A number of years ago I happened to be in the company of a board gaming friend when he learned that I was one of the many, many people over the last few decades who has played Magic: the Gathering. (Fun fact: I still do even!) As it turns out, he too was into it at the time – before his friend group at the time ultimately lost interest. He never actually got rid of his cards or the decks he had made at the time though, sort of in the hopes that someday he’d be able to rekindle that interest with others. Excited at the prospect of digging out his old decks for a fun trip down memory lane, he asked if the next time we got together we could play a few games.
I, of course, happily obliged, not fully thinking this through. Mostly because I too was interested in seeing what he would bring to the table.
Sure enough, a few weeks later we reconnected for another game night. In the interim, he was indeed able to fish out his old box of cards, including decks he quite literally had not touched in years.
And by that I mean decks that hadn’t been updated since around the Urza block, maybe – maybe – Mercadian Masques. Frozen in time since 1999.
Alarm bells started going off in my head.
This isn’t to say that this era of Magic was uncapable of being effective, as evidenced by the fact that the Necropotence-dominated Black Summer of 1996 is still remembered, or that some of the most powerful and efficient cards the game has ever seen all came out during the first few years the game existed. Artifact-dominated decks fueled by the advent of new cards from this era such as Tinker, Metalworker, and Tolarian Academy work to devastating effect to this day. So it is fully possible to use decks designed around this time to compete with more contemporary choices…if you have the right cards. For the average casual Magic player, that is far less likely. And even at the time this took place (approximately 2014), Magic had evolved substantially over the proceeding 15 years.
This became evident very quickly.
I am not, nor have I ever been a power-based Magic player. My modus operandi for over 25 years has focused primarily on casual – specifically multiplayer casual. I’ve only built a handful of 60 card decks in my life, and I’ve never ascribed to the many of the pearls of wisdom you hear from professional tourney players about land ratios or ensuring I have a card drop for every turn. I generally favored combo over speed, and I favor utility over either. I unequivocally have made my share of potent, even scary decks, but few have been of the ‘kill on turn 4’ caliber – mostly because I don’t find those very interesting. Especially if you’re in a 4 player game and that leaves one person sitting around for 45 minutes while the rest of you finish. As a result, I have a tendency to sacrifice speed for versatility. It’s great for multiplayer. Dueling not so much.
For our first game I opted for one of the few 1 v 1 decks I still carried on me at the time – a Red / White Equipment deck. It proved to be a rout so fast that for the second and third games, I quickly pivoted to my multiplayer decks instead, each subsequent choice more toned down than the one before it. Regrettably, while this gave him a bit more of a chance, in each of those two the end result was the same as the first.
While he remarked that he still enjoyed the ability to dust off his old collection, in the end I felt guilty. I took no pleasure in winning so decisively against a couple decks that were largely built during the Ice Age block and whose most effective cards used against me were a couple Hymn to Tourachs and a Force of Will, once. Both of those cards are great examples of cards whose efficacy has survived through the ages, but although Magic was still largely the same game in 2014 as it was in 1999, the quality (and relative power level of individual cards) had unquestionably gone up. I guarantee the decks used across the table from me that evening were effective in the time they were made – likely even more so than the some of the decks I probably had around the same period. But time and the game had moved on, leaving me internally feeling more bittersweet than joyous.
I honestly shudder to think of how such an evening would go now. Ironically several of the decks I opted for at the time haven’t been updated since around that time, for it was shortly after this when my play group started making the migration over to being primarily (and later exclusively) Commander-based. This gives me now my own decks frozen in time, so to speak. On the EDH-side, however, the game has marched steadily onwards. The style temperament of my decks haven’t changed drastically in the Commander era, but I’d be foolish to think they haven’t advanced at all. The steady drumbeat of progress and all that. Still, I do vividly remember that evening if nothing else because it is fun to look back and see where the game came from compared to where it’s going.
Nowadays, there is a small but not-insignificant portion of the Magic community that has also been looking backwards, albeit for entirely different reason. In the last couple years, there has been a steady rise in the prices of older cards. Normally one would expect a slow, natural climb as cards become older and harder to find, but it’s more than that. Nor can it solely be attributed to the popularity of Commander itself, as many of the cards who have seen price spikes aren’t necessarily great for the format. No, it seems that over the last 2 years particularly, collectors and even some small-time investors have gotten into buying up old card stock – especially Reserved List cards since there’s a virtual guarantee those cards will never be reprinted. This has precipitously driven up card values both on individual cards and whole sets. Pretty much every large set prior to mid 1999 now is valued around or over $1,000. Pretty much every small set of the same time period now goes for at least $500. Revised, the last core set with dual lands? $7,000. The Dark has 122 cards, many of which were already reprinted and most of which aren’t all that great by today’s standards, is worth over $1,300. Antiquities – a generally so-so 100 card set but one dear to me as it was my first booster pack ever? Close to ten grand. Arabian Nights and Legends are over twice that.
Blissfully, even comically, there are a couple exceptions to this wave of price jumps. One is Fallen Empires, famously known as one of the least valuable sets the game has ever made. The reasons for this vary wildly, from overproducing way, way too much of it as an overcorrection to under-printing Legends, to having multiple copies of the same cards in the set (albeit with different art), to it being a bit lower power level than the last few expansions that came before it. So much so that even up until a few years ago you could still find boxes of it for under $100 and could buy an entire copy of the set for about $50. Nowadays that number is more in the $100-150 range – with a whopping two cards worth at or over $10! That’s pretty momentous for Fallen Empires – a set most people still scoff at.
Here’s a dirty little secret though about Fallen Empires (and the equally lambasted Homelands): there actually are some decent cards in there. High Tide was a tournament staple for a long time. Goblin Grenade is incredibly devastating in a Goblin deck. Spore Cloud is a better Fog than people give it credit. And the aforementioned Hymn to Tourach is still one of the best discard cards in the game.
Buried among the chaff of the set (yes there is a fair amount), there is also one card that has always stood out to me as having multiplayer potential but has historically never received much attention. This week, we’re going to change that. Because after so long, it’s this week’s card pick.
Today we have: Farrel’s Mantle
Name: Farrel’s Mantle
Edition: Fallen Empires
Rarity: Uncommon
Focus: Damage Dealing / Spot Removal
Highlights: Magic’s early years were fraught on a few levels as it tried to find the fight formula for various effects, color pie associations, and the efficacy of card types. The power level of creatures is probably the most famous example of this. Strangely, creature Auras on the other hand were actually – in aggregate – fairly decent even by today’s standards. Hidden among the rank-and-file among these was Farrel’s Mantle, an odd creature enchantment that rewards you for…attacking but not doing damage.
There were a handful of cards from this era that all shared this effect, whereby if the attacking creature was unblocked, you could forgo doing combat damage to a player in exchange for X. In the case of Farrel’s Mantle, it allows you to instead deal that damage elsewhere.
For three mana Farrel’s Mantle says that if the enchanted creature attacks and isn’t blocked, it allows you to deal damage equal to the creature’s power plus 2 to another target creature on the battlefield. Similar to Green’s ability to one-sided Fighting and Red’s occasional ability for a creature to deal damage equal to its power, Farren’s Mantle offers this now out-of-color ability in White.
There are, of course, two notable restrictions on its efficacy. First, you need to be able to be unblocked for this to even trigger, which means you either need a window of opportunity to run at any opponent without blockers or have some other means of evasion on the creature that prevents it from being blocked. Second, the creature’s power needs to be of a decent enough size to be worth the effort. Although even a paltry unblocked 1/1 token would be able to deal a modest 3 damage to another creature, having it on a creature of 3+ power opens up a lot more options for viable targets.
The question one may ask is – why not simply use a spot removal spell instead, especially in a color known for having access to them? To which the response is a) why not both?. and b) unlike a single spell, Farrel’s Mantle you can do over and over again so long as it’s on the battlefield. Save that spell for when you really need it. The Mantle effectively states that each time the creature attacks you can pick off another targetable creature on the battlefield. Importantly, it does not need to be a creature of the person you attacked. In fact, thanks to the inherent table politics of the format, Opponent A may gladly let you attack them at the cost of 0 damage if it meant being able to deal with Opponent B’s creature that you can’t get at more directly.
Farrel’s Mantle is an old, odd, and somewhat situational creature enchantment that trades one of your creature’s attack potential for the ability to pick off another creature, which in plenty of cases may actually be more advantageous than the handful of damage you’d do to an opponent in the moment. And because it’s an uncommon from Fallen Empires, it’s still incredibly, incredibly cheap to pick up.
So, you know, it still has that going for it.
Keep an eye out for us to be regularly featuring other more accessible-but-worth-it Commander cards going forward. In the meantime, we’ll keep the light on for you.
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