Gavin Verhey, one of the lead designers at Wizards, posted an interesting question on Twitter:
“You get to pick one Magic keyword mechanic to return in 2024. What is it?”
What are we bringing back?!
My crazy long shot that’s never coming back as is, sadly: Dredge. I think it’s such a fun and unique mechanic, and cards like Life from the Loam are excellent examples of how it can be done well.
More realistically: I’d love to see Buyback again, an old one I loved from Exodus. Capsize every turn!
Dredge is really hard to do well though, in that it makes a card playable no matter what else is written on it, and making a card too playable, then adding dredge onto it can easily make it broken enough to pick up bans in eternal formats. It’s such a small design space, but I’d also love to see a few cards try to thread that needle.
Buyback is fun, Clockspinning in particular stands out as a fun card to play, even if it’s not amazing. Expanding it to creatures would be a fun twist to see it come back with.
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Yeah probably so difficult that even in the 0% chance it does come back the cards would be so neutered that what’s point.
A low dredge value helps though and even a few that are quirky would be cool. Like a recurring ETB effect on a cheap artifact with dredge 2 that’s heavy on the lore. Something!
We did get a dredge card fairly recently in [[Shenanigans]], the key here was a niche (but okay priced) effect + a low dredge number. Brings it more in line with the original “fair” use of dredge (re buying useful cards)
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A weird one, but Provoke. Green has been pretty bad in terms of creature combat lately, and fight spells are basically useless in constructed. I think Provoke is pretty balanced nowadays, given that it’s dependent on attacking and there are already so many value engine permanents that killing 1 creature a turn (excluding the turn it comes down) is strong but not unbalanced. Tacking on a condition or mana cost could also tone it down for lower rarities/mana values).
My more conventional pick would be Persist, lots of design space and it’s fun to get extra use out of your creatures.
Wow I completely forgot about this ability! Kind of like a mini [[Lure]]. There seem to be only 9 cards with it too. I think this could be a great ability for green to get more of and makes total sense color-wise.
inb4 “All abilities are just kicker” 😛 (TCC vid)
but seriously, I would love to see Buyback as well, I loved Whispers of the Muse and Forbid. Other than Buyback I would also love to see Spectacle come back. I feel like we don’t have enough good Spectacle cards.
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Yeah this would be a great one to see again, I love Convoke too. I just looked it up and I’m surprised there are so few legendary creatures with it, and none that would enable a GW commander deck 😮 Would love to build that one day.
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That new Jeskai legend is pretty fun and a slightly different twist on the generic regular convoke colours and strategies. But that’s commander, of course
Banding!
How about “Bands with…”
We can now do such fun things as “Bands with planeswalkers”, “Bands with melded creatures”, and “Bands with vehicles”.
Benalish hero crew!
bestow :3
