Mirrodin Besieged prereleases are this weekend, and the full set has been spoiled. Much talk is being made of the cards out on the interwebs, and Geordie Tait seems to have sparked some controversy in his article One-Shot, the Robot. Hin the article on Star City Games, Tai accused Wizards of the Coast of hack design when it comes to the new Mythic Rare, Blightsteel Colossus. Personally, I couldn't feel like the article wasn't more dead on in its analysis of the card.
On the MTGSalvation forums, in a discussion of the new card Plague Myr, "penguinofhonor" said:
"Bad design. They don't normally put "attack with me!" and "tap me!" effects on the same card"
How true. Mark Rosewater, the big designer man himself, has discussed "inelegant" card design in this manner. (See answers to questions 10-12.)
Perhaps, though, none of this is actually bad design, but laziness (which Tait says is ultimately apparent in the naming of Blightsteel Colossus).
Laziness, I suppose, really does equate to bad design, however.
Let's look at another example in Mirrodin Besieged. Look at the art for Shriekhorn.
It's a horn breathing fire. First, it's not shrieking. Second, it's breathing fire!
[Edit: As per the comment below, sure there are souls in there, but that doesn't change the fact that it looks more like fire, than any sort of ectoplasmic ether, perhaps it should have been green or had a ghostly feel to it.]
In what way does that relate to something that has a "mill" effect?
Mill effects come in all sorts, from the traditional artifact-based, including Millstone, Whetstone, Grindclock, Keening Stone, to the less straightforward, for example Halimar Excavator. While the Excavator makes some sense, it is "digging" through a library (though I think a scry effect may have made more sense, as a means of excavating, or digging, for treasure), but on the flip side, Hedron Crab? It's flavor text, however, sums it up my thought process when trying to figure out how a crab is milling a player, "Hedrons perplex minds both great and small."
Traditionally, no matter what color a card has been that has the word "shriek" in its name, the effect is in some way indicating "instilling fear". That may have been to force a discard (you're so scared you forget your spell), tap creatures (they cower in fear), return a creature to hand (it runs away), or in the case of Shriekmaw, it flat out scares them to death (ie. Terror). Other uses have been to boost a creature's power and toughness in some way. Soulshriek is a guttural intense bellow of power inducing dark rage, that ultimately kills a creature. Nim Shrieker gets really angry about artifacts and rages powerfully in a scary way (though this is really pushing it). And finally, Fireshrieker, well, it's a firebreathing staff that gives a creature double strike, so yeah that doesn't really work (another example of bad design, in my opinion...it should have given a creature actual Firebreathing.) My point is, as was discussed by Doug Beyer, certain words should reflect certain things. Specters, as he notes, always cause a discard effect. Shades get bigger for spending black mana. It's what they do.
Shriekhorn's effect is a mill effect. A player loses cards from their library. In the sense that it is an artifact "instilling fear" and making a player "forget" spells, thus losing them, I suppose it Shriekhorn makes sense. But from an art standpoint, it is makes no sense whatsoever. By looking at the art, one would assume that this artifact deals some sort of direct damage. Perhaps, remove a charge counter to "Incinerate." As it is, the card is not bad design in effect, but there is a certain amount of laziness in making the art match the card, or vice versa.
So what am I saying? Basically, when reading articles from Wizards of the Coast, and most frequently from Head Designer Mark Rosewater, there is a heavy emphasis, notably from Time Spiral block forward, on cards being designed in a way that makes sense, and from M11 forward, on flavor being very important. There is also a stress on the amount of effort and work is put forth on each individual card over the course of a long design and development period, to make sure the cards are excellent. So what happens?
Some cards are, indeed, excellent, but overall, so many opportunities are missed to make cards that A) feel like they fit into the set they are in, and capture that set's flavor (a small change is often all that would be necessary to create something truly flavorful) and B) are worth playing (yes, some cards need to be bad in relation to other cards being better, but no card [Mindless Null anyone?] should ever be absolute junk).
I understand that there will be mistakes. But for all the future future play testing, redesign, reconsideration, multiple eyes and hands touching and seeing cards, some of the cards that are released just boggle my mind. And moreover, it tends to be in second sets of blocks. Morningtide in relation to Lorwyn. The tribal aspect of Lorwyn was not explored enough in the first set, and then changed in the second. Without a true third set, it floundered and was never fully realized (hence many of my problems with Rise of the Eldrazi in relation to the rest of Zendikar block, there most definitely should have been Allies and lands, in general, should still have been important).
Take Worldwake. For all the hype, and sales of packs, that uber-card Jace, the Mind Sculptor created, how many other worthwhile cards were really in that 145? Wizards seems to feel that by putting a small few great cards in the small middle set, it can justifiably lower the quality of the rest of that set. That appears to be the same case with Mirrodin Besieged. For each Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, there are several Lumeingrid Gargoyles (really, a 4/4 flyer for 6? We don't even get the classic Air Elemental in the core set anymore for 5.), Quilled Slagwurms (oh good, another big high-cost vanilla wurm) or, worse, Pierce Striders (for my analysis related to that lost opportunity, click here).
So yeah, I'm ranting, but only because I've played the game for a long time and see that so much is wasted in design and development that makes the product ultimately frustrating. As a player, I don't want a bunch of bad cards. I would suspect in Limited, even, a player really doesn't want bad cards even if they are "okay" in a draft pool. Is Wizards really at fault for bad design? Perhaps. Is it lazy design? I really do think so.
Comments
I like the idea that laziness equates bad design, but find you just don't find the best example to support your point.
(1.) Did you notice that Shriekhorn doesn't actually "breathes" fire, but releases a cloud of spirits that have faces, which look very much like they are wailing and possibly shrieking. The color is reminiscent of other spirits that are not on fire (Phantom Nomad).
Combine this with the fact that on many milling cards the flavor can be summarised as "a noise so unnerving that it unsettles the wizards mind" and you know how shrieking causes mill (note how fear is not a factor in why the sound mills - its annoyance).
(s.a. Millstone flavor text: "More than one mage has been driven insane by the sound of the millstone relentlessly grinding away.")
(2.) Both blunders seem not to be cases of bad design work (even if they are as bad as you make them out to be - debatable), but bad creative work: Fireshrieker especially is so simple, it probably was designed long before the flavor was added, so the name art etc. are NOT in the hand of the Design department (I agree though that Fireshrieker is a bad match for double strike - it would be interesting to investigate whether this is a case of reassigned art).
(3.) Having read the infamous Blightsteel Colossus article, I don't think it is as "dead on" as you think. It raises some good points, but maybe even more bad.
I agree that there are examples of laziness in this set. Blightsteel Colossus and Pistus Strike to me seem like examples of cards they just threw infect on and called it a day, something they rally against in the Great Designer Search 2. Poisonous as a keyword, yet only one card makes it to print with that ability. And I also agree that Plague Myr is generally bad design for the mana-or-attack reasons. Usually a card that's good for attacking and has a tap ability has vigilance to make up for it (i.e. Razia). And unlike Niv-Mizzet, the card isn't cool enough to have to make that annoying decision.
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