Case Study: Ooze

Hello Everyone! My name is Ant.  Yes Ant.  Like the bug!

Well now that we have the formal introduction out of the way, let me be the first to say welcome to my first installment of something I like to call Case Study.  

What is Case Study?

Case Study is a column where I will select one creature type among the many creature types of Magic, and delve into the mechanics which help to define them.  So yes, this is a design oriented article.
If you were here hoping to get info on the latest metagame breakdown, sadly I am not your guy.  If you are here; however, because like me you read Mark Rosewater’s column every sunday night at midnight, and can be found spending your free time populating your computer word files, iphone notepad, and napkins everywhere with card design ideas that pop into your head at a moments notice, then this is the place for you!

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Ahh now that we designers are alone the fun can begin... Muahahahahaaa

Why Should We Perform This Study in the First Place?

I’m glad you asked! As most (if not all of you) may know, when designing a magic card, there is one thing that can truly define that card right from the start.  The cards color.  As Maro (Mark Rosewater) has stated again and again...and again and again and again, the color pie is the most important facet of Magic, and is what keeps the game alive.  If you look at any card in modern magic, cards that are a particular color are expected to be able to do certain things.  Red cards deal damage, blue cards counter, black cards discard, etc. etc.  But this was not always the case!  When Richard Garfield designed Magic, none of the colors had yet to be defined.  Once he established what each color did, each set after Alpha created new cards that followed suit with the original blueprints of Alpha, and continued to keep the same relative abilities in their original colors.  Over time, these mechanics became the norm for each color and are now expected as they help to define what the color is capable of doing, and more importantly, what it is not capable of doing.

It is my belief, that a similar approach should be taken for the creature types of Magic.  

Can You Repeat that?

Human beings, by their very nature, crave repetition.  It's how most of us learn.  The first time we ever touched something hot as a kid and burned ourself, we learned that touching really hot things is not a good idea.  When we encountered a different hot object and touched it, we got a similar lesson. (Don't touch hot things!)  Through those repeated experiences, we have come to learn (and expect) that when something is hot, we should not touch it or we will get burned.  Now imagine that we learn that there is an object that when it's hot, if we touch it, it feels cold.  This would be jarring to us and “not make sense” because we are so used to it being the other way.  A similar phenomenon exists in almost everything we do.  

Relating this to Magic, this would be like if Wizards just up and moved countering and bouncing and flying to Green.  No reason they just decided it would be cool to do one expansion.  I guarantee that most players would initially hate that expansion based on one thing: it wouldn’t feel like the Magic they know.  Now for an even more related example, take the Dragon:

                                                   

This is everything you would expect a dragon to be.  It flies, its big, and it breathes fire. RAWR!
Why is this? because there is another important aspect that must be considered.  Coming into Magic, most players already have a conception in their minds of what a dragon is, and what it should be, so when they see this card design, it is very easy for them to understand, or grok.
Now imagine that Shvan dragon instead did not have flying, did not breathe fire, and was not a large creature.  What if instead it was a 2/6 with deathtouch and T: add G to your mana pool, but it was still a dragon.  That would make absolutely no sense! Players both new and old, would pick up that card, and think “who designed this junk?” and toss it aside.  Creature types are relevant, and the abilities that appear on them are too!

Unique to One Self

Where this gets interesting, is that there are plenty of creatures that are unique to magic, or have unique designs within the game.  Take the demon, for example.  There historically has been roughly one large demon per set, and those demons usually have what's known as a drawback ability.  Is this a coincidence? Or are they following in the familiar footsteps of the original?

 

                           

Its not a mistake that demons have similar abilities, it's done because when we see a demon, we expect a drawback, because it's familiar and easy to understand!  It is my belief that understanding the creatures is important and relevant for creating future members of that race / class.  By doing these studies, one can better learn and understand what it means to design a card representing that type, and can improve their designs and the game overall.

Cruisin’ for an Ooze’n

SO! Now we can get to the meat of what I am doing here.  Basically I look at one creature type, and research all the cards that currently exist in Magic that involve that type.  I try to look through and find the mechanics that are being used that actually feel like they are helping to define the creature’s type, and I list and discuss them.  It is my hope that designers out there can use these articles whenever they find themselves designing one of these creatures, and they want to see what abilities are currently used to define them.  For this first instalment, I chose to use my favorite creature type in all of Magic, the Ooze.  ENJOY!

Ooze Cruise

Being an Engineer, I find that it is often easier to explain things with pictures, so I'll just cut to the chase:

This is a Venn Diagram! With Oozes!!

For those of you out there who do not know what a Venn Diagram is, here is a quick tutorial:

                                          
In the above diagram, lets assume that inside of bubble A (the yellow one) I listed all the people I knew that had black hair.  Inside of bubble B (the blue one) I listed all of the people I knew that had blue eyes.  Now, you see that overlapping area in the middle there that is kinda green? In there I would list all the people I know that have both black hair, and blue eyes, because they satisfy both constraints!  Thats it!! a Venn Diagram is a useful way to show relationships between common things (In this example, it was showing different traits of people).  For this case study, I did the same thing illustrated above, but for oozes!

This diagram shows all of the different Ooze mechanics that currently exist on all of the oozes in magic.  This is done in an attempt to better understand the creature type, as well as to attempt to discover areas of improvement within the game.  So, let's dive in shall we?!  First up, the green mechanics!

You Look a Little Green...

Permanent Destruction

The ability to destroy permanents upon entering the battlefield has been made prevalent in the card Acidic Slime, and is representing the trope of an ooze that enters the battlefield, and gets its corrosive oozy goodness all over another permanent, destroying it. This is not only flavorful but a great mechanical space for Green to boot!

X/X Body (Static)

This is a common ability among ooze cards, as well as cards that create oozes, in that they create varying X/X size creatures with matching power and toughness.  The reason i call this “static” is that the body sizes do not generally change at instant speed, and the oozes are there to represent just a big green blob of slime.  This mechanic can be seen working its magics on cards like Gelatinous Genesis, Ooze Garden, and even Ancient Ooze.

‘Splitting’ Mechanic

Seen on Mitotic Slime, this ability captures the trope of an ooze that when you slice it in half, splits into two smaller versions of itself, and when you squash each of those, they split into two more smaller versions of themselves. A great ooze mechanic, with solid flavor.

Small Guys Form A Big X/X

When doing this case study, there was one question in particular that i felt like i needed to answer: Will I consider UN cards?  I then quickly decided...’Why wouldn’t I?’ and continued forward!

This is the booger mechanic found on the card S.N.O.T. The mechanic represents a whole bunch of little guys teaming up to form a huge X/X creature to smash with.  By “sticking together” the little snots are able to overcome their foes.  I think this is a great mechanic, that fits Green’s space in the pie, and hits the nail on the head when trying to create an ooze that gets bigger and bigger as you add more ooze to it.  When the only similar mechanic we had was banding, one could look at S.N.O.T.  and think “we will never see this in the real game”, but now that we have soulbond, I am more optimistic.

Life Gain

Seen on Scavenging Ooze, this ability does not hit on any common tropes that i know of involving oozes, but I can see this being concepted as the inverse of something like Acidic Slime, being an ooze that emits a sweet smelling jell-o nectar that heals the consumer, instead of a corrosive slime that melts your face off.

Regeneration

The ability to regenerate is something that makes sense on an ooze creature, as it just glops and squishes itself back together after being cut in two, free to ooze on for another day.

Ooze Conversion

This is more of a darker mechanic, and represents a creature that gets broken down and turned into an ooze.  Kinda creepy, but also AWESOME!  Ooze Garden represents this idea by creating an area that you can dump your creatures into, and let them get oozified and plop back onto the battlefield all oozed up. YUM!  This makes me wish this mechanic was represented on a creature.
I’m picturing something like this:

                                                           

<3<3<3

Attack and Grow

This mechanic, seen on Predator Ooze,  represents an ooze that gets bigger and bigger and bigger as it attacks, continuing to grow in size as it rages across the battlefield.  This is reminiscent of the old Blob movies, and is a cool and simple ooze mechanic.

Flash

I don't know why i love this idea so much, but the thought of an ooze just flying onto the battlefield and smashing into an attacker is just so awesome! Look out for the flash ooze!

‘Sengir’ Ability

Also seen on Predator Ooze, I believe that this is trying to convey an ooze that grows in size whenever it kills a creature, by absorbing it into its masses.  Creepy! (For those of you who do not know, this ability was made famous by the alpha creature Sengir Vampire)

‘Goyf’ Ability

Indirectly seen on the card Gutter Grime, this ability (made famous by Lhurgoyf) makes the creature's power and toughness affected by the number of creatures in the graveyard.  Gutter grime more cares about the number of times it has seen a creature hit the yard while it is in play, but the general idea is there. This is the ability for the power and toughness of the slimes having to do with the number of creatures that have bit the dust, and it fits them very well.

X/X Body (Dynamic)

Our final ‘mono-green’ ooze mechanic can be seen on the Shards of Alara card Manaplasm.  this card, unlike the ‘Static’ X/X ability mentioned above, causes the creature to change its shape at a much more unpredictable rate.  Out of nowhere, one Act of Aggression could take you from having one 1/1 ooze, to instantly having a 6/6 ooze and an opponent’s fatty staring them in the face.

Next we can look at the mechanics that are found on oozes that show up on Red cards throughout Magic:

Red Stripe is Jamaican Ooze.

Random Growth

Chaotic Goo, I Ooze You! ~<3~ This mechanic represents the trope of an ooze that is pulsating and undulating across the battlefield, its shape seemingly impossible to understand or predict, no knowing whether it will just bump off of you or smash your teeth in.  A great Red ooze mechanic by any standards, and my personal favorite.

Grow Large and Die

Showing off Red’s occasional total lack of a concept of it’s own ‘future’ this mechanic does a great job of depicting an ooze who just grows and grows and grows, and thinks nothing of the consequences of doing so, until eventually you can’t afford to feed it any more so it dies. (Earthen Goo I’m looking at you!) It simply gets too big for its frame and cannot support its weight and the thing suffocated under the force of its own flub. (Assuming oozes breathe that is)

Grow Out of Control

This trope is one of an ooze that just grows and grows and grows, until eventually you just can't contain it anymore, and it eats you.  Cool right? Primordial Ooze captures this so nicely there isn’t much more i can even write about it!

Up next we have the creepy, yet loveable Black Oozes.  Tread lightly as things are gonna get Vile.

Back in Black

Slow Consumption

Depicting the classic trope of an Ooze that surrounds a creature and slowly digests it, this is a great ooze mechanic, and fits the Black mentality to a T. Consumptive Goo is a great example of this mechanic at work, with this ooze getting stronger off of the consumed to boot!

Creature Kill

Where the Acidic ooze melts permanents, this type of ooze melts faces.  Now, the ‘creature kill’ mechanic can be extremely broad.  Anywhere from Assassinate to a straight up Terror the mechanic can easily be represented, but what's important here is that we have an Ooze that exists where it says, YES! it is ok for oozes to use this trope, and represent a caustic slime entity that is death to all living creatures that touch it!  Look no further then our friend the Necroplasm.

Graveyard Abilities

This is representing the trope of an ooze that squishes across the battlefield, absorbing parts of the dead bodies in its wake, and with each body, the ooze absorbs the abilities of those dead bodies.  Necrotic Ooze hits this one out of the park with an interesting and flavorful look at the ‘Black Ooze’

Life Loss

I find this one to be the most interesting of the Black ooze abilities.  It is something that is so flavorful yet is so unique to a black ooze.  This is the ooze that causes you to become ill.  By merely handling this caustic and vile substance, you become more and more ill, eventually resulting in your demise.  Ahh, Vile Bile, you are doing more work then you could know...

That brings us to the final color to feature abilities and or mechanics that are unique to its color.  Bring on the blue goo!

Blue Ooze Brothers

Clone

There are currently only 2 ooze creatures in all of magic (oddly enough both are the only legendary oozes) that are blue, and both use a clone ability!  

WHERE IS OUR RED,GREEN, AND BLACK LEGENDARY OOZE THAT WILL LET US USE ALL OF THE PRINTED OOZES IN OUR COMMANDER DECKS!...sorry.  

The mechanic can be seen featured on The Mimeoplasm, and to a lesser extent, on Experiment Kraj.  The Mime takes on the copy of a target, whereas Kraj just takes on their abilities.  Both abilities are featured on Blue-Green creatures, but what is important to remember is that GOLD CARDS DO NOT MEAN THAT BOTH COLORS GET THEIR ABILITIES.  

There is a very important distinction to be used when analyzing both gold and hybrid cards.  A hybrid card’s abilities are supposed to be abilities that could work as a mono colored version of either of the two colors that it is representing, whereas gold cards usually have at least one ability that is representative of each of it’s colors.  Here is an example:

Mudbrawler Raiders

This card could be either mono red or mono green, as both colors hate blue.

Exploding Borders

This card searches for land (A green ability) then deals direct damage (A red ability).  This card could not be mono red or mono green.

Therefore on each of the legendary ooze creatures mentioned above, their ‘cloning’ ability could not be anything other than mono blue, as it is a mono blue ability.  Green does not like when a creature changes its shape, and tries to be something else, because the green color pie slice states that creatures want to be what they are naturally, and do not want to change.  Blue, however; believes that each creature is born with a blank slate and with work, could become whatever they wish.  Therefore ‘cloning’ is blue.

Now, we will look at the ones that fall within more than one color and are “shared” mechanics.

Gold Rush

Steady Growth

Starting with Red and Green, both have access to the Oozes like Bloodhall Ooze and Ancient Ooze, that just keep growing, and growing... and growing, and growing, and growing! This is a great staple ooze mechanic, and fits both colors extremely well.

Deathtouch

Deathtouch can be found on both Acidic Slime and Mephitic Ooze (a weird version).  The ability definitely fits the whole caustic “don’t touch me!” ooze trope, and feels right at home in both its colors.

Size Mimic

When researching the different ooze mechanics, this one really struck a chord with me.  More specifically, it was the card Bioplasm that really got me thinking.  WHY is Bioplasm mono green?  The card looks at the top of your library for a creature card, then takes a power and toughness boost to mimic the power and toughness of the creature it saw.  Now i know that on the surface this just looks like another pump ooze, but what's important here is that those oozes have an innate ability to them that just pumps them by some X/X amount.  This guy, however, is looking at another creature, and is mimicking their shape.  To me this is a blue ability, and should not have been on a mono green card.  The other instance that this is seen is on The Mimeoplasm, where is also mimics the size of a creature.  Instead of a blue or green ability, i feel that this should be a mono blue one, and this is honestly what lead me to really look into the oozes and see if there was more here to discover.  Were there more mechanics that would feel at home in a different color?

Which then led me to this:


This is how I think the Ooze Venn Diagram should look, going forward in the future of magic.

My goal here was to spread out the wealth of mechanics a little bit, allowing oozes to branch out into the other colors a little more, allowing for some really cool oozes of the future!  

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes!

One of the changes that I think should be made going forward, is the inclusion of the “Attack & Grow” Mechanic in Red oozes as well.  I think that the flavor of a raging ooze that grows as it turns sideways fits well with both red and green and this change should not really surprise anyone.

I moved the both the “Sengir” and “Goyf” abilities to be shared by both black and green because, well, first of all the sengir ability was originally a black ability, and lets be honest it's easy to see counting cards in the yard in order to pump your guy as a black ability too.  

What's funny here is that this made me look at the following card: Predator Ooze. This is an interesting little ooze, and I think that is should have looked a little more like this:

                                                     

The first ability is definitely green.  The second, could be argued Red, and the third, well the more I thought about it, the third one is really a black ability, and this ability has been black up until the release of this ooze.  Interesting!

I moved the Size Mimic ability to be mono blue because, as I discussed above, I believe Bioplasm was a mistake and should have looked like this:

                                                     

Finally, I moved the X/X body (Dynamic) ability to red because I wanted to flesh out Red as an ooze color a little more, and because I realized that Manaplasm would have made a great Red card:

                                                     

Now I know this is a little jarring, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves if what is currently the norm may be wrong, and able to be improved.  R&D is constantly re-thinking the different slices of the pie, in order to look for different opportunities where moving an ability would not only make sense in the flavor, but could also improve gameplay as a whole.  A very recent example of this was moving the “looting” mechanic from Blue to Red.

                                  
Now if i were to completely change Manaplasm, I would make it trigger only off instants and sorceries, making it an ooze that gets powered by spells.  I think that the unpredictability that comes along with this guy makes it fit nicely into red, and i think that it plays wonderfully with a lot of red instants and sorceries (as I mentioned in my Act of Aggression example above)  Most green instants and sorceries that are played focus around finding lands or creating tokens, or buffing your creatures, whereas red offers a ton of interestingly complex spells that would play so interestingly with this guy.

Ooze the Man?!

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Case Study!  I hope that all the designers out there will find this guide helpful the next time they wish to create a creature full of oozy goodness.

What creature type would you all like me to analyze next?? Please comment below and let me know what you think!  

Also feel free to reach me at ANThroplasm909@gmail.com if you want to discuss the article directly, or if you want to send me designs inspired by this article!

Also, remember to follow me @ANThroplasm on twitter so you know when the next article is out!