Pacifism is an iconic way for white to "remove" creatures by keeping them out of combat. Many powerful creatures these days can just shrug it off, though. Kenrith, the Returned King doesn't have to attack or block to make an impact. To counter this, recently we've seen more variants like Arrest and Trapped in the Tower that turn off activated abilities as well. But then what can we do about creatures like God-Eternal Oketra and Niv-Mizzet, Parun?
There's no existing Magic card with the phrase "triggered abilities" in its rules text. But similar design ideas pop up a lot these days on cards like Teysa Karlov and Hushbringer, so this wording doesn't seem problematic. One reason it might not have seen print was so it couldn't be used to avoid drawbacks like Rotting Regisaur's. Fortunately, putting Struck Blind on one of those probably isn't what you want to be doing.
Interesting trivia (for Mel types like me at least): This design was scooped by Heliod's Punishment from Theros Beyond Death, which turns off all abilities period. Historically R&D wasn't willing to print that text on its own because it did counter-intuitive things like killing Beanstalk Giant, but recently they bit that bullet and backed off on printing characteristic-defining abilities instead.
I wonder if the slight extra interaction you get out of this (counting for your creature-type matters cards) warrants this execution over the much cleaner Banisher Priest template.
ReplyDeleteIt depends. Here are some other potentially relevant differences:
Delete- Static abilities (e.g. Aggressive Mammoth's second ability)
- Activated abilities (e.g. Kenrith)
- Leaves-the-battlefield abilities (e.g. Banisher Priest itself)
- Enters-the-battlefield abilities triggering when the removal spell gets removed
- Creature being available for sacrifice effects etc.
I agree that in most situations both Struck Blind and something like Banishing Light amount to unconditional removal. But that's not a new problem-- it also applies to Pacifism, Arrest, etc.
I somehow thought it also stopped activated abilities. My bad. Still this does not feel common/uncommon in terms of difficulty of parsing for new players.
Delete