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First Look at Ixalan Mechanics for Limited
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Quick aside: this also means that we’ll be saying goodbye to one of the better draft formats in recent Magic history. If you haven’t had a chance to dig into Hour of Devastation-Hour of Devastation-Amonkhet, please go out and do so! Or if you were like me and turned off by the pure aggression in triple Amonkhet, prepare to be pleasantly surprised by the multitude of deck options Hour of Devastation opened up!
Anyways, back to Ixalan. While we don’t have the full set to view yet, all the mechanics have been revealed, along with some marquee cards to showcase them in action.
[Ruin Raider]
Let’s start with raid which made its debut in Khans of Tarkir: this popular and intuitive mechanic asks only that you attack with at least one of your creatures in return for a sweet bonus. In Ixalan, raid seems to be centered on Grixis colors, present among the Pirate tribe, and conspicuously missing from Dinosaurs and those that worship them. This does seem like a natural fit, as the smaller tribes already benefit from having early strong board presence on due to their creature synergies, and thus can turn on raid both consistently and ahead of schedule.
In order to fully leverage the raid mechanic, your deck should have numerous one- and two-drop creatures, ideally ones that will still have utility even later in the game. That means possessing evasive abilities like flying, relevant activated abilities, or even just being part of a synergistic tribe with other cards rewarding you for that. The more and better raid cards you have, the more you’ll want to fill your deck with these “enablers”. Storm Fleet Aerialist, the two mana 1/2 flier that becomes a 2/3 when raided, for example, is an excellent card for this style as it both acts as enabler and payoff. Storm Fleet Spy, the three mana 2/2 that draws a card if raided, and Storm Fleet Arsonist, the five mana 4/4 that forces a sacrifice if raided, on the other hand, are purely payoffs for turning on raid with the Arsonist potentially game breaking in the right matchups.
Cheap removal and combat tricks are also good here, as you’ll be entering the combat zone frequently. However, do be careful of stuffing your deck with too many expensive combat tricks since you’ll often want to spend most of your mana in your second main phase on casting raid cards. Another thing to note is that against experienced opponents, occasionally you can disguise tricks while attacking with seemingly inferior creatures as suicidal attacks to turn on raid are not uncommon. It also may mean bluff attacks will be called more frequently in this format than otherwise, with people blocking assuming you were just trying to raid something. Finally, I suspect that this mechanic will push players into choosing to play first, as not only does that allow for getting free hits in while enabling on raid, but being on the draw means every attacker you spend to raid is one fewer blocker available when you’re most likely already behind on board position.
The next major mechanic in Ixalan is enrage, which looks fairly straightforward in its application: encouraging players to repeatedly get into combat. Unlike raid, this mechanics works just fine while blocking, and it may be correct to hold back creatures to have the option of triggering enrage if you think your opponent will not turn it on for you by blocking when you attack. In fact, defensive enrage on creatures with higher toughness than power may be exactly what the bigger dinosaur decks are looking for when trying to stabilize against the quicker aggressive decks, so keep an eye out for any that you open when assembling such decks. Another strategic option available to enrage are pingers -- creatures or other permanents that are capable of repeatedly dealing damage to other creatures. Lately it seems that Wizards of the Coast has dialed back the frequency of this type of cards, but if they exist in Ixalan there is potential for some very powerful results. The usual caveat applies for these multi-card combos in limited: don't play either side unless they are individually good cards, as you will have a large number of games where only one makes it to the table and survives.
I’m actually slightly underwhelmed at the enrage cards revealed so far, as most of them are either over costed bodies with passable effects (Sun-Crowned Hunters, a six mana 5/4 that deals three damage on enrage), or small enough that you will usually only get their trigger once (Ravenous Daggertooth, a three mana 3/2 that gains two life on enrage). Ranging Raptors, a three mana 2/3 that searches for a land on enrage, is very good on turn three against an aggressive deck, but elsewhere is probably only a chump blocker that will enrage a delayed Rampant Growth. Even the Bellowing Aegisaur, a six mana 3/5 that adds +1/+1 counters to your creatures, requires having both a board and most likely a minimum of two triggers to have its impact felt. Ripjaw Raptor is the only enrage card that does it all, but thankfully at rare it will not show up and take over limited games too often. With the majority of commons and uncommons not yet revealed, I’m sure this lack of solid enrage cards will change and we’ll see a good number of them show up at the prerelease. While on the subject of specific cards, two that work particularly well with enrage are Savage Stomp and Raging Swordtooth. These two are already powerful cards at their baseline level, but are immensely improved when combined with angry Dinosaurs – just be careful about turning on ones on your opponent’s side!
Explore is the last keyworded mechanic in the set, and it’s completely new. The closest resemblance I’ve seen it be compared to is scry, and for the most part explore is directly superior, as it sometimes lets you draw a card, and other times nets you +1/+1 counters and can bin unwanted cards into the graveyard. This mechanic serves the purpose of smoothing out draws and reducing games decided by mana shortage or flooding, but does not seem to me powerful enough to provide a significant late game advantage even if there were repeatable explore effects. For example, if there is a Tamiyo’s Journal equivalent for exploring, it would obviously be worse than making Clues that draw cards. I do quite like it when attached to individual cards as one-shot bonus, such as Tishana’s Wayfinder, a three mana 2/2 that explores, and Merfolk Branchwalker, a two mana 2/1 that explores. The uncommon Lurking Chupacabra is also playable once you have a good number of explore cards, as it is very similar to Blightcaster from Magic 2014, which I recall wanting at least 5-6 enchantments to be worthwhile.
I’ll briefly talk about Treasure tokens and vehicles here, as I doubt either of them will have a drastic effect on Ixalan gameplay. Treasures by themselves are not very impactful, acting as color fixing and a burst of resource, but never generating any card advantage. The Ixalan treasure cards revealed so far are all expensive enough that we will rarely see a tempo game decided one player getting far ahead in mana early on. What this means is that outside of specific cards that leverage Treasure usage, you should probably not go out of your way to play with these cards unless you really need the color fixing. Vehicles made their debut in Kaladesh, and players immediately realized how strong these oversized, immune-to-sorcery-speed-removal, pseudo-haste cards were. This time around Wizards of the Coast have hopefully learned from the past and priced them more appropriately. So far, Sleek Schooner has very modest stats, and Dusk Legion Dreadnought is very solid but not oppressive at 5 cmc. I look forward to putting the days of Renegade Freighter and Irontread Crusher behind, and I doubt it’ll be necessary to maindeck artifact removal in sealed in Ixalan.
As for the Vampires, Merfolk, Pirates and Dinosaurs creature types I’m afraid there isn’t much to say, due to most of the revealed cards not caring about tribal synergies. Using recent Magic sets as guidelines I expect most decks to only loosely care about what creature types you have in your deck, with possibly exceptions at higher rarity levels. Even uncommon tribal cards probably will not demand too much of you, so focus on what their individual merits are and how well they synergize with your existing cards, not what their highest potential may be. One of the more common pitfalls that newer Magic players commit is playing a set of bad cards that together reach mediocrity, or adding bad cards to their deck when their big payoff card doesn’t need an overload of that type to really succeed. Deathless Ancient, a 4/4 flying that can recur if you tap three Vampires, is often just as good as a 4/4 flier as it would be coming back, and Thundering Spineback, a seven mana 5/5 that pumps your Dinosaurs and can make Dinosaur tokens, is going to take over a game just by making tokens even if you have no other Dinosaurs.
To wrap things up, here are what I think I would try to do at the prerelease and release events for Ixalan. Be on the play with plenty of early creatures. Stick to two colors and play sixteen lands, using Treasures and the Evolving Wilds or Traveler’s Amulet easy fixing equivalents to cast the few big spells in my deck or maybe or or two splashed off-color ones. Treat raid cards as always enabled, play enrage and explore cards only if the rest of the card is reasonably costed. Prioritize high powered creatures and unconditional removal to trade against the many large Dinosaurs and other bombs. Above all, have fun and take joy in trying out the new cards!