August 14, 2020
offiziersmesser – noun [German] : a penknife incorporating several blades and other tools such as scissors and screwdrivers
It pains me to start here. Almost as much as is pains me to play against this ^&@#!*ing card.
Uro is incredibly powerful.
Uro is ubiquitous.
And as of this writing, Uro is valued at $47, down from an all-time high of $59 but still nearly $20 more than the second most valuable card in all of Standard, The Great Henge. And much of Henge’s value appears to be driven by Commander, as it sees very little play in competitive Standard brews (some mono-green aggro decks run a couple copies, and that appears to be it.)
If you’re playing any (semi-competitive) Standard deck with green and blue in it, you just have to play Uro, because not only is it egregiously strong, it is also (I suspect – I’ve never used it) a really fun card to play. Who doesn’t want card draw? Who doesn’t want ramp? Who doesn’t want incremental life gain? Who doesn’t want a recurrable 6/6 beatstick with comes-into-play and when-it-attacks abilities that let you do all the fun stuff every stinkin’ turn it’s in play?
Seriously, think about it. It draws! It ramps! It beats! It gains! It recurs!
Uro is the Veg-O-Matic of Magic.
And it is obnoxious to play against. Even if your deck is (somehow) able to effectively deal with it, by the time your opponent plays it you’re already behind on resources on multiple levels.
Uro is among the penultimate “fun to play with, awful to play against” cards that players love and loathe in equal measure.
For 7 mana you can play it from your hand and recur it from your graveyard, drawing two cards, gaining 6 life, potentially ramping two lands into play, and gracing you with a 6/6 that will continue to accrue substantial value every turn it survives. And it survives death, returning to tilt the opponent all over again.
If it’s on your side of the board, Uro is a blast. The player on the other side of the table, however? Unless they’re also playing Uro (which isn’t too great a stretch in the current Standard environment) they’ve got nothing that splatters value everywhere quite like the Ur-O-Matic.
As a middle class Magic player, Uro presents me a dilemma. Few of my decks are pedal to the medal jank, so strong cards are not foreign to my builds. But I have a natural resistance to using cards that I despise facing myself. If I don’t enjoy playing against a card, or an archetype (staring menacingly at you, RDW), why would I inflict that misery on my opponents? (I know, I know…to win.)
Sure, maybe my opponent WANTS to play against Uro, or Teferi, or Wilderness Reclamation, or Cat/Oven. But if they did…if they really enjoyed facing the best (worst) of the meta, they’d be playing on the Arena ladder, right? That’s where you’ll face the strongest cards run by the fiercest competitors. If it’s Uro and its ilk you want, you’ll not lack for opportunities to wrangle with the Simic Titan there.
In the Arena Play queue players are surely looking for a different experience, right? That’s where you can go to jam jank, play Nine Lives meme decks, and grow armies of cat birds.
Except, as I’ve talked about before, the Play queue is hardly a haven for casual fun. Pubstomers abound, and jank, while present, is rather outnumbered. Honestly, I think a not-insignificant portion of the population of the Play queue are players like me – middle class spellslingers who don’t have the cards and/or the desire to fully optimize their decks into meta oblivion. So we run pseudo-jank. Decks with synergy and some strong cards, but nothing that could regularly match whatever the competitive meta’s offering.
Blue/white flyers. White/black lifegain. Gruul aggro. While not prevalent, I do see these and others – tier 2/3/4 decks with a mix of “fun” jank (Skycat Sovereign, Evolution Sage, Improbable Alliance, Pack Leader) and brutally efficient plays (Bonecrusher Giant, Agonizing Remorse, Shatter the Sky, Dovin’s Veto.)
The Arena developers have stated they are looking into ways, outside of daily wins, to incentivize players to log in regularly. But they also admitted nothing is imminent. Players themselves seem split between those who believe a “kitchen table” or non-competitive/jank queue is possible and necessary, and those who believe tryhards are inevitable and undeterrable, and will ruin any such queue (thus it’s not worth the programming effort.)
As minimal consolation, the recent bans and the upcoming Standard rotation in mid-September have (or soon will) overhaul the Standard meta and refresh the flagging desires of many a non-Spike to log in and play.
But Uro will remain. People’s desire to play “broken cards that do broken things” will not have changed in the slightest. And players like me, those middle-class pseudo-jank only-so-competitive types, will still be left with the choice:
- Play strong cards or value engines like Uro that improve any/all compatible decks they slot into, regardless of whether they fit the deck’s theme; or
- Refuse to play cards that make for a grueling, if not outright miserable, experience for the opponent
Are cards like Uro a necessary evil for the good of the game? Does choosing to play (or not play) powerhouse cards regardless of context say anything about the player? Where should the balance between fun-to-play / awful-to-play-against be drawn, whether by design or play choices?
I’ll continue exploring these themes (and likely asking more vague and unanswerable questions) in upcoming posts.
Until then…
Uro is coming, and he’s making fries!
Casual Magicking 