The gamer is a beast prone to seeing patterns, and games are part of feeding that mental need. Some games, like Magic: The Gathering are absolutely rife with this, thanks to cycles and a system of supposedly uniform costing and structuring effects. Any player of a certain time invested with has a general idea of what things should cost, even if they don’t agree with Wizards’ mere rulings on that idea.
When I played the game most actively, buying boosters (and not drafting), I did so with the desire to dig down under the surface of the game and come to understand it. More often than once would I point out old cards and new cards, seeing the way new ones had some element of rules connecting them – a behaviour that wasn’t particularly obnoxious (I tell myself now). I often claimed that the three eras of Magic’s brokenness had been a period of overpowered control (early Magic), overpowered combo (Urza’s), and overpowered Aggro (Affinity). I was…
Optimistically, I had a somewhat simplistic view, but it was an interesting idea. One idea that’s been stirring in my head for a little while, however, is that Khans of Tarkir is the proper replacement for Onslaught. To talk about that we’re going to have to first chatter about just how messed up Onslaught was.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Onslaught, that block is a god-damned mess. First things first, it was a block with a tribal theme where the two blocks on either side of it explicitly did not service the same groups of tribes, meaning that the set had to rely on its own cards, or on long-term mainstay cards from the core sets. Fine if you were an Elf deck looking to slot in Llanowars (oh wait they cycled out), not so fine if you were playing Soldiers. Odyssey was full of Dwarves and Centaurs, and Mirrodin was full of who fucking cares, Affinity is happening, it is right around you right now it’s in your eyes it’s in your hair who cares about your Onslaught Tribal Zombie Deck Bullshit. This meant the set had a ‘parasitic problem’ – where the bulk of what the set did it did within itself in Standard and there was very little reason to add cards from any other set.
Second, Onslaught was when Wizards had realised that maybe just maybe ten years of Counterspell and Draw-Go strategies might not be ideal for encouraging new players. So Onslaught cratered the power level of blue in its traditional areas of power, and tried to address them elsewhere. This didn’t work – it didn’t diminish the presence or power of Blue, because Odyssey block had just happened, where between Psychatog, Wake, and a full set of good, high-power blue card draw and counterspells, Blue had more than enough power to bully the standard environment. This meant that blue’s tribal interaction was actually reserved, mostly, to dirdly little fliers and drafting red, for some great removal spells. Blue in block constructed was basically nonexistant – even with Voidmage Prodigy in the pool, there was no reason to dick around with the empty-feeling wizard tribe when you could be dropping turn five Kilnmouth Fucking Dragons.
(This was a weird block).
Blue wasn’t the only colour that sucked, though, because black had two tribes, both of which were ordinary outside of draft. In draft? Black was strong, with a bunch of good, resilient zombies and aggressive strategies that crashed in to the redzone. Big enough to block for one turn, then burly enough to charge into the red zone. Then constructed happened and Black had to, uh.
Well, Black still had Cabal Coffers and all the good stuff from Odyssey Block. So black was fine – it just gained almost nothing from Onslaught Block.
You might imagine then that I’d be big on a set where apparently, Blue and Black sucked ass, but the thing is, the other colour that was hosed in this scenario was green – which couldn’t really compete on a tournament level with even blue and black. This was an old day of Magic, where even bad removal was pretty damn good – and green’s colour pie was mostly ‘3/3 creatures for 5 that make 6 drops better.’ Basically, three of the colours were either building into places that weren’t good, or relied on the sets that came before or after them to support a block that was trying to make them less powerful.
The third problem was that Onslaught was the first showing of Morph. Morph was a ghastly fucking mechanic when it first came out. The problems of morph hadn’t been shaken out yet – there were too many situations where a morph was a coin flip. Morph creatures as 3 mana 2/2s were the standard for the other colours – meaning that you would often get 3 mana 1/2s with abilities, or dirdly little 1/1s with a morph ability that would never be relevant. Morph was treated as a special ability, an advantage worth giving up some major points for, creating this landscape of 1/2 and 2/1 creatures. When you stepped out of the draft environment though, there were maybe two morphs whose effects were costed worth your time for actual play – Willbender, and Exalted Angel. Willbender didn’t even exist in a world where it could thrive – it’s been played primarily in older and eternal formats because of its niche power application.
Fourth, Onslaught was trying to be a creature set, a tribal set, back when Wizards were still just struggling with what made creatures good. Time has not been kind to the creatures of Onslaught. In the set there’s a cycle of legendary creatures, known as the Pit Fighters, who at the time we looked upon with awe and hope, only to find, in play, they were god awful. With a few exceptions, it was a generation of creatures that couldn’t match the removal in the world they lived. Particularly sad is the history of Silvos, Rogue Elemental, an 8/5 trampling regenerator – in a block where no black removal allowed regeneration. Nor did the white regeneration. Nor did some of the red removal. Nor did the blue removal. These were meant to be headlining creatures, too!
I guess the final mark against Onslaught though is the real blindspot period its development had. I haven’t the exact details but I’ve heard Rosewater and others refer to the number of things that ‘surprised’ them between Onslaught and Odyssey block. Now, the failure of Mirrodin block is well known and very well understood – Affinity was a titanic powerhouse. But the blind spots in Odyssey block were somewhat subtler – the powerhouse mana control deck lurking in Mirari’s Wake or the overwhelming control represented by Cabal Coffers – or, of course, the odd-one-out in its cycle, Psychatog. In case you’re unfamiliar, Psychatog was an uncommon, part of a cycle, and quite possibly one of the strongest creatures ever printed.
This isn’t to say Onslaught didn’t work. It was a good enough set – but it contributed very little to the greater formats. It’s a deeply flawed block, but it has heart. There’s good idea. There’s good intentions in this set. It wants to be a good block, it’s not a deliberate effort to slow the world down like Mercadian Masques was (and maybe Kamigawa was as well). But we’ll talk more about the high points of Onslaught more later.