Gatecrash Mechanics

[Thomas David Baker]

Simic - Evolve (Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, if that creature has greater power or toughness than this creature, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.)

Boros - Battalion - Whenever ~ and at least two other creatures attack, ~ deals 3 damage to target creature or player and you gain 3 life.

Gruul - Bloodrush - {cost}, Discard ~: Target attacking creature gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of lands you control.

Orzhov - Extort (Whenever you cast a spell you may pay {cost}, if you do each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life.)

Dimir - Cipher (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of the encoded card without paying its mana cost.)

What do we think?  They all seem pretty cool.  Extort is pretty narrow if the effect is always drain for 1 but we can all already see the "extort deck" in Limited full of extort guys and very cheap spells.  I think it's unfortunate that the Dimir mechanic requires combat damage to a player.  Bloodrush is certainly going to win some games.  I can't think of anything I want more in my RG aggro deck than a creature/pump spell split card!

I assume the effects on Battalion are going to vary by card.  Bloodrush will usually be +X/+Y where X is power Y is toughness of discarded creature?  Extort I think will always be drain for one?  Evolve is obviously always the same but some creatures have triggered abilities to do with +1/+1 counters landing on them (and others can move the counters).

I can already think of ways that Extort, Cipher, Battalion and Evolve will warp draft strategies which I think is a good thing.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I'm amazed how close some of these abilities are to the themes and abilities we came up with in our Wedges set.

Overwhelm and Battalion are the closest, and Surge and Evolve are mucking about in the same space. I'm guessing Bloodrush won't just care about lands you control, but if it does it will be close to our URG mechanic.

As for the actual abilities itself, I can see Extort decks being a giant pain in the ass, and Cipher looks pretty clunky to me, will be very dependant on the spells they print with it.

Evolve looks like it might be fun if there are good ways to manipulate the +1/+1 counters.

[Philip Dickinson]

fwiw Bloodrush is actually +x/+y where x/y are the p/t of the creature

[Thomas David Baker]

The salvation spoiler had it like that for the rare but that would make sense as the general mechanic.