Battle for Zendikar Preview - Day 4!
Hibernum_JC
Posts: 318 Mover and Shaker
Hi folks! Day 4 of the Battle for Zendikar preview, and today’s update brings us 2 new mechanics, namely Rally and Awaken, plus an all-new Green Mythic card!
First off, we’ll talk about Rally. Rally is a keyword that is present on many cards (and is particularly present in White). Like Landfall, Rally is a trigger, which means that whenever you trigger the Rally action, it will perform it’s ability.
To perform a Rally, you simply need to have a creature with Ally enter the battlefield. Whether it’s through Gideon’s 2nd ability or another creature you have that is an Ally, you can trigger Rally quite often during your turn.
It’s important to note that every single creature with Rally is also an Ally, and they trigger their own Rally when they enter the battlefield! So for example, a creature with “Rally: All your creatures gain +1/+1 until the end of your turn” enters the battlefield, it gives +1/+1 to all your creatures until the end of your turn. You can often chain Rally, with having 2 creatures with Rally and summoning a cheap Ally to trigger 2 Rally at the same time. It’s an incredibly strong ability with a huge potential, and so we hope players will exploit it to the fullest!
The 2nd mechanic we’ll talk about today is Awaken.
Awaken is a keyword present on some cards (mostly Spells, but it also is there on a creature or two). Whenever a card has Awaken, it also has a number present next to the keyword, like Awaken 12, for example. You can think of Awaken as a 2nd optional casting cost to the card, that only gets filled once the 1st casting cost is filled. For example, if a spell costs 3 to cast and has Awaken 12 on it, once you fill the first 3 mana, you’ll start filling the Awaken cost. If a card with Awaken is cast with it’s Awaken cost fully filled, it will execute whatever ability is linked to the Awaken keyword.
It’s important to note that cards WILL automatically cast themselves once their primary casting cost is filled, regardless of if they have Awaken or not. In the previous example, if you gain 12 mana in a single turn, the card would get the first 3 to it’s first cost, the next 9 to it’s Awaken cost, then be cast because it’s primary cost is filled. If you want to guarantee the Awaken ability, you will need to Disable the card in your hand to ensure that you’ll fill the Awaken ability. It’s a bit of an advanced move, but it’s also very strong as typically Awaken summons elemental tokens as the same time as the Spell is cast, so you can end up with dealing damage AND summoning a 3/3 on the board at the same time.
Awaken is very strong in a lot of situations, and the Awaken cost scales with the card rarity - the rarer the card, the cheaper the Awaken cost per token summoned.
It’s now time to reveal today’s Green Mythic card: Greenwarden of Murasa!
Greenwarden of Murasa is a bit more expensive than the other Mythics we’ve shown so far, but it’s effect is very, very strong. It does exactly as it says - when this creature is on the battlefield, ANY other non-token creature you control that is Destroyed from the battlefield returns to the battlefield at full life. At 5 life, it’s not completely trivial to get rid of.
Overall, it’s an incredibly strong Mythic that has a myriad of uses!
Tomorrow, for the final day, we’ll look into the last mechanic the set introduces and we’ll reveal the final card: a Red Mythic!
First off, we’ll talk about Rally. Rally is a keyword that is present on many cards (and is particularly present in White). Like Landfall, Rally is a trigger, which means that whenever you trigger the Rally action, it will perform it’s ability.
To perform a Rally, you simply need to have a creature with Ally enter the battlefield. Whether it’s through Gideon’s 2nd ability or another creature you have that is an Ally, you can trigger Rally quite often during your turn.
It’s important to note that every single creature with Rally is also an Ally, and they trigger their own Rally when they enter the battlefield! So for example, a creature with “Rally: All your creatures gain +1/+1 until the end of your turn” enters the battlefield, it gives +1/+1 to all your creatures until the end of your turn. You can often chain Rally, with having 2 creatures with Rally and summoning a cheap Ally to trigger 2 Rally at the same time. It’s an incredibly strong ability with a huge potential, and so we hope players will exploit it to the fullest!
The 2nd mechanic we’ll talk about today is Awaken.
Awaken is a keyword present on some cards (mostly Spells, but it also is there on a creature or two). Whenever a card has Awaken, it also has a number present next to the keyword, like Awaken 12, for example. You can think of Awaken as a 2nd optional casting cost to the card, that only gets filled once the 1st casting cost is filled. For example, if a spell costs 3 to cast and has Awaken 12 on it, once you fill the first 3 mana, you’ll start filling the Awaken cost. If a card with Awaken is cast with it’s Awaken cost fully filled, it will execute whatever ability is linked to the Awaken keyword.
It’s important to note that cards WILL automatically cast themselves once their primary casting cost is filled, regardless of if they have Awaken or not. In the previous example, if you gain 12 mana in a single turn, the card would get the first 3 to it’s first cost, the next 9 to it’s Awaken cost, then be cast because it’s primary cost is filled. If you want to guarantee the Awaken ability, you will need to Disable the card in your hand to ensure that you’ll fill the Awaken ability. It’s a bit of an advanced move, but it’s also very strong as typically Awaken summons elemental tokens as the same time as the Spell is cast, so you can end up with dealing damage AND summoning a 3/3 on the board at the same time.
Awaken is very strong in a lot of situations, and the Awaken cost scales with the card rarity - the rarer the card, the cheaper the Awaken cost per token summoned.
It’s now time to reveal today’s Green Mythic card: Greenwarden of Murasa!
Greenwarden of Murasa is a bit more expensive than the other Mythics we’ve shown so far, but it’s effect is very, very strong. It does exactly as it says - when this creature is on the battlefield, ANY other non-token creature you control that is Destroyed from the battlefield returns to the battlefield at full life. At 5 life, it’s not completely trivial to get rid of.
Overall, it’s an incredibly strong Mythic that has a myriad of uses!
Tomorrow, for the final day, we’ll look into the last mechanic the set introduces and we’ll reveal the final card: a Red Mythic!
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Comments
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Whoa. That's an impressive ability.
Curious to see how Rally plays in an environment where you're limited to three creatures - I imagine the abilities are pretty powerful, and the cards that make multiple Ally tokens especially valuable!0 -
I agree - these abilities sound overpowered but then you have to keep in mind that you can place a max of 3 creatures at a time. Even the mythic tree above can only affect 2 other creatures (baring other weirdness where control is temporarily given to you over your enemy's creatures). (Not that it makes it worthless - far from it! But it's not like you can have 5 or 6 creatures that can never die.)0
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And if you have a reinforced creature that dies only 1 will come back... i think
Why awaken cards need to be played automatically? there are cards like Day's Undoing that asks me if i want to play it now or i dont.
What happens if i grey out a card with awaken because i think that i wont be able to fill the awaken cost but then i get a lucky cascade and i miss the chance to play it?
I rather have it enabled and after the gem matching to get the game to ask me "you didnt fill the awaken cost, do you want to play the card anyway? yes or no"0 -
EDUSAN wrote:Why awaken cards need to be played automatically? there are cards like Day's Undoing that asks me if i want to play it now or i dont.
What happens if i grey out a card with awaken because i think that i wont be able to fill the awaken cost but then i get a lucky cascade and i miss the chance to play it?
I rather have it enabled and after the gem matching to get the game to ask me "you didnt fill the awaken cost, do you want to play the card anyway? yes or no"
This is a terrific point. I would much rather the Awaken keyword be similar to many other "Are you sure you want to cast this now," cards.0 -
Well, Reclaim just got more interesting. Sacrifice your Elvish Visionary, gain 12 mana, then Elvish Visionary returns to the battlefield, changes 3 gems to green, possibly chaining a cascade, giving you even more mana.0
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Good card and as pointed out above good reclaim sinergy.
In the end I think it is still too slow for current meta and since things are going to speed up it could be too slow.
One thing bothers me: will ai play around it or do stupid things like killing with spells other creatures you control?
We will see.0 -
EDUSAN wrote:And if you have a reinforced creature that dies only 1 will come back... i think
Why awaken cards need to be played automatically? there are cards like Day's Undoing that asks me if i want to play it now or i dont.
What happens if i grey out a card with awaken because i think that i wont be able to fill the awaken cost but then i get a lucky cascade and i miss the chance to play it?
I rather have it enabled and after the gem matching to get the game to ask me "you didnt fill the awaken cost, do you want to play the card anyway? yes or no"
Yes, if you have a reinforced creature that dies, only 1 will come back.
As for Awaken cards, they are played automatically if they are cards that can be played automatically. I should have made that clearer!0 -
I agree that Awaken cards should definitely have an option to not cast them when they are partially filled. Disabling before matching is not the right solution. Since the amount of mana you generate in a turn is somewhat unpredictable due to cascades it means you have to make some awful choices. The example card had a cost of 3 and 9 more for awaken. If I have 9 points of match obviously on the board I have to decide between definitely waiting to cast it until next turn or hoping to get a few points off a cascade but risking 6 mana just being wasted. I should be able to leave the card enabled so I can cast it if it fills entirely and if it doesn't fill the awaken amount I tell it not now. Other cards use triggers like this, the awaken ones should too.0
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Yea does casting an awaken card early just completely waste the stored mana?
It should definitely grant it back into the cards on your hand. Novices that don't know or forget to hold a card will be screwed.
17 is actually not that high for Nissa. Her ramp is so high that on average you should be gaining 8-15 mana a turn, once your setup is complete.0 -
Thanks for all the updates! I love spoilers so I'm really looking forward to the new set.
By any chance will this Zendikar release include cards from Battle for Zendikar AND Oath of the Gatewatch?
Or is Oath going to be released sometime in the future?
I'm interested to see what Kozilek and Ulamog will look like in MtgPQ!0 -
Sorry if I missed this in the other previews of the update, but is there going to be something added in this update to make the extra cards we have used for something? Example being that I've pulled Willbreaker more times than I could hope for, but I only have a use for 1 of them.0
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Cabol wrote:Sorry if I missed this in the other previews of the update, but is there going to be something added in this update to make the extra cards we have used for something? Example being that I've pulled Willbreaker more times than I could hope for, but I only have a use for 1 of them.
Yea you can convert (bulk only - meaning one press all your cards) duplicates to runes.
Also: murasa + reclaim lol Nissa is only going to get faster.0 -
Hibernum_JC wrote:As for Awaken cards, they are played automatically if they are cards that can be played automatically. I should have made that clearer!
I think the point was that none of them should be played automatically.0 -
majincob wrote:Hibernum_JC wrote:As for Awaken cards, they are played automatically if they are cards that can be played automatically. I should have made that clearer!
I think the point was that none of them should be played automatically.
Most cards have a prompt regardless, so it shouldn't be an issue.0
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