Force of Reason

There’s a lot of speculation right now suggesting that maybe Wizards will decide to put Force of Will into one of the new Coldsnap preconstructed decks.

I’m not really sure how I feel about the issue. I mean, I already have a playset and I’m not really looking to collect more, even if they come up with an infinitely pimper foil version. What I’m trying to say is that, whether they print it or not makes no real difference to me. I just think it would be weird, wild, and irresponsible of them to do so.

When it was printed in Alliances, Force of Will was an uncommon. This means that it’s not on the Reserve List and can technically be reprinted whenever Wizards feels inclined to do so.

Also, since it is already in the Ice Age block, it will not appear in Coldsnap. It can’t. That would be like printing Darksteel Ingot in Darksteel and then putting it in Fifth Dawn a few months later.

Wizards has already said that Ice Age and Alliances cards will be reprinted in the Coldsnap precons to help along the Ice Age Block theme. They have also said that the reprinted Ice Age and Alliances cards will not be Standard legal, although the Coldsnap cards will be. However, if the idea is to showcase the new cards rather than the old ones. Wizards will not overshadow the cards coming out in Coldsnap with a chase uncommon.

They can’t print it as a rare either because they wouldn’t put a rare from another set into another set’s precon.

It wouldn’t matter whether it was uncommon or rare, though. Either way, yes, they would sell more precons, and yes, players would be really excited about buying cards, but they wouldn’t be excited about Coldsnap. Just like the situation with Betrayers of Kamigawa and Umezawa’s Jitte, unopened packs of Coldsnap would sit on the shelves while the Rats’ Nest equivalent would fly off the shelves. Unless there’s something even more incredible in Coldsnap—which there probably won’t be—that’s a lot of wasted product for Wizards.

I say there won’t be for two reasons:

First, Force of Will is really, really good.

Force of Will is arguably the most powerful counterspell ever printed. It’s only real competition is from Mana Drain, but Drain takes so much more involvement to use. In a well-built control deck (generally one with at least 15 blue cards), Force of Will can be played for an investment of two cards and one life. Mana Drain, though it accelerates your mana on your next main phase, usually requires having two blue mana sources in play and untapped. That’s a significant investment since it’s not only three cards (one Mana Drain and the two blue sources), but it also means you didn’t use those two blue to cast something of your own the previous turn. You delayed your own plans for the opportunity to stop your opponent and potentially accelerate into something (or somethings) even bigger on your next turn.

Force of Will just says “No,” early and with very few conditions. Other cards have a lot of trouble standing up to that. Mostly because Force just says “No.”

The second reason that there won’t be cards better than Force in Coldsnap is that Wizards has changed the way they design since Alliances. Sets are a lot more unified now, and to avoid releasing something completely outrageous into Standard, Coldsnap will have to fit in with that. Cards can be good, but they can’t be Captain Insano. Therefore, since Coldsnap will be closer to the average, the cards included in its precons will have to be as well. Wizards has done a decent job of balancing their precons recently (Rats’ Nest excepted) and they probably won’t change now.

There have also been similar cards printed recently. Disrupting Shoal is the clearest example of the spawn of Force of Will. It’s much, much closer to what Wizards has been looking for in blue: no hard counters without a high cost or a conditional drawback. Disrupting Shoal is free, as long as you can discard a blue card with the same casting cost as the card you’re trying to counter. That’s a pretty big limitation as you’re now forced to play a wider range of blue spells, one somewhat proportional to the range of casting costs played in other decks rather than just counters.

Time Stop and Rewind both have high enough casting costs to be safe in Standard. Hinder and Remand both leave up the possibility that you’ll see the spell again and trade that for a lower cost. Spell Snare is really good, but only at countering 2-mana spells.

Even though Force of Will wouldn’t be tournament legal, I really think Wizards would want to avoid the temptation and the constant pleading to print it in 10th Edition or some other upcoming set.

As much as they shouldn’t have to be, Wizards does care about the secondary market. Players who play only Vintage and Legacy do not usually buy packs. It’s much easier for them to study the card pool and carefully select the cards in which they want to invest. However, those cards still have to come out of packs at some point.

This weekend, I helped open a case of Dissension at the Hero Zone and except for Voidslimes (of which there seemed to be a couple dozen) I’m not sure that I saw a playset of any other rares. Wizards sold more than $400 worth of product, but even with that one player would have to do something to get a playset of Dissension.

So, Vintage players pay inflated prices for cards from new sets to dealers, sometimes the dealers buy from someone, and that someone bought thousands of dollars worth of packs from Wizards of the Coast. And next time the dealer can buy even more packs because they made more money off the inflated prices!

Basically, Wizards does have a vested interest in the secondary market, and flooding that market with a chase uncommon, even one that couldn’t be played in the current Standard environment, would be a bad idea. This is what happened with Chronicles, and there weren’t even that many really good cards in Chronicles besides, like, City of Brass.

Not to mention that if Wizards has any intention of re-releasing Alliances online (which is very likely) or in the stores (which is not very likely, but still possible), having a whole bunch of Forces out there would really, really, really reduce interest in buying that. For as popular as it was, there were really not that many awesome cards in Alliances, and a lot of them were “fixed” later on. Kjeldoran Outpost became Vitu-Ghazi; Lake of the Dead became Cabal Coffers; and Necropotence was printed in Ice Age and has never really been printed in a fair-but-powerful way. Beyond that it’s like, uh, Balduvian Horde? Which is good, but still fair.

So those are all the strikes against Force of Will coming out in a Coldsnap precon. You can hope, but don’t hold your breath.

The things I’m looking forward to out of Coldsnap are a better handling of the Snow-Covered Land distinction, maybe some cumulative upkeep and poison counters, and some all new pitch-spells.

People really, really like spells with alternate casting costs, no matter how bad or weak they are. They allow you to do ridiculous thing so much earlier than you normally would. Like that extremely unlikely five-card first-turn kill with Raging Goblin and two Blazing Shoals? That was awesome! People will definitely buy Coldsnap if they get more of those.

I doubt the blue one will be a counterspell, though, since they just had one. It could be a draw spell this time, though that seems kind of really broken. We’ll just have to see.

Until then. Don’t Force too hard or you’ll pop a blood vessel in your eye.