Mystery Mechanic

[Goaswerfraiejen]

I wish Forecast had seen more love from players and Wizards. Pride of the Clouds is such an awesome card... Frankly, I'm holding out for Forecast, even though it hasn't really got a chance in hell, since they said "popular".

Delve would be nice too, though. Even banding. I'd prefer if it wasn't an ability already tied to a number of interesting cards, though (such as Hellbent, Madness, etc.).

[Sek'Kuar]

Affinity unfortunately is a generally hated mechanic by non-affinity players, so I doubt it will come back.

I'd love even something non format-warping like an 1/1 Flying for 2 with affinity for artifacts.

Why not Affinity for a creature type, like Zombies? Or, even better, and fitting with the hypothetical graveyard theme, Affinity for Graveyard: This card costs 1 less to play for each card in your graveyard.

Edit: Nevermind, I just realized graveyard affinity is almost strictly better than Dredge... Oops.

[HdH_Cthulhu]

I would like to see a new form for phasing! Like they did with faiding/vanishing

example:

Hurloon 2RW

Shifting (At the beginning of yor upkeep, if Hurloon is in play remove it from the game, if Hurloon is rfg bring it with haste into play.)

Whene Hurloon comes into play it deals 2 damage to target player whene it leaves play you gain 2 life
2/2

They could desing lots of good cip creatures and we would gains some wreid anti stp tech...

Edit: I hope my Shifting ability wouldnt trigger if the creatures are only in my SB that would be bad realy realy bad

[KillemallCFH]

Edit: I hope my Shifting ability wouldnt trigger if the creatures are only in my SB that would be bad realy realy bad

RFG'd =/= SB, so that ability should work.

[hi-val]

What about the Gating ability from INV? Did people even like it?

[cloudstrife7]

Sorry I don't have links to articles, but I remember two things very clearly about R+D promises for the future.

One was that Affinity and Poison are insanely popular with the designers, and they've promised to bring affinity back when they can figure out how to make it powerful without being broken, and bring Poison back on some slightly more vague time schedule.

The second is that they straight up 100% promised to bring back either Snow, or a similar subtype theme one day in the future. I don't think anyone mentioned that, but it would jive with the mystery mechanic rumor as well as the "we've never done this before" rumor.

[Dan Turner]

Why not Affinity for a creature type, like Zombies? Or, even better, and fitting with the hypothetical graveyard theme, Affinity for Graveyard: This card costs 1 less to play for each card in your graveyard.

Edit: Nevermind, I just realized graveyard affinity is almost strictly better than Dredge... Oops.

how bout some big stompys with affinity for elves

or burn spells with affinity for goblins that would be cool

and give them the creature type damn it

[AngryTroll]

I liked Gating.
Affinity for Islands is awesome-something like Inkwell Leviathan with Affinity for Islands would be cool.

Shifting, as worded just above, would be the most awesome Swords to Plowshares dodger ever.

[Skeggi]

What about the Gating ability from INV? Did people even like it?

In my old Fires deck. That was awesomesauce. Bounced the Master Blaster 2000 or the Kavu wit LAZERSZZ!.

[Sek'Kuar]

Snow could be interesting. What if they had a snow block and brought back affinity. Affinity for snow. I think that would be pretty cool. OTOH, that doesn't jive with the rumor of a graveyard theme.
Could that even be incorporated without it being stupid?

[MSC]

Snow could be interesting. ...
Could that even be incorporated without it being stupid?

Recover from Coldsnap?
But that wasn't really popular...

[BreathWeapon]

Split Second, because Counterbalance needs to GTFO.

[HdH_Cthulhu]

The more split seconds they print the better becomes counterbalance

[Heresy]

Split Second, because Counterbalance needs to GTFO.

I'ts possible to counter a split second spell with counterbalance.

[georgjorge]

I agree with more anti-Counterbalance cards. Delve and Madness would both work for that, only Delve is especially good with blue cantrips, so we know in which decks those cards would end up .

[MattH]

One MAJOR thing ya'll are missing is the emphasis, repeated many times, on inter-block design: they never again want standard to look like "battle of the block decks" like it did 2002-2005. So look for some element which is playing quietly in the corner of Alara block and extrapolate from there.

My guess? They're going to do threshold again, but pull a trick like what they did with echo circa Time Spiral to open up design space. Change the rules so threshold can be at any number*, errata old cards so Werebear & co. all have "Threshold -- 7", and be able to print new cards with threshold-3 or threshold-12.

And yes, this rewards players for playing out their spells, in accordance with what Sek'Kuar was remembering. And the threshold guys, especially green ones, were and are very popular.

And oh look, threshold interacts extremely well with both unearth and devour, and the tri-fetches, and cycling, and several of the mini-cycles scattered throughout Shards block (Rockslide Elemental appreciates you filling your graveyard with creatures). The Naya 5-power-matters cycle also works if there's threshold cards which get big enough upon threshold (Krosan Beast, for example).

*or possibly any condition, such as "this card has threshold when you have exactly 7 cards in hand"? Maybe!

[FoolofaTook]

It could be colorless decks. People have wanted to play all artifact decks with just colorless lands since Mishra's Factories, Mishra's Workshop and the Urza's lands were printed in Antiquities. The hangup is that nothing works at instant speed in a colorless deck unless the mechanism to make it happen is already on the board. So maybe a couple of more interesting lands that produce only colorless mana but have interesting added abilities and a few artifacts with Flash?

[Wrath_Of_Houlding]

I hope not...that would make three blocks in a row with color themes. While it is an integral part of the game, a different area would be nice.

[Shtriga]

One MAJOR thing ya'll are missing is the emphasis, repeated many times, on inter-block design: they never again want standard to look like "battle of the block decks" like it did 2002-2005. So look for some element which is playing quietly in the corner of Alara block and extrapolate from there.

My guess? They're going to do threshold again, but pull a trick like what they did with echo circa Time Spiral to open up design space. Change the rules so threshold can be at any number*, errata old cards so Werebear & co. all have "Threshold -- 7", and be able to print new cards with threshold-3 or threshold-12.

And yes, this rewards players for playing out their spells, in accordance with what Sek'Kuar was remembering. And the threshold guys, especially green ones, were and are very popular.

And oh look, threshold interacts extremely well with both unearth and devour, and the tri-fetches, and cycling, and several of the mini-cycles scattered throughout Shards block (Rockslide Elemental appreciates you filling your graveyard with creatures). The Naya 5-power-matters cycle also works if there's threshold cards which get big enough upon threshold (Krosan Beast, for example).

*or possibly any condition, such as "this card has threshold when you have exactly 7 cards in hand"? Maybe!

This, for me, is the most plausible opinion in this thread. Nice one.

I wouldn't mind threshold again, not at all.

[MattH]

In one of Maro's columns a couple months back, he flat-out said that if they were doing it today, they'd've made it "Threshold-7" so they could do different numbers. So it's not like I just came up with that out of the blue.