Zeffrikar Exploratory Design Part 2: Everything that Isn't Landfall

Now that I've solidified my stance on Landfall's return in Zeffrikar, it's time to look at the other Zendikar mechanics a little more in-depth. I've already given my one-sentence ratings for these, but we can dig a little deeper.

Once Creative gave the adventure-world coating to the bottom-up land-matters set Zendikar began its life as, R&D began filling out the sets mechanics using a "maps, traps, and chaps" model. They made the mechanics representing going on an adventure (the quest enchantments), the adventuring party (allies), and traps that imperiled them (traps). Each of these does a fantastic job selling Adventure world to me. That said, they are not the only ways to tackle these adventure tropes.

3: Quests

I love quests, and I am hoping to include them in Zeffrikar. They capture the adventure world trope perfectly. They do have two major strikes against them though, which may preclude them. First, this may be a counter-heavy set. The major land-matters mechanic I'm strongly considering is going to involve lots of counters being on the board, and with quests in the mix, there's going to be more glass beads and dice floating around than actual cards. The other thing is that a few colorless-maters mechanics I'm considering for Eldrazi will want artifacts to be at a slightly higher-than-usual volume, which will directly compete with the enchantment space.

That said, even if they are not a major theme, they can definitely still be a minor one, with one or two cycles of them at higher rarities. We'll revisit this as I narrow down the named mechanics for the first pass.

Even if they don't make the cut, there are a number of other ways to show a quest or adventure.

I know DFCs are making their "big" return this summer in Origins, immediately before BfZ, and that might stand in the way of consideration. But DFCs hit two major tropes in the Adventure world theme - the trigger, which represents the call to adventure, and the flip side, showing the growth of that adventurer. In contrast to Innistrad's use of the mechanic, which told tragic tales or the loss of humanity, on Adventure world DFCs would take the place of the leveler mechanic, showing the growth of individual people preparing to take on the unfathomable eldrazi horrors.

Another aspect of the adventure is one of exploration. It's hard to represent that in combat-oriented Magicese, but there are ways to do it. Dig is super wordy, but a little less swingy than Clash from Lorwyn was. This execution definitely needs some refinement, but there might be something here.

The mini-game aspect of the quests has been done before with a keyword, and this ties in with lands. Hideaway is kind of a clunky mechanic, but it might have the seeds of a variant that would work well for our adventure world.

Allure is inspired by the treasure mechanic from the Goblin AI deck a few of us worked on a year and a half ago. It's weird - it seems like it can be a drawback mechanic, but forcing your opponent to commit to an attack each turn can be a big plus too if you're ready for it. It's additionally weird in that it's making your opponent go on the adventure, and I'm not sure that that's the way we want to sell adventure here. Still, it's hard to imagine a more adventure-y trope than two factions fighting for control over some kind of macguffin, and this does that in a big way.

Finally, it's worth noting that while "quest" pushes more towards mini-games than combat, sometimes combat is the quest one goes on.

4: Traps

The execution on traps is more or less perfect, as far as I'm concerned. As I mentioned last time, my big gripe is with the subtype. If traps are going to be included as a mechanic, then the subtype is going to have to matter a little more.

5: Allies

Allies in Zendikar were initially modeled on D&D parties consisting of Warriors, Wizards, and Clerics. Cards in the Warrior model grew over time with +1/+1 counters for every ally you played. Wizards triggered off of other allies entering the field, with varied effects. Clerics cared about the number of allies you had, with effects scaling to match.

My initial impulse was to keep allies more or less the same, with different mechanical implementations for each class.

Wizards would have activated abilities to boost individual allies.

Clerics would have triggered abilities that turned on when you had a threshhold number of Allies

Warriors would have team-wide bonuses triggered on them attacking (and possibly blocking).

Metaghost suggested ditching Allies as a mechanic entirely in favor of a class-based tribal theme, which would have tremendous cross-block synergy with Tarkir's Warrior theme. I came up with rock-paper-scissors boosting mechanical model that may be worthwhile to tease out a little more.

Of course, not every adventure is about the team you have supporting you. Zendikar keeps pushing us towards Indiana Jones tropes, and Indy has always been a kind of me-against-the-world character. Mechanics that give boosts to the underdog may play well, particularly when there are giant Eldrazi running around.

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These are some of the early mechanics I'm considering for the Zendikari. Next time I'll handle the Eldrazi, as well as some ideas for a land-matters mechanic that is more "adventure" than landfall.