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Copperhoof Vorrac: Once again, a lot of creatures coming up randomly. So be it.
I never liked cards like these. When I say “like these”, I include stuff like Maraxus of Keld and any number of Prophecy cards with lines like ” if defending player controls an untapped land”. Basing creature stats on the tapped/untapped status of lands is just such a fidgety principle. Of course, since mana burn was eliminated, they also play a lot different than before, now that any player can just tap his lands for mana with no bigger consequences than possibly losing a few options.
A variant on this mechanic was used on Wake Thrasher – less fidgety, but still quite complicated, forcing to you remember what exactly you untapped at the beginning of your turn (something many players do without really thinking about it) – oh, and also quite powerful on a blue 3-mana creature!
You know, I’m all for encouraging players to play the game consciously. It is one of the defining differences between mediocre players and good players that the latter actively think about which land they drop on turn one, even though they cannot play anything with it either way, and that they manage each tapping of their lands carefully to maximize their options (real or bluffed). One of the things I can get quite upset about is if I use an ability from a permanent which has been on the battlefield for several turns, and my opponent THEN takes that card and reads it, because he doesn’t know it, and just ignored it so far. A game of Magic really suffers if its participants aren’t at all times aware of the game state.
However, that is actually a compelling argument for the game’s designers to keep board complexity manageable! Or it should be, at least. There has been a clear trend over the last years to reduce the game’s strategical depth in favor of increased board complexity. The customers don’t seem to care – in fact, the great success of multiplayer variants like EDH suggests strongly that they love it! Whenever I watch a multiplayer Magic game with five or more participants, I see strong indications that most of the players aren’t even aware of half the relevant permanents, let alone the tactical implications arising from them. To my lasting astonishment, they just don’t mind. (This is because most participants in multiplayer games are Timmies – read my improved definition of MaRos gamers’ psychographic here.)
So, I guess Timmies like Copperhoof Vorrac, especially in multiplayer games (probably as long as someone else takes the trouble to figure out how big exactly this beast is), since it seems to be doing things on his own, growing and shrinking all the time and being likely to reach stats in the high 2-digit area. (Funny – I just reminded a reader in a comment that I am not talking about multiplayer games in this series, and here comes a card where I just have to!) But what about regular duels?
Under old rules, Copperhoof Vorrac had an effect similar to those of Innistrad werewolves, punishing players who were unable to act on their turn and forced to keep their lands untapped to avoid mana burn. It also punished (and still does) players for keeping creatures back to block, and using non-tapping permanents (global enchantments, equipment). Even under new rules, a reactive deck might face a big Vorrac while keeping mana open for countermagic. But in the end, Copperhoof Vorrac is a 5-mana creature without evasion which will in many scenarios be of unexciting size even if the opponent plays normally, and in others just might induce an opponent to tap lands he might not have tapped otherwise, while sometimes rather randomly hosing an opponent with an already bad draw.
Johnnies might devise other ways to use the Vorrac: For example, let the opponent untap, wait until they get priority during upkeep, then Fling the Vorrac at their opponent’s face (he can respond to this by tapping lands, but since the Vorrac is already sacrificed as a cost, it won’t change his stats anymore). Even if that works, it’s not especially impressive in a duel, though. When all is said and done, Copperhoof Vorrac is a really unreliable big creature which MIGHT get REALLY big, but always at the discretion of your opponent, and which forces a lot of bookkeeping upon both players. All this is just a very detailed way to say “it plays horribly”.
Whenever you (as an amateur designer) design a big creature with variable stats, or (as a cube builder) decide if to include such a creature, ask yourself: Why not just use a generic big creature with fixed stats instead? There are a lot of good answers to this question, like encouraging players to manage their resources carefully, rewarding building around a theme, or introducing interesting minigames; but you should make sure that your answer actually IS good by analyzing what exactly happens when this creature is in play.
Let’s get to grading: Whatever fringe constructed value the Vorrac might have possessed once has likely be eradicated by the loss of mana burn; and even if it was fine powerwise, it still played in an annoying way. In Limited, it is essentially a more random version of Scourge of Geier Reach (like that card needed more randomness tacked on!), able to waltz over several blockers, but probably shrinking itself to death in the process. It could be used as a subtle punisher for (as an example) equipment-heavy decks in a cube, but I really cannot find anywhere enough good qualities in this design to make up for the randomness and the bookkeeping it brings. So, while the sheer number of possible interactions with a cube’s themes justifies an upgrade from E, at the same time its annoyance factor requires a downgrade, having it end up at a sharp E.
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