Battle For Zendikar Preview - Day 1!

Hibernum_JC

Hi folks! Starting today, I’ll be putting up a post every day highlighting some of the new features, cards and Planeswalkers we’ll be releasing in Battle for Zendikar!

Let’s start off today with a big one - a brand new Planeswalker!



As some of you might have guessed, Ob Nixilis represents the Black color. He has a different focus than Liliana, however - his abilities are mostly centered around sacrificing his health pool to gain an advantage in combat.

His three abilities are:

Sacrifice of Knowledge: Lose life to draw card(s). Sacrifice of Destruction: Lose life to destroy target creature

At ranks 1 and 2, the creature must have 4 and 6 power or less, but at rank 3 it destroys any creature.

Ignite: Create a Support on the board that deals damage to your opponent every time a player draws a card

This ability has a big synergy with his first one!

The reasoning behind the design of the Planeswalker was both thematic and attempting a new direction for Black. We like trying out new ways for different colors to be played - cards that could be useless with certain Planeswalkers can be very strong with others, and so with this we’re really going for a different playstyle. You’ll find this way of designing them throughout the expansion!

Today I’m also revealing a new Mythic card!



Drana is a brand new Mythic creature for Black decks. As you can see, there’s quite a few things going on with her!

The combination of her card text and Unblockable makes her a total force to be reckoned with - as soon as she hits the board, she *must* be taken care of or things will snowball quickly in your favor. She’s similar in design to Relic Seeker, one of the MVPs of Origins, except she has no restrictions on her buffing abilities - you know she’s going to hit the opponent Planeswalker every turn she’s on the board! We also purposefully kept her starting stats low, both to ensure that she can be actually removed through direct damage, but also to ensure her casting cost is rather low so she can be played early.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about some of the new mechanics we introduced in this set! Stay tuned!

I'll also stick around the forums for a bit to answer questions you guys might have!