Battle for Zendikar Preview - Day 3!

Hibernum_JC

Hi folks!

Today we’ll be discussing 3 new items: another Planeswalker, a new mechanic and a new card!

Let’s start off with the new Planeswalker: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar!


Gideon is back in this set, with a whole new set of abilities! He also has a brand new loadout, and makes for a very different playstyle than the Gideon we currently have in-game.

First, his loadout is Spell-oriented. There are some very good cards in this set that are more spell-oriented, and his abilities complement the fact.

His three abilities are:

Echo of Gideon - Summons a token on the battlefield with haste. It dies at the end of your turn. This is incredibly useful to push through a defender or deal a bit of extra damage. At rank 4, the token dies at the beginning of your next turn instead and has Vigilance, so you can use it defensively as well. This ability is rather cheap, so you can use it pretty often! Conscription - Summon Kor Ally tokens on the battlefield. Any creature with Ally has great synergy with the Rally keyword, which we will discuss later this week in more detail. Ranks 1 to 4 summon 1 to 4 of these tokens. Rally the Troops - grants +2/+2 to +5/+5 to each Ally you control White, in this set, has a lot of creatures with Ally, so this ability will give them loads of permanent buffs. It’s a very strong ability with the drawback that you need to play with Allies (thankfully your 2nd ability generates them!)

We wanted to make sure this iteration of Gideon felt and played differently than the one in Origins. His abilities are a lot more focused, and he can make great, great use of a few specific White Mythics that make him incredibly strong.

Next up, we’ll talk about Landfall.

Landfall is a keyword that is present on some cards. It is triggered by matching 4 or more colored gems. Being a trigger, what it will do is perform it’s attached ability whenever you match said gems. For example, a card might read “Landfall: Deal 2 damage to your opponent”. When this card is in play, every time you match 4 or more colored Gems, that card will deal 2 damage to your opponent. There are many, many cards with Landfall, each with their own abilities. Landfall in general is great because it is repeatable - if you match 5 Gems, then 4, you’ll trigger it twice in a single turn!

Some cards will also have “Landfall <color>”, then “Landfall” later on the card text. For example, a card could have “Landfall Red: Deal 2 damage to your opponent. Landfall: Deal 1 damage to your opponent”. In this case, if you match 4 or more Red gems, you’ll deal 2 damage to your opponent (but the 2nd Landfall won’t trigger as it is excludes the previous color). Any other color Landfall would deal 1 damage to your opponent.

That’s it about Landfall! It’s overall a pretty simple mechanic that benefits a lot from board manipulation and gem conversion.

Last but not least, it’s time for the Mythic reveal of the day: Emeria Shepherd!


As you can see, this is another card in the line of Mythics that don’t cost too much to cast, but still have pretty good stats. 4/4 a Flying for 11 is nothing to sneeze at on it’s own, and we purposefully didn’t raise it’s stats higher to ensure it’s cheaper cost.

She has 2 Landfall abilities as well - whenever she’s on the battlefield and you match 4 or more White gems, the last non-Spell (this means any Creature or Support) you controlled that was destroyed is returned to the battlefield. This incredible ability brings back Creatures or Supports for free, which is incredibly strong in itself! Her regular Landfall returns them to your hand, which is still very strong.

Overall, once she’s on the battlefield, she becomes a massive resurrecter that is harder to get rid of due to her Flying.

That’s it for today! Tomorrow we’ll look into 2 new mechanics as well as a new Green Mythic!

ChrisTot

If my last card was a creature/support, and then I replay a different copy of the same one before the ability triggers, is the creature reinforced / shield added onto my current newly played card?

Neat ability! I'm digging that landfall is based on match 4 and not 5. Seems like through your internal playtesting 5 matches must be happening more often these days if 5 into 4 is a normal example.

Cheers as well to making cards less powerful with a lower cost.

Hibernum_JC

ChrisTot wrote:

If my last card was a creature/support, and then I replay a different copy of the same one before the ability triggers, is the creature reinforced / shield added onto my current newly played card?

Neat ability! I'm digging that landfall is based on match 4 and not 5. Seems like through your internal playtesting 5 matches must be happening more often these days if 5 into 4 is a normal example.

Cheers as well to making cards less powerful with a lower cost.

Yes, it will reinforce/add to the shield if it's already present.

Part of why we wanted Landfall to be based on match-4 instead of 5 is that we want the Landfall abilities to trigger often, but not every single turn. Match-4s happen pretty often, so it's a good tradeoff.

loroku

Hibernum_JC wrote:

As you can see, this is another card in the line of Mythics that don’t cost too much to cast, but still have pretty good stats. 4/4 a Flying for 11 is nothing to sneeze at on it’s own, and we purposefully didn’t raise it’s stats higher to ensure it’s cheaper cost.

Mizzium. Meddler. 4/7 for 9 + an amazing ability and it's rare. Perhaps it should be 4/5? (Or 4/4?)

ChrisTot

loroku wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

As you can see, this is another card in the line of Mythics that don’t cost too much to cast, but still have pretty good stats. 4/4 a Flying for 11 is nothing to sneeze at on it’s own, and we purposefully didn’t raise it’s stats higher to ensure it’s cheaper cost.

Mizzium. Meddler. 4/7 for 9 + an amazing ability and it's rare. Perhaps it should be 4/5? (Or 4/4?)

Shhhhh, Mizzium Mezzler all by himself let me beat a Heroic Chandra challenge the other day. All I had to do was use Jace's first ability on my own Mezzler to make sure he didn't kill my opponent in 25 turns. Opponent couldn't play a card the whole game.

Hibernum_JC

loroku wrote:

Mizzium. Meddler. 4/7 for 9 + an amazing ability and it's rare. Perhaps it should be 4/5? (Or 4/4?)

Mizzium Meddler's ability has been changed in the next release. It's body remains unchanged (Toughness remains cheap for Blue) but it's ability is much weaker. It's still a good card, it's just not anymore something you'll play and it'll win you the game because the AI can't play against it.

Morphis

Hibernum_JC wrote:

loroku wrote:

Mizzium. Meddler. 4/7 for 9 + an amazing ability and it's rare. Perhaps it should be 4/5? (Or 4/4?)

Mizzium Meddler's ability has been changed in the next release. It's body remains unchanged (Toughness remains cheap for Blue) but it's ability is much weaker. It's still a good card, it's just not anymore something you'll play and it'll win you the game because the AI can't play against it.

Landfall being triggered by 4 matches is really good to hear.
One question though: will 5 match trigger it too?

Also did not expect mizzium to be changed. That's good news!

loroku

Morphis wrote:

One question though: will 5 match trigger it too?

"every time you match 4 or more colored Gems" - based on that, I'm thinking yes: 5, 6, 7, etc. would work, too.

Also, yes, thanks for changing Mizzium! I know in one of the other threads you said there were "too many bug changes to list" but I really think you should create a list of all the changes somewhere and post it.

Hibernum_JC

Landfall does trigger on match 4 and more, so 5 will work.

The problem with card bugs is that I'm not the one who fixed a lot of them, so unless the fix was a functionality fix (ie changing what a card does vs fixing the card) I wasn't the one in charge of fixing them. On my end there isn't that many cards that were changed, but a lot were fixed internally. I know we fixed a lot of bugs, but I'd have to sit down with programmers and sift through lists of bugs for a long time Sorry guys, that won't really happen.

Keegan

I can't wait to see how this evolves PvP, particularly with a smarter AI tied to these new features. Perhaps it'll temper the grind-as-fast-as-possible strategy.

majincob

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Mizzium Meddler's ability has been changed in the next release. It's body remains unchanged (Toughness remains cheap for Blue) but it's ability is much weaker. It's still a good card, it's just not anymore something you'll play and it'll win you the game because the AI can't play against it.

Boo! Always with the nerfing of my good cards (but the good ones I don't have DON'T get nerfed).

Keegan

majincob wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Mizzium Meddler's ability has been changed in the next release. It's body remains unchanged (Toughness remains cheap for Blue) but it's ability is much weaker. It's still a good card, it's just not anymore something you'll play and it'll win you the game because the AI can't play against it.

Boo! Always with the nerfing of my good cards (but the good ones I don't have DON'T get nerfed).

No matter much how I like playing with Mizzium, I'll readily admit that when a single card can win or lose you the game (against the AI, I almost always just quit those games) regardless of most board circumstance, that card is broken and needs to be nerfed.

EDUSAN

Is this gideon a new pw? Or its a remake of the one we already have?

I have mixed feelings about these new mythics cards.
They are good and cheap so they are a lot more usable than the ones we have now, but getting a mythic card is so damn hard that i feel like my decks will be crippled forever

Being playing since release almost none stop and i only have a couple mythics. I rather feel that mythic card is a nice adition to a deck and not a must have

Keegan

EDUSAN wrote:

Is this gideon a new pw? Or its a remake of the one we already have?

A new PW.

I have mixed feelings about these new mythics cards.
They are good and cheap so they are a lot more usable than the ones we have now, but getting a mythic card is so damn hard that i feel like my decks will be crippled forever

Being playing since release almost none stop and i only have a couple mythics. I rather feel that mythic card is a nice adition to a deck and not a must have

The Mythics are just teasers because they're the "best". There is an entire new set of cards being released for BFZ.

EDHdad

Thanks for the update!

It seems reasonable to Nerf Mizzium Meddler. I'd also suggest Nerfing Jace's 1st ability on the higher levels. -6 power for 3 loyalty is oppressive. With Gideon, Chandra and Liliana, the 1st ability costs more as it gets stronger.

* Will we be able to put Gideon's temporary tokens onto the battlefield if we already have 3 creatures? The ability sounds more useful if we don't have to hold open a creature slot for it.

Hibernum_JC

EDHdad wrote:

Thanks for the update!

It seems reasonable to Nerf Mizzium Meddler. I'd also suggest Nerfing Jace's 1st ability on the higher levels. -6 power for 3 loyalty is oppressive. With Gideon, Chandra and Liliana, the 1st ability costs more as it gets stronger.

* Will we be able to put Gideon's temporary tokens onto the battlefield if we already have 3 creatures? The ability sounds more useful if we don't have to hold open a creature slot for it.

Jace's 1st ability has also been nerfed. Everyone has received changes to their abilities, either through cost or effectiveness.

As for the temporary tokens, no. If it does become a problem, however, we'll look into it.

Meto5000

Hey Hibernum_JC, will there be any changes regarding how multiple tokens of the same type enter the battlefield at the same time? E.g. Gideon's Phalanx or Hangarback Walker where the cards put 4 or 8 tokens into play at once but you have to wait for every single token animation to complete before the game can proceed. These kinds of repetitive animations really slow down the game and incidentally make the cards that cause the slowdown to be less fun to include in your deck and even less so when an opponent plays them.

I'd prefer if I didn't have to make decisions about which cards to include in my deck based on how long they take to cast. Hangarback Walker is a really fun and powerful card but I'd only ever use it to play in story mode simply because of how annoying it is to wait for every thopter summon. Perhaps the reinforce animation mechanic in general could use an update so that there wouldn't be a full summon animation every time a creature is reinforced. If you're worried about this affecting a newer player's understanding of what's going on, perhaps you could include it as a toggleable property in the settings menu.

I realize this functionality would probably cause a fair bit of recoding, maybe more than a fair bit, but I think this is an issue worth tackling. Again, having to make the decision of not including a card in your deck simply because it takes too long to play is not a fun choice to make. Especially in the current Quick Battle meta where every second counts.

Hibernum_JC

Meto5000 wrote:

Hey Hibernum_JC, will there be any changes regarding how multiple tokens of the same type enter the battlefield at the same time? E.g. Gideon's Phalanx or Hangarback Walker where the cards put 4 or 8 tokens into play at once but you have to wait for every single token animation to complete before the game can proceed. These kinds of repetitive animations really slow down the game and incidentally make the cards that cause the slowdown to be less fun to include in your deck and even less so when an opponent plays them.

I'd prefer if I didn't have to make decisions about which cards to include in my deck based on how long they take to cast. Hangarback Walker is a really fun and powerful card but I'd only ever use it to play in story mode simply because of how annoying it is to wait for every thopter summon. Perhaps the reinforce animation mechanic in general could use an update so that there wouldn't be a full summon animation every time a creature is reinforced. If you're worried about this affecting a newer player's understanding of what's going on, perhaps you could include it as a toggleable property in the settings menu.

I realize this functionality would probably cause a fair bit of recoding, maybe more than a fair bit, but I think this is an issue worth tackling. Again, having to make the decision of not including a card in your deck simply because it takes too long to play is not a fun choice to make. Especially in the current Quick Battle meta where every second counts.

I know we discussed something to that effect internally, but I'm not 100% if it made it past the talk stages. I'll have a quick chat with the team and see what we did.

Keegan

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Jace's 1st ability has also been nerfed.

Great news.

Let's go ahead and make a banner to run with this at the top of the board, and could some folks please go ahead and open up duplicate discussions on this. One needs to be on-topic and teetering on the edge of civility, one needs to be a blue v. the world flame war, one should go wildly off-topic, and one should be a bump of a thread from this past winter

Thanks!

Unknown

Suck it Jace!

Also to everyone that defended his stuff: I told you so! muahaha.

But yea I'm also a bit saddened by the mizzium nerf. I think it was the 2nd or 3rd rare I ever got...pretty much single handedly won me every game as a level 18 Jace.

majincob

Keegan wrote:

majincob wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

Mizzium Meddler's ability has been changed in the next release. It's body remains unchanged (Toughness remains cheap for Blue) but it's ability is much weaker. It's still a good card, it's just not anymore something you'll play and it'll win you the game because the AI can't play against it.

Boo! Always with the nerfing of my good cards (but the good ones I don't have DON'T get nerfed).

No matter much how I like playing with Mizzium, I'll readily admit that when a single card can win or lose you the game (against the AI, I almost always just quit those games) regardless of most board circumstance, that card is broken and needs to be nerfed.

You are correct of course, but I really enjoy playing broken stuff. That's what is most fun for me
Also I don't think it's too annoying to play against as you can reorder stuff in your hand and make strategic choices. Definitely not a *rage quit* card when I see the AI play it. Now the Hexproof dudes... immunity to board effects is ridiculous.