Coming October 2nd, the new Magic: The Gathering card set, "Battle for Zendikar," brings back the Eldrazi, but not quite the way they were expected. It's been several years since Magic players have visited this broken world. So, what can we expect with this return?
First off, everyone's most loved/hated big creatures come back. The Eldrazi, nightmare Lovecraftian monsters from beyond space and time, are back with vengeance. Utilizing a variety of tactics, including summoning, exiling and, believe it or not, un-exiling, these colorless creatures will be slamming carefully designed decks into the ground. One example is Ulamog, leader of the Eldrazi, who has a rather unpleasant special ability. Whenever he attacks, the defender exiles the top twenty cards from the top of their library. He costs 10 colorless mana, so he'll be a bit tricky to bring out, but late game, he will be an extreme danger since a normal deck is only 60 to 70 cards.
However, despite some excellent mechanics, the late-game Eldrazi are significantly weaker than they were the last time we visited Zendikar Gone are the days of Annihilator, where a defending player sacrificed up to two to ten permanents each attack. The one exception is Bane of Bala Ged, where a defending player must exile two permanents any time they are attacked by Bane. No longer do the large monsters come with Indestructible already equipped. Several cards from both this and the previous Khans block will be able to smack away massive creatures for a mere two or three mana.
A good thing that's coming back for Eldrazi players are the Eldrazi Scions, tiny little 1/1 colorless creatures that a player can sacrifice to get a single colorless mana each. Of course, green will be one of the more popular colors for players going this route, as several of the new green Eldrazi drop two or three of these little guys each while maintaining decent stats themselves.
An interesting mechanic utilized for the Eldrazi in this block is Devoid, causing the card to be a colorless card, even though colored mana may be used to cast the Eldrazi in question. This works well with several other Eldrazi cards that require a certain number of colorless permanents to be in play.
A key thing Eldrazi players will want to keep an eye on is the mechanic Awaken. By paying an extra cost on a card listed by the mechanic, a player can place a certain number of +1/+1 counters on a land, creating a land/creature hybrid. With the larger Eldrazi creatures costing significant amounts of mana and being much more vulnerable to low cost removal, utilizing Awaken may not be the most efficient method of getting out game finishing cards since a land that is also a creature can be killed due to the creature type.
The last thing I personally am looking forward to seeing are the new full-art land cards. The last time we had them was in a Zendikar block, and their price per card has increased in some shops to over a dollar each.
Whether you are a veteran Magic player, casual player or beginner, I have no doubt this will be a great set of cards to play with.
The prerelease will be at midnight on Friday, 9/25-26. Hope to see you there!
Have an opinion on the new Eldrazi? Share it with me below in the comments box. Thanks for reading!
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