Sets Battle for Zendikar Spoilers

[Chris Taylor]

Looks like only one wotc spoiler today, folks:

Also some prerelease details for the people who care

• No faction choice, everyone gets 6 regular boosters and a promo
• The promo "can be one of any rare or mythic rare in the set." Planeswalkers, bulk rares, lands, it's all game apparently.
• New box will apparently function as a legitimate deckbox. Still paper/cardboard though.

Interesting! I'm not sure Blue 6CC is where I want my tokens, but he's cool

Prerelease promos: Eh, no worse than before we got the "choose your guild" BS in RTR.
I like the deckbox functioning properly though. The only actual deckboxes I have are the huge Leather mana symbol ones, which don't actually fit in anything nicely. I don't prerelease that often, so I never bothered to buy an actual useable deckbox

 

[Eric Chan]

Back to (almost) regular sealed deck! That's the best news I've heard in years - it's been a long time since there wasn't some sort of gimmicky prerelease "experience".

 

[Chris Taylor]

Also, here's something you might like:
http://imgur.com/gallery/YnMWA
Noah Bradley showing off his art for the full art lands.
I don't usually pay attention to the artist, but I've used enough of Noah's Art in my customs to not give him props. Funny how of the ones I selected, he happened to paint 3/5

 

[shamizy]

Noah is great, love his work. I'm pretty happy about this change in the Prerelease, no more people going for one color b/c of the rares. I remember all of the Blue boxes left over at my LGS from M15. Mercurial Pretender, what a powerhouse.

 

[anotak]

it's the blue opposition

alternatively, it's going to drown any hope you have of it being good

 

[Tyrole]

BFZ Mechanics Article

Anyone else think the new mechanics are kind of lackluster? Granted we have quite a few more cards to spoil, but:

Ingest - It will depend on how much it's used, but just having the keyword doesn't do much. The only 2 Processors spoiled so far aren't very inspiring.

Devoid - It's colorless; Neat, but not typically game-changing.

Converge - In limited, how many colors are we likely to play? Probably 2, which is pretty restrictive.

Awaken - I have some hope here. So far the cards seem relatively conservative, but if they push it some, this could be a really interesting mechanic with some excellent decision making potential.

Rally - Again, not bad, but it's mostly a wide ETB effect. Useful, but not particularly creative.

Of course, I love landfall, and the 1/1 scions could be interesting (again, depending on how pushed they are), but overall, the mechanics seem a bit dull compared to some recent sets. Anyone care to disagree? I have high hopes for this set, but so far I'm not blown away.

 

[David Bohlander]

I hope they do something interesting with Devoid, but I'm afraid it'll actually end up playing like a tribal mechanic.
I'm really excited about Awaken, though. Cards with more modes and more options are always exciting.

 

[Aoret]

Awaken is a good mechanic. Converge is basically just Domainburst, but is the only other mechanic that I think stands any chance of not just falling flat.

 

[Chris Taylor]

BFZ Mechanics Article

Anyone else think the new mechanics are kind of lackluster? Granted we have quite a few more cards to spoil, but:

Ingest - It will depend on how much it's used, but just having the keyword doesn't do much. The only 2 Processors spoiled so far aren't very inspiring.

Devoid - It's colorless; Neat, but not typically game-changing.

Converge - In limited, how many colors are we likely to play? Probably 2, which is pretty restrictive.

Awaken - I have some hope here. So far the cards seem relatively conservative, but if they push it some, this could be a really interesting mechanic with some excellent decision making potential.

Rally - Again, not bad, but it's mostly a wide ETB effect. Useful, but not particularly creative.

Of course, I love landfall, and the 1/1 scions could be interesting (again, depending on how pushed they are), but overall, the mechanics seem a bit dull compared to some recent sets. Anyone care to disagree? I have high hopes for this set, but so far I'm not blown away.

Converge is probably going to preform better in a high curve enviornment. Probably a lot easier to splash that off color bomb when you reliably get to 8+ mana on average. Could be sweet, unless I'm reading this format insanely wrong.
Ingest seems like an interesting little combo element. Having the right number of injesty guys and "puts cards from exile somewhere" could be a fun balance
Devoid doesn't count as a mechanic, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Awaken will probably be sweet. Basically all forms of kicker play well, this seems like a good one too, it even has some cross synergy with the non-mechanic of devoid, since lands are colorless
Rally earned so many bonus points with me for affecting all of your creatures instead of just allies it gets a pass.

I hope they do something interesting with Devoid, but I'm afraid it'll actually end up playing like a tribal mechanic.

I'm really excited about Awaken, though. Cards with more modes and more options are always exciting.

Are tribal mechanics a bad thing?

 

[vennythekid]

The only actual deckboxes I have are the huge Leather mana symbol ones, which don't actually fit in anything nicely. I don't prerelease that often, so I never bothered to buy an actual useable deckbox

Two of those stacked sideways fit perfectly into a fat pack box! Also, between tokens and a sideboard, everything fits sungly inside them. My personal favorite deckboxes.

In terms of mechanics, if we get a not overcosted effect plus a reasonable Awaken cost, it could be really interesting.
Something like 1U Bounce target creature, 1U: Awaken 1 would be sweeeeeet.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Sunburst and the Bringers got me back into Magic after a two-year hiatus, so converge is definitely exciting to me!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Devoid is interesting because it intersects with artifact themes; barrage tyrant, for example, is a sac. outlet for artifact creatures.

Not that any of them we've soon so far is particularly interesting--just that the potential is there.

 

[notATrueEnd]

Not that any of them we've soon so far is particularly interesting--just that the potential is there.

RB for a 3/2 that can give haste to colorless creatures seems pretty sweet at least, even if it's not terribly interesting.

 

[RavebornMuse]

RB for a 3/2 that can give haste to colorless creatures seems pretty sweet at least, even if it's not terribly interesting.

"not terribly interesting" imo should be the death knell for any multicolored card in cube.

Even if you don't subscribe to that, I feel like 3/2 at this point is hardly worth the second colour, and if we're doing generic dumb beaters, Fleecemane Lion is where I'd rather be than some wannabe aggro/support card that hastes like, 3-10 other creatures in the average cube. If it was an anthem effect of "colourless creatures you control have haste", or if you're making a colourless-matters/artifact cube, I'd be all over it, but it just seems like a real stretch.

 

[Diakonov]

Also, here's something you might like:
http://imgur.com/gallery/YnMWA
Noah Bradley showing off his art for the full art lands.
I don't usually pay attention to the artist, but I've used enough of Noah's Art in my customs to not give him props. Funny how of the ones I selected, he happened to paint 3/5

Man that Plains art is really something nice, I have to say

 

[anotak]

i actually think that 3/2 IS interesting

people were talking about fires theme well there's another piece yall

 

[CML]

these look kinda crap but what have prereleases taught me except "i have no idea if this will be fun or not." e.g. scavenge looked great, overload looked dumb. not anymore!

 

[GenericZero]

Can we speculate on what Ob Nixilus will do as a card? He's getting a planeswalker card, so that means something interesting, hopefully.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I feel like this is going to be such a synergy oriented set that it's hard to say anything until more stuff is spoiled. Stoked about seeing some basics that doesn't look so plain.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Converge - In limited, how many colors are we likely to play? Probably 2, which is pretty restrictive.

I think Converge in this set is actually fairly elegant. It's the set's "proliferate", if you will. We have two multicolor tribes, which presumably encourage you to go deep by crossing color lines. Then in both cases you have a mechanic that rewards such behavior, in the way that proliferate cards worked both with charge counters and poison counters (and -1/-1 counters).

Still think allies are super lame, even if better implemented this time around.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Also, here's something you might like:
http://imgur.com/gallery/YnMWA
Noah Bradley showing off his art for the full art lands.
I don't usually pay attention to the artist, but I've used enough of Noah's Art in my customs to not give him props. Funny how of the ones I selected, he happened to paint 3/5

His girlfriend is even prettier than his artwork. I don't buy his assertion that she's just there for scale.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Can we speculate on what Ob Nixilus will do as a card? He's getting a planeswalker card, so that means something interesting, hopefully.

The guy who spoiled both Gideon and the new nonbasics perfectly had him pinned as something like
+1 Draw a card and lose one life
-3 Destroy target creature
-8 Target opponent gets an emblem with "when you draw a card, lose 2 life"
Starts at either 4 or 5
It was in a reddit thread I think? I saw a cap of it somewhere.

I like converge a lot but I'm not expecting much out of colorless tribal.

 

[Chris Taylor]

these look kinda crap but what have prereleases taught me except "i have no idea if this will be fun or not." e.g. scavenge looked great, overload looked dumb. not anymore!

*Shrug* I liked Kicker-again and Creature-Flashback-But-Not-Just-Ball-Lightning-Style. I'd venture the problems with RTR limted were hardly those two's fault.
And if your problem is with the limited format as a whole, I don't think a prerelease is the place for you to be. Hold back and wait till people have the format figured out, you crotchety old curmudgeon.

The guy who spoiled both Gideon and the new nonbasics perfectly had him pinned as something like
+1 Draw a card and lose one life
-3 Destroy target creature
-8 Target opponent gets an emblem with "when you draw a card, lose 2 life"
Starts at either 4 or 5
It was in a reddit thread I think? I saw a cap of it somewhere.

I like converge a lot but I'm not expecting much out of colorless tribal.

Honestly, even if colorless tribal is on 2-3 good cards, the ammount of overlap it has with the Awaken Stuff and the artifact stuff from Origins means it could be sweet. Not quite Bloodshot Cyclops who got spoiled a bit ago isn't really doing it for me, but something very well could.

Real Talk though: Would you play him as hypothesised? I'm pretty well in the market for more black value over time spells, (which walkers do nicely) since it fits in well with the inevitable feel black has most of the time, but I wish he didn't cost 5.
He feels a bit Vraska-Esque, but that seems like a decent place to be, and that +1 is waaaaaaaaay better than hers ever was

 

[RavebornMuse]

I would totally play 5-drop Obbywalker as rumoured. Both common modes are super relevant and friendly to most any deck; seems like an easy include, though potentially "skill-less" enough that passing would be reasonble. Depends a lot on the art for me tbh; if he looks like a big ol demon goober, I'll pass

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Depends a lot on the art for me tbh; if he looks like a big ol demon goober, I'll pass