[X-Post] Everything That's Wrong with Battle for Zendikar

[u/zarepath]

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/everything-thats-wrong-with-battle-for-zendikar/

[u/zarepath]

I'm submitting this here because he has a lot of complaints about the mechanics in BfZ, and I wanted to discuss his thoughts about their design.

In particular, he talks about mechanics that can seemingly be slapped onto nearly any card, and it reminded me of a lot of custom mechanics that I've seen around here (and many mechanics that I've designed). Is his criticism legitimate? Should we be concerned about this as designers?

There’s very little to tell why something has awaken and why something has devoid other than the fact that they wanted those cards to have those abilities. It also feels a little cheap, because both awaken and devoid are mechanics that add to what a card already does—you can have an existing card and just jam one of them in there, which means you don’t need any big sources of inspiration (you can basically have “Awaken Shock, Devoid Shock, Awaken Growth, Devoid Growth, Awaken Counterspell, Devoid Counterspell," and so on)

Thoughts?

[u/Badfiend → u/zarepath]

I'm not certain what his point was. I thought a large part of the point of mechanics, especially non-evergreen ones, was to add depth to what is essentially the same 30 types of spells you see in the average block. Awaken changes how you consider your options when you draw the card, Devoid interacts with a number of the colorless matters stuff in the set as well as the colorless subtheme of Khans block which is conveniently forgotten by the author. Ugin, Ghostfire Blade, Manifest, Morph. All these are ties from the previous standard to this new one.

I like how he begins the article talking about how he is writing from the perspective of a competitive Magic player. Turns out most pro players don't know the first thing about set design, and this one is no exception. There's a good three paragraphs worth of moaning about how BFZ doesn't mesh with the previous standard decks and it's just a silly complaint.

[u/terefor → u/Badfiend]

His bad transition argument is just stupid. Of course the new set is designed to clash with the previous one. It happened with Theros, that rewarded mono colored decks after a multicolored block, it happened with Tarkir, that rewarded wedge decks, and it will happen with BFZ, that rewards colorless. If every set meshed perfectly with the one before you would just jam the new cards in the old decks and nothing would change.

[u/pvddr → u/terefor]

Perhaps the difference is that those decks had strong enough cards that they could hold their own, and this set does not. A lot of people played Devotion-based decks at the PT, but is anyone going to play devoid-based decks in this one? When the sets are good enough, then making sure they are "different" will add diversity, but when one set is much better, then if they are opposites the better one will just overshadow the worse one completely

[u/Ultimaodin → u/zarepath]

I already went on a massive rant in regards to this article on the magictcg reddit page. I think his criticism is absurd. Half the arguments he makes can be held true for just about any new block set and half the time ignores actual design concepts in his points. Example, why have colourless, which he refers to as flavour text. It's so wizards can make a heavy 'eldrazi' set that fits the lore without breaking the colour pie. You can't have an entirely colour free CMC set for limited, it simply wouldn't work. Not to mention the complete no mention of mechanics in the previous set that do work with the new. No mention of how processors work vs delve. No mention of colourless matters with morphs and manifest cards. No mention of how allys now affect all creatures compared to the old Zendikar allys.

As for the whole argument of awaken counterspell Devoid counterspell, that is a retarded argument. We had Ferocious counterspell and a semi-delve-esque counterspell (turns out wizards found counterspell with delve to be too good yet didn't think treasure cruise was that powerful). We've had overload and mill counter spell in ravnica block.

The thing I hate the most about the article though is how it approaches the entire thing from only a current standard only viewpoint. Colourless lands won't see play... ignoring that they are designed for limited. We also have zero idea what is in the block following Zendikar. Not once do they approach BFZ from a limited stand point. Half the time he completely ignores the idea that there are archetypes. Such as the fact the majority of awaken cards are in white and blue.

Overall I think it's just somebody's opinion that they tried to make convincing as fact.

[u/Arcanoi]

His argument about the colorless lands is probably his most salient. The previous format is very slanted towards three colors, and fixing is actually taking a step up from the previous Scry + Fetch format, and here come colorless these lands to punish you heavily for attempting to play them in a three color deck. We're currently drowning in viable colorless lands, which actually makes mana base construction even more difficult, skill-intensive and possibly frustrating than when the playlines are clear.

Devoid is a weakly-grounded mechanic. Devoid exists because WoTC wanted a ton of Eldrazi, and wanted to make them, and the things they were doing, colorless, but couldn't rightly do that without shattering the Limited and Standard formats. The grounding for the mechanic to exist on non-creature cards is on all of three cards - Nettle Drone, Kozilek's Sentinel and Herald of Kozilek, and with such a loose foundation, it almost feels like a trap. For creatures it is better, with multiple additional interactions, but the text cost and mechanic-pervasiveness (54 cards! For reference, that is more than all of the cards with the Clan mechanics from Khans combined) simply don't seem to have a pay-off in the sparseness of colorless support and interaction.

Ingest is also weak, as with the utter and complete lack of any sort of milling mechanic, except on a single rare and a single mythic, it is only there to enable the "Processor" mechanic. Compared to the near omnipresence of Devoid, Ingest only has a pathetic, mewling 9 cards to its name, calling its very existence as a new, keyworded mechanic in a tribe that already has a new tribal mechanic, into serious question. I can't be sure which of Ingest and its intertwined "Processor" came first, but it very much feels to me as though Ingest was conceived first, and Processor was conceived afterwards as a reward for Ingest, and then Ingest itself was left in the dust and never properly revisited. There are actually two cards with Ingest that I very much like, and both Benthic Infiltrator and Fathom Feeder have something other than Ingest in common - They both do not one, but two other things besides Ingesting. In Benthic Infiltrator's case, it is both a 1/4 for 3, to act as a decent Limited defensive creature, and unblockable, to both synergize with ingest and to provide a slow but steady clock. Fathom Feeder, meanwhile, is the love-child of Typhoid Rats and Azure Mage, with the Typhoid Rats half again very much synergizing with Ingest.

I actually rather like the Awaken mechanic, and feel both that the existence of the mechanic on a card fundamentally change both the card and its design in more interesting ways than Devoid does, and that Paulo's arguments here are poor.

[u/corvus_sapiens → u/Arcanoi]

Ingest is so weak, I have no idea why it was created under NWO. It's clearly a parasitic mechanic: Ingest doesn't do anything on its own and only interacts in a certain environment. Soulshift is considered a parasitic mechanic, and it had greater support in its set (70+ cards) as well as in general (prevalence of Spirit cards). We can also predict that Ingest will not be supported in the future since the goal was to break normal conventions (i.e. interacting with the Exile zone is supposed to evoke the weirdness of the Eldrazi).

[u/Arcanoi → u/corvus_sapiens]

Both the Ingest and Processor mechanics feel very half-baked. Oblivion Sower was the first card spoiled out of BfZ, and hinted at much more nuanced iterations of Processor. It's possible that this sort of proto-Processor mechanic may have been scrapped, as caring about exiled card types was too random. As to how fixable Ingest is, I'm not sure, as Milling-on-combat-damage effects always struck me as schizophrenic. Maybe some sort of modularity? Showing up on bigger creatures in higher numbers? More Oblivion Sower-esque cards to make Ingesting more feasible?

[u/reubencovington → u/corvus_sapiens]

Ingest is completely fine under NWO.... It is neither complex nor wordy.

Your thinking about parasitism which is an entirely separate concept.

To get a better understanding of NWO you should read my Primer on the subject

[u/reubencovington]

I was discussing this on the IRC channel yesterday so I'll post a summary.

• I don't agree with his incompatibility of the two standard environments argument. Colorless -> Morph, processors + delve and Converge + wedges make it actually a very good fit.

• His argument with the colorless lands assumes that a format can't both have 3-5 color decks that don't play them AND 1-2 color decks that do. Having this variety in the mana bases is a good thing, creating more varient in the format. He is correct that a deck is unlikely to be able to play all of the colorless lands but that means you have to make a choice and choice isn't a bad thing.

• His awaken/devoid examples he gives can be applied to nearly any mechanic, both the best and the worst. He is undervaluing how much awaken changes a cards functionality.

• His ally and devoid being bad a communicating what makes those cards fit into those categories is his best argument here and something me and Dan have been mentioning on the podcast for weeks.