When you thumb through a booster pack, it’s the rare or mythic at the back that dictates the power it adds to your deck and your wallet. It’s those uncommon cards before it, though, that really show ingenuity and finesse of design. Kristen argues Uncommons are officially more interesting than Mythics.
When a new set is ready to drop, we already know what we’re getting from the mythic slot. Chase cards that are undercosted and pushed, designed to appeal to those building Standard or Modern decks, or to upgrade a broad swathe of Commander decks – and often, to both. The thing is, though, Mythics are lowkey… boring.
MYTHICS (AND SOME RARES) STOPPED BEING INTERESTING
I hate to say it, but Mythics (and by extension rares, a lot of the time) have become a tad uninteresting. Take Super Shredder. It’s the most mana efficient payoff for running edicts thus far in Commander in mono black, and it triggers off of your own permanents leaving too. It gets huge quickly, and is another “oops, all edicts” Commander to add to the pile we’ve had in the last year or so. It’s not the most interesting design, but it’s very powerful, so it’s pretty hyped.
Dipping back to Edge of Eternity, take a look at Exalted Sunborn. It’s an extremely pushed token doubler, released off of the back of extremely pushed token doubler Elspeth, Storm Slayer. It’s a chunky flyer with lifelink, and you can “borrow” the effect for two mana earlier in the game in order to pop off. At this moment in time, you can’t real turn any dials higher on this particular effect – power creep has reached its ceiling, for now. The card is strong, sure – but it’s just not doing anything remotely interesting.
In the same set, we got Icetill Explorer. Again, the seemingly current approach to building a cool rare or mythic is the same: staple on desired effects, in multiples, on a competitively-costed creature. It’s a build your own wildcard for your deck, and thus becomes something of an auto-include if you want any of the printed effects – because if you want one, you generally want the others.
So, where does one go to see interesting designs now? Well, it’s a little closer to the middle of your booster pack. It’s the Uncommons.
UNCOMMONS ARE WHERE IT’S AT
When I want to see a boundary pushing, exciting, and genius design these days, I turn to the Uncommon slot. It’s often said that restrictions breed creativity, and no more is that true than on the card rarity that has to (usually) be weaker than rares and mythics, but still stronger and more relevant than a common.
As someone who isn’t a TMNT fan, Go Ninja Go was one of the cards that got me most intrigued from the set. It would have been absurd as an Instant, but feels tantalizingly good, still, at sorcery speed. It’s flexible and powerful, without being an auto-include. There are downsides to running it (as a sorcery), and so all in all, it feels much closer to what my understanding of a good Magic card is (and should be). I’m not being unserious when I say that many modern designs for pushed high rarity cards feel closer to the sloppy wishlist designs of yesteryear’s reddit fan edits than the resource-management focused card game I learned the ropes with.
I get excited by what a card like Energybending represents for storm decks in any format, and by the narrow efficiency of a card like Rhino’s Rampage – which is, again, tempered by that sorcery speed.
UNCOMMONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXCITE THOSE WITH FOREVER DECKS
The other thing about Uncommons is that they tend to be the cards that excite those of us with long-term Commander decks. When you have a mostly solved deck, it’s hard to just shove new rares and mythics in all of the time without triggering the need for a complete rebuild eventually.
With uncommons that are either strictly better or mostly better than the glue that holds decks together right now – which often ends up being removal, cantrips, and other ancillary pieces of a deck – you can have fun swapping out new cards. Even sidegrades can be fun to brew with. In an aggro deck, is Emergency Eject worth losing the ability to blow up a land, in exchange for not providing them a 3/3 blocker? Probably, and that’s interesting.
The power level of Uncommons has without a doubt risen, too. This is great for those on a budget, as it gives them more accessible powerful cards to make decks function without the need of high-end staples and Gamechangers. While the power ceiling of Uncommons is still something that ultimately worries me, it’s still held in check somewhat by not being the highest rarity available. Twinflame Travelers was a beating in Limited, but it needed a wide board to deliver that beating. It’s similar with Northern Air Temple; both cards are insanely good in Commander, but warp 1v1 Magic a lot less.
UNCOMMONS FEEL LIKE CLASSIC DESIGN
When it comes to signpost Uncommons – which are increasingly Legendary Creatures – there’s one thing that I keep circling back to, and that’s that they feel like classic Magic designs. They are strong, and have effects which makes you want to build around them. Whether that’s the sneak ability of Karai, the landfall of Tannuk, or the card draw of SP//dr, Piloted by Peni, you have cards that don’t give you setup and payoff. You get one half, and have to figure the rest out yourself.
Players like to jump through a few hoops to achieve something, and they’d prefer doing that than being spoon fed. The issue is when there are too many hoops. Finding that goldilocks zone isn’t that hard, though. It’s actually pretty wide.
END STEP
Am I turning into a something of a Magic boomer? It’s a reasonable take, given that my ideals of the game are biased toward how it was when I started playing. Heck, when I look at modern Pokemon TCG cards with their 300HP+ health pools, I feel like my math skills are a little rusty seeing as I can’t count past 180-220HP. Maybe it’s the same.
All I know is that Uncommons are the cards that fire me up these days. They’re the ones I’m most excited to play with, brew with, and order. And incidentally, they’re the cards that epitomize Limited formats. Terrapact Intimidator was such an iconic part of Edge of Eternities draft, and much more memorable than steamrolling with Ouroboroid, that’s for sure.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.