The major problem with Landwalk is that the ability punishes you for playing a certain color (while being completely irrelevant if you are playing other colors).
MaRo has stated a few times that Landwalk is among the abilities they wish to stop using. I guess Regenerate is another one.
It's worth noting they're also moving away from Intimidate. There are no creatures with it in Khans block and Soulflayer can't gain it, landwalk, or protection, unlike Cairn Wanderer. I believe Maro has also said that they don't like its color-hosing effect, which incidentally is the same reason they don't like landwalk.
I wonder if the "Can't be blocked except by 2 or more creatures" aka Goblin drums ability will ever get a keywoard and eventually be evergreened because is suprisinglly a very comon ability
Both make sence. Granted I feel Regenerate should stay.
At the same time I feel Shroud and Hexproof should both remain. Altough Hexproof has replaced it.
Shroud was a more fair version of Hexproof that should have stuck around. The reason for getting rid of it ("a lot of players thought Shroud was Hexproof") is really stupid.
I also agree that Regenerate should stick around, but that may just be my nostalgia talking since it was one of the abilities I enjoyed the most when I first started playing back in revised (Thicket Basilisk + Lure + Regeneration FTW!)
Again, yet another fun mechanic going away on a whim.
A conditional unblockability based on land type, how in the world did this become stronger than hexproof, unblockable, protection or indestructibility? For ages now swampwalk and islandwalk were probably the only walks that had any relevance and they have been on a steady decline since Zendikar.
They have been losing touch with their game and their main themes over the years...
Regenarate is fading out due the complexity of the ability. But it probably won't go away till they find a fair substitute for it. So We might get a more simple but similar effect in the future.
I would be fine with creatures no longer having regenerate.
One shot effects using that same idea are fine. Just the trend of 1/1 regenerators just seems like more of an annoyance than anything that fundamentally changes who ends up winning the game.
Just giving a creature Indestructible until end of turn ends up being functionally similar to Regeneration in most ways, except that it doesn't tap the creature and it can't be prevented by Wrath of God and the like. Indestructible is definitely better than Regeneration, but with the current power level of the game, I'd say it is a perfectly acceptable option.
Again, yet another fun mechanic going away on a whim.
A conditional unblockability based on land type, how in the world did this become stronger than hexproof, unblockable, protection or indestructibility? For ages now swampwalk and islandwalk were probably the only walks that had any relevance and they have been on a steady decline since Zendikar.
They have been losing touch with their game and their main themes over the years...
I don't remember landwalk ever being particularly fun... it's just one of many conditional evasion abilities in the game. Most of them aren't even keyworded. It also has nothing to do with it being stronger than any other mechanic. It's actually strictly worse than straight up unblockable which is still a thing that will likely stick around. The reason they have been moving away from it is because it isn't very fun, there are better ways to have conditional evasion (see den protector, silumgar assassin and many others like them) and a good enough card with some sort of landwalk can hate specific colors out of a meta, which isn't particularly healthy for the game.
I can definitely understand why. It hoses people just for playing a certain color just like Protection does.
Sam Stoddard wrote an article that talks about Modern but he mentions three things that they won't print in Standard because they don't like what it does. One of them are super-powerful hate cards that hose people just for playing certain colors(Boil, Choke, Flashfires, etc).
And if you think about it Landwalk and Protection is not that different from those. They don't do anything against some people and against others they are just back-breaking.
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I don't remember landwalk ever being particularly fun... it's just one of many conditional evasion abilities in the game. Most of them aren't even keyworded. It also has nothing to do with it being stronger than any other mechanic. It's actually strictly worse than straight up unblockable which is still a thing that will likely stick around. The reason they have been moving away from it is because it isn't very fun, there are better ways to have conditional evasion (see den protector, silumgar assassin and many others like them) and a good enough card with some sort of landwalk can hate specific colors out of a meta, which isn't particularly healthy for the game.
Landwalk was very thematic. Zombies came out of the swamp and fish people came out of the sea. When the corrupt swamp spread, the zombies rose from the other side. When floods spread, the fish people swam across with ease. It was something along those lines. Very flavorful, and fully conditional.
Most of the time, it wouldn't be useful at all and that's a reason why landwalk wasn't particularly memorable. However, in the older sets, unblockability was very rare and landwalking was the only way to be unblockable.
I would argue that this simple conditional unblockability is more fun to achieve than playing an unblockable creature or having variable unblockable abilities like you mentioned. The main reason Den protector sees play is mainly her morph ability. The conditional blocking is a plus but nobody is running her for that reason.
Regenarate is fading out due the complexity of the ability. But it probably won't go away till they find a fair substitute for it. So We might get a more simple but similar effect in the future.
Exactly this. For the first 10 years I played this game I did not know that regenerating tapped the creature when it is consumed. Regenerate is unfortunately sort of complicated with the whole regeneration shield and what it does. Indestructable is easier to understand but unfortunately from a flavor standpoint they represent very different things. Totem Armor has so far probably been the closest thing to a regeneration ability but that was also sort of confusing based on what it could and could not save from not to mention they were aura based effects that would be hard to represent on a creature.
I suppose Persist and Undying were yet again other attempts to functionally create regeneration in a different way.
Personally I think its a good thing to stop using landwalk effects. They add more complexity than they are worth for new players while not really adding much to the game.
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In the past landwalking was quite common, as the forms of evasion were more limited.
Right now we got intimidate for black and red, instead of just fear for black.
Blue gets lots of unblockables, islandwalk (as that makes lots of flavour sence for some merfolk and the like).
Landwalking was also much more usefull in the past, simply because creatures in general were worse and so you really needed something to hit them with.
Another big thing is that basic-land walkers kinda make basic lands worse, and they really want to give basic lands a reason, instead of making them worse and worse.
Landwalking would work way better in constructed if it would just look for the color a land can produce, so it hoses that color instead of a basic land type.
But then again, a creature thats just unblockable is way easier and does the job ; and more often than not, you really dont need that evasion and flying is just the much more easy way to do it.
We will for sure see much less land walking, islandwalk seems like the most likely to survive, as it works in pretty much every set that has bunch of water in it (which is like every plane, even mirrodin cheated on that).
We've allready seen Fear being replaced by Intimidate but generally speaking I think it would have been cooler to re-rule Fear into what Intimidate is now.
What would that change, though? Other than the name?
I also agree that Regenerate should stick around, but that may just be my nostalgia talking since it was one of the abilities I enjoyed the most when I first started playing back in revised (Thicket Basilisk + Lure + Regeneration FTW!)
A conditional unblockability based on land type, how in the world did this become stronger than hexproof, unblockable, protection or indestructibility?
It's not about the strength of the mechanic, it's about what the mechanic adds to the game.
Arguing about the power of mechanics in a vacuum, without the cards attached to them, is pretty silly, anyway.
For regeneration - are you sure they want to get rid of it? They removed all those "can´t be regenerated" bonus effects to make it more important. And even added more -x/-x & exile removal spells so people notice the difference.
I guess this change works both ways. It gives more sense to Regenerate (it wasn't nice when every remove spell was able to bypass regeneration) but it also moves towards leaving the keyword fall into oblivion.
Anyway, I don't think it will go away soon. Indestructibility works in a similar way, but MaRo stated a few times that the flavor was important (Skeletons with Regenerate, ok, Skeletons with Indestructible, not ok) and how the primary colors in Regenaration (Black and Green) do not get Indestructible very often (at least Black doesn't).
Just giving a creature Indestructible until end of turn ends up being functionally similar to Regeneration in most ways, except that it doesn't tap the creature and it can't be prevented by Wrath of God and the like. Indestructible is definitely better than Regeneration, but with the current power level of the game, I'd say it is a perfectly acceptable option.
Combat makes indestructible quite a bit different. Regeneration doesn't let a 2/2 trade with a 2/2 first strike. Regeneration also means that your opponent's removal spells can still tap your creature down.
I could see Swimming and Tunneling potentially existing as evasion mechanics, though chances are they'd run into the same problems as Horsemanship: Too similar to Flying and with fewer answers.
As for regeneration, I've thought of a few different effects that can capture what regeneration is supposed to do while cutting a lot of the complexity:
"The next time a source would deal damage to this creature this turn, prevent that damage." For Troll-like regeneration.
"When this creature is next destroyed this turn, return it to the battlefield." It says "destroy" and not "die" to prevent shenanigans.
"When this creature dies this turn, return it to its owner's hand." Similar to Mortus Strider.
"When this creature dies this turn, put it on top of its owner's library." A slower variant of the previous.
Since these use either damage prevention or death-triggered effects, red is still able to counter regeneration with its anti-damage prevention and exile effects. The biggest downside to the latter three variants is that tokens can't use them.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
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You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I like that landwalking is going away. I know it is flavourful with Dryads stalking through the forest, but it feels too random. Particularly in limited. There is a reason why a lot of cubists shun protection and landwalk in their cubes.
With regeneration, I'm a bit more torn. I like the ability, but the functionality of it with the current rules is so counter-intuitive. You have to regenerate before the creature dies. That doesn't sound like what an ability named regenerate should do, it sounds more like what an ability named "Deflector shields" or something should do.
I know there are rules issues.
For creatures that regenerate themselves, I think it would work with an erratad regenerate abilty along the lines of "if this would be destroyed, you may pay [cost]. If you do, instead tap it, remove it from combat and remove all damage from it". But that doesn't work for things that regenerate other things, like Death Ward, since there wouldn't be an opportunity to cast or activate such spells or effects.
What if the regeneration-granting abilities all received errata to something like this:
Death Ward W
The next time target creature would be destroyed this turn, regenerate it.
So that for things that regenerate themselves, you would actually regenerate, but for things that regenerate other things you would have somthing that resembles the current "regeneration shield", in that the effect would have to be activated prior to death.
Would this work, and would it help with anything?
EDIT: Would my suggestion actually require two abilities, "regenerate" and "regeneration"? Where "Regeneration:[cost]" is an ability that allows you to pay to "regenrate" a creature, and "regenerate" is a replacement effect that replaces destruction with tap, remove from combat, remove all damage.?
I think it does actually. So perhaps the effects that regenerate other things should instead be worded like:
Death WardW
Target creature gains "Regenerate:0. Use this ability only once" until end of turn
Are they going to get rid of landwalk once and for all. Could this be a sign that perhaps a keyword overhaul is coming?
Nothing really powerful though. Pretty much all just limited fodder that really I don't sees much play in that format.
MaRo has stated a few times that Landwalk is among the abilities they wish to stop using. I guess Regenerate is another one.
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I think going forward we're going to see more evasive abilities like those on Ire Shaman, Den Protector, and Silumgar Assassin.
Shroud was a more fair version of Hexproof that should have stuck around. The reason for getting rid of it ("a lot of players thought Shroud was Hexproof") is really stupid.
I also agree that Regenerate should stick around, but that may just be my nostalgia talking since it was one of the abilities I enjoyed the most when I first started playing back in revised (Thicket Basilisk + Lure + Regeneration FTW!)
A conditional unblockability based on land type, how in the world did this become stronger than hexproof, unblockable, protection or indestructibility? For ages now swampwalk and islandwalk were probably the only walks that had any relevance and they have been on a steady decline since Zendikar.
They have been losing touch with their game and their main themes over the years...
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WUB Mill BUW
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What I think of MaRo
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One shot effects using that same idea are fine. Just the trend of 1/1 regenerators just seems like more of an annoyance than anything that fundamentally changes who ends up winning the game.
I don't remember landwalk ever being particularly fun... it's just one of many conditional evasion abilities in the game. Most of them aren't even keyworded. It also has nothing to do with it being stronger than any other mechanic. It's actually strictly worse than straight up unblockable which is still a thing that will likely stick around. The reason they have been moving away from it is because it isn't very fun, there are better ways to have conditional evasion (see den protector, silumgar assassin and many others like them) and a good enough card with some sort of landwalk can hate specific colors out of a meta, which isn't particularly healthy for the game.
Sam Stoddard wrote an article that talks about Modern but he mentions three things that they won't print in Standard because they don't like what it does. One of them are super-powerful hate cards that hose people just for playing certain colors(Boil, Choke, Flashfires, etc).
And if you think about it Landwalk and Protection is not that different from those. They don't do anything against some people and against others they are just back-breaking.
Landwalk was very thematic. Zombies came out of the swamp and fish people came out of the sea. When the corrupt swamp spread, the zombies rose from the other side. When floods spread, the fish people swam across with ease. It was something along those lines. Very flavorful, and fully conditional.
Most of the time, it wouldn't be useful at all and that's a reason why landwalk wasn't particularly memorable. However, in the older sets, unblockability was very rare and landwalking was the only way to be unblockable.
I would argue that this simple conditional unblockability is more fun to achieve than playing an unblockable creature or having variable unblockable abilities like you mentioned. The main reason Den protector sees play is mainly her morph ability. The conditional blocking is a plus but nobody is running her for that reason.
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
Exactly this. For the first 10 years I played this game I did not know that regenerating tapped the creature when it is consumed. Regenerate is unfortunately sort of complicated with the whole regeneration shield and what it does. Indestructable is easier to understand but unfortunately from a flavor standpoint they represent very different things. Totem Armor has so far probably been the closest thing to a regeneration ability but that was also sort of confusing based on what it could and could not save from not to mention they were aura based effects that would be hard to represent on a creature.
I suppose Persist and Undying were yet again other attempts to functionally create regeneration in a different way.
Personally I think its a good thing to stop using landwalk effects. They add more complexity than they are worth for new players while not really adding much to the game.
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Right now we got intimidate for black and red, instead of just fear for black.
Blue gets lots of unblockables, islandwalk (as that makes lots of flavour sence for some merfolk and the like).
Landwalking was also much more usefull in the past, simply because creatures in general were worse and so you really needed something to hit them with.
Another big thing is that basic-land walkers kinda make basic lands worse, and they really want to give basic lands a reason, instead of making them worse and worse.
Landwalking would work way better in constructed if it would just look for the color a land can produce, so it hoses that color instead of a basic land type.
But then again, a creature thats just unblockable is way easier and does the job ; and more often than not, you really dont need that evasion and flying is just the much more easy way to do it.
We will for sure see much less land walking, islandwalk seems like the most likely to survive, as it works in pretty much every set that has bunch of water in it (which is like every plane, even mirrodin cheated on that).
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What would that change, though? Other than the name?
Amateur. Sylvan Basilisk + Lure is how it's done.
It's not about the strength of the mechanic, it's about what the mechanic adds to the game.
Arguing about the power of mechanics in a vacuum, without the cards attached to them, is pretty silly, anyway.
I guess this change works both ways. It gives more sense to Regenerate (it wasn't nice when every remove spell was able to bypass regeneration) but it also moves towards leaving the keyword fall into oblivion.
Anyway, I don't think it will go away soon. Indestructibility works in a similar way, but MaRo stated a few times that the flavor was important (Skeletons with Regenerate, ok, Skeletons with Indestructible, not ok) and how the primary colors in Regenaration (Black and Green) do not get Indestructible very often (at least Black doesn't).
Commander: WUBRG Superfriends, GW Rhys Tokens, WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon
Kitchen Table (now that's real Magic): WUBRG Domain, GU Biovisionary, UB Korlash Grandeur, UW Merfolk Mill
Combat makes indestructible quite a bit different. Regeneration doesn't let a 2/2 trade with a 2/2 first strike. Regeneration also means that your opponent's removal spells can still tap your creature down.
As for regeneration, I've thought of a few different effects that can capture what regeneration is supposed to do while cutting a lot of the complexity:
Since these use either damage prevention or death-triggered effects, red is still able to counter regeneration with its anti-damage prevention and exile effects. The biggest downside to the latter three variants is that tokens can't use them.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
I like that landwalking is going away. I know it is flavourful with Dryads stalking through the forest, but it feels too random. Particularly in limited. There is a reason why a lot of cubists shun protection and landwalk in their cubes.
With regeneration, I'm a bit more torn. I like the ability, but the functionality of it with the current rules is so counter-intuitive. You have to regenerate before the creature dies. That doesn't sound like what an ability named regenerate should do, it sounds more like what an ability named "Deflector shields" or something should do.
I know there are rules issues.
For creatures that regenerate themselves, I think it would work with an erratad regenerate abilty along the lines of "if this would be destroyed, you may pay [cost]. If you do, instead tap it, remove it from combat and remove all damage from it". But that doesn't work for things that regenerate other things, like Death Ward, since there wouldn't be an opportunity to cast or activate such spells or effects.
What if the regeneration-granting abilities all received errata to something like this:
The next time target creature would be destroyed this turn, regenerate it.
So that for things that regenerate themselves, you would actually regenerate, but for things that regenerate other things you would have somthing that resembles the current "regeneration shield", in that the effect would have to be activated prior to death.
Would this work, and would it help with anything?
EDIT: Would my suggestion actually require two abilities, "regenerate" and "regeneration"? Where "Regeneration:[cost]" is an ability that allows you to pay to "regenrate" a creature, and "regenerate" is a replacement effect that replaces destruction with tap, remove from combat, remove all damage.?
I think it does actually. So perhaps the effects that regenerate other things should instead be worded like:
Target creature gains "Regenerate:0. Use this ability only once" until end of turn
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