they were. While nerfing the Wish cards was unnecessary and inconsistent with the philosophy of, where possible, allowing cards to function as originally intended, it’s not nearly as egregious as doing the same thing to Ring of Ma'rûf: the original printed text on the card makes it explicitly clear that it’s supposed to be able to work on a card in what would become known as the “exile zone.” It may be an archaic phraseology for Magic rules today, but it’s not remotely ambiguous. To add insult to injury, Wizards of the Coast would go on to make new cards that did have the same type of function they took away from Ring of Ma'rûf, those being Coax from the Blind Eternities and Karn, the Great Creator. How rude.
Yes, I just wrote multiple paragraphs about something only tangential to the Companion mechanic, and you’re probably thinking it’s irrelevant and silly. Well, it’s kind of a full disclosure sort of thing. I am emotionally invested in what I see as an affront, but it’s something most people, probably including you, don’t think about at all. The vast majority of Magic players do not care that Ring of Ma'rûf was changed. If pressed, they might have one opinion or another about the nuances of the exile zone and the history of rules changes there, but it certainly doesn’t bother them. It bothers me. I am weird. I recognize that I’m highly unusual in this respect. And now that we come to the Companion mechanic, I have to emphasize that I’m biased. The mechanic has already caused problems, and we’ll come to that, but my personal take on it is colored by my own weird obsession with this whole issue of how WotC treats “outside the game” in the rules. Whatever your thoughts on Companion, for or against it, your response might not be as vehement, as annoyed, as mine. If you weren’t disgusted with the printing of Coax from the Blind Eternities because it was a reminder of a past offense, then your objection to Companion cards just isn’t going to be as severe as mine. And when I report on the implications of the Companion mechanic on Tribal gameplay I want to temper my evaluation and set aside my own prejudice. But it’s hard!
The Ikoria companion cards are the first cards that bring themselves in from outside the game. And this means that other than the deckbuilding restrictions each companion imposes, there’s no reason not to use whichever one is best for your deck if your deck can use it. The first question to ask is: “Does the deckbuilding limitation outweigh the benefits of the companion?” At the time I write this, while the physical set has yet been released, MTGO data already indicates that for top decks in every major competitive format, the answer is often a strong affirmative. Also, we see that different individual companions perform well in different environments. Notably, in the Brawl and Commander formats, one of these cards has been preemptively banned. Other bans may follow, but it’s too early to know how this will turn out.
In the Canadian Highlander format, which is organized by its own community and isn’t tied to WotC, they stipulate that sideboards are not used and that “outside the game” cards do not function. The Commander format used a similar rule, but Wizards of the Coast intervened to specify that companions were an exception. Canadian Highlander doesn’t recognize this exception. I haven’t been following other popular community-governed formats, but they might handle this in different ways. I’ve never really been happy with Magic formats just making rules that Ring of Ma'rûf and cards like it don’t work. Ring of Ma'rûf is older than any of those formats! It’s part of the game. Allowing the official tournament “sideboard” modification is fine.
I don’t think that we’ve ever formally addressed the issue of sideboards or “from outside the game” effects for Tribal games at the CPA. So far, we’ve just let them work in the default way for casual games. I forget how often they’ve been used, but there was one time when Mooseman had Burning Wish in his Dwarf Tribal deck and used it to grab Apocalypse from outside the game!
I have to acknowledge that “Wish” cards are pretty ridiculously flexible if no limits are imposed on them, such as setting up a sideboard. Still I don’t feel motivated to advocate for limiting these cards to their tournament functionality for a casual format. And even if we did that, it wouldn’t address the issue of companions anyway, because each deck can only have one companion.
My personal preference would almost be to give in to frustration and just ban the Companion mechanic from working. The individual cards are fine, if they’re in a maindeck. It’s being able to cast them from outside the game that’s the problem. But I wouldn’t want to go down the road of just ignoring aspects of Magic that I don’t like, or of imposing houserules that cancel out what WotC has done. I strongly believe that this mechanic is a horrible mistake. But it’s a mistake that we’ll just have to live with. One solution might be to ban the companions that are problematic. I’ve given the matter some thought, and I won’t be advocating for a ban on any companions at this time. But I am very wary of them. There are ten companions, one for each of the two-color combinations. Because they use hybrid mana, they could fit into a deck that uses either of their colors. Data from other formats shows that different companions flourish in different environments. I can’t think of anything that completely rules out any of them for Tribal gameplay, although some are more obviously viable than others. For instance, Umori pretty much rules out support spells for a Tribal deck, which seems harsh. Meanwhile, Lutri gets most of the way toward the format imposing its restriction on decks anyway if one is using the CPA Tribal Lowlander deckbuilding rules.
Out of the ten companions, the one that stands out for Tribal usage is Kaheera, the Orphanguard. It has synergies with cats, elementals, nightmares, dinosaurs, and beasts. I’d imagine that it basically becomes a default companion for almost any deck in any of those tribes. It would seem that all five of those tribes receive a substantial boost.