168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic the Gathering's had an excellent year. From the snowy realms of Kaldheim to the opulent wedding🐽 of Innistrad: Crimson Vow, we've visited new planes, met new chara♓cters, and, most importantly, been introduced to a whole host of new mechanics to play with.
Some mechanics have been amazin🐈g, while others probably shouldn't come back for a second outing. Here is every new mechanic introduced in Magic the Gathering t♍his year, ranked.
18 Perpetually ꦅ
A digital-only mechanic introduced in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, Perpetually can make permanent changes to a card that is tracked through all the zones of the game. A card that's left the battlefield and returned will normally have no memory of what it was before, including counters, enchantments, stat changes, or anything else, but they will remember Perpetual effects.
The problem with Perpetually is that it's a digital-only ✃mechanic that caused a major rift between digital and paper♒ Magic, and it's incredibly unlikely that it will ever get a print on any physical card. It wasn't the apocalyptic, end of the game scenario people worried about when it was announced, but it's still a shame to see the Historic format now become so far divorced from the rest of Magic.
17 Conjure
Conjure is another Jumpstart: Historic Horizons digital-only mechanic, except this one can create a card out of thin air and put it into your hand. For example, Wingsteed Trainer conjures a Sto🌳rmfront Pegasus into your hand, which is then treated like any other card.
Conjure could have worked in paper play with a few adjustments. We saw something similar to it with Garth One-eye 🌟in Modern Horizons 2, although that cast the spell rather than put a copy of its card into you🌌r hand. As it is, it's a mechanic we're likely never going to see outside of the Historic format.
16 Seek
The second digital-only 🀅mechanic, Seek uses AI to select a random card of a specific type from your library and put it into your hand without any involvement from you. The deck doesn't even need to be shuffled, as you don't have to look through the library.
Along with Perpetually and Conjure, Seek is low down on this list because of its ♋status as a digital-only mechanic. The idea isn'🎐t too far divorced from effects that reveal off the top of your library until you find the first card of a set criteria, just given a fancy high-tech overhaul to justify having a digital-only set.
Out of the three digital-only mechanics, Seek is the best because it actually uses the digital nature of Arena in a more interesting way than 'track something that would be awkward to do physical𓆉ly'.
15 Coven
Coven was Innistrad: Midnight Hunt's mechanic for the Human creature type that gave yo♍u various triggers if you controlled at least three creatures with different toughness.
At first, it seems reasonable – going wide is a common humans strategy, after all. But the problem with Coven was that it was so situational and difficult to set up, that doing it anywhere other than in the Midnight Hunt limited environment was a complete waste of time. For example, a rare card was Sungold Sentinel, who could pay two to get hexproof from a single colour, and couldn't be blocked by that colour, until the end of the turn… as long as you control three creatures with different power… and if you paid one gener🎉ic and one white. With how easy it is to give things hexproof, like Swiftfoot Boots or Mirror Shield, why꧒ would you jump through all of those hoops?
14 Decayed
Design-wise, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt's Decayed makes sense. Making zombies who can't block, and sacrifice themselves at the end of the first turn they attacked in allows Wizards to make more cards that produce more zombies for a lower mana cost. It was a good idea.
It was also one that♒ caused a lot of disappointment. Thinking "oh cool, I can make a zombie!" is exciting, until you then realise "oh, it has decayed…". It was too much of a downside for a creature type that already has plenty of ways t🐈o make lots of zombie tokens easily.
13 Boast
From Kaldheim, Boast represented warriors coming back from battles and tell💦ing tales of their glory. It had some brilliant effects, like Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire tutoring for any card, or Fearless Liberator making a Dwarf token.
Boast really struggled for a couple of reasons, though. Outside of Varragoth, Draugr Recruiter, and Dragonkin Berserker, a lot of the effects were u෴nderwhelming. Make a 1/1 token, gain and dr♎ain one life, deal one damage to any target, that sort of thing. You were also only allowed to do it once per creature each turn, and to do so you had to attack with that creature and put it in harm's way.
If we ever get a return trip to Kaldheim, this is a mechanic that should make a comeback to be given a bit more love. More cards like Birgi that don't boast themselves, but care about when other creatures𝕴 do, and more impressive Boast effects to ma🌞ke the risk of attacking worthwhile.
12 Ward
Ward is a protection k🎐eyword that was designed as a less one-sided replacement for Hexproof. While Hexproof completely shut down your opponent from targeting your creatures, Ward allows them to🌳 force a targeted effect through if they pay the right price.
Though Ward has been put to really interesting use a few times, like Svyelun of Sea and Sky giving it to all other Merfolks you control, or the Tarrasque having a shockingly high Ward price of ten mana to emphasise how unstoppable it is, it's also hard not to feel a bit let down that it's a worse Hexproof that's meant to replace it. It's a mechanic designed to make every player but the one using it feel better about the game.
11 Daybound/Nightbound 🌊
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Daybound and Nightbound were the solutions to the long-standing problem of how to make werewolves transforming make se💎nse thematically. Having one werewolf transforming and another one not felt weird, and so Innistrad: Midnight Hunt brought them all under the banner of daybound and nightbound: when it's the day, everything is on one side, if it's n𒁃ight, everything's on the other.
While it did fix the problem in Midnight Hunt, it was also overly confusing. Keeping track of when it's day and night, counting how many spells people p🀅lay, and the difficulties related to keeping it night for more than a turn at a time꧋ made it a frustrating mechanic to play in.
What's more, Wizards of the Coast elected not to retroactively add it to older Werewolf cards. In eternal formats, you still have the problem of some werewolves transforming and others not, except you also have to keep track of day and night on top of it.
10 Pack Tactics ༒
It's curious that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pack Tactics came earlier than ♈Coven in this year's releases, as it does a lot of the same things Coven does, but better. Pack Tactics is an attack trigger that triggers when a creature attacks alongside others with a total combined power of at least six – for example, Werewolf Pack Leader draws a card if the total attacking power of your creatures, including it, is six.
Pack Tactics was a really cool ability that encouraged you to swarm an opponent, which fit nicely with it being a mechanic belonging to barbarians, goblins, and gnolls. The reason it's so far down this list is that we didn't see enough of it: there were only eight cards released for it in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, a set that was very busy mechanically. It got swamped out a bit by the sheer mass of stuff going in, and a simple attack trigger mechanic is never going toও be everyone's favourite.
9 ꦜ Les𒁃son/Learn
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lesson and Learn have been a big part of the Standard format ever since they were introduced in Strixhaven: School of Mages. Whenever you Learn, you can look outside the game for a Lesson card a✨nd pu💝t it into your hand.
A few of them have become must-haves for Standard, likꩵe Environmental Sciences, while others, like Mascot Exhibition, feel too expensive for what they do. There's also the important fact that they don't do what they're meant to in Magic's most popular format, Commander. Commander has no concept of 'outside the game', meaning all you get to do with a Learn trigger is discard a card to draw a card instead.
