Rivals of Ixalan - Blog Post (3/8/18)

Brigby
Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
edited March 2018 in MtGPQ General Discussion

Rivals of Ixalan

By Pedro Rauiz Estrigarriba Gestal – Co-Lead Game Designer at Oktagon for MTGPQ

Hi everyone! 

Today we will talk about our next release for MtGPQ: Rivals of Ixalan. A lot of feedback we received on Ixalan helped us define the path for Rivals, and we really appreciate that. We’ve worked hard to deliver this second part of Ixalan’s world, and we want to share with you what to expect for the next big release!

The New Mechanic -- Ascend

Ascend is Rivals of Ixalan's unique mechanic. It revolves around getting as many creatures, supports and/or reinforcements on the board as you can. While a card with Ascend is in play or when one is played, it checks whether or not the sum of your creatures, your supports and your reinforcements is greater than or equal to 10. If it is, then you get the City's Blessing for the rest of the game. Here are some examples:

We hope you enjoy this new mechanic!

The New Planeswalker - Angrath (B/R)

Angrath is a minotaur pirate that has been trapped in Ixalan ever since a Planeswalking accident led him there. Here is a breakdown of his abilities:

  • Ability 1 (9):

    • Level 1: Deal 2 damage to your opponent.

    • Level 2: Deal 2 damage to your opponent. Then, your opponent discards a card.

    • Level 3: Deal 2 damage to your opponent and find a Treasure. Then, your opponent discards a card.

    • Level 4: Deal 2 damage to your opponent and find 2 Treasures. Then, your opponent discards a card.

  • Ability 2 (12):

    • Level 1: Gain control of target creature that costs 5 or less until end of turn. It gains Haste.

    • Level 2: Gain control of target creature that costs 10 or less until end of turn. It gains Haste.

    • Level 3: Gain control of target creature that costs 15 or less until end of turn. It gains Haste.

    • Level 4: Gain control of target creature that costs 15 or less until end of turn. It gains Haste and “This creature is destroyed at end of turn”.

  • Ability 3 (18):

    • Level 1: Creates a support with: “Whenever a creature enters your opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, deal 2 damage to your opponent.”

    • Level 2: Creates a support with: “Whenever a creature or support enters your opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, deal 2 damage to your opponent.”

    • Level 3: Creates a support with: “Whenever a creature or support enters your opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, deal 6 damage to your opponent.”

    • Level 4: Create a support with: “Whenever a card enters your opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, deal 6 damage to your opponent.”

The New-Old Planeswalker - Huatli (G/W)

Huatli is a different Planeswalker whose first ability will help you use her other abilities as much as you want. Here's a breakdown of her abilities:

  • Ability 1 (9):

    • Level 1: Create a support with “Whenever you match 3 or more White or Green gems, gain 2 Loyalty.”

    • Level 2: Create a support with “Whenever you match 3 or more White or Green gems, gain 2 Loyalty. If you control a creature, gain 3 Loyalty instead.”

    • Level 3: Create a support with “Whenever you match 3 or more White or Green gems, gain X Loyalty where X is 3 plus the number of creatures you control.”

    • Level 4: Create a support with “Whenever you match 3 or more White or Green gems, gain X Loyalty where X is 3 plus the number of creatures and creature reinforcements you control.”

  • Ability 2 (12):

    • Level 1: Target creature gets +X/+X until end of turn where X is the amount of creatures you control.

    • Level 2: Target creature gets +X/+X until end of turn where X is the amount of creatures you control times 2.

    • Level 3: Target creature gains Trample and gets +X/+X until end of turn where X is the amount of creatures you control times 2.

    • Level 4: Target creature gains Trample, Berserker, Prevent Damage and gets +X/+X until end of turn where X is the amount of creatures you control times 2.

  • Ability 3 (18):

    • Level 1: Draw a card for each creature you control and gain 6 mana.

    • Level 2: Draw a card for each creature you control then gain 4 mana for each creature you control.

    • Level 3: Draw 2 cards for each creature you control then gain 6 mana for each creature you control.

    • Level 4: Draw 2 card for each creature you control then gain 8 mana for each creature you control.

The New PvE Coalition Event - Battle of Four Tribes

Fight for control of Orazca in this new event. Beating encounters and completing objectives will help you and your Coalition gain control of the Golden City. Coalitions will be ranked based on how close to controlling Orazca you are. The event is similar to Avacyn's Madness and Return of the God-Pharaoh in structure. The main difference being that each boss encounter (last fight of each node) has a support that changes how the fight is played. While the final boss, Azor, the Lawbringer, will rotate these effects starting from turn one:

  1. Azor’s opponent’s creatures can't attack.

  2. Spells in your opponent’s hand are disabled until the beginning of Azor’s next turn.

  3. Supports in your opponent’s hand are disabled until the beginning of Azor’s next turn.

Conquer Orazca and claim the Immortal Sun. (Literally! The Immortal Sun is a special event reward for players in the top 10 Coalitions of the event). There are 5 nodes with 3 encounters. The nodes start with 2 charges and can get up to 3. The node charge cooldown is 8 hours. Each of the nodes' encounters are based on a Tribe from Ixalan. The last node being the exception, as it is based around Azor, the Lawbringer.

We want players to face this event and its bosses more like deck building challenges. If your usual deck doesn’t seem favored against it, try building a different deck around the node’s specific mechanics.

While we understand that long events aren't always a good thing, we really wanted to showcase the exciting world and characters in Ixalan. Being able to do that though meant having tribes represented in a single event based on the set, since time-constraints prevented us from creating multiple events. Moving forward into Dominaria, you can expect events to be shorter and more manageable time-wise. Now here is some information about each node.

Node 1: Pirates

The opponents in the Pirate Node have aggressive Loyalty abilities and fast-paced decks. During its boss fight, both players will face a special condition: Whenever they match four or more gems of specific colors (Blue, Black or Red), special effects will trigger and the tides of war can change.

Node 2: Sun Empire

The Sun Empire nodes brings dinosaurs and humans together to create a primal challenge for players. During the boss fight, activated gems (Red, Green and White) will grant special benefits for each player's dinosaurs, while harming their opponent's strategy.

Node 3: Shapers

The Merfolk of Ixalan will fight with all their effort to protect and control Orazca. During the boss fight, casting creatures, spells and drawing cards will create cyclical benefits by reducing mana costs, empowering creatures and increasing the speed of the battle.

Node 4: Dusk Legion

Torrezon and its endless legion of vampires are about to overrun Ixalan and Orazca. Fight or join them to claim the Immortal Sun. During the boss fight, sacrificing your own vampires and destroying the opponent's creatures will grant players control of the battlefield. Try to disable, exile or gain control of the enemy's army to achieve victory.

Node 5: Azor, the Lawbringer

Azor has hidden the Immortal Sun at the forbidden city of Orazca, never to be found again, but you managed to track it down! Now you must fight the three last battles of the event to claim it.

On the first node, the Golden Guardians will fully benefit from loyalty gems. They have abilities to replicate themselves and smash the player's planeswalker. Be ready to face a constant flow of large Golems.

On the second node, Azor's Gateway should be approached as a puzzle, as you try to ascend as fast as possible to receive the City's Blessing, in order to deliver the ultimate hit on the opponent’'s planeswalker. Be aware of a one-hit KO battle, and prevent the Gateway from Ascending.

During the boss fight, players will face Azor himself. The sphinx has a great variety of binding spells, bounce effects and creatures that Disable, which can completely fizzle out strategies that were not built to defeat him.

That's it! We had a lot of fun designing this new set, and we hope you enjoy it as well. Don’t hesitate to give us your opinions and feedback, as we work together to create the future of Dominaria, and of course, MtGPQ.

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Comments

  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    O_O already!?

    Ixalan hasn't even been out a month yet....

    Not that I'm not excited to see even more in game, don't get me wrong. I guess this explains why the plane walkers and exclusive cards felt somewhat rushed.

    Will this set be added to Ixalan packs like Aether Revolt, or will it be treated as a stand-alone set like Hour of Devestation?
  • Thuran
    Thuran Posts: 456 Mover and Shaker
    Looks great! Ascend will be a very interestibg Mechanix, if the payoff  is good enough. Go go tokens and servos!

    I'm guessing things move fast in order to catch up to paper releases
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    Whatttt?????!!!!

    It looks promising— can’t wait! 
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm glad we're working to catch up. In the long run this will be good.
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Thuran said:
    Looks great! Ascend will be a very interestibg Mechanix, if the payoff  is good enough. Go go tokens and servos!

    I'm guessing things move fast in order to catch up to paper releases
    Rushing to catch up only means there might be another long dry spell after the core set, though. Guess we will have to see...
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    wereotter said:
    -snip-

    Will this set be added to Ixalan packs like Aether Revolt, or will it be treated as a stand-alone set like Hour of Devestation?
    I just received word that Rivals of Ixalan will be its own stand-alone set
  • DaddyO
    DaddyO Posts: 51 Match Maker
    Solid promo! I hope the best for these developers. Booster crafting was a solid “A” but Ixalan has been a bit weak. Live and learn. This follow up is off to a better start. 
  • FindingHeart8
    FindingHeart8 Posts: 2,731 Chairperson of the Boards
    This looks sweet!  Release date?


  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    This looks pretty awesome.  The only thing I'm really worried about is the event secondary objectives.

    The event itself seems awesome, but then again, so did Race to Orazca.  Please release the secondary objectives here with enough time to make changes in case they need tweaking (pretty please)

    @Brigby
  • khurram
    khurram Posts: 1,090 Chairperson of the Boards
    Can we get a word if the supports created by those PWs will have a countdown? It makes a difference.

    Exciting stuff otherwise.
  • Matthew
    Matthew Posts: 605 Critical Contributor
    The fact that these two Planeswalkers don't seem like they will be tied to this set is a fantastic move. I hate that so many of the current walkers are tied to mechanics that will eventually be irrelevant for Standard. Bravo on the design for both of them.

    The two cards you've shown us also look very interesting. Timestream Navigator was actually one of the paper cards I was most hoping to see, and I think you've done it justice, especially since it's Activate ability has a number higher than one (Activate 1 should never, ever be a thing!!!). And while 10 cards in play does seem like an awful lot to achieve, it's still definitely doable. One question I have about this point is this:

    Brigby said:

    While a card with Ascend is in play or when one is played, it checks whether or not the sum of your creatures, your supports and your reinforcements is greater than or equal to 10.


    What exactly does the bit about "reinforcements" mean? Creatures and supports? Are token creatures included in there? Do token supports count?

    Finally, the event looks superficially quite interesting and also challenging (something this game has lacked for quite some time now). I guess we'll have to see when it gets here. I'm also curious to see how the Immortal Sun reward will get doled out. There's a pretty consistent list of names in the top 10 coalition placements, with only a little bit of variation here and there. Will this card only be rewarded once? Will you earn a second copy if you place high enough on a second run of the event? Will there even be a second run of the event?

    Overall, I'm super excited to see this! It was very unexpected. When can we hope to see this update? I'm sure we're all thinking it, so I'll just go ahead and as: will it be here in 4-ish days, when the current timer on the EP runs out??
  • DBJones
    DBJones Posts: 803 Critical Contributor
    I'm quite excited too! However, that description of Azor makes me worry he'll be another Bolas (RotGP version) considering every card mentioned is anti-creature.
  • ArielSira
    ArielSira Posts: 520 Critical Contributor
    Ascend and the RB walker are great, but the best part for me is seeing that the 2 cards have good manacosts compared to Ixalan. Looking forward to this set!
  • THEMAGICkMAN
    THEMAGICkMAN Posts: 697 Critical Contributor
    the immortal sun reward concerns me, if it's game breaking and great and only available to top 10 coalitions then that'll be a HUGE problem. hopefuly it's cosmetic, and doesn't impact gameplay. you have a very large audience outside of the top 10, don't block them off from something great 
  • DBJones
    DBJones Posts: 803 Critical Contributor
    If they make the immortal sun like it is in paper, it'll give the controller a couple minor but useful boosts (+1/+1 to all your creatures and spells cost one mana less), and locks out all Planeswalker abilities on both sides. More of an interesting change in the battle dynamic than a huge advantage, I think it'll be fine if they follow that.
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    The example cards look pretty great. 10/10 for 10 usually has a downside so I sort've expect him to change before release but given the cool ability, if any changes are needed please dont up the cost, drop his power and or toughness if necessary.
  • DBJones
    DBJones Posts: 803 Critical Contributor
    Having to get out 10 creatures/supports at once before it can attack or block is a significant downside if you get two or three in your initial hand, which happens pretty often. I think that's a good balance overall, as long as none of those upcoming PvE enemies have him and abilities that get them City's Blessing ridiculously fast…
  • speakupaskanswer
    speakupaskanswer Posts: 306 Mover and Shaker
    Wow, this really means you were right when you said your main goal is to catch up with paper MtG! It's a good reason not to get any IXL packs anymore. Everything looks cool here, both cards look really good and the PWs all seem really strong.

    A lot of feedback we received on Ixalan helped us define the path for Rivals, and we really appreciate that. 
    I would really like to know what exactly this means. What did you learn from the feedback? How did it influence the design (especially in such a short amount of time).
     

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