Battle for Zendikar Preview - Day 4!

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!