Welcome back to another week of Ideas Unbound. The next major event I plan to attend is Grand Prix Louisville, which is after Theros comes out. Between this, and the fact that my new schedule at work means I will not be able to play FNM means that I won’t be focusing much on the current Standard format. Today we are going to look at some of the spoilers from Theros and see what we can divine about the next few months.



We only have about 25% of the set to work with so far, but we can still start to get some general ideas and look to expand on those ideas as new cards are released. We are going to start by looking at the mechanics themselves and how they might be used.

Scry

Anyone who has been playing this game for a while will tell you how good Scry is. This mechanic has shown in multiple blocks going back through the history of Magic and has never been disappointing. For those of you new to Magic, I will go over Scry and why it is as good as it is.

One of the biggest factors in a game of Magic is the luck of the draw. You never really know what card your deck is going to give you on a specific turn. It makes it difficult to plan long term and means you have to be adjustable to what you draw. Scry helps reduce this situation.

Scry allows you to look at some number of cards on the top of your deck and decide if you want to leave them there or ship them to the bottom. It’s pretty easy to see how this is beneficial. Scry allows you to dig for the cards you need. Imagine you have two lands in hand, but need a removal spell. Then you Scry 2 and see two more lands coming. Now you get to move those two lands to the bottom and have a better chance of drawing that removal spell you need.

While, that was a very basic example of how Scry is useful, it helps to see how power the ability can be. Sometimes, it’s not that obvious though. Scry is a skill-testing mechanic, because in order to use it to its fullest potential, you have to be able to recognize the state of the game and plan ahead based on the information it provides you. You may see a card that you don’t need right now, but it may be useful two turns from now. If you move it to the bottom, you may not see it again. This becomes especially important in Limited when that could very well be the only copy of that card in your deck.

Now that we have the easy one out of the way, let’s take a look at the new mechanics

Bestow

Bestow is a very interesting mechanic allowing giving your creatures flexibility and giving card advantage to a card type that has been notorious for card disadvantage: the Aura. Historically, playing an Aura on a creature leads to you losing card advantage because if your opponent kills the enchanted permanent, the Aura typically goes with it, costing you two cards. Bestow has the advantage of sidestepping this.

A quick rules tip: If you cast a Bestow creature as an Aura and the target dies in response, the Bestow creature WILL enter the battlefield in creature form. It does not get countered like a typical Aura would. This is just another way Bestow helps avoid the inherent disadvantage in Auras.

Even though Bestow removes the disadvantage of Auras, it does not come cheap. Of the Bestow cards we’ve seen so far, the cost to use the Bestow ability have been on the higher side. This leads me to believe that this is a mechanic that will mostly be used in Limited. In limited you can play the Bestow aura on a weaker creature making it something your opponent has to deal with. Once they use their removal, you are still left with the Bestow guy as a creature making your opponent find another removal spell.

One of the biggest skill testers of the Theros limited format I believe will be learning when to cast them as a creature and when to Bestow them. It will be similar to how Bloodrush worked in Gatecrash limited. Sometimes you need a creature immediately to develop the game state, but sometimes it is worth more to wait for the extra mana to Bestow it.

Monstrosity

This will be another mechanic that I think will shine in Limited more than Constructed. Monstrosity functions as a mana sink in games that go long, giving you things to do on turns where you don’t have spells to cast. Not only does it make the creature bigger, it usually generates an effect as well.

The existence of Bestow and Monstrosity lead me to believe that this is going to be a slower Limited environment, giving you time to get to a late game where you can use these increased costs. Most of the Monstrosity creatures are pretty decent vanilla creatures for their cost in Limited, but can become insane once they go Monstrous. The fact that most of the start as vanilla creatures is what leads me to believe they won’t have much of an impact on Constructed.

Heroic

The Heroic mechanic rewards you nicely for combat tricks. I think some of these guys will work their way into aggro decks in Constructed. It seems awesome casting a pump spell on your guy to save them in combat and getting a nice bonus from it as well.

It’s interesting how this mechanic plays well with Bestow. Auras are targeted spells so they will trigger Heroic. This could make for some very interested Limited game play. I’m already excited to draft this set.

Another rules tip here: The trigger happens as soon as you cast the spell, before your opponent gets a chance to respond. So even if they kill the Heroic creature in response or counter the spell, the trigger will still resolve giving you the bonus.

Yet another rules tip: Bloodrush will not trigger Heroic. When you use Bloodrush, you are using an activated ability, not casting a spell. That means no bonuses from your Ghor-Clan Rampager.

Devotion

Devotion is definitely one of the more interesting mechanics in the set. It encourages a play style completely opposite to what Ravnica block is trying to promote. This should lead to an interesting dynamic where decks are trying to take advantage of the plethora of multicolor color cards in the format while maintaining the right balance to keep their devotion high. What makes things really interesting are hybrid cards. A hybrid mana symbol counts as a mana symbol of both colors. So a Boros Reckoner provides 3 devotion to white and 3 devotion to red.

It’s hard to really comment on this mechanic at this time because the effects are varied. We need to see if any of the effects available are strong enough to focus our deck on that color and give up the advantage of the multicolor spells from Ravnica. I have a hunch that we will see some pretty powerful effects so I am going to keep my eye on this as well any card with at least two colored mana symbols in its cost.

Wrap Up

Most of the mechanics in this set probably will not see much play in Standard. Bestow and Monstrosity seem like they will make Limited very interesting. Again, these are just speculations based on a quarter of the set, but I think I’m on the right trail. Next week, we will have plenty more spoilers available and we will start looking at individual cards. As always feel free to leave questions and comments and I will answer them as best I can.

Eddie Walker
@praethus on Twitter
praethus on MTGO