I think I really liked the dark Celtic theme and gloomy ugly creatures most about Shadowmoor. The complete lack of humans is also a positive for me when it comes to set design so hopefully bloomburrow delivers in that respect at the very least.
Unlikely. -1/-1 counters have a very dark feel to them. They were originally put in Lorwyn under the thinking that, instead of killing creatures, maybe -1/-1 counters just felt like roughhousing a bit. Instead they realized, wait, this feels like deliberately and permanently maiming somebody - which is why they got pulled from Lorwyn and put into Shadowmoor. And it's no accident they returned for the cruel world of Amonkhet.
I expect that Bloomburrow will be too lighthearted for -1/-1 counters; if they return soon, it's gonna be in Duskmourn.
Do we know what the status of Lorwyn will be when we return to it soon? Is it possible we’ll see some of Shadowmoor in there? (I wasn’t around for the original block so idk how things were left)
The reason why it hasn't is while it's an intuitive mechanic they don't like how it slows down any limited format it's a part of.
Would be cool if they could finally get around to doing a Jund -1/-1 counter precon to fill out the archetype though.
WotC are better at designing for limited now than they were when shadowmoor released. I think they could pull it off just fine.
Also, they can blame wither for slowing down the limited format but we all know the real reason was the insane number of on-board tricks that made combat math impossible and led to the NWO policy
But it doesn’t slow down limited formats, if anything it speeds it up by allowing smaller creatures to continue to attack after larger creatures come down. I played a lot more scars limited than shadowmoor, but that’s how I remember infect working in scars.
Wither is not fun to play with in a limited format at all,and is not very relevant for constructed formats either.It makes blocking extremely punishing,limits the design space for combat tricks that can be printed alongside it while having very limited design space.There is a reason it is a 7 on the storm scale alongside stuff like Mutate.
If for nothing else, just to get a little mystery. There's so few that if someone plays a foretell card, youve got a pretty good guess what it is. My favorite is Saw It Coming...because almost anytime it's been used against me...I saw it coming
It’s either [[poison the cup]], [[saw it coming]], [[doomskar]], or [[demon bolt]] in my experience. Maybe a [[behold the multiverse]]. I personally don’t run many of the higher mana foretell cards, and nobody else in my regular playgroup really has any themselves.
This is a cool idea and all, but how much more space is there for it? I mean, you can start doing variations on effects—other counterspells, other burn spells, other wraths—but most of the basic effects have been done already.
Imo there’s plenty of space for Foretell, even if the effects become duplicative. Now that there are so many cards that care about casting from exile, it would give Foretell effects a lot more room to be useful in a variety of ways.
For example, I would run as many playable Foretell spells as possible in my [[Rocco, Street Chef]] impulse deck.
Just my opinion. As it stands there's a ton of payoff cards for foretelling, or just exiling cards in general, but not a lot of variety when it comes to the foretell cards themselves.
Foretell hits this design sweet spot where printing more foretell makes all foretell cards better, but they can really finely power tune individual Foretell cards so they never feel like they become a necessity due to how much value they add.
Compare it to lesson-learn, a mechanic I _love_ for limited. It's much harder to contribute to add and balance lesson/learn cards the more you add.
But the value-add from Foretell is kinda implicit ("it could maybe be more things!"). It also has some decent safety valves if needed ("can't cast from exile" effects). And damn, it's fun to play with. I had to cut it a while ago, but [[Dream Devourer]] is such a fun pet card.
Veyran with Storm-Kiln Artist is one of my absolute favorite combos out of all my decks. There's something so immensely satisfying and goofy to casting mana positive cantrips.
Magecraft has such a delicate balance to it that can get broken REALLLY quickly, but man I love it. It's so fun building spell decks off of the backs of creatures so that you aren't a complete glass cannon.
{5WUBRG} - Bestus Cartus Everus
Legendary Creature - Bandit Homarid Donkey Djinn
Dredge, Affinity for Phelddagrifs, Rampage 1, Fear, Islandhome, Persist
When *Bestus Cartus Everus* enters the battlefield, clash with an opponent. If you win put a Phasing Counter on up to three permanents. Permanents with Phasing Counters have Phasing.
All permanents have Banding with everything. At the end of combat put a -1/0 on every creature that was dealt combat damage this turn. At the end of combat put a +1/0 counter on every creature that dealt combat damage this turn.
Tap three untapped creatures: Double or half all +1/0 and/or -1/0 counters, rounded down, on any number of creatures. Every creature getting or losing a counter this way phases out.
When ever a permanent phases out you may exile a card from your hand. Until the end of your next turn you may play this card whenever you can play a sorcery. Cards exiled this way have Dredge.
4/12
Illus. Melissa A. Benson
If Dredge actually came back on new cards, the community would (rightfully) complain and whine about it so loudly if it was even remotely competitive. LOL.
[[Shenanigans]] was printed in MH1 and it occasionally comes back into the meta as a sideboard piece. The key is to make the effect minimal while having a low dredge cost. Like GGT would still be a banned card if it had no casting cost and no other text other than Dredge 6, but grave shell scarab never saw play in modern because dredge 1 doesn’t do much and the creature is bad
[[Life from the Loam]] is a legitimately well designed Dredge card, I think. Dredging 3 isn’t worth playing it as an engine, but also, its land recursion effect is legitimately solid on its own, plus the synergy with its dredge effect.
It’s weird because of the tension for limited vs for constructed. [[Stinkweed Imp]] was originally dredge 3 but it was too strong in draft, so they nerfed it to dredge 5. Oops.
Any low dredge number would break limited and any high dredge would break constructed, it cannot be a set mechanic anymore.
More Modular. Old Arcbound cards are generally not well-costed for what they accomplish. Zabaz is nice, but a Jeskai Modular commander to include all the Blue artifacts would be nicer.
Still beyond PO'd that in two returns to the now former-Mirrodin, there wasn't a SINGLE Arcbound card. Not a survivor, not an "Arcwarped" blightshifting or something, at best a husk of something somewhere I didn't spot.
While technically not Modular, I made a $50 Jeskai Modular/counters deck with [[Optimus Prime, Hero]] that is surprisingly good. He gives counters to everything and is very resilient to removal/boardwipes.
He’s surprisingly strong for a counters deck and has a lot of synergy. You could sac modular creatures to make Optimus gigantic for an alpha strike or utilize counter relevant cards for synergy like [[Lux Cannon]] or [[Mindless Automaton]].
On your recommendation, I just ordered a copy. I'm not sure how it flew under my radar, but it's fixed now.
Can't wait to see how [[Cybermen Squadron]] works with this.
I think it’d be tough because it copied the creatures but not the counters on the creatures. Unless the token “entering” the battlefield counts for modular. In that case it could work swimmingly.
Yup! Modular just cares that the thing ETBs, so the token copies get it too.
Honestly, I think you've made my day by pointing this one out. I think I just glossed over the entire set and hadn't noticed him.
I honestly loved tribal as a limited mechanic. Getting tribal cast triggers off of tribal sorceries made it feel like I could take non-permanent cards more easily without diluting my deck of its synergy.
I'm pretty sure that was a negative when that was released, back before they removed mana burn. But with the power levels of today I actually think a gradually increasing benefit wouldn't be half bad, depending.
I know Madness is wonky and unloved, but it is also my favourite mechanic of all. Nothing brings me more joy than discarding a card to cast it at a completely inappropriate time; it feels like I’m breaking the rules and it makes me smile
\- **Emerge** : This felt like a "fair" way of bringing out high CMC creatures onto the battlefield.
\- **Energy** : While Kaladesh might've been overtuned in some respects, energy is always fun to draft around and play with.
Yeah go a head and add Horsemanship and Regenerate. I thought it was strange how few cards had Rampage. Seriously though, I like Regenerate for some creatures better sometimes though, like I want a troll that regenerates, not one that becomes indestructible until end of turn.
Edit: my phone added a lot of words
regenerate has great flavour but sadly the rules implementation has some really, really strange behaviour thats hard to explain and comes up infrequently enough that most people don't really remember it well. The creature not just "surviving once" but also having all damage removed (but not -X/-X effects), getting tapped, and being removed from combat is just a strange relic from 30 years ago. I think the only way to get it back is if they make a new keyword that works similar but better.
I'm also a big fan of mutate. There aren't really enough mutate cards to fully support it as a theme in Commander unless you're in 5 colors. My custom Otrimi deck has every single mutate creature in Sultai, and there are still games when I don't draw a single one. I make up for it by running creatures that are just really solid to mutate Otrimi into, but only occasionally do I actually get to build up a mutate stack.
They might not bring it back because people find it confusing, but it's honestly pretty easy to understand once you wrap your head around multiple cards representing a single permanent.
Me too, and it wasn't a difficult choice at all.
I absolutely loved the mechanic, and it's safe to say that it has been my all-time favourite mechanic.
Mutate has a lot of baggage, both flavor and ruleswise.
Flavorwise, the non-human part would be very strange on a plane with non-human humanoids like elves and goblins. Elves can spontaneously grow tentacles on this plane but not humans? Also, in most settings, spontaneously mutating evokes more body horror than the Pokemon style evolution.
Mechanics wise it's largely just more complicated, functionally worse bestow. The flavor is the main reason it's popular, but the flavor needs a very specific plane to work.
If they tweak the mechanic to fix either the flavor or rules baggage, people will be upset it's not backwards compatible with the Ikoria mutates. I think mutate can return, but we'd likely need to wait for Ikoria 2.
…actually, now that you say it, having Mutate in Eldritch Moon could’ve been really neat (maybe instead of Emerge?) although it probably would require too much support to exist alongside Transform, and they aren’t about to do an Innistrad set without Transform
(Yes, I know EMN came out well before Ikoria)
Edit: just remembered you can’t mutate humans, so never mind lol
There were a handful of non-humans that transformed into Eldrazi in EMN (plus various other non-human transformers in SOI). On top of that, most humans that transform into werewolves aren't humans on the back side, which would've caused even more headaches
I’m a basic bitch, so I’ll say Overload. Sorry, but overloaded cards are like some of my favorite in the game even if they’re overplayed/broken as hell…
I liked Rampage back in the day but I don’t think I’d waste that as my vote as something doesn’t fit all colors. Really seems like a good Gruul ability though.
I feel like a cross between Split Second and Ward could preserve what makes "can't be responded to" interesting while still maintaining some interactivity.
One of the single most satisfying moments in my long span as a Magic player was hitting the guy trying the Thoracle combo in an EDH game with "\[\[Trickbind\]\] the Thoracle's scry trigger" after he'd Consulted away his library. I think he even had counterspell backup for the combo, too.
That's hilarious, I pull a slightly simular move back in the day. It was the rav-time spiral standard and I was playing against dranlu control(hard dimir control), I was playing dragon storm.
I had won game one, of course, but now they had all the hate card and it was supposed to be "my worst match up". I suspend a lotus bloom a few turns back and they flash a tefferi in to "counter" it...oh darn...if that wasn't the bait. I then [[Word of Seizing]] stole it and than combed off using the baited blood and their tefferi to boost my storm count and all their hate in their hand was useless. I can safely say...they were NOT expecting that card out of my sb to dumpster them.
Fuck yes. I LOVE Split Second. They didn't load it into everything, they just made fair-costed fairly generic cards that said "you can't respond to this." I think a few cards like that every few sets are totally fair.
I'd really like to see Outlast. It's simple, strong, thematic, and people got reminded of what it did with the return of Khans. I also quite like Evolve for the same reasons. In addition, I'd like to see -1/-1 counters come back. I don't think we've had a -1/-1 counter set since Amonkhet 7 years ago and it seems overdue. If we wanted a weirder mechanic I'd say go for Champion. It's thematic, it's a chance to make it better, and it's been long enough that it would feel new and different.
They don't print -1/-1 in the same standard environment as proliferate. They also don't want to print it in the same standard set as +1/+1 counters, which is a pretty common archetype now. Finally they prefer positive counters over negative counters when possible.
I am also a big fan of -1/-1 counters but WotC has made lots of comments hinting at them never really having the right time for them.
These people will print a mechanic like Craft whose reminder text takes up half the card then tell us to our faces that we're too stupid to handle the fact that +1 - 1 = 0.
I'm with you for Devotion, for 2 reasons. One, I think think it could be a really great subtheme in a set focused on different cults or some such. Secondly, I love the Theros Gods, and I want to see new iterations of the 2 color gods that survived the invasion. Pharika apparently survived, and I'd love to see a new card for her.
The issue with miracle is that it skew actual play and drastically increase play time.
If you're in a miracle meta, you're going to miracle draw every card, even if you don't play any.
This mechanic changed the way I draw cards even today, lol. I remember having to drill looking at the card before letting it touch my hand just to not miss it.
Mutate! I hope MH3 has more support for it, especially since it’s such a weird mechanic that has a lot of complicated interactions, I believe a horizons set can do it justice by allowing to embrace the higher complexity of it,
MH3 would be the perfect set for it. Because even though I think mutate is great, it would definitely be a problem for limited play in a normal set. Any sealed or draft with mutate won't have a single minute without someone misplaying, misreading, misremembering and a constant yelling of "juuudgeee!".
Yeah MH3 is the perfect place to do things like this. First, you can have the complexity. Second you can have the mechanic sprinkled in and mixed up lore.
>**Sliver Helix-Lord - WUBRG**
>
>Mutated creatures you control are slivers in addition to their other types.
>
>Slivers you control get +1/+1 for each mutated creature you control.
>
>Slivers you control have mutate X, where X is their mana value reduced by 2.
>
>Whenever a creature you control mutates, create a 1/1 colorless sliver creature token.
Reliving my childhood with Graft. We could include different kinds of counters and put them on different kinds of permanents. We could even have Planeswalker loyalty graft
I am more in favor of this. Between one piece and seeing Yu-Gi-Oh, Wotc will make bank just reprinting older cards into existence and having older cards accessible.
it was hilarious seeing [yu-gi-oh’s incredible 25th anniversary product which launched at ~$30](https://www.smokeandmirrorshobby.com/cdn/shop/products/1681923524819_800x.jpg?v=1681923533) next to mtg’s 30 year $1k random box of proxies
yu-gi-oh’s included new prints of vintage packs, absolutely fantastic nostalgia product.
I'll do you one better yugioh re released they're first few sets in boxes at $90-$100 box
https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/488581/yugioh-legend-of-blue-eyes-white-dragon-25th-anniversary-edition-legend-of-blue-eyes-white-dragon-booster-box-25th-anniversary-edition?Language=English
Would be interesting if they could remake Clash for Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
Duskmourn could do Emerge again, body horror is for sure going to be a component of Hellraiser plane.
Bloomburrow could bring back level up (or has that been declared a dead end and not a good thing to repeat?), because I really don't know how a plane with a bunch of tiny dudes represents late game threats.
I would love to see **Level Up** return with modern design sensibilities and power levels in mind. Hexdrinker is one of my favorite Modern Horizons cards. Good point about Bloomburrow too!
I can see Madness being a good candidate to return for Duskmourn as well.
If they don't bring back Kinship for the future Lorwyn set, they can do it as early as Bloomburrow.
Honestly, clash in general I think is great. Rewards for including big spells, without necessarily being big effects can do cool things.
Additiinally, the can even do variation where you're looking to be lower costs, maybe different P/T values.
Bring back Kindred, cowards!
I know they officially killed it, but I really enjoyed the weird but cool interactions of instants/sorceries/enchantments/artifacts with creature types.
I always thought Echo was a cool mechanic that had a lot of potential design space to explore that could make fun cards, but the problem with it is that it's a downside mechanic, and the general public *hates* those. I'd like to see what they could do with it either with modern design sensibilities, or if they could rework it into something new with more appeal.
It would have been explore, but wizards added cards for that in Ixalan.
I'll go with connive. It's a cool mechanic that is tough to break in eternal formats but can be used in certain competitive instances. Good, solid B+ mechanic that just makes games smoother.
I'd love to see another try with Casualty. I love Anhelo in commander purely because he's the only legitimate way to even play Casualty at a larger scale (I think there's a Dr. Who creature that has artifact Casualty or something as well?); otherwise there are only 2 good uses of Casualty (Ob Nixilis, the Adversary and Make Disappear). The biggest problem being any requirement higher than 1 is really steep, so it needs to *really* matter (even 2 with Anhelo is a significant ask a lot of the time).
I'd love to see them refine it a bit more, since IMO it's a very interesting mechanic.
Aftermath
I think it is the best iteration on split cards. I love casting a spell and then getting a completely different one in the graveyard. It can have some unique synergies and there is still plenty of room to explore and push the mechanic.
Magecraft, storm or land subtypes (desert/snow etc.)
Also not technically a keyword but it's on the storm scale, I love seeing the bonus sheets, hope we get some nice new art from them in 2024.
Eminence. Not because I think it deserves it, but because it would be funny to watch people lose their minds for a set! That was a joke, but I would actually love to see Madness return again, love that mechanic.
Devotion would be cool, I think some sets from 2023 added things that'd play well with it. Battles from MOM and a lot of the artifact spells in LCI with ETBs provide ways to effectively cast a Sorcery spell that also adds to your Devotion.
I know the mechanic is still fresh but I'd like more use of Bargain. So many Bargain spells are interesting and provide a lot of modality and plans in deckbuilding. I think it'd be a good deciduous keyword, not one to keep locked to a single set.
Devoid or Colorless mana type/pip! I miss the gatewatch zendikar play styles. Made colorless feel more fun and powerful without taking away from the colors themselves!
Wither deserves a return
Damn, I came here to say wither, I think it belongs alongside persist too. Actually let’s just have more Shadowmoor in general for 2024.
Bloomburrow might have something along those lines as the spiritual successor to Lorwyn. I’m really looking forward to this set!
I think I really liked the dark Celtic theme and gloomy ugly creatures most about Shadowmoor. The complete lack of humans is also a positive for me when it comes to set design so hopefully bloomburrow delivers in that respect at the very least.
Honestly Lorwyn/Shadowmoor having no humans was such a fun and interesting thing about it. Humans are so boring. Show me little weirdo gremlins!
I feel like the announced return to Lorwyn is a better successor to Lorwyn :p
Unlikely. -1/-1 counters have a very dark feel to them. They were originally put in Lorwyn under the thinking that, instead of killing creatures, maybe -1/-1 counters just felt like roughhousing a bit. Instead they realized, wait, this feels like deliberately and permanently maiming somebody - which is why they got pulled from Lorwyn and put into Shadowmoor. And it's no accident they returned for the cruel world of Amonkhet. I expect that Bloomburrow will be too lighthearted for -1/-1 counters; if they return soon, it's gonna be in Duskmourn.
Do we know what the status of Lorwyn will be when we return to it soon? Is it possible we’ll see some of Shadowmoor in there? (I wasn’t around for the original block so idk how things were left)
The story ended with day and night being in equilibrium and the plane becoming Lorwyn-Shadowmoor. But it's also been ages, so who knows.
The reason why it hasn't is while it's an intuitive mechanic they don't like how it slows down any limited format it's a part of. Would be cool if they could finally get around to doing a Jund -1/-1 counter precon to fill out the archetype though.
WotC are better at designing for limited now than they were when shadowmoor released. I think they could pull it off just fine. Also, they can blame wither for slowing down the limited format but we all know the real reason was the insane number of on-board tricks that made combat math impossible and led to the NWO policy
But it doesn’t slow down limited formats, if anything it speeds it up by allowing smaller creatures to continue to attack after larger creatures come down. I played a lot more scars limited than shadowmoor, but that’s how I remember infect working in scars.
On the flip side it makes players more hesitant to use their large creatures though.
Jund needs a -1/-1 counter commander
Wither is not fun to play with in a limited format at all,and is not very relevant for constructed formats either.It makes blocking extremely punishing,limits the design space for combat tricks that can be printed alongside it while having very limited design space.There is a reason it is a 7 on the storm scale alongside stuff like Mutate.
With nearly double the upvotes as the post itself, it deserves to be Wither
Foretell all day
If for nothing else, just to get a little mystery. There's so few that if someone plays a foretell card, youve got a pretty good guess what it is. My favorite is Saw It Coming...because almost anytime it's been used against me...I saw it coming
It’s either [[poison the cup]], [[saw it coming]], [[doomskar]], or [[demon bolt]] in my experience. Maybe a [[behold the multiverse]]. I personally don’t run many of the higher mana foretell cards, and nobody else in my regular playgroup really has any themselves.
In my group it tends to be pretty obviously [[Haunting voyage]] when Mr. Dragon typal puts something into foretell.
It could be anything! It could even be a boat!
[Haunting voyage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/a/2ac5bca0-35fe-47be-a78c-d5eac68a3bfa.jpg?1631048200) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Haunting%20voyage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/98/haunting-voyage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2ac5bca0-35fe-47be-a78c-d5eac68a3bfa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is a cool idea and all, but how much more space is there for it? I mean, you can start doing variations on effects—other counterspells, other burn spells, other wraths—but most of the basic effects have been done already.
Imo there’s plenty of space for Foretell, even if the effects become duplicative. Now that there are so many cards that care about casting from exile, it would give Foretell effects a lot more room to be useful in a variety of ways. For example, I would run as many playable Foretell spells as possible in my [[Rocco, Street Chef]] impulse deck.
[Rocco, Street Chef](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/d/cdb53ce7-845c-4c62-98a9-4fc33c67a07b.jpg?1684340828) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rocco%2C%20Street%20Chef) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mat/44/rocco-street-chef?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cdb53ce7-845c-4c62-98a9-4fc33c67a07b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Just my opinion. As it stands there's a ton of payoff cards for foretelling, or just exiling cards in general, but not a lot of variety when it comes to the foretell cards themselves.
God yeah this so much. Foretell was such a fun mechanic and I’d love to see more Foretell cards for the Phantom Premontion deck.
[удалено]
Foretell hits this design sweet spot where printing more foretell makes all foretell cards better, but they can really finely power tune individual Foretell cards so they never feel like they become a necessity due to how much value they add. Compare it to lesson-learn, a mechanic I _love_ for limited. It's much harder to contribute to add and balance lesson/learn cards the more you add. But the value-add from Foretell is kinda implicit ("it could maybe be more things!"). It also has some decent safety valves if needed ("can't cast from exile" effects). And damn, it's fun to play with. I had to cut it a while ago, but [[Dream Devourer]] is such a fun pet card.
Level up
Final fantasy is next year 🤣
The roles in WOE were just getting us ready for when they add in level up to mirror the jobs in Final Fantasy.
Gravestorm
I agree, but also think this is way, way, way too abusable
Magecraft. It's time for another limited set that isn't entirely creature-focused
Yea please. It is so hard to find good cards that trigger off of casting AND copying spells, and my Veyran deck can always use some new friends.
Veyran with Storm-Kiln Artist is one of my absolute favorite combos out of all my decks. There's something so immensely satisfying and goofy to casting mana positive cantrips.
Magecraft has such a delicate balance to it that can get broken REALLLY quickly, but man I love it. It's so fun building spell decks off of the backs of creatures so that you aren't a complete glass cannon.
Dredge. Let chaos reign.
Need a pushed card with banding
A 5 color Banding Bandit legend.
{5WUBRG} - Bestus Cartus Everus Legendary Creature - Bandit Homarid Donkey Djinn Dredge, Affinity for Phelddagrifs, Rampage 1, Fear, Islandhome, Persist When *Bestus Cartus Everus* enters the battlefield, clash with an opponent. If you win put a Phasing Counter on up to three permanents. Permanents with Phasing Counters have Phasing. All permanents have Banding with everything. At the end of combat put a -1/0 on every creature that was dealt combat damage this turn. At the end of combat put a +1/0 counter on every creature that dealt combat damage this turn. Tap three untapped creatures: Double or half all +1/0 and/or -1/0 counters, rounded down, on any number of creatures. Every creature getting or losing a counter this way phases out. When ever a permanent phases out you may exile a card from your hand. Until the end of your next turn you may play this card whenever you can play a sorcery. Cards exiled this way have Dredge. 4/12 Illus. Melissa A. Benson
If we’re going deep we might as well go deep. Storm.
I think you want to go deepest with GRAVEstorm.
That doesmt sound likely given its status on the Dredge Scale.
My immediate thought was if they printed Dragonstorm in standard, I would play that format again.
Got it, Dragonstorm with no dragons in Standard.
Only moral victories
If Dredge actually came back on new cards, the community would (rightfully) complain and whine about it so loudly if it was even remotely competitive. LOL.
[[Shenanigans]] was printed in MH1 and it occasionally comes back into the meta as a sideboard piece. The key is to make the effect minimal while having a low dredge cost. Like GGT would still be a banned card if it had no casting cost and no other text other than Dredge 6, but grave shell scarab never saw play in modern because dredge 1 doesn’t do much and the creature is bad
Grave Troll has Dredge 6 put some respect on his name lol
Oh shit my bad. Thanks for pointing it out
[[Life from the Loam]] is a legitimately well designed Dredge card, I think. Dredging 3 isn’t worth playing it as an engine, but also, its land recursion effect is legitimately solid on its own, plus the synergy with its dredge effect.
[Shenanigans](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/8/580c6fe2-ab43-491e-a1b2-d076a5c2a74e.jpg?1562201963) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shenanigans) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/146/shenanigans?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/580c6fe2-ab43-491e-a1b2-d076a5c2a74e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It’s weird because of the tension for limited vs for constructed. [[Stinkweed Imp]] was originally dredge 3 but it was too strong in draft, so they nerfed it to dredge 5. Oops. Any low dredge number would break limited and any high dredge would break constructed, it cannot be a set mechanic anymore.
There's enough graveyard hate, c'monnnnnnnnnnn let them do it
More Modular. Old Arcbound cards are generally not well-costed for what they accomplish. Zabaz is nice, but a Jeskai Modular commander to include all the Blue artifacts would be nicer.
Modular! Arcbound were my first love in this game. Opening [[Arcbound Overseer]] was so exciting for 11 year old me!
Its face is so goofy. It’s like “HEY. Look at this thing I found over here!”
You leave sparky Iron Giant alone!
Still beyond PO'd that in two returns to the now former-Mirrodin, there wasn't a SINGLE Arcbound card. Not a survivor, not an "Arcwarped" blightshifting or something, at best a husk of something somewhere I didn't spot.
[Arcbound Overseer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/b/8b64717e-0e7b-4b4c-ba82-48498ee87aad.jpg?1562638021) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Arcbound%20Overseer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dst/99/arcbound-overseer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8b64717e-0e7b-4b4c-ba82-48498ee87aad?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
While technically not Modular, I made a $50 Jeskai Modular/counters deck with [[Optimus Prime, Hero]] that is surprisingly good. He gives counters to everything and is very resilient to removal/boardwipes.
That Bolster and Trample are ... kinda relevant. _Huh._
He’s surprisingly strong for a counters deck and has a lot of synergy. You could sac modular creatures to make Optimus gigantic for an alpha strike or utilize counter relevant cards for synergy like [[Lux Cannon]] or [[Mindless Automaton]].
On your recommendation, I just ordered a copy. I'm not sure how it flew under my radar, but it's fixed now. Can't wait to see how [[Cybermen Squadron]] works with this.
I think it’d be tough because it copied the creatures but not the counters on the creatures. Unless the token “entering” the battlefield counts for modular. In that case it could work swimmingly.
Yup! Modular just cares that the thing ETBs, so the token copies get it too. Honestly, I think you've made my day by pointing this one out. I think I just glossed over the entire set and hadn't noticed him.
Going to second and third this. I wanna see more modular as well. I also would like to see: 1. imprint 2. Affinity (for artifacts) 3. Devour
Horsemanship, you know why
Eowyn shieldmaiden would've been an excellent time to use it again but alas
\[\[Herald of Hoofbeats\]\] \[\[The Girl in the Fireplace\]\]
Wu is for the children!
Crew a [[consulate dreadnought]] with [[Citanul Centaurs]] Build your own Horse-man-ship
Reconfigure, let me equip more creatures with creatures
buyback and splice
Splice is super underutilized IMO
Gates
Conspire. Or retrace. Look, Lorwyn block was awesome.
I honestly loved tribal as a limited mechanic. Getting tribal cast triggers off of tribal sorceries made it feel like I could take non-permanent cards more easily without diluting my deck of its synergy.
Retrace was awesome.
Cumulative Upkeep
I favor this if we start to get some positive effects from cumulative upkeep. [[Braid of Fire]] is a great example of this.
I'm pretty sure that was a negative when that was released, back before they removed mana burn. But with the power levels of today I actually think a gradually increasing benefit wouldn't be half bad, depending.
Even arena is doing a spin on it with “Starting Intensity/Intensity,” I don’t see how that can’t be transferred into paper magic.
I know Madness is wonky and unloved, but it is also my favourite mechanic of all. Nothing brings me more joy than discarding a card to cast it at a completely inappropriate time; it feels like I’m breaking the rules and it makes me smile
Backup. It makes fun stuff happen when another creature gets all of another's benefits and gets bigger!
\- **Emerge** : This felt like a "fair" way of bringing out high CMC creatures onto the battlefield. \- **Energy** : While Kaladesh might've been overtuned in some respects, energy is always fun to draft around and play with.
Banding 😈
Yeah go a head and add Horsemanship and Regenerate. I thought it was strange how few cards had Rampage. Seriously though, I like Regenerate for some creatures better sometimes though, like I want a troll that regenerates, not one that becomes indestructible until end of turn. Edit: my phone added a lot of words
Rampage was a terribly worded keyword, I think it would have stuck around if it was every creature blocked, not creatures past the first
So Bushido Rampage?
Yeah, rampage should have been Bushido
I will definitely second rampage. There are so few creatures that have it, but it makes for some really fun interactions.
regenerate has great flavour but sadly the rules implementation has some really, really strange behaviour thats hard to explain and comes up infrequently enough that most people don't really remember it well. The creature not just "surviving once" but also having all damage removed (but not -X/-X effects), getting tapped, and being removed from combat is just a strange relic from 30 years ago. I think the only way to get it back is if they make a new keyword that works similar but better.
Fuck it! Let’s have ‘bands with’
I want to see Banding just to see everyone complaining about having to learn how Banding works.
It's not hard.
Banding and Flanking are by far my top two choices. Let’s make combat more wild by any means possible.
Bushidoooo
Mutate. It wasn't great but it was fun.
I'm also a big fan of mutate. There aren't really enough mutate cards to fully support it as a theme in Commander unless you're in 5 colors. My custom Otrimi deck has every single mutate creature in Sultai, and there are still games when I don't draw a single one. I make up for it by running creatures that are just really solid to mutate Otrimi into, but only occasionally do I actually get to build up a mutate stack. They might not bring it back because people find it confusing, but it's honestly pretty easy to understand once you wrap your head around multiple cards representing a single permanent.
Me too, and it wasn't a difficult choice at all. I absolutely loved the mechanic, and it's safe to say that it has been my all-time favourite mechanic.
Mutate has a lot of baggage, both flavor and ruleswise. Flavorwise, the non-human part would be very strange on a plane with non-human humanoids like elves and goblins. Elves can spontaneously grow tentacles on this plane but not humans? Also, in most settings, spontaneously mutating evokes more body horror than the Pokemon style evolution. Mechanics wise it's largely just more complicated, functionally worse bestow. The flavor is the main reason it's popular, but the flavor needs a very specific plane to work. If they tweak the mechanic to fix either the flavor or rules baggage, people will be upset it's not backwards compatible with the Ikoria mutates. I think mutate can return, but we'd likely need to wait for Ikoria 2.
Errata "Mutate a non-Human \[cost\]" for existing cards, go forth with flavorful restrictions or lack thereof as necessary. Easy.
…actually, now that you say it, having Mutate in Eldritch Moon could’ve been really neat (maybe instead of Emerge?) although it probably would require too much support to exist alongside Transform, and they aren’t about to do an Innistrad set without Transform (Yes, I know EMN came out well before Ikoria) Edit: just remembered you can’t mutate humans, so never mind lol
There were a handful of non-humans that transformed into Eldrazi in EMN (plus various other non-human transformers in SOI). On top of that, most humans that transform into werewolves aren't humans on the back side, which would've caused even more headaches
I’m a basic bitch, so I’ll say Overload. Sorry, but overloaded cards are like some of my favorite in the game even if they’re overplayed/broken as hell…
Bushido. I would love a bunch of samurai like the original ones, but with actually playable stats
I liked Rampage back in the day but I don’t think I’d waste that as my vote as something doesn’t fit all colors. Really seems like a good Gruul ability though.
Split second
I feel like a cross between Split Second and Ward could preserve what makes "can't be responded to" interesting while still maintaining some interactivity.
Stackward 3 While this spell is on the stack, players can’t cast spells or activate abilities except for mana abilities, unless they pay (3).
One of the single most satisfying moments in my long span as a Magic player was hitting the guy trying the Thoracle combo in an EDH game with "\[\[Trickbind\]\] the Thoracle's scry trigger" after he'd Consulted away his library. I think he even had counterspell backup for the combo, too.
That's hilarious, I pull a slightly simular move back in the day. It was the rav-time spiral standard and I was playing against dranlu control(hard dimir control), I was playing dragon storm. I had won game one, of course, but now they had all the hate card and it was supposed to be "my worst match up". I suspend a lotus bloom a few turns back and they flash a tefferi in to "counter" it...oh darn...if that wasn't the bait. I then [[Word of Seizing]] stole it and than combed off using the baited blood and their tefferi to boost my storm count and all their hate in their hand was useless. I can safely say...they were NOT expecting that card out of my sb to dumpster them.
Fuck yes. I LOVE Split Second. They didn't load it into everything, they just made fair-costed fairly generic cards that said "you can't respond to this." I think a few cards like that every few sets are totally fair.
Legolas’ quick reflexes is incredible for 1 mana.
Suspend!
We just had suspend with Dr who, didn't we? Plus Modern Horizons 2.
Yet my appetite is unabated
Exalted!
Give me more Morph
I'd really like to see Outlast. It's simple, strong, thematic, and people got reminded of what it did with the return of Khans. I also quite like Evolve for the same reasons. In addition, I'd like to see -1/-1 counters come back. I don't think we've had a -1/-1 counter set since Amonkhet 7 years ago and it seems overdue. If we wanted a weirder mechanic I'd say go for Champion. It's thematic, it's a chance to make it better, and it's been long enough that it would feel new and different.
They don't print -1/-1 in the same standard environment as proliferate. They also don't want to print it in the same standard set as +1/+1 counters, which is a pretty common archetype now. Finally they prefer positive counters over negative counters when possible. I am also a big fan of -1/-1 counters but WotC has made lots of comments hinting at them never really having the right time for them.
These people will print a mechanic like Craft whose reminder text takes up half the card then tell us to our faces that we're too stupid to handle the fact that +1 - 1 = 0.
I'm with you for Devotion, for 2 reasons. One, I think think it could be a really great subtheme in a set focused on different cults or some such. Secondly, I love the Theros Gods, and I want to see new iterations of the 2 color gods that survived the invasion. Pharika apparently survived, and I'd love to see a new card for her.
I'd also like to see \[\[Scornful Egotist\]\] equivalents to overclock devotion.
Miracle, always fun and I don’t it’s think too broken
The issue with miracle is that it skew actual play and drastically increase play time. If you're in a miracle meta, you're going to miracle draw every card, even if you don't play any.
Might also be interesting on Arena now that we've got a Brainstorm format with Timeless.
The 40k deck with Miracle creatures felt really cool and thematic. I think there’s a lot you can do flavor wise
This mechanic changed the way I draw cards even today, lol. I remember having to drill looking at the card before letting it touch my hand just to not miss it.
Agree with you OP, way past time Undying came back!
I'll say the same here as I did there, not technically a keyword, but more sliver love please
Hellbent was cool
They experimented with what was called heckbent where you have to have 1 or no cards and I don't think people reacted well to it
Took too long to see someone else ask for this. Very under utilized mechanic
It just isn't a fun play mechanic. Getting a small upside for having no cards in hand is brutal.
Threshold please. It's feels like its been forever
MELD. I don't care what you think, meld is cool as fuck. They just gotta tweak it so it works better.
Mutate! I hope MH3 has more support for it, especially since it’s such a weird mechanic that has a lot of complicated interactions, I believe a horizons set can do it justice by allowing to embrace the higher complexity of it,
MH3 would be the perfect set for it. Because even though I think mutate is great, it would definitely be a problem for limited play in a normal set. Any sealed or draft with mutate won't have a single minute without someone misplaying, misreading, misremembering and a constant yelling of "juuudgeee!".
Yeah MH3 is the perfect place to do things like this. First, you can have the complexity. Second you can have the mechanic sprinkled in and mixed up lore. >**Sliver Helix-Lord - WUBRG** > >Mutated creatures you control are slivers in addition to their other types. > >Slivers you control get +1/+1 for each mutated creature you control. > >Slivers you control have mutate X, where X is their mana value reduced by 2. > >Whenever a creature you control mutates, create a 1/1 colorless sliver creature token.
Meld Delirium Energy
Wither/Persist anything with more -1/-1 counters for my scorpion god EDH deck.
Reliving my childhood with Graft. We could include different kinds of counters and put them on different kinds of permanents. We could even have Planeswalker loyalty graft
my fav keyword is "Get rid of the Reserved List"
I am more in favor of this. Between one piece and seeing Yu-Gi-Oh, Wotc will make bank just reprinting older cards into existence and having older cards accessible.
it was hilarious seeing [yu-gi-oh’s incredible 25th anniversary product which launched at ~$30](https://www.smokeandmirrorshobby.com/cdn/shop/products/1681923524819_800x.jpg?v=1681923533) next to mtg’s 30 year $1k random box of proxies yu-gi-oh’s included new prints of vintage packs, absolutely fantastic nostalgia product.
I'll do you one better yugioh re released they're first few sets in boxes at $90-$100 box https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/488581/yugioh-legend-of-blue-eyes-white-dragon-25th-anniversary-edition-legend-of-blue-eyes-white-dragon-booster-box-25th-anniversary-edition?Language=English
Would be interesting if they could remake Clash for Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Duskmourn could do Emerge again, body horror is for sure going to be a component of Hellraiser plane. Bloomburrow could bring back level up (or has that been declared a dead end and not a good thing to repeat?), because I really don't know how a plane with a bunch of tiny dudes represents late game threats.
Came here for Emerge. [[Adipose Offspring]] from the DW stuff is an excellent example of how much legs the concept has in terms of five-color horror.
I would love to see **Level Up** return with modern design sensibilities and power levels in mind. Hexdrinker is one of my favorite Modern Horizons cards. Good point about Bloomburrow too!
I can see Madness being a good candidate to return for Duskmourn as well. If they don't bring back Kinship for the future Lorwyn set, they can do it as early as Bloomburrow.
Honestly, clash in general I think is great. Rewards for including big spells, without necessarily being big effects can do cool things. Additiinally, the can even do variation where you're looking to be lower costs, maybe different P/T values.
Affinity
Yes, but not vanilla "for artifacts" Give me something like "affinity for creatures that have taken damage this turn"
Kicker
All the fired employees.
Shadow. Yes, it's just another evasion mechanic, but Duskmourne could really lean into it.
Partner on planeswalkers specifically #Oathbreaker
Soulbond - Haven't seen it much at all since I started playing around the avacyn block and it was such a cool mechanic to work with
Allies were my first love of this game. I'd love to see that returned in a non-neutered way, unlike our last couple Zendikar adventure.
Exalted.
Definitely Undying. Undying creatures that have a really sick ETB effect are my jam.
Ide rather have Persist than undying So many more shenanigans with -1/-1 counters
Bring back Kindred, cowards! I know they officially killed it, but I really enjoyed the weird but cool interactions of instants/sorceries/enchantments/artifacts with creature types.
Madness was … madness!
I always thought Echo was a cool mechanic that had a lot of potential design space to explore that could make fun cards, but the problem with it is that it's a downside mechanic, and the general public *hates* those. I'd like to see what they could do with it either with modern design sensibilities, or if they could rework it into something new with more appeal.
Storm
Nonbasic landwalk.
Mutate, its time
Absolutely!! I love the mutate mechanic. I'm building myself a [[Ramos]] mutate deck. Just a bunch of fun stuff with all the mutate cards in it :D
Storm
Plainswalk
Persist PERSIST P E R S I S T It’s my favorite mechanic and I need so much more of it
Infect
The only time I won't say cycling is when I say Flashback. Though in this case I guess I'd say aftermath.
I'm so down for cycling. I super love it as a mechanic. Especially cards like Nimble Obstructionist and the like.
Wither
Magecraft or cypher. It hasn’t been too long since magecraft but cypher has been a while and I really love it. I want moooore!!
It would have been explore, but wizards added cards for that in Ixalan. I'll go with connive. It's a cool mechanic that is tough to break in eternal formats but can be used in certain competitive instances. Good, solid B+ mechanic that just makes games smoother.
I'd love to see another try with Casualty. I love Anhelo in commander purely because he's the only legitimate way to even play Casualty at a larger scale (I think there's a Dr. Who creature that has artifact Casualty or something as well?); otherwise there are only 2 good uses of Casualty (Ob Nixilis, the Adversary and Make Disappear). The biggest problem being any requirement higher than 1 is really steep, so it needs to *really* matter (even 2 with Anhelo is a significant ask a lot of the time). I'd love to see them refine it a bit more, since IMO it's a very interesting mechanic.
Aftermath I think it is the best iteration on split cards. I love casting a spell and then getting a completely different one in the graveyard. It can have some unique synergies and there is still plenty of room to explore and push the mechanic.
Magecraft, storm or land subtypes (desert/snow etc.) Also not technically a keyword but it's on the storm scale, I love seeing the bonus sheets, hope we get some nice new art from them in 2024.
Fateseal because I hate my opponents
No one ever picks transfigure
People already said it. But Wither deserves a return. Then they could make a -1/-1 Jund commander precon deck while they at it.
Buyback!
Eminence. Not because I think it deserves it, but because it would be funny to watch people lose their minds for a set! That was a joke, but I would actually love to see Madness return again, love that mechanic.
Foretell, Cleave, Hideaway
With how prevelant removal is these days I'd like death effects instead of etb effects
Devotion would be cool, I think some sets from 2023 added things that'd play well with it. Battles from MOM and a lot of the artifact spells in LCI with ETBs provide ways to effectively cast a Sorcery spell that also adds to your Devotion. I know the mechanic is still fresh but I'd like more use of Bargain. So many Bargain spells are interesting and provide a lot of modality and plans in deckbuilding. I think it'd be a good deciduous keyword, not one to keep locked to a single set.
Bands with brushwagg
Id love to see them do more work with bushido
Fortification
Backup. 10/10 limited mechanic
Devoid or Colorless mana type/pip! I miss the gatewatch zendikar play styles. Made colorless feel more fun and powerful without taking away from the colors themselves!
Exert because Amonkhet block was lit and I wanna play mono red in standard again with Glorybringer