[BFZ]Battle for Zendikar spoilers thread

[ReAnimator]

Ok, i see what you are saying now. I think black still gets this stuff flavourwise but on large mid costed flyers now for the most part.

Maybe for standard or modern i could see these sorts of things coming back, but for legacy you would need to print something that is equal or close to Tarmogyf or Tasigur now, and that's probably not realistic. Like if it's not at least 3 or 4 power for one or two mana it's just not really on legacy's power level.

[jrsthethird]

Just wait for a few years until they tweak the mechanic to give us Megamenace.

Or Menacekicker.

Fear never should have been a keyword to begin with, but it's just another symptom of the problem with constantly trying to introduce more elements to the game. I think around Ice Age or something they announced they'd be doing two new abilities in every block. It was silly then, it's silly now.

If you don't introduce new things to the game, every set will feel the same. Do you want stagnancy, or do you want variety?

[bruizar]

Or Menacekicker.



If you don't introduce new things to the game, every set will feel the same. Do you want stagnancy, or do you want variety?

I don't think he's criticizing new mechanics, I think he's criticizing the 2 new mechanics per set rule. Forcing new mechanics like this will surely deplete creativity (read: I'm not talking about depleting new mechanics, they will always release new mechanics. Creative new mechanics will appear less and less as can be seen with the kicker variants, sunburst-variants and menace/fear)

[rufus]

...

Solution: develop a new mechanic that grants evasion but is also color-agnostic and not just a reskin of flying, i.e. horsemanship. That mechanic is menace. Personally, I think menace is a little on the weak side, since it only works when you're ahead (unlike flying) and is not great on little guys that effectively get killed for free if your opponent can get sufficiently large creatures on them. I like it on medium and large guys, and I like it in colors with combat tricks, since then it gives you more room for two-for-ones.

Menace is not a new mechanic. It's a new label slapped on something that's been around for a long time. At least as old as Goblin War Drums in fallen empires. It's got a history of being terrible, but maybe it will find a place in this new world order when they print pushed cards with the ability.

And that's really the thing that bugs me about "two new mechanics each set": Mostly, they don't make new mechanics, but only pretend to by slapping new keywords on old stuff. Like converge and sunburst or devotion and chroma, at least with kicker and multikicker or morph and megamorph they put a lampshade on the issue.

[jrsthethird]

I don't think he's criticizing new mechanics, I think he's criticizing the 2 new mechanics per set rule. Forcing new mechanics like this will surely deplete creativity (read: I'm not talking about depleting new mechanics, they will always release new mechanics. Creative new mechanics will appear less and less as can be seen with the kicker variants, sunburst-variants and menace/fear)

And that's really the thing that bugs me about "two new mechanics each set": Mostly, they don't make new mechanics, but only pretend to by slapping new keywords on old stuff. Like converge and sunburst or devotion and chroma, at least with kicker and multikicker or morph and megamorph they put a lampshade on the issue.

Converge and Devotion are improvements on old abilities and could likely be retroactively applied to the old cards without a functional difference (not that this does anything except for the sake of this comparison), whereas multikicker/megamorph are simple variations. I don't know why you demonize them for going deeper into the space of these mechanics and finding new space. Obviously megamorph is a shitty name, and multikicker isn't much better, but they are simple, elegant evolutions of common mechanics.

It seems like you don't realize that their design space is somewhat finite and want them to burn through it ASAP.

[rufus]

...

It seems like you don't realize that their design space is somewhat finite and want them to burn through it ASAP.

It just seems disingenuous for them to slap new names on old stuff and pretend it's new.

[Barook]

I just realized that the whole "We make everything more expensive. Fuck you!"-thing might have to do with design space. Why else would they suddenly come up with some horseshit that 1cc mana dorks are too good after 22 years?

[H]

I'm not sure how many have read this article, but it does a pretty decent job summarizing most of my feelings on this set, Everything That’s Wrong with Battle for Zendikar, by Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and he articulates it a lot more cleanly than I ever could.

[TsumiBand]

I'm not sure that a 2 keywords per set mandate (if it is a real thing) is a guarantee that innovation will occur, any more so than revoking it would demand stagnation. That seems like a false pretense.

Like, it's nice to have a standing rule that says they should Make New Things but, that's kind of implicit in printing a new set (or one would assume it is). I don't think a set's innovative-ness can be measured by its keyword-to-card ratio. Time Spiral Block, amirite?

It isn't necessarily a *problem* to codify a rule about keywords but they should try not to keyword terrible things. Or not do it in a terrible way, at least. Ingest, Unleash, Megamorph; on their face they're fine to keyword, but it's so locked down. The mechanics literally cannot expand by themselves, they are locked in as "Do this." You can never Unleash 2 or Ingest 3, or ever have it scale, so it churns out these mechanics that pretty much only work on tiny guys in the early parts of the game. Chaos Imps is a good example, that mechanic is not great for something that's already big, or for that matter, something that's already evasive and huge to have "can't block" when it's arguably just in its best role as a finisher.

Like honestly, the whole idea of having all these abilities "locked in" at X all the time (where X is generally 1) is probably to try and keep things from just feeling like Yet Another Kicker, but then again, Kicker doesn't suck, so.

[Barook]

Like, it's nice to have a standing rule that says they should Make New Things but, that's kind of implicit in printing a new set (or one would assume it is). I don't think a set's innovative-ness can be measured by its keyword-to-card ratio. Time Spiral Block, amirite?

TS block was wasted potential. I guess a good chunk of people who saw Blast from the Past expected a lot of cool, synergestic mash-ups of old abilities (at least I did), but in the end, they only did so in Future Sight, and not even that much there. Gotta use Suspend and recycled Fading instead...

[Cire]

Hey . . . I thought Unleash was pretty good. It seemed boring but in draft it forced some interesting decisions. Not for legacy, but not a bad mechanic. (But yes it should have had a number attached to it)

Edit: Would have loved more cycling/madness cards (or madness with any discard ability really)

[jrsthethird]

Ingest, Unleash, Megamorph; on their face they're fine to keyword, but it's so locked down. The mechanics literally cannot expand by themselves, they are locked in as "Do this." You can never Unleash 2 or Ingest 3, or ever have it scale

I think part of this is for simplicity's sake, as well as preservation of further design space.

For the first part, it's nice to see things like Scry 2, Awaken 3, Bolster 4, etc., but I think every mechanic having that makes things a little complex. What I notice at first glance, thinking of things like Persist, Unleash, Undying, Ingest, Megamorph, is that they're all creature mechanics. I think having scaling in the same set makes board states slightly more complex and confusing (not for us, but for the masses); I don't think people want to spend their time at FNMs trying to figure out which guys come back with 3 +1/+1 counters when they die, or just 1. The abilities with numbers attached seem to go along with spells or abilities, so you activate them once and they're done.

The second part, well, there's nothing that says in the future they can't do Megamorph 2 or Ingest 3, or variations. They probably won't, but the ability can be retemplated. It would to be consistent within that environment, just like not having a quantifying number is consistent in the current environments. There are a couple precedents for this (maybe; they both involve mana costs, not quantifiers): Cycling and Echo. Cycling started out as "Cycling 2", but was expanded to include different mana costs as well as nonmana costs. Echo is a better example though, since it started out as a simple, non-scaling ability, but then was changed to actually require a cost, and the old cards were errataed to fit the new format, with the mana cost equal to the echo cost.

So it's theoretically possible they could do Battle for Zendikar 2: The Eldrazi Boogaloo and use "Ingest 3", while retemplating the original BFZ cards as "Ingest 1".

[phonics]

I think part of this is for simplicity's sake, as well as preservation of further design space.

For the first part, it's nice to see things like Scry 2, Awaken 3, Bolster 4, etc., but I think every mechanic having that makes things a little complex. What I notice at first glance, thinking of things like Persist, Unleash, Undying, Ingest, Megamorph, is that they're all creature mechanics. I think having scaling in the same set makes board states slightly more complex and confusing (not for us, but for the masses); I don't think people want to spend their time at FNMs trying to figure out which guys come back with 3 +1/+1 counters when they die, or just 1. The abilities with numbers attached seem to go along with spells or abilities, so you activate them once and they're done.

The second part, well, there's nothing that says in the future they can't do Megamorph 2 or Ingest 3, or variations. They probably won't, but the ability can be retemplated. It would to be consistent within that environment, just like not having a quantifying number is consistent in the current environments. There are a couple precedents for this (maybe; they both involve mana costs, not quantifiers): Cycling and Echo. Cycling started out as "Cycling 2", but was expanded to include different mana costs as well as nonmana costs. Echo is a better example though, since it started out as a simple, non-scaling ability, but then was changed to actually require a cost, and the old cards were errataed to fit the new format, with the mana cost equal to the echo cost.

So it's theoretically possible they could do Battle for Zendikar 2: The Eldrazi Boogaloo and use "Ingest 3", while retemplating the original BFZ cards as "Ingest 1".

I feel like devoid could have just been another color identity dot like the ones that colored spells with no casting cost have. In general though there is very little exploration into new mechanics and interesting applications.

[into_play]

TS block was wasted potential. I guess a good chunk of people who saw Blast from the Past expected a lot of cool, synergestic mash-ups of old abilities (at least I did), but in the end, they only did so in Future Sight, and not even that much there. Gotta use Suspend and recycled Fading instead...

I personally loved Time Spiral block, and I don't think people's enjoyment of the block should have been contingent only on the old mechanics. The two new mechanics, Suspend and Split second, were creative and powerful (well, mostly split second), so the cards with old mechanics felt mostly there for nostalgia and less for power. Flavorwise, the set referenced a little bit of everything in the past (Slivers, Rebels, the Magi cycles, all the mechanics, totems, etc...) so all the local old school players at the time really got a kick out of it. Plus, the theme of the three sets being past, present and future I thought was very creative. The block exceeded all expectations for me.

[iamajellydonut]

Also, remember that Time Spiral is responsible for keywording and subsequently evergreen-ing the "flash" mechanic.

That being said, Time Spiral is one of my all time favorite blocks. Don't be hatin'.

[Zombie]

I personally loved Time Spiral block, and I don't think people's enjoyment of the block should have been contingent only on the old mechanics. The two new mechanics, Suspend and Split second, were creative and powerful (well, mostly split second)

Suspend cards actually did a ton of work in Block Constructed (UB control with Detritivore for blowing up Urza's Factories and manlands, Aeon Chronicler) and definitely in TS-Lor/Sha-CSnap Standard.
Ancestral Vision obviously did a ton of work in Lark-Blink and Faeries and T1 Ancestral T2 Bitterblossom pretty much dominated the format.
Search for Tomorrow was played in GR Snow Ramp (imagine - an interesting Ramp deck :O).
Riftwing Cloudskate was played a lot in Lark-Blink and was one of the strongest Turn 2 plays for it.
Greater Gargadon was used in some Lark builds as a combo enabler over Mirror Entity.
Lotus Bloom's obviously been used to fuel combo decks in many formats, and was used in the Dragonstorm decks of the era.
Rift Bolt has obviously been played everywhere.

The block exceeded all expectations for me.

It was a wonderful time to start playing Magic, though I to this day don't understand all the crying about Harmonize :D

[rufus]

Ingest, Unleash, Megamorph; on their face they're fine to keyword...

...Battle for Zendikar 2: The Eldrazi Boogaloo...

Please don't put words in my mouth. That was Tsumiband, and not me.

[TsumiBand]

I think part of this is for simplicity's sake, as well as preservation of further design space.

For the first part, it's nice to see things like Scry 2, Awaken 3, Bolster 4, etc., but I think every mechanic having that makes things a little complex. What I notice at first glance, thinking of things like Persist, Unleash, Undying, Ingest, Megamorph, is that they're all creature mechanics. I think having scaling in the same set makes board states slightly more complex and confusing (not for us, but for the masses); I don't think people want to spend their time at FNMs trying to figure out which guys come back with 3 +1/+1 counters when they die, or just 1. The abilities with numbers attached seem to go along with spells or abilities, so you activate them once and they're done.

The second part, well, there's nothing that says in the future they can't do Megamorph 2 or Ingest 3, or variations. They probably won't, but the ability can be retemplated. It would to be consistent within that environment, just like not having a quantifying number is consistent in the current environments. There are a couple precedents for this (maybe; they both involve mana costs, not quantifiers): Cycling and Echo. Cycling started out as "Cycling 2", but was expanded to include different mana costs as well as nonmana costs. Echo is a better example though, since it started out as a simple, non-scaling ability, but then was changed to actually require a cost, and the old cards were errataed to fit the new format, with the mana cost equal to the echo cost.

So it's theoretically possible they could do Battle for Zendikar 2: The Eldrazi Boogaloo and use "Ingest 3", while retemplating the original BFZ cards as "Ingest 1".

I feel like at this point they are typically better at anticipating if a keyword needs remoding from Keyword to Keyword X. The two mechanics you noted are, what, 15 years old? Unleash is a mechanic designed with some years under their belt, I'd be surprised to see them revisit any of the "locked in" keywords, much less require the rules team to amend their current entries. Perhaps they've simply shifted to a YAGNI approach, and if that's so I eagerly await to be proven wrong. I get the sense that they are pretty content with just rehashing and renaming where needed though - it is really easier or better to introduce Megamorph than to either (a) update Morph to handle counters on its own (b) just place "when this turns face up" text on a regular Morph creature, as they have in the past?

As for less "figuring out" which guys get more counters or whatever - if they're trying to avoid RTFC fails, why in the blue hell do we have Allies everywhere? As the recently posted article stated, some of the Allies are just not very obvious in their execution; they just have the Ally type, but don't really behave as Allies. It's like if there were a set full of Slivers, but some Slivers wrre like "Creature - Beast Warrior Sliver" and had a minor tap ability that they didn't share with the hive. They're technically Allies, sure, but they just carry the type without acting very Ally-like.

I reckon we could circle the drain on this, but I think we understand each other.

[Fox]

Horribly Awry <- this card shall henceforth be known as the Cinnamon Challenge. On a more serious note, played in the prerelease last night, this set feels similar to MM2 limited, but more fun. I especially liked the how ingest/processor mechanic felt most like the exploit decks of DTK.

[jrsthethird]

Please don't put words in my mouth. That was Tsumiband, and not me.

Whoops. Fixed.

I feel like at this point they are typically better at anticipating if a keyword needs remoding from Keyword to Keyword X. The two mechanics you noted are, what, 15 years old? Unleash is a mechanic designed with some years under their belt, I'd be surprised to see them revisit any of the "locked in" keywords, much less require the rules team to amend their current entries. Perhaps they've simply shifted to a YAGNI approach, and if that's so I eagerly await to be proven wrong. I get the sense that they are pretty content with just rehashing and renaming where needed though - it is really easier or better to introduce Megamorph than to either (a) update Morph to handle counters on its own (b) just place "when this turns face up" text on a regular Morph creature, as they have in the past?

As for less "figuring out" which guys get more counters or whatever - if they're trying to avoid RTFC fails, why in the blue hell do we have Allies everywhere? As the recently posted article stated, some of the Allies are just not very obvious in their execution; they just have the Ally type, but don't really behave as Allies. It's like if there were a set full of Slivers, but some Slivers wrre like "Creature - Beast Warrior Sliver" and had a minor tap ability that they didn't share with the hive. They're technically Allies, sure, but they just carry the type without acting very Ally-like.

I reckon we could circle the drain on this, but I think we understand each other.

Makes sense. I don't understand the reasoning between Allies/non-Allies in this set, I think that is an issue.

Horribly Awry <- this card shall henceforth be known as the Cinnamon Challenge. On a more serious note, played in the prerelease last night, this set feels similar to MM2 limited, but more fun. I especially liked the how ingest/processor mechanic felt most like the exploit decks of DTK.

Hah. Prerelease was fun; the only downer to Ingest is when you see every single out against flyers get ingested and know you're drawing dead. But at the same time, when they ingest all your lands and you draw business, it feels great. I'm excited to draft this set.