Card Talk 5

Arni Metalbrow card art

Today is the fifth post in my Card Talk series.

Reminder how Card Talk works:

• I go to Scryfall and select 'Random Card'
• I present and blog about the card. I could discuss any aspect: the art, abilities, cost, set, impact on the game, and so on. Stream of consciousness.

Card Talk is a fun, uncurated way to look at Magic's cards, mechanics, history, art, sets, and so on. And of course it exposes some of my own preferences, biases, and memories of the game. 

Today's card is . . .

Standing Troops

Hmmmm . . . Standing Troops. A white human soldier. This version is from the Welcome Deck 2017.

I love tribal decks, and I discussed white soldiers specifically in January. They are the most prevalent tribe in white. Standing Troops doesn't feature in any of my constructed decks, though. It is certainly a nice defender, with 4 defense keeping it out of reach from most red damage spells. And vigilance is nice. But with only 1 attack, and a mana value = 3, there are better options out there if you are playing soldiers.

Standing Troops has been printed six times in paper:

- Exodus (1998)

- Classic Sixth Edition (1999)

- Seventh Edition (2001)

- Eighth Edition (2003)

- Duel Decks: Elspeth vs. Kiora (2015)

- Welcome Deck 2017 (2017)

After the initial printing in an expansion, it featured in three consecutive core sets, then dropped out of sight for 12 years until coming back for two special releases. This is a good reminder that many cards (not on the reserved list) may get reprints even after years of being ignored.

Other card observations:

• Welcome Deck 2017 was a set of 30 reprinted cards that showed up in several products (booster battle packs and deckbuilder's toolkits) from the Amonkhet and Ixalan block sets. You can read more about that here.
• Vigilance didn't become a keyword until 2004, so the first four printings of this card spelled out the ability: "Attacking doesn't cause Standing Troops to tap."
• The vigilance keyword shows up on 744 cards as of this writing. Not surprisingly, 350 of them are mono-white and 500 of them have white in the casting cost. Different keywords feature in different colors; it is clear that vigilance is largely in white in Magic.