Battle For Zendikar Preview - Day 5!

Hibernum_JC

Hi folks! Today’s the last preview update for Battle for Zendikar! The update will release very shortly, and hopefully these few previews have been helpful at understanding the new mechanics and you’re hyped at seeing some of the new Mythics we’re adding into the game!

In this final update, we’ll talk about the last mechanic we’re introducing into the set, Converge, and we’ll show the final Mythic preview!

Converge is a new mechanic in Battle for Zendikar that affects cards in hand. Essentially, it scales card power for each different color gem you match to fill it up.

For example, a card that has Converge would have it’s card text read as “Deal X damage, where X is your converged mana”, if you fill the card with a single color, it would deal 1 damage. If you fill the card with 5 different colors, it would deal 5 damage. This creates an interesting choice in how you make your matches - you might end up matching gems that give you less mana for a bigger payoff with the card, or you might decide you don’t need the payoff and match for higher mana gains. It’s a very interesting mechanic as in really influences the choices you will make when these cards are in your hand.

As for the final card preview - let me introduce Akoum Firebird!


This mighty Phoenix is a pure interpretation of Red - loads of damage, quick. The fun thing too is that being a Phoenix, he can come back from the dead - whenever you do a Landfall Red, if he has been Destroyed, he comes back to life, *with* Haste! When playing against him, Red mana denial is the key to ensure he stays down.

Finally, you can see his mana cost is rather low for an 8/8. This is the new baseline for Mythics cards - we understand that a lof of Mythics in Origins are very technical cards that do not seem useful, so we made sure that the Battle for Zendikar Mythics are appropriately costed so that you will never be unhappy when getting one!

This is it for the Battle for Zendikar preview! We hope you’ve liked this little series of posts, and we look forward to you feedback once the set releases!