So, Batch 170 had our fourth tied matchup - so it’s time for me to weigh up the options and cast the deciding vote. You can see the first three tiebreaker posts here.

Generator Servant

Design

An interesting one to start here - a very unique sort of ability. Something kind of like this was done with Hall of the Bandit Lord, but that was more restricted. Generator Servant has a sort of ‘mana storage’ effect, letting you spend mana on one turn and get it back on a later turn. These kinds of effects are somewhere in same family as rituals (get more mana immediately at the cost of a card) and ramp (invest resources now for more mana later). Mana storage has moved around the colour pie, but this is a pretty well-executed red version. It even has a clever thing whereby the haste makes it look like you are getting a surprise creature, but the tap symbol on the servant keeps you from using it until your opponent has had time to prepare.

Generator Servant enables you to ramp into a fatty, or unleash a hasty combo piece finisher. It can even let you live the dream of splitting the two colourless mana between two different creatures, and getting a double dip of haste. This does quite a lot for a common with passable combat stats, and all adds up to a compelling card.

Flavour

The concept here seems simple enough: an electrical elemental that generates power for you. I am not totally sold on the idea of using the word ‘generator’ for a one-shot effect like this, but it’s a minor niggle. Sadly no room for flavour text here, and the card doesn’t really tie in to any larger setting, so there’s not that much here to go on.

Art

Mathias Kolross has put together a very eye-catching figure here, with a sense of life and crackle in its lightning limbs. The tilted body gives a sense of motion and energy, and the faceless collar adds up to a cool and memorable creature. The partial body even ties in to the feeling of impermanence.

The background, on the other hand, is a little more confusing. There’s a sort of telescope thingy back there, and some floating spheres, and a window. It evokes some kind of a technological complex, but doesn’t really sell the story of the card.

Place in Magic history

Despite its seeming potential, Generator Servant hasn’t really found a place in Magic decks. It’s occasionally seen helping make hasty Myr Superions or other somewhat janky options, but hasn’t otherwise really stamped out a name for itself.

Copy Enchantment



Design

This card is a straightforward callback to Copy Artifact, up to and including the extremely literal name. Clones are simple to design, but are naturally powerful and need some kind of a safety valve; for most, this is costing a fair bit or having a drawback, but here the trick is to only allow copying a narrow permanent type. This played into the minor enchantment subtheme seen on other Ravnica cards like Drake Familiar.

There isn’t a great deal to be said for originality in Copy Enchantment, but clones are a popular and fun effect and adding additional iterations of your favourite Aura or enchantment is fun. Since the advent of Theros this card can also pull double duty as a cheap Clone for enchantment creatures, too.

Flavour

As mentioned before, the name is unusually prosaic for a Magic card, presumably because Wizards wanted to make the direct callback to Copy Artifact as loud as possible. Being literal makes the flavour clear but not compelling.

The flavour text, on the other hand, is a bit more of an oddball. The Simic hadn’t been on cards when Ravnica came out, but their ‘bio-scientist’ gig was established earlier than that with flavour such as this. However, it doesn’t quite reason through to me - the Simic are not about enchantments, and their experiments aren’t really backed up by an enchantment copying effect, either. This doesn’t really fit with the Simic ideal for me.

Art

Joel Thomas has done his best with this brief, to make some kind of surprised looking creature (what is that, anyway?) having a second magical glove appear around his massive fist. The focus is definitely on the foreground fist (with the creature’s sightline drawing attention to it), meaning that the duplication idea was lost on me at first until I spotted the background fist. The concept is muddied somewhat by the fact that the glove looks more like an Equipment than anything, but visually representing enchantments has always been tricky.

Place in Magic history

Connecting back to Copy Artifact aside, Copy Enchantment didn’t really make a splash in Constructed, but has found a home in Commander decks as a way to get yet more Doubling Seasons into green/blue decks and more. It also pops up here and there in wacky combo decks or very hard rules questions.

Final verdict:

DESIGN: Generator Servant

FLAVOUR: Generator Servant

ART: Generator Servant

PLACE IN MAGIC HISTORY: Tie

Overall, it’s a clear call for me: Generator Servant advances to Round 2!