I appreciate Allie being less parasitic personally.

Then again, I never liked them to begin with, so maybe they shouldn't be trying to appeal to me.

I'm still pretty excited for the set, but I do agree that it'll be awkward to remember which creatures are Allies. It's good that they spread it out, but I just wish they'd made all the non-Allies be non-humanoid so it'd be easier to tell what's an Ally and what isn't.

The set does have a bunch of parasitic mechanics, but that doesn't bother me personally, since I really only play limited, and that's where parasitic mechanics shine.

It's gonna be awesome in limited, possibly best limited ever for a regular expansion. But not as good for standard which is what pvddr is complaining about.

But the exile matters and colorless matters both definitely interact with the previous block. And not all the colorless lands have to be played, just like any other card type. We're just used to colorless lands always being playable just like in the past we were used to removal always being playable in limited which is no longer the case. The colorless lands add some tension between playing lots of colours and not using them vs playing fewer colours and using them.

I agree with a lot of what he said before CFB hid the article. I like that Allies are slightly more useful outside the AllInAllies.dec and there are definitely some colourless-matters interactions from Khans.

But this does feel very Kamigawa Redux, and I can totally see why fullarts and Expeditions were put in now - this set would not outsell Tarkir sets without them.

CFB hid the article? I can still see it there...

To be fair, I'm sure the full art lands were one of the first things put into the file, so you can't really call them an emergency move to make the Set sell more.

The relatively low power level is what would prevent the set from selling, but pvddr said that wasn't his issue with the set

I thought it was a pathetic whine. I think he writes one of these for every set? Obviously they have to occasionally drop down Standard power levels or it will escalate forever. And in Khans when they printed modern cards they had to ban two.

And complaining about "which are allies" is just whatever. RTFC.

he explicitly didn't complain about power levels?

They altered the date to take it off the front page, and removed all the tweets linking to it.

Next block after BFZ is Shadows over Innistrad. Any idea what it will be about?

This guy should explain that: Mad prophet

Mind blown.

I'm so excited for Shadows over Innistrad. The original is my favorite set of all time, and Liliana one of my favorite characters, so Wizards already has my attention. I just hope they can live up to the original and not take away the sense of horror that made it so great.

I'm distinctly worried over how much they're going to retread considering the abysmal showing of original thought involved with BFZ.

It's basically a given DFC cards will be back.

I think you are vastly underselling the amount of work that was put into Battle for Zendikar. It's a set with very good gameplay.

The new mechanics are not terribly impressive. I'm not saying it wasn't vetted well, but converge is mostly terrible cards and pretty much had to be for balance issues, awaken is just really not that exciting, and devoid is more flavor text than a real mechanic (even if I happen to like it). Ingest is there to fuel processor, which is odd, but in a new way at least. Landfall and allies are reheated, even if rally opened up the potential a bit too wide for my taste.

The mechanics just kind of fall flat. The cards might work, but the best parts of the set are just delivering on old things.

So which mechanics would you guys expect to return in Shadows Over Innistrad?

For reference, the ones in Innistrad block were:

Flashback
Morbid
Undying
Fateful Hour
Miracle
Soulbond

Also DFCs and Curses.

My bet is on Morbid as practically a given, with Flashback second and Undying third most likely. Fateful Hour was not very good and I doubt any of the AVR ones are coming back.

I think the only one we can be sure about is DFCs.

Flashback was itself a returning mechanic, so it doesn't have to return again.
Morbid has already returned in Conspiracy, same with Curses.
Undying is hard to develop, same with Miracle. I'm not sure if the AVR mechanics will return since it was from a mechanically distinct set. On the other hand, when we last left Innistrad it was in Angel mode so maybe they will pick up where they left off. (For this reason I don't think fateful hour would fit flavorwise).

What if they swapped out Flashback with Unearth?

That's possible. The past three return blocks all kept their main mechanical theme (artifacts, multicolor, lands) so even if Innistrad was top down I think we can still expect a graveyard theme, as well as minor tribal theme. It has to play well with old Innistrad.