While it was a bit divisive in the beginning, Conjure has gone on to become a staple mechanic in Alchemy. By greatly expanding Wizards’ design toolbox, Conjure has created some absolutely wild and iconic MTG cards. Unfortunately, while exciting, these cards have long been exclusive to MTG Arena. According to MTG’s Head Designer, Mark Rosewater, that may be about to change.
In a new Blogatog post, Mark Rosewater has revealed that Conjure may be coming to paper. While there’s no timeline for when this will happen, the implications of this development are huge. If this mechanic isn’t handled carefully, Conjure could cause a massive spike in logistical and mechanical complexity. Whether you love it or hate it, there’s no denying Conjure is a big can of worms to open, especially at a time when mainline sets are already getting more complex.
The Conjure Mechanic In Paper MTG?
“Manacryptek: If/When on seeing more mechanics that conjure cards into your hand/library in paper? (I.e. conjure/spellbook mechanic on Arena, or Garth, One-eye like mechanics)
Via: Blogatog
Mark Rosewater: Probably when, but much more limited than what we can do in digital.”
This isn’t a full-on confirmation, but it’s about as close to one as you can get in Blogatog parlance. Given the mechanic’s high complexity, it’s surprising to see. In the comments, Holeria even said, “I’m surprised, I honestly expected it to be a contraptions/sticker deck situation all over again.” Wizards have moved away from clunky mechanics like this in the past. That they would return to this one is certainly unexpected.
I say “return” because we have actually seen Conjure in physical Magic before, albeit not named as such. Garth One-Eye from Modern Horizons 2 “Conjures” one of six iconic Alpha cards right onto the stack, creating token copies of them. Disa the Restless and Tarmogoyf Nest from Modern Horizons 3 do something similar. Both create a token that’s a fully functional copy of the iconic card Tarmogoyf. While you could argue this isn’t really Conjure due to the token, it’s functionally close enough to count, I’d say.
Thanks to these cards, there’s definitely precedent for Conjure to exist in some capacity on paper. Thanks to Alchemy, there are tons of card designs that are ready to go with minimal tweaking. With over 150 Conjure cards having been created so far, it’s safe to say that Wizards has a solid foundation to build Conjure off of on paper. As Mystery Booster 2’s Alchemy cards proved, there’s clearly a strong demand for these cards, too.
Unfortunately, while Conjure is a compelling mechanic, it’s far from perfect. On paper, it would surely cause a steep increase in mechanical and logistical complexity. At the very least, having to explain the mechanics of a Conjured card, as Tarmogoyf Nest does, would create some massive walls of text. Thankfully, it seems Wizards is well aware of this issue, as Rosewater states they’d be “much more limited than what we can do in digital.”
Know Your Limits
Due to the mechanics’ complexities, the appearance of Conjure on paper may concern some players. Thankfully, while the sky is the limit on MTG Arena, it is easy to limit the mechanic without ruining it. This has already been proven, in fact, by the paper Conjure cards, which haven’t caused any issues.
When keeping Conjure in check, we can immediately remove Spellbooks from the running. This adjacent mechanic has players drafting cards from a unique themed pool before Conjuring them into existence. With cards like Sliver Weftwinder boasting a Spellbook that contains 24 unique MTG cards, the potential complexity is obscene.
On paper, this mechanic would be an absolute mess, as you’d need tokens of each Spellbook card to draft and shuffle them correctly. If you had a deck full of these cards, you’d potentially need more than an extra deck’s worth of tokens just to play a game. Considering that Wizards would need to print and distribute these tokens, too, there’s little to no chance Spellbooks ever make the jump to paper.
Moving on from Spellbooks, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t get any cards that Conjure to the hand or library either. If Conjure on paper were only to create token copies of cards, just as Garth One-Eye does, then these cards couldn’t exist outside of the battlefield. While Wizards could potentially change this, Claire D’Loon, Joy Sculptor being an Acorn card makes that seem unlikely.
While token copies of Conjured cards do make the most sense, Wizards could also use the sideboard. Branching off from the Learn mechanic, which brings Lesson cards into the game, Wizards could have Conjure produce specific cards from outside of the game. Sadly, while this would be a solution for Standard, this implementation wouldn’t work in Commander without a rules change.
A Positive Step?
Beyond the specifics of how Conjure conjures cards into existence, there are the aforementioned complexity issues to consider as well. While these aren’t a concern on MTG Arena, on paper, they’re a massive hurdle to this mechanic’s success and implementation. Even if Wizards is restrained, Conjuring something simple like Shivan Dragon into existence requires both players to know the card.
In theory, the solution to this problem is releasing new tokens or having copies of the Conjure-able cards on standby. Sadly, this just replaces the problem of having to remember cards with increased logistical complexity and pre-game setup. Not only would this be frustrating for regular constructed play, but it’d be chaos for Limited, especially for prerelease events.
With these concerns in mind, Wizards may want, or rather need, to forgo this mechanic entirely. While this is definitely the safe option, Conjure cards do have tons of interesting design possibilities. Being able to create cards that aren’t typically legal in the format opens up a huge design space, and Alchemy is definitely richer for it.
That said, while cards like Oracle of the Alpha are definitely fan favorites, Wizards would be more limited, as Rosewater states. Due to this, we probably won’t get cards Conjuring the Power Nine into Standard. Even cards like Ruby Collector are too risky with blink effects floating around.
Ultimately, while Wizards would definitely have to be careful implementing it, Conjure is apparently on the table. That said, I wouldn’t expect to see it anytime soon, as “Probably when” is hardly the most urgent response. As usual, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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