Here's hoping for something with "Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If you do, shuffle your library."
With the Naya plane from Elemental Thunder that turns into "whenever you play a land, you may play all basic lands from your library".
Not quite sure what you're talking about, Alara really didn't have an above average mechanic density at all. The whole block pretty much had Exalted, Devour, Unearth, 5-Power Matters, Artifact Matters, Cycling, Domain, and Cascade. Lorwyn miniblock, in comparison, had Changeling, Hideaway, Champion, Tribal to the Nth power, Evoke, Prowl, Kinship, and Reinforce - the same number for two sets, AND each tribe had a theme - mana production, tapping/untapping, sacrificing things, toughness matters, "attacking with a bunch of dudes is fun" (silly kithkin), flash with CiP effects, being elves... essentially, a lot more than Alara. Though of course I could be mistaken in this, I'd love to continue this discussion.
My point is that because Alara had five different shards, each one was developed as if it were its own set. Usually in each set you have three mechanics that get either expanded on or left to die in the next sets of the block. In Alara you had one for each plane which as expanded in future blocks, because the set was designed with five different themes. Most sets have one major theme, but Alara's was the five shards so in essence it created five themes based on each shard. Now it was awesome for the set design because it really got across how different each shard was, but in a sense, it killed the over all space. With Zendikar, we know that Land is apparently important through various hints and now Landfall. So guessing by the Falling Obelisks, descriptions in TPF, and now this, it would seem that Landfall makes perfect sense. And in all the land arts we've seen we know that the obelisks cover the shard, so each color (logically) should get a nice amount of Landfall cards in Zen, which hopefully provided if flavor allows it, we'll get even more in Worldwake and the third set.
No. Players don't like being unable to play their spells. Splitting hairs, perhaps, but the distinction is very important considering the criticism leveled at countermagic, land destruction, discard, lockdowns and other such 'unfun' strategies.
I have never heard of playing lands being something players have a particular enjoyment of doing. It strikes me the same as breathing - we all do it all the time (just like players play lands in every game) but it's not seen as a particularly remarkable or appreciated part of one's day. Just like playing lands is a necessary part of the game but it isn't one that on its own brings to mind the concept of "something players like to do". When I think of that statement, I think of fan more dynamic, 'fun' things like attacking with creatures, playing big spells, combos, drawing cards, winning games - simply playing lands eels far more taken for granted and mundane in comparison.
This is the exact reason why I dislike non-utility lands printed in rare slots. They are a means to an end, not anything exciting.
On topic, you could view the argument either way. If you say that playing spells is fun, you could infer that playing land smust also be exciting because it allows you to play your spells. I think that a landfall type ability is definitely possible, The full art lands perhaps foreshadowing this
No, that's a faulty argument. I don't like ability words like domain, chroma, and landfall for one simple reason: they waste design space (imo). Keyword abilities like trample, haste, vigilance, lifelink, etc. make more room for design space, whereas words like Landfall just add another word and a hyphen and a couple other character spaces for blank spaces between the hyphen and the ability, which wastes design space. For example, I wish the would keyword Lure already, we all know what Lure is. At least most of us do.
Btw, how are first strike and flying more "self-referential" than trample and lifelink?
But no, keyword mechanics are great. Ability words like domain, chroma, and landfall aren't so much.
What design space is wasted? The usage of the words "domain" and "chroma"? "Chroma" isn't even a word, so they wasted something that didn't exist. I agree that, for now, making it so that other cards can't mention ability words is silly. Something like "Landfall abilities trigger twice per land put into play" would be fun, but the current rules don't support it.
First strike and Flying both reference themselves: First strike creatures deal damage before creatures without first strike, flying creatures can only be blocked by creatures with flying. By comparison, Trample and Lifelink don't have interactions with Trample and Lifelink. The existence of Flying and First strike is a requirement for their mechanics to work. The same is true of Shadow and Banding.
What design space is wasted? The usage of the words "domain" and "chroma"? "Chroma" isn't even a word, so they wasted something that didn't exist. I agree that, for now, making it so that other cards can't mention ability words is silly. Something like "Landfall abilities trigger twice per land put into play" would be fun, but the current rules don't support it.
First strike and Flying both reference themselves: First strike creatures deal damage before creatures without first strike, flying creatures can only be blocked by creatures with flying. By comparison, Trample and Lifelink don't have interactions with Trample and Lifelink. The existence of Flying and First strike is a requirement for their mechanics to work. The same is true of Shadow and Banding.
I suppose I shouldn't have said design space, just text space.
I suppose I shouldn't have said design space, just text space.
Oh, I gotcha. Brain fart.
But again, the point isn't to save text space, but to save mental space and increase card elegance. Landfall allows for mental leaps - you don't have to read the whole card to understand what's going on, just like you don't have to read the reminder text of Raging Goblin if you've already played with Rip-Clan Crasher (though of course Crasher has no reminder text, but I couldn't remember another reminder-texted haste card, so there)
Unless of course you path the creature with Landfall...
Right, but who knows it landfall is only a creature ability? (It could work with just about anything.. Enchantments (Both Aura and global), Artifacts maybe even planeswalkers?)
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Right, but who knows it landfall is only a creature ability? (It could work with just about anything.. Enchantments (Both Aura and global), Artifacts maybe even planeswalkers?)
No, not planeswalker, but yes, it could work on any other permanent. It can't work on a planeswalker because they don't have triggered abilities, they have activated abilities.
Unless of course you path the creature with Landfall...
Don't forget that a big part of what makes path a great card is that it isn't just strictly an exile opponent's creature spell. There are hundreds of situations in which it is great to instant speed exile your own creature. In response to an opponents terminate, you get an instant speed rampant growth for one mana. With landfall, that's more valuable than ever, because it allows you to play combat tricks. Putting a land into play at instant speed is rare, because of the strictness of the rule that you can only play lands on your turn. I say that Path became better, it just also got trickier to use.
Don't forget that a big part of what makes path a great card is that it isn't just strictly an exile opponent's creature spell. There are hundreds of situations in which it is great to instant speed exile your own creature. In response to an opponents terminate, you get an instant speed rampant growth for one mana. With landfall, that's more valuable than ever, because it allows you to play combat tricks. Putting a land into play at instant speed is rare, because of the strictness of the rule that you can only play lands on your turn. I say that Path became better, it just also got trickier to use.
While I agree with you, realistically there are only two or three instance one would use path on their own creature (while its still under their control).
1) Player X is sevrely mana screwed. (Or that one extra mana is necessary to pull off a combo or a game turning move.)
2) All of the creatures your opponent owns have shroud and/or pro-white.
Landfall (for me) would have to have some strong abilities to make me *want* to path my own creature.
Anyone else think there may be more powerful/cost effective permanents with Landfall?
What makes me come to this conclusion is that effectively the landfall ability makes the cards (almost) cost 1 more (in order to activate its ability) or waiting til next turn.
Then again there may be River of Tears-esque Landfall cards to come.
While I agree with you, realistically there are only two or three instance one would use path on their own creature (while its still under their control).
1) Player X is sevrely mana screwed. (Or that one extra mana is necessary to pull off a combo or a game turning move.)
2) All of the creatures your opponent owns have shroud and/or pro-white.
Landfall (for me) would have to have some strong abilities to make me *want* to path my own creature.
You must not play green. That one extra mana is a constant effing heartache for green players. Being one forest away from an overrun sucks.
But what you're really missing is that path to exile runs at instant speed. This is critical because almost every type of mana acceleration in standard takes a turn to warm up. Bloom tender can make crazy mana if you have the right permanents, but it has summoning sickness. Farhaven Elf is a creature, so it runs at sorcery speed, and it puts the land into play tapped. Rampant Growth, the basic land tutor, is a sorcery that also puts your land into play tapped. Land cycling, while it will get you that last forest, isn't acceleration at all, because you're always restricted by your ability to put only one land down a turn.
The reason the elf combo is great is because it allows green to accelerate mana without giving your opponent a turn's to find a way to deal with it. Because heritage druid's ability isn't affected by summoning sickness, it can get started right away. If you had to wait, elfball wouldn't exist because you give your opponent way to long to come up with an easy answer.
Path lets you play a rampant growth on your opponent's endstep by sacrificing your least important creature. Then you can accelerate into an overrun that your opponent really can't see coming.
Unless of course you path the creature with Landfall...
That also depends on how many cheap landfall creatures are in play. Two landfall permanents out and path is still weakened even if it hits one of them.
I dont know if you guys have seen this picture from the Magic Facebook page, but to everyone who thinks landfall is the obelisks falling, it might not neccesarily be so. It seems there might be different types of floating rock crap cus this picture looks like it could be Deluge In landfall form.. and it doesn't look like its falling, just rocking back and forth.
Plus the Goblin (or so we assume) thats running through the mill right now hints at chunks of these things with holes in em for critters to live in etc.
Even if it is one of the island arts (which I didn't know but oh well) the mechanic is sort of called -LANDfall- its mostl just off the top of my head speculation but it seems to me like every basic land type will have its own funny set of floaty..rock..things..
I dont know if you guys have seen this picture from the Magic Facebook page, but to everyone who thinks landfall is the obelisks falling, it might not neccesarily be so. It seems there might be different types of floating rock crap cus this picture looks like it could be Deluge In landfall form.. and it doesn't look like its falling, just rocking back and forth.
Plus the Goblin (or so we assume) thats running through the mill right now hints at chunks of these things with holes in em for critters to live in etc.
With the Naya plane from Elemental Thunder that turns into "whenever you play a land, you may play all basic lands from your library".
edit: So, yes, that would be excellent.
My point is that because Alara had five different shards, each one was developed as if it were its own set. Usually in each set you have three mechanics that get either expanded on or left to die in the next sets of the block. In Alara you had one for each plane which as expanded in future blocks, because the set was designed with five different themes. Most sets have one major theme, but Alara's was the five shards so in essence it created five themes based on each shard. Now it was awesome for the set design because it really got across how different each shard was, but in a sense, it killed the over all space. With Zendikar, we know that Land is apparently important through various hints and now Landfall. So guessing by the Falling Obelisks, descriptions in TPF, and now this, it would seem that Landfall makes perfect sense. And in all the land arts we've seen we know that the obelisks cover the shard, so each color (logically) should get a nice amount of Landfall cards in Zen, which hopefully provided if flavor allows it, we'll get even more in Worldwake and the third set.
This is the exact reason why I dislike non-utility lands printed in rare slots. They are a means to an end, not anything exciting.
On topic, you could view the argument either way. If you say that playing spells is fun, you could infer that playing land smust also be exciting because it allows you to play your spells. I think that a landfall type ability is definitely possible, The full art lands perhaps foreshadowing this
What design space is wasted? The usage of the words "domain" and "chroma"? "Chroma" isn't even a word, so they wasted something that didn't exist. I agree that, for now, making it so that other cards can't mention ability words is silly. Something like "Landfall abilities trigger twice per land put into play" would be fun, but the current rules don't support it.
First strike and Flying both reference themselves: First strike creatures deal damage before creatures without first strike, flying creatures can only be blocked by creatures with flying. By comparison, Trample and Lifelink don't have interactions with Trample and Lifelink. The existence of Flying and First strike is a requirement for their mechanics to work. The same is true of Shadow and Banding.
I suppose I shouldn't have said design space, just text space.
Oh, I gotcha. Brain fart.
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Claims:
The kicker variant in WWK will be "Kicker without a kicked effect." - proven wrong Jan 2010 : 2 wrongs
Decks:
:symu::symb: Bloodchief Ascension - Modern
:symb::symr: Rakdos, the Defiler - EDH
:symu::symb::symw: Sharuum the Hegemon - EDH
:symw::symu::symb: Zur the Enchanter - EDH
But again, the point isn't to save text space, but to save mental space and increase card elegance. Landfall allows for mental leaps - you don't have to read the whole card to understand what's going on, just like you don't have to read the reminder text of Raging Goblin if you've already played with Rip-Clan Crasher (though of course Crasher has no reminder text, but I couldn't remember another reminder-texted haste card, so there)
And ironicly Path to Exile could have just gotten worse with the new landfall keyword.
Unless of course you path the creature with Landfall...
My art blog
Claims:
The kicker variant in WWK will be "Kicker without a kicked effect." - proven wrong Jan 2010 : 2 wrongs
Decks:
:symu::symb: Bloodchief Ascension - Modern
:symb::symr: Rakdos, the Defiler - EDH
:symu::symb::symw: Sharuum the Hegemon - EDH
:symw::symu::symb: Zur the Enchanter - EDH
Right, but who knows it landfall is only a creature ability? (It could work with just about anything.. Enchantments (Both Aura and global), Artifacts maybe even planeswalkers?)
No, not planeswalker, but yes, it could work on any other permanent. It can't work on a planeswalker because they don't have triggered abilities, they have activated abilities.
My art blog
Claims:
The kicker variant in WWK will be "Kicker without a kicked effect." - proven wrong Jan 2010 : 2 wrongs
Decks:
:symu::symb: Bloodchief Ascension - Modern
:symb::symr: Rakdos, the Defiler - EDH
:symu::symb::symw: Sharuum the Hegemon - EDH
:symw::symu::symb: Zur the Enchanter - EDH
Don't forget that a big part of what makes path a great card is that it isn't just strictly an exile opponent's creature spell. There are hundreds of situations in which it is great to instant speed exile your own creature. In response to an opponents terminate, you get an instant speed rampant growth for one mana. With landfall, that's more valuable than ever, because it allows you to play combat tricks. Putting a land into play at instant speed is rare, because of the strictness of the rule that you can only play lands on your turn. I say that Path became better, it just also got trickier to use.
While I agree with you, realistically there are only two or three instance one would use path on their own creature (while its still under their control).
1) Player X is sevrely mana screwed. (Or that one extra mana is necessary to pull off a combo or a game turning move.)
2) All of the creatures your opponent owns have shroud and/or pro-white.
Landfall (for me) would have to have some strong abilities to make me *want* to path my own creature.
In reference to XXWB Mythic Sorcery - Return X creatures from among any graveyards in to play under your control.
Why?
Because it encourages more lands in your deck, which is flipping awesome. Maybe control will resurface because of this.
What makes me come to this conclusion is that effectively the landfall ability makes the cards (almost) cost 1 more (in order to activate its ability) or waiting til next turn.
Then again there may be River of Tears-esque Landfall cards to come.
In reference to XXWB Mythic Sorcery - Return X creatures from among any graveyards in to play under your control.
You must not play green. That one extra mana is a constant effing heartache for green players. Being one forest away from an overrun sucks.
But what you're really missing is that path to exile runs at instant speed. This is critical because almost every type of mana acceleration in standard takes a turn to warm up. Bloom tender can make crazy mana if you have the right permanents, but it has summoning sickness. Farhaven Elf is a creature, so it runs at sorcery speed, and it puts the land into play tapped. Rampant Growth, the basic land tutor, is a sorcery that also puts your land into play tapped. Land cycling, while it will get you that last forest, isn't acceleration at all, because you're always restricted by your ability to put only one land down a turn.
The reason the elf combo is great is because it allows green to accelerate mana without giving your opponent a turn's to find a way to deal with it. Because heritage druid's ability isn't affected by summoning sickness, it can get started right away. If you had to wait, elfball wouldn't exist because you give your opponent way to long to come up with an easy answer.
Path lets you play a rampant growth on your opponent's endstep by sacrificing your least important creature. Then you can accelerate into an overrun that your opponent really can't see coming.
That also depends on how many cheap landfall creatures are in play. Two landfall permanents out and path is still weakened even if it hits one of them.
Plus the Goblin (or so we assume) thats running through the mill right now hints at chunks of these things with holes in em for critters to live in etc.
http://www.wizards.com/mtg/images/daily/arcana/252_tallisland2_zg521f73s4.jpg
Currently Playing:
I don't even know right now.
What goblin?
My art blog
Claims:
The kicker variant in WWK will be "Kicker without a kicked effect." - proven wrong Jan 2010 : 2 wrongs
Decks:
:symu::symb: Bloodchief Ascension - Modern
:symb::symr: Rakdos, the Defiler - EDH
:symu::symb::symw: Sharuum the Hegemon - EDH
:symw::symu::symb: Zur the Enchanter - EDH
there is floating rock in the background.... he may even run on one! thinking of it, he may have landfall....
landfall- whenever a land enter the battlefield under your control, creature you control gain +1/+0 and haste
I gotta say, that's a pretty interesting flavor for Zendikar.
"OH NOES, THE PLAYER IS PLAYING A LAND, LOOK OUT!!!"
My art blog
Claims:
The kicker variant in WWK will be "Kicker without a kicked effect." - proven wrong Jan 2010 : 2 wrongs
Decks:
:symu::symb: Bloodchief Ascension - Modern
:symb::symr: Rakdos, the Defiler - EDH
:symu::symb::symw: Sharuum the Hegemon - EDH
:symw::symu::symb: Zur the Enchanter - EDH