MTG Ramblings Echo & Pact

MTG Ramblings Echo & Pact

When is a cost worse than it's actual face value? when you have to pay tax on it.

Additional Costs are a gripe in the MTG community, usually because they are not worth it in any circumstance, or they are way too good on the card they are on. But that is a ramble for another day, today I will be trying to use the long lamented mechanic of Echo to make better cards & talking about the Pact cycle.

Additional costs are what they say on the tin, an additional cost to cast a spell, this can come in several ways, such as Discarding a Card, Sacrificing Creatures or Lands, or paying life. Why does this happen, as it says its an additional cost so that way your powerful spell can cost less mana & people will actually want to play the card/not have a high cost card stuck in there hand, these costs are good as they can have synergy with other cards in your deck. Have to discard a card, Does it have Madness? Some sort of Flashback effect that you don't need right now but later? Does your sacrificed creatures have a Triger on death effect? Do they want to be sacrificed in the first place? Does an effect come on line when you have lost & gained life this turn?

We are not taking about that, we are taking about the black sheep of the additional costs, Echo. Echo is a mechanic that exists mostly in Red & Green that has you pay an additional cost, usually the Casting cost of the card, at the beginning of the Next Upkeep or sacrifice it. It is not a good mechanic, the only technique it may have is if you have a way of switching control of a creature you control with Echo & an opponent creature & they cannot pay the upkeep cost of the swapped creature. It generally doesn't lead itself to doing anything useful, some cards have tried to get around this by giving the creature Hast, and later the Dash mechanic came about which is much better than Echo.

Once again we go to Future Sight to see how this mechanic was used in other ways, this being giving alternative costs to Echo, "Shah of Naar Isle" has your opponents gaining way to much card advantage for a Cost, "Skizzik Surger" is a large body and the sacrifice of two lands is meant for late game and nothing else. Of course the Modern Horizons sets had there own take on it, that being Rakdos Headliner needing you to Discard a card, it's name alluding to you to use cards with Madness. Yet there is another cycle in Future Sight that we may take inspiration from, The Pact Cycle. (Also obligatory shout out to Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug, as this is basically a Pact card + a Dash mechanic.)

The Pact Cycle are a series of cards that are Zero Mana but require you to pay mana at the beginning your next Upkeep or you loose the Game. Its just an Echo cost on a Instant card. So why cant we do something with these? Having no or low cost creatures that have pushed stats, but require a High Echo cost? Such as having to discard you entire hand, or sacrificing permanents besides itself? The problem is that it can be abused, there are cards out there that make creatures lose all abilities, such as Mystic Subdual. This is a minimal problem as these types of cards also change the Creature's base stats and makes it so they cant attack or untap, but there is always the possibility WotC decides to make a card that shuts down your own Abilities as an upside.

So let me make an examples:

"Keldon Demolition Squad" {1}{R} 4/1 Creature - Human Barbarian (w) - When [Creature] enters, destroy target artifact. Echo - Sacrifice a Artifact you control. (Simple effect, destroys an artifact & leaves you if you decide to not pay them, that is if you haven't used them to Chump block a larger creature.)

"Multani's Acolyte's Acolyte" {G} 2/2 Creature - Elf Druid (w) - When [Creature] enters, draw a card. Echo - An opponent Draws a Card. (Simple, clean, can play politics with others & don't need some cost to untap it when it doesn't untap naturally.)