When Will WotC Print Enemy-Colored Counterparts to the Battle Lands?

Spoilers, Rumors, and Speculation forum

Posted on Oct. 4, 2016, 4:12 p.m. by DemonDragonJ

In Kaladesh, WotC finally printed enemy-colored counterparts to the dual lands from the Scars of Mirrodin block, which many players had been desiring for a long time.

Therefore, I believe that it is all but certain that WotC shall eventually print enemy-colored counterparts to the dual lands from Battle for Zendikar, also often known as the "battle lands." The only uncertain aspect of that is when they shall do so.

The Kaladesh dual lands were printed eight blocks after the Scars of Mirrodin dual lands (coincidentally, both of which are artifact-focused blocks), so I imagine that it may take eight blocks after the Battle for Zendikar block to see enemy-colored counterparts to the battle lands.

What does everyone else say about this? When will WotC print enemy-colored counterparts to the Battle for Zendikar dual lands?

DarkLaw says... #2

Seems a little early to discuss this, no? The lands aren't even out of standard.

October 4, 2016 4:57 p.m.

Servo_Token says... #3

Probably after whenever someone actively pushes the "Frontier" format and there's enough players in that format that need access to all ten of them.

October 4, 2016 4:59 p.m.

Atony1400 says... #4

DevoidMage, I dobut Frontier will ever take off as a format.

It will likely be 10 or so blocks until we see those lands again.

October 4, 2016 5:45 p.m. Edited.

Servo_Token says... #5

People said the same thing about modern. It's obvious that the frontier format is being built into something that wizards is happy with, it's just a matter of time before people embrace it.

October 4, 2016 5:55 p.m.

kengiczar says... #6

Things are gonna be confusing at my LGS if they call their "new modern" by the name "New Frontiers" as that's what Force of Will TCG calls their Standard.

Anyways to the OP I think it will be done and I expect it to take 10 years.... WotC is in the habit of starting things but only finishing them when it suits their set construction rather than according to player demand. At least when it comes to lands*.

October 4, 2016 10:45 p.m.

Postmortal_Pop says... #7

I can't see why wizards doesn't just print all 10 in the sets that start in, if the set is suppose to be balanced then you can't give just 5 duel colors a clear advantage.

October 5, 2016 12:22 a.m.

DemonDragonJ says... #8

Did not WotC, at one point, say that they would attempt to give equal support to all ten two-color combinations, most notably by always printing dual lands in cycles of ten? They printed ten shocklands, ten filter lands, ten scry lands, and ten "lifelands" in the Tarkir block, but why did they print only five scar lands (originally) and five battle lands? Is that not unbalanced?

October 5, 2016 12:53 a.m.

sylvannos says... #9

@Postmortal_Pop and DemonDragonJ: WotC said they were going to do all 10 lands in every block whenever they introduced a cycle because of what happened during Innistrad Block Constructed.

Here's one source from Mark Rosewater.

All of the set's mechanics were tied to ally color pairs (R/G Werewolves, U/W Miracles, G/W Humans, etc.). However, the dual lands for the block were enemy colored (Woodland Cemetery, Clifftop Retreat, et al). This lead to a lot of issues where the format ended up narrowing in on enemy color pairs and just playing good stuff decks. The purpose of block formats is to showcase mechanics and lore in order to make it different from Standard. That was all lost during ISD Block Constructed.

But then, they got rid of Block Constructed as a required format for some events. This killed the format and now they don't have to deal with the promise they made and can do whatever they want with lands in terms of design.

Here is a really good article of the way the MtG:O community feels about the loss of THS block being pulled from the client and how the delays in KTK block really hurt the format.

October 5, 2016 10:49 a.m.

kengiczar says... #10

Having to many duals is bad... well for WotC at least.

(A) 5/5/5 split. People play mono color decks.

(B) 5/5/10 split. People play dual and tri-color decks. The other colors truly are just "splashed".

(C) 5/10/10 split. Almost everyone plays dual and tri-color decks. Mono color decks are exceedingly rare unless a card like Blood Moon is in the format.

(D) 10/10/10 split. Everybody plays 3, 4, and 5 color decks.

Lengthy diatribe of an unemployed rambling man who loves recognizing patterns and MTG.
Show

WotC has to be very careful about when and where they put 10-card cycles when it comes to dual lands. One of the things they can periodically do to keep the cost of standard down, thus attracting new players, is to use the 5/5/10 cycle. In a world with 1 and 2 color decks dominating you don't ahve to buy as many dual lands if any. This isn't "bad" for local game stores it's just not as good as when you need lots of duals to compete. As far as WotC's wallet goes ithardly matters because they are still selling lots of product since people still buy sealed in order to get dual lands for later and the cards for their decks. At the same time if they are doing the 5/5/10 cycle, or even a 5/10/10 cycle where one o the sets of 10 is bad, then one of those needs to be a set of new lands to keep people from getting bored or disatisfied with sealed product.

it's a very delicate balancing act but WotC pulled it off with the fast-land cycle the first time around.

On the other extreme when you have a 10/10/10 situation then players get very mad at others just jamming the best cards into a deck. There are two ways to solve this: (A) color-blend or (B) making types or sub-types matter.

Option (A) has the downside of ruining eternal formats. It's fine a limited environment beacuse it allows two different 5-color decks to play very differently despite being made of the same colors and even lands. In eternal formats it does dumb things like giving colors things they shouldn't have. (Beast Within or Pongify for example were quite the color bends.)

Option (B) is just fraught with peril. First off there are only Lands, Instants, Sorceries, and Creatures. Well lately WotC has been making planeswalkers.deck possible and "oops all lands" not possible so lets say we have creatures.deck, spells.deck,, and walkers.deck.

Players complained a lot about spells.deck so that's no longer possible. Players also aren't keen on enchantments.deck and WotC has already done artifacts.deck. TWICE. That's why this time around they made a whole new type, "vehicles". This is incredibly hard to do consistently though but lets say they did. Lets say you had a 5 color block where everybody had the same $300.00 land base..... and yoru new card type won't see support for years. Think about it, if WotC puts vehicles into the set after kaldesh block player are going to be like "sigh I'm bored of that" and become disinterested.

So "what about sub-types?" you quip enthusiastically. Well WotC tried that with sahdowmoore and eventide and people generally adopted the saying "sick of faeries" as that was the dominant tribe. It became SUCH a problem that WotC vowed never to make tribal types that strong in standard again. They even abandoned slivers for years before finally making more and when they made more they were weak and not at all reminiscent of the past in any visual quality. Now I think tribal could work quite well but there is also the fact that a lot of players just don't like it.

So then how do you make a standard format where everyone can play 5 color decks but still have multiple deck-types? There is one more option and it is probably the most hated and despised amongst new players and the most missed out of true "old-timers". You could make archetypes distinct again.

You could make aggro win on T3 & T4 consistently, control only win if it survives past T4, and introduce combo with recursion to get around control that is slower than aggro. This would lead to an Aggro>Combo>Control>Aggro triangle. But players don't like combo either!

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TLDR: Having to many 10 card land cycles leads to design challenges that so far have not been solved.

October 5, 2016 11:09 a.m.