Retard 2: Zendikar

So it seems as if this blog is coming out of a retirement of sorts - let's call it a sabbatical. Well, in order to commemorate it in some marginal way, I think this calls for a moment of reflection. The first post here was to do with Zendikar block, many moons ago. What should we return to for this post of resumption?

Why not Return to Zendikar...?!

Seriously, though. In keeping with Wizards' recent trend of regular "Return to a place you didn't like the first time" blocks, which I suppose is still a step up from "New plane every block; never look back," we're finally getting to revisit that crapsack world of floating rocks and Lovecraftian wannabes, Zendikar. It was promising in theory: an unprecedented theme of Lands Matter, revisiting the Kor, and even a decent surprise in the form of Eldritch horrors. Unfortunately, it somehow ended up being all Razor Boomerangs and The-Land-Continues-to-Burns. How a block simultaneously "upped the power level" and dropped more balls than a palsied basketball team, I couldn't tell you. Clearly one of those statements must be fallacious. Hint: quotation marks.

Anyways, we're not talking about Zendikar, here. We're talking about "Zendikar, after these words from our sponsor." The question is... with the bar set, and not particularly highly at that, how does it compare? We should examine the important things in any set, particularly one spearheading a new block: the story, the mechanics and the playability.


Landfall

Okay, our first comparison is not a favourable one. If you'll recall,  Leatherback Baloth turned heads for being a 4/5 for three mana. Steppe Lynx, being a 4/5 for one mana, was below notice. This is largely in part to its wearing camouflage - appearing to be a 0/1. Anyways, Wizards found they had accidentally created a powerful and useful common that documented the block's new keyword ability. Now, five years later, they learned their lesson and are printing mediocre uncommons instead. Great. Superb.

I feel like this is our closest comparison to another benchmark card, Plated Geopede. They're both red 2-drops that have a combat ability and three power after a land drop. Correction: the Geopede is a 3-power, first-striking nightmare for blockers. The Sliderule is a 2-toughness turkey that drops to the first ever-more-numerous 2-power one-drop that stands in its way. Crack a fetchland, and the comparison is even less favourable. At least it's a common, but it still fits the ongoing trend of cutting usable commons out of the game.
Note: You may feel that Plated Geopede is a closer parallel to Valakut Predator, but that's still trading +1/+1 for one extra mana and a loss of first strike, still putting it behind. Besides, doesn't that go to show a redundancy in design space here...?

Would you rather pay six mana for an 8/8? Or eight mana for a 5/5? I don't care if the boost is permanent, I don't want to have to invest sixteen mana into a guy with zero protection or evasion just to get her larger than the Baloth after one landfall. Tough talk coming from a lady who's clearly not prepared to fight, either.

 


















Two more mana for 1 more power? Not sounding so good. The extra toughness might seem nice, but it's not like there are many big flyers to worry about in Standard. Think of it this way: assuming one land a turn, Windrider Eel is a 4/4 flyer for four, or a cheaper Air Elemental. Wave-Wing Elemental is Mahamoti Djinn... that's it, no discount.

These cards are different enough that I won't force a direct comparison, but I'd like to stress how much nicer it is to get something for zero mana versus getting it for six mana. The game would be very different if it cost six mana to play a land. Just think about it.

Allies

Okay, so landfall hasn't evolved very pleasantly. Another major theme of the Zendikar setting was "allies" - the most insubstantial creature type to date. Races, like goblins and vampires, are all their own species and thus easy to group together. Professions, like soldiers of wizards, are a group that have a common specialty, again, natural for singular organizations. What's an "ally," though? Literally just a group of friends. Allies could, and did, have a race and profession on top of their ally-ness, meaning it could be slapped on literally any card so long as it looked like a guy who could play well with others. Talk about lazy.

OUT: Anyone who grows.

No joke, the idea of an ally getting bigger every time another shows up is officially unrepresented in Return to Zendikar. Your 1-drop can no longer stand a chance of being valid after, say, the third turn. Allies now sorely need multiple friends in play to be of any use, rather than at least giving a permanent boost to your other allies before they're killed.

IN: Temporary effects.

...on big, clunky bodies. While there are of course smaller allies (emphasis on "smaller," since you aren't getting anyone who ends up bigger than their mana cost dictates) the average mana curve on them went way up. We exclusively have guys who spread around abilities, which might sound more interesting than 'just growing,' but please keep in mind that the original block had representatives of both schools of thought (as well as others on top of that.) There are even power/toughness boosts, but they're only until end of turn. You're only ever getting temporary effects from putting a guy into play - on your opponents' turns, your allies are smaller and more vulnerable. Starting to sound familiar?
It's literally just landfall again. Instead of "whenever you play a land, everyone gets a temporary boost," it's "whenever you play a creature, everyone gets a temporary boost." They have the same damn ability twice in the set.

Vampires

Zendikar took a bold step forward by taking vampires from unanimously fat flyers to the current model - a cheap, hyperaggressive tribe that's so efficient it's treading uncomfortably on white's toes. What does Battle For Zendikar give us?

Um... fat flyers. Only this time without the flavourful abilities. Zendikar had its share of mana-greedy bruisers, but there were also the little ones that people, y'know, played. Battle for Zendikar has nine vampires, none of which are one mana. Of the two 2-drops, one is more importantly an ally. It's all downhill from there, or uphill if you're counting the mana costs. We have a "Whenever you gain life" theme going around in place of "if your opponent has 10 life or less," but try not to puzzle over the flavour of it too much. Vampires are most importantly too far and few between to make use of in this set, but the fact that the most aggressive is a 2/1 for two and the biggest is a 4/5 for seven, it's not like you're exactly wishing there were more.

Kor

Nothing to see here. There are nine Kor in the set and absolutely nothing to set any of the cards aside, making them into little more than Humans 2.0

Kicker, Quests, Traps, Level-up, Rebound, Totem Armor, Annihilator

All conspicuously absent.


What's New?




Not this guy. Goodness gracious, did we really need another version of this card?

Anyways, the set does introduce some new keywords and themes to replace the ones shuffled out. The keywords are largely re-toolings of old abilities, with the occasional keywording of an old concept.

Devoid - Keywording the "this card is colorless" idea from Ghostfire,  which is unspectacular but a reasonable step in Wizards' efforts to keyword common abilities. Unless those abilities are Landhome. Or Spiritcraft. Or unblockability.
Ingest - Keywording Reef Pirates' ability! Or darn near, anyways. It's made more significant by the fact that there are multiple cards that interact with exiled cards in the new set, which rather spits in the face of WotC's swearing that the exile zone will remain a minimum-interaction sacred ground.
Awaken - A kicker on some spells that lets you animate one of your lands. The result is largely the same as Evoke: either pay a little mana for a spell, or more mana for a spell and a creature. Only this time, you can let your opponent's removal serve double duty by turning Doom Blades into Sinkholes. Who said land destruction is dead in standard?
Rally - Keywording the "When an ally comes into play..." ability on allies. The fact that it is ally-specific makes it seem unnecessary to me. Slivers don't have "Hiveshape" and Chimeras don't have "Combino Body." However, do note that "rally" is just "ally" with an R added. I'll admit I rather enjoy that fact.
Converge - A more versatile form of Sunburst, Converge cards get more powerful the more coloured mana you spend on them. Just a couple years ago, Wizards was spouting that Chroma was too wishy-washy in terms of how it counted mana symbols, so they made Devotion to make its result more predictable. Now they're more-or-less doing the reverse with Converge. It's time to start punching things.

The Eldrazi themselves are of course more numerous. There are quite a few small, colorful ones with Devoid, certainly enough to make a multicolored deck now. There are, of course, also well more than enough of 6 mana+ colorless fatties who all fill the same design space of "being large." Eldrazi Devastator and Ruin Processor fill Ulamog's Crusher and Hand of Emrakul's original titles of being the gigantic common Eldrazi. The two new ones are probably worse, although the Devastator at least can't be chumpblocked all day - that said, the loss of Annihilator should most likely balance that out. Nice for Standard, but neither one will likely do anything in Pauper that the original two wouldn't.
There is a new incarnation of Ulamog, who eats libraries instead of permanents in play. Note that he no longer is shuffled into your library upon going to the graveyard, meaning he can be reanimated. We'll possibly see Emrakul and Kozilek 2.0 in the next set.


So what's going on in the story?

Hoo boy. No surprises here, though there are more than a few chuckles to be had.

So the story picks up more-or-less where Rise of the Eldrazi left off: they showed up, they're spooky, and everyone in the world has to fight them. Say... they're otherworldly aberrations, they seek to oust the world's inhabitants, they're defiling the land, they turn people into carriers, they're removed from coloured mana... doesn't that sound familiar?

But no, the flavour of this one is totally different! I mean, the global threat means that every race on the plane must abandon their prior conflicts in order to address a common enemy, and...

...oh. Hm.
All right, well the whole concept of allies in the face of a common threat is just obvious. Zendikar is a rugged, naturalistic plane with unintelligent beasts that fight back of their own accord, and...

...ummm. Okay, well it's not all about creatures. In fact, all of the planeswalkers (except one who's unwilling and one who's bad) are making an alliance to combat the threat, and...

Okay, okay. Asides from the biggest story in Magic's history that one detail, it's totally original.

Goddamnit.


Well, there you have it folks. The guts of Battle for Zendikar laid bare for you to get a good whiff of. The set does little to impress, both in terms of playability and story. Oath of the Gatewatch may step things up a bit, but I wouldn't count on it.

Stay tuned for Return to the Battle for Zendikar. See you in five years.