Magic: The Gathering – Battle for Zendikar

4/5 House rule to update the land system to Duel Masters, Marvel Champions, etc... rules for a more streamlined strategic experience = less luck.

[b]Zendikar Cube[/b] (mostly Battle for Zendikar block) [i]Distributed Planar Collection III (Jeremy)[/i]

I think I'm going to settle on a solid 7 for this set, which is based largely on the unpopular Battle for Zendikar. The design process was very interesting, as I tried to address the set's weaknesses by incorporating themes from Oath of the Gatewatch, original Zendikar, and Worldwake. I believe I was ultimately successful, which gives me an aura of pride when considering it, but ultimately all I managed to do was get this from being a weak set with few playable decks to hitting straight down the middle with about ten or so archetypes. That's about on par with Theros, which also settled in at a 7.

Design Impressions: In putting this set together, I had to learn all the inherent strategies to make sure I'm including them in the set in a balanced way. My experience echoed the opinions voiced on the Limited Resources podcast: this is a very complex set. Coming off Dragons of Tarkir, which was a cinch to put together, I am finding Battle for Zendikar satisfyingly challenging. I am cautiously hoping to upgrade green a bit, so it's not as nerfed at it was in the original, but just getting a baseline understanding of how the original ticked has been quite the puzzle. Despite the horrid reviews coming from some camps, I must say I am looking forward to playing this one!

Play Impressions: Having tried most of the color combinations in actual play, I can confirm this is a very solid set. It's not as thematically entertaining as Theros, but the decks are a bit more interesting, and I feel like I'm seeing a few more surprises. After a couple tours through the set, I started wondering if the suite of three Devoid archetypes were a little weak, as they'd never made much of a showing in any of our games. While that's the case, I don't think those color combinations are "unplayable"; they're just going to come together in more vanilla builds (e.g., UB Control) rather than the fancy version I was going for (e.g., UB Ingest). (It's worth noting my appreciation thus far has been in direct proportion to the number of sets I stuffed into a given set. Tarkir = 2, Theros = 3, Zendikar = 4.)

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