Functional Reprints

Yesterday's post about the total number of unique Magic cards didn't discuss a nuance that would have complicated things: functional reprints.

A strict reprint is reusing an existing card in a new release. It might have new art or flavor text, but the same name, casting cost, type (creature/instant/etc.), stats, and abilities- it's identical in every game-relevant aspect. (I excluded those yesterday from the calculation, as they weren't unique.) A functional reprint is a card that has the same color, casting cost, type, stats, and abilities of an existing card but different name. Examples:

Note that the definition doesn't include subtype, so it would count Oreskos Swiftclaw (below) as a functional reprint of Savai Sabertooth and Prowling Caracal, even though the Swiftclaw is also a warrior.

I don't see eye to eye on that one, because (for example) Swiftclaw could benefit from Kor Blademaster while the other two would not, since they're not warriors:

But it's not up to me. The official Wizards page ran a nice article on this years ago, and Gamepedia has a list of cards in this category.

Why do they make functional reprints? Why not just reprint an existing card? I see two reasons.

1. From the Wizards article, "They are usually made for one simple reason: to flesh out the world of the new set." Each Magic expansion has a theme, and some existing cards may not be a match (based on name or art), but would fit well otherwise. So change the name and art, and voila, it works.
2. Functional reprints effectively allow a player, depending on format, to play more than 4 copies of a given card. If you wish, you can play four copies each of Swiftclaw, Sabertooth, and Caracal in a Modern deck, giving you twelve 3/1 white cats for {1}{W}. When both sets were legal in Standard, you could play Didn't Say Please and Thought Collapse in the same deck, giving you eight identical counterspells (I did this in a mill deck iteration).

If you stick with the game long, you'll pick up on such reprints as you scan card previews of new sets. You'll get a twinge- "wait, haven't I seen this before?"- and chances are, you have. Either in a strict reprint or functional one.

A final thought: why do reprints at all? Again, the Wizards article is helpful. They give three reasons for strict reprints, but the concepts apply to functional as well:

• define play environments, 
• give new players more access to staple cards, and 
• provide sets with links to the past.

I'd add: there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. There are staple cards- offering basic abilities important to fundamental Magic play- that really don't need to be changed from set to set. They're good as they are, so why change them? 

Whether strict or functional, yesterday we found that Magic has over 20,400 unique cards (no strict reprints). The Gamepedia article lists 334 cards that are functional reprints, so if we dropped those, we'd still be north of 20,000 unique cards. Either way, the card pool has more variety and complexity than can be enjoyed in several lifetimes, so I'm fine with the arrangement.

There's yet one more nuance- the tweaked reprint- that I'll cover next time.