Review: new gameplay mechanics

paralistalon

Rally: Kind of fun. I enjoyed discovering the combo in the tutorial of Lantern Scout (Rally: give lifelink to all your creatures until end-of-turn) and Serene Steward (whenever you gain life, lose 1 mana and give +1/+1 to your first creature). The new Gideon promises to give you a way to supercharge your allies with its ability to put up to 4 1/1 allies into play. This will work wonders with allies that have additive rally abilities (like gaining +2/+2), but won't do much of anything with ones that give ability keywords like double strike. My biggest complaint with Rally comes down to the 3 creature limit (you will notice this is a theme in my review). Rally makes you want to play an ally each turn, but you'll soon reach your 3 creature limit, and then what? This is not so much a problem if you can reinforce, but if you have a new ally in your hand, there isn't much you can do other than sacrifice an existing creature, and then you lose out on whatever ability THAT ally would have conceivably given, plus your new creature has summoning sickness. If you want to make a dedicated ally deck, then I suppose one strategy is to play the small allies and then slowly upgrade them to the more expensive ones as the game goes on, but there's a lot of inefficiency in throwing creatures away. Otherwise, you can just play a few of the stronger allies, like Hero of Goma Fada who is showcased in the tutorial as well. Honestly, he's so good he's worth including even if he's the only ally in your deck!

Landfall: This is by far my favorite new mechanic. We've known since the game has been released that making two match-3s is better than making one match-4, but this mechanic makes you stop and reconsider if this is always the best play. The color-specific landfall abilities also tie in nicely to the supports that give you more of those color gems. Now, not all of the landfall cards are that strong, because you're not going to be hitting landfall every turn, but I do find it to be a fun and satisfying ability.

Converge: Okay, let's get to my least favorite mechanic. This is the rare ability that is better with a low-leveled planeswalker. With any decent walker, you might trigger 2 or maybe 3 colors, but it's simply not possible to get more than that. Having a card that you can never mathematically use to its fullest potential is a bit of a slap in the face.

Awaken: Um... I can see where they're going here. Paper magic has a lot of "kicker" type mechanics for when you want to have options to upgrade spells in the late game. MPQ is a bit different because your mana base doesn't grow over time, so I think that's why this mechanic feels forced. With Awaken, you can power up a card to get an amount of 1/1 elemental tokens, but the additional cost is usually inefficient for what you get. Also, you're only going to want to do this if you have an open creature slot. Remember that if you already have your 3 creatures out, you're not going to be able to put anything else into play without sacrificing something. I can see there being a strategy to keep one creature slot open for your landfall tokens and then play multiple landfall spells in the same deck so they can reinforce each other, but again, when you're jumping through hoops to pay 12 mana for a 4/4 creature, you're better off with a different strategy. At its best, if you only have one card left in your hand and happen to get an outrageous mana cascade, it can give that mana someplace to go rather than be wasted (if you have an open creature slot).

Void Gems, Ingest, Process, and Devoid: With the Eldrazi mechanics, they definitely succeeded in adding some unique things to the game. I'm going to break it down a bit as far as what you can do with them:
Using ingest to create void gems- By taking away the opponent's primary color, this can help in slowing them down a bit and can screw up some of the colors matters cards (like Animist's Awakening). Also, if they don't have devoid creatures of their own, they don't get any mana from matching void gems, while you do (but you only get 1 mana for each void gem so not really worth it). Unfortunately, ingest has a very high cost attached to it right now. Most early ingest creatures are in the 8-12 range and only ingest 1 when they deal damage to the opponent so it's not like it's going to slow them down much. They also don't do much damage on their own so you're mostly going to be using them to...
Using ingest to power up creatures with process- The tutorial shows off a fun process card, Ulamog's Despoiler (17 mana for a 5/5, but if you have 2 void gems in play, he can come in as a 9/9). I think it makes for a cute linear strategy that lets you pay mana costs in a different way.
Overall, I don't think the Eldrazi ingest->process strategy is as powerful as just ignoring it completely (I'd rather put a 4/4 into play and start beating you down rather than put a 1/1 with ingest into play), but I don't mind it because it's kind of neat and adds some variety. I imagine Eldrazi VS Eldrazi decks will be interesting... you may want to let your opponent hit you with ingest a couple of times and then steal their hard work with your own process card! I can't imagine the AI has been trained to utilize process effectively, but we'll see.

Eldrazi Scions: I think this deserves its own analysis. There are a lot of cards that put these 1/1 defender guys into play that, upon death, give you 3 mana. For example, Blisterpod is a 13 mana creature that is a 1/1 defender that, when dies, puts a scion into play. Or, there's Call the Scions, a spell that puts 2 scions into play for 12 mana. Another take is Brood Monitor, a 15 mana 3/3 defender that puts a scion into play when it enters the battlefield. They appear to serve as a way to both clog up the board and help ramp into bigger spells, but I just can't get behind them. Like most new mechanics, they're very expensive. Would I rather play Brood Monitor for 15 in the hopes of ramping into another card later, or would I rather just play Iroas's Champion for 16 and dominate the game immediately? To Brood Monitor's credit, when you calculate the 3 mana savings you get from the scion, you're essentially paying only 12 mana for what's a 4/4 defender, which is about a fair price, but it also costs 2 whole creature slots that could be filled with decent attackers. What also hurts the scions' case is that, even if you have 4 scions stacked on top of each other, you will ONLY GET 3 MANA when all of them die. So once you have one in play, all subsequent scions are just 1/1s. To think that Call the Scions may only be a 12 mana 2/2 creature in some situations is enough to make me cry at night. Now, because these do exist and maybe some players will have them in their decks, it makes cards like Somberwald Alpha or anything with trample or flying better at winning in fewer turns.

Colorless Matters: Finally, there are a number of cards that give bonuses to colorless creatures. Gold-Forged Sentinel fans can rejoice! Most of these creatures are devoid, like Forerunner of Slaughter, a 13 cost 4/3 black/red creature that says: when a colorless creature enters the battlefield, it gains haste. As it currently stands, and maybe this is a bug, the Forerunner does not grant himself haste because he is not colorless. Only true colorless cards count, and right now, most devoid cards are not considered colorless. I think if they fix this, it could be a useful ability to build a deck around.

Final Impressions: The developers added A LOT of new stuff to this set, so much that my head was spinning at first. Once I got used to all the new mechanics, I felt that:
1) it's hard to translate new mechanics from paper magic to puzzle quest, mostly because the 3 creature limit makes things that are good in paper magic just plain bad in puzzle quest magic.
2) the new cards are very weak and overcosted. Except for rares and mythics. There are some really good rares and mythics that you won't mind adding to your deck that take good advantage of the new mechanics. Again, this is because if you can only have 3 creatures in play at a time, they had better be GOOD creatures on their own; weenie strategies are not viable in this game when you have 3 creatures and 100 life points!

Meto5000

paralistalon wrote:

Colorless Matters: Finally, there are a number of cards that give bonuses to colorless creatures. Gold-Forged Sentinel fans can rejoice! Most of these creatures are devoid, like Forerunner of Slaughter, a 13 cost 4/3 black/red creature that says: when a colorless creature enters the battlefield, it gains haste. As it currently stands, and maybe this is a bug, the Forerunner does not grant himself haste because he is not colorless. Only true colorless cards count, and right now, most devoid cards are not considered colorless. I think if they fix this, it could be a useful ability to build a deck around.

Devoid creatures not being treated as colorless is definitely a huge oversight (I hope). I hope this can get an official response soon.

loroku

paralistalon wrote:

Landfall: This is by far my favorite new mechanic. We've known since the game has been released that making two match-3s is better than making one match-4, but this mechanic makes you stop and reconsider if this is always the best play. The color-specific landfall abilities also tie in nicely to the supports that give you more of those color gems. Now, not all of the landfall cards are that strong, because you're not going to be hitting landfall every turn, but I do find it to be a fun and satisfying ability.

I agree that this seems like the best addition and most positive gameplay mechanic for exactly the reason you stated.

Meto5000

loroku wrote:

paralistalon wrote:

Landfall: This is by far my favorite new mechanic. We've known since the game has been released that making two match-3s is better than making one match-4, but this mechanic makes you stop and reconsider if this is always the best play. The color-specific landfall abilities also tie in nicely to the supports that give you more of those color gems. Now, not all of the landfall cards are that strong, because you're not going to be hitting landfall every turn, but I do find it to be a fun and satisfying ability.

I agree that this seems like the best addition and most positive gameplay mechanic for exactly the reason you stated.

I also really like the Rally mechanic. As we acquire more and more cards I hope to see some strong Rally based decks out there in Quick Battles. The life linking rallyer for 5 seems like a solid option, and doesn't the Gideon create ally tokens? Definitely pumped to see how things develop.

BassMuffinFIve

I pretty much agree with everything you said here!

Morphis

I was going to make a review of the gameplay overall but your analisis is correct.

There are a couple more points to add though:

- awaken has a big downside. If you want to cast the spell but not pay the awaken cost most likely you are going to waste the mana accumulated for the awaken cost I presume. That + the inefficient awaken benefit in itself as you pointed out make these card almost always inefficient even if you just ignore the awaken effect.

- eldrazi scion could have some nice sinergy. The fact that scions are defenders means they will be on fist slot getting support buffs.
With right deck a spawned scion can easily go to like 5+ attack and some more health too(but against non chandra decks creature health is not that important).
Anyway spawning more than 1 scion at a time is heavily inefficient cause the mana return does not increase.

Barrelrolla

Meto5000 wrote:

paralistalon wrote:

Colorless Matters: Finally, there are a number of cards that give bonuses to colorless creatures. Gold-Forged Sentinel fans can rejoice! Most of these creatures are devoid, like Forerunner of Slaughter, a 13 cost 4/3 black/red creature that says: when a colorless creature enters the battlefield, it gains haste. As it currently stands, and maybe this is a bug, the Forerunner does not grant himself haste because he is not colorless. Only true colorless cards count, and right now, most devoid cards are not considered colorless. I think if they fix this, it could be a useful ability to build a deck around.

Devoid creatures not being treated as colorless is definitely a huge oversight (I hope). I hope this can get an official response soon.

This is the thing that bothers me the most. Devoid should mean colorless and I plan on spamming the forums every day if I have to, but I want to hear from a developer why it isn't. Most Eldrazi cards have some effect towards colorless spells, it doesn't even look right when they are not counted as such.

Morphis

I think the problem arose from the "new colorless" mana introduced in magic recently.

The first eldrazi released(with BFZ) in magic were like artifact creatures: colorless and you can spend ANY mana color to cast it.

Recently though new eldrazi and land were released.
These lands(waste lands) produce colorless mana. This mana is the only mana you can use to cast creatures requiring specifically colorless mana(in card it is showing a diamond symbol).
This requirement forces ppl to add waste lands to the deck.

Basically you can look at colorless as a 6th color of mana with the downside(mostly) of being of no color.
This means that a card that can produce mana of any color cannot produce colorless mana or a converge effect does not take advantage of colorless mana.

Basically I think they somehow mixed the 2 things while designing this expansion.
Colorless was introduced in oath of gatewatch expansion(the one after battle for zendikar).

Barrelrolla

Colorless mana (the one with the diamond) was indeed introduced in Oath of the Gatewatch, but Devoid was introduced in Battle For Zendikar and it always meant that the spell is colorless. If you take a look at some of the Eldrazi cards you can see that their effect is the same as in paper Magic, with the difference that in paper Magic all Eldrazi are colorless or have Devoid if they belong to a color, meaning all Eldrazi are colorless.
As you said Wizards added a sixth colored mana (colorless) in a game that's been around for more than 20 years, just so Eldrazi can be more interesting. I see absolutely no reason why Eldrazi should not be colorless in this game, quite the contrary, they ABSOLUTELY should be, IMO.
Either Devoid should mean that the creature is colorless or the new cards that have Devoid and have an effect that gives bonuses to colorless spells should be changed to give bonuses to Eldrazi spells, although the second is not ideal, because not all cards with Devoid are Eldrazi spells.

Morphis

To be honest the only solution that would be close enough to paper magic would be the introduction of colorless mana, so another color.

Then there would be 2 ways to go from there:
- add an "eldrazi pwalker" that has affinity with colorless(not good for lore as far as I know)

- balance eldrazi mana cost that have colorless(devoid).

This way you could have both eldrazis.

Anyways, adding another base mana color has big impact in the game and would also throw away their whole devoid process etc. work.

Barrelrolla

There is no need for a new color. The only issue currently is that a card like "Vile aggregate" says that it has +3 attack for every colorless creature you control but other red Eldrazi are not counted, even though they have devoid. In paper magic they are. And even if you do need a new mana color, there already is one - ingest creates void gems on the board that give mana only for devoid spells, so there you are, colorless mana. Only issue here is that devoid spells are not colorless, when they should be.

The way to solve all issues: make devoid mean colorless, like in paper Magic.

You can even make void gems give more mana, since currently I would prefer to match my color, since it gives +3, than to match void gems. But that's just theorycrafting, since I haven't played much devoid spells, because they lack synergy at the moment (because they all have colorless effects, but aren't colorless themselves) and I don't have many ingest cards.

Morphis

Now I see what you meant but... Is it so important that eldrazi are colorless?
I mean since here there is no "protection from color" the only benefit of being colorless is getting some bonus like you mentioned.
Is not like it would completely change the gameplay..

Unless there is a huge sinergy spread across cards toward colorless that I did not notice...

EDUSAN

Morphis wrote:

Now I see what you meant but... Is it so important that eldrazi are colorless?
I mean since here there is no "protection from color" the only benefit of being colorless is getting some bonus like you mentioned.
Is not like it would completely change the gameplay..

Unless there is a huge sinergy spread across cards toward colorless that I did not notice...

there are a good amount of cards in this new set that have bonuses if you play colorless stuff. A creature says "the colorless cards in your hand cost less", a black/red rare creature says "at the end if your turn if you dont have 2 colorless creatures in play return this creature to your hand", a red support says "whenever you play a colorless support, spell or creature, deal 2 damage to the opponent"
and there are many more

To me cards with so many conditions to be good need to be a lot cheaper than what they are now. Paying 13 mana for a 1/2 that ingest 1 when deals damage is toooooooooo expensive. That card should be 5 mana more or less.
And trying to match voided cards is SOOOOOOOOOOOO useless. They only give 3 to the 1st card that benefits from it. And if you wait for matches to happen by themselves, at least considering the cards i was able to gather for now, can take forever
There should be a better incentive to matching voided gems, my ideas are:

1) make matching voided gems give you normal mana (without modifiers, that means just 3 mana) to your 1st card + the voided mana to a card that beneffit from it
2) make every card that fill itself with voided mana to be filled when you match a voided gem. that would really make me try

Unknown

Just a note, some Awaken cards, like Rolling Thunder (which I think is actually pretty decent in Red Control), don't give elementals but some other upside.

BassMuffinFIve

EDUSAN wrote:

Morphis wrote:

Now I see what you meant but... Is it so important that eldrazi are colorless?
I mean since here there is no "protection from color" the only benefit of being colorless is getting some bonus like you mentioned.
Is not like it would completely change the gameplay..

Unless there is a huge sinergy spread across cards toward colorless that I did not notice...

there are a good amount of cards in this new set that have bonuses if you play colorless stuff. A creature says "the colorless cards in your hand cost less", a black/red rare creature says "at the end if your turn if you dont have 2 colorless creatures in play return this creature to your hand", a red support says "whenever you play a colorless support, spell or creature, deal 2 damage to the opponent"
and there are many more

To me cards with so many conditions to be good need to be a lot cheaper than what they are now. Paying 13 mana for a 1/2 that ingest 1 when deals damage is toooooooooo expensive. That card should be 5 mana more or less.
And trying to match voided cards is SOOOOOOOOOOOO useless. They only give 3 to the 1st card that benefits from it. And if you wait for matches to happen by themselves, at least considering the cards i was able to gather for now, can take forever
There should be a better incentive to matching voided gems, my ideas are:

1) make matching voided gems give you normal mana (without modifiers, that means just 3 mana) to your 1st card + the voided mana to a card that beneffit from it
2) make every card that fill itself with voided mana to be filled when you match a voided gem. that would really make me try

I wholeheartedly agree with this. My response to the set (after the initial excitement wore off) was- why do these new ingest/process/void mechanics cost so much to do so little? They really do not work in their current form. Perhaps once we have all the necessary rares/mythics it will be a different story?

I kinda view it in paper magic terms: you can pay 5 for a 2/2 that in a couple turns may (if everything goes correctly) allow you to cast an under costed 7/7 for 4 OR you can simply play a 2/2 for 2, a 3/3 for 3, and a 4/4 for 4. End result is the same mana spent for the same stats EXCEPT the first way has a very high chance of just not working. At all. The risk/reward needs to be adjusted.