CCDD 091818—Dimir mechanics

Cool Card Design of the Day
Surveil is clearly a good mechanic because scry is a good mechanic and this also sets up your graveyard for interaction, which Dimir, Golgari, and Izzet all benefit from. Even so, my initial reaction was disappointment because it's the most familiar and least innovative of the Return to Return to Ravnica guild mechanics (after convoke, obv). It's wise to include familiar mechanics in a set with five keywords and it's also great to create synergy with the adjacent guild mechanics, so I wouldn't undo the choice to use surveil as the Dimir mechanic. That doesn't mean I could stop myself from considering alternatives…

The most obvious mechanic is damage-also-mills, because that supports existing Dimir mill strategies and fits well thematically. I tweaked it into a triggered mechanic that lets you choose who to mill so it's relevant both in mill-attack decks as fill-your-own-graveyard decks.

The first criticism of infiltrate is that you'll never mill an opponent out before you kill the damage, but that assumes infiltrate is your only vector of milling and that decking the opponent is the only purpose of milling them; the set would include direct mill cards to help you finish decking your opponent (including probably a 'bad' common that gives them life in order to mill more cards) and a bunch of uncommons and rares that steal cards from their graveyard.

Infiltrate would work in place of surveil because it still fills your graveyard, but it also asks the Dimir player to be attacking either aggressively or evasively, which is a role the set doesn't need more of.

Speaking of using cards from your opponent's graveyard, blackmail does that very literally. This keyword would absolutely also be paired with mill effects, but also gets turned on just by killing their creatures or tempting them to cast spells.

Blackmail could not replace surveil in Guilds of Ravnica because it doesn't support the adjacent mechanics and it does cannibalize the aggressive attack space (which isn't really what Dimir wants to be anyhow).

Playing in that space that infiltrate hinted at, we get forge. A keyword you could print on, like, a vertical cycle of cards at most. I like the flavor that you're forging documents, but that's all I can say in favor of this.

Crack is a lot like infiltrate, but it's easier to make happen (since they can't prevent it by blocking) and the effect can be disproportionate to the creature's power, making attacking-to-mill viable. Here, you'll see I'm pairing the mill with a trigger that hopes you'll hit a specific card type, giving you incentive to send in a team and increase the chance of cracking your opponent's safe. I worded Recruiter so that just killing their creatures would also work, because more vectors of interaction are usually welcome. That said, it may be inappropriate here; I'd want to playtest. This particular card makes a token because that fit the art I found. Most would do other things (or nothing beyond the mill.)

Crack doesn't fill your graveyard, so it's not as strong a replacement for surveil in GoR as infiltrate.

I happened upon this art and imagined a Dimir agent sneaking into a ball to gain sensitive information, so I mocked up fit in. Black-blue doesn't really need another evasion mechanic, and mechanics that depend on what your opponent is doing to work are on the out, so I'm not loving this one, but I thought it was cute enough to share.

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I shared my ideas in chronological order, to show my thought progression. Ultimately, I think crack has the most potential in general and that infiltrate is the only one that comes close to being an alternative to surveil, but that the set is better served by surveil. What do you think of these keywords? Do you have another surveil alternative to discuss?