Mark Rosewater's Comments on Blocking Additional Creatures
General forum
Posted on Sept. 6, 2025, 11:09 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
In this post, Mark Rosewater stated that the ability to block additional creatures (as seen on Avatar of Hope and similar creatures) is a 10 on the storm scale, meaning that it is highly unlikely to return in a standard-legal set, because the ability does not do well in digital formats, but I am very displeased with that reasoning, since this game was physical long before it was digital, and discontinuing a mechanic in the physical game because it plays poorly in the digital game is outrageous, in my mind, so I do hope that WotC shall eventually change their stance on this matter, as I am very fond of that mechanic, and I am certain that other players, are as well.
What does everyone else here say, about this subject? Are you also displeased at the reason for WotC not reusing the mechanic of blocking additional creatures? I certainly am interested to hear your thoughts, on this matter.
If his main reason was 'online doesn't like it' I think he's being spurious, the reason we could never have 'blocks extra dudes' as a supported mechanic was because it slows games down; if you have a big creature with the ability to block two creatures it's considerably harder to attack into because each swing likely costs 2 creatures (which also deal no damage to the opponent). If the creature is small it's even more problematic because the ability would probably be cheap to see play. Toss in Vigilance and Lifelink and now your big creature needs to be removed or you're going to win. The ability looks small until you actually play with it IMHO, Brave the Sands is a very good option for Voltron decks for this reason, even though neither ability is remotely flashy or exciting.
FWIW it also interacts strangely with things like Menace; can the creature block the Menace threat by itself, or can it only block it with another creature (and yet can still block a 2nd creature that combat)? Players don't want these hassles in their fun hobby, they want fast games where AGGRO is always a 'viable' strategy, even if it's not usually 'the best' strategy. It's also why 'toughness matters' is WAY less supported than 'power matters', because incentivizing high power helps finish games more than buffing toughness, which worst of all threatens the nightmare of 2 mono-white decks facing off with a variety of Vigilance turtle creatures. Toss in that White has bad creature removal for most of Magic's history and you have the Dev's worst nightmare. The problem is these types of 'toughness matters' decks are very fun and interesting if they're rare, but as soon as they start having mirror matches it can result in delays in the tournament because nobody can generate enough advantage to win. It's also why we don't get turtle creatures that are like 3/7 with Vigilance and Lifelink, they just stall the game and can't win without serious support (I just looked and the closest I could find was 3WW for a 2/4 with the two keywords, imagine if you pulled those in draft as your top end for your mono W list, and run into the mirror! The match will take 2 hours and end in game one with one player decking out.
Just my 2 cents.
September 7, 2025 10:37 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #4
Crow_Umbra, DreadKhan, once again, WotC is supporting aggressive strategies over defensive ones; I should apply for a job, there, to see if I can make defensive strategies popular, again.
September 7, 2025 3:56 p.m.
wallisface says... #5
DemonDragonJ the mechanic is bad for more reasons than just digital play, as others have already covered.
There’s a big difference between “defensive strategies” and what this effect does, which is create unintuitive board states, and gummed-up board states that undermine the combat step.
With all due respect, Wotc are generally very careful to hire people with very a strong grasp of the game and the design process - it’s a job that’ll have a ton of people wanting to be part of, so they’re only ever going to pick the very best. Your general montage of posts confused about card interactions/power-level/design-direction lead me to believe they would not find you to be a good fit. They’d want a candidate that intuitively already knows all these things.
September 7, 2025 4:10 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #6
wallisface, I was not actually being serious, as I am very fond of my current job, but, if I was working for WotC, I would have opposed the printing of cards such as Jumbo Cactuar or Overkill with every ounce of energy that I had.
September 7, 2025 4:28 p.m.
wallisface says... #7
DemonDragonJ your opposition to those cards only justifies my claim ;)
September 7, 2025 5:46 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #8
wallisface, I am not certain that I agree, with that, but, since I am not actually serious about working for WotC, there is no need to discuss that subject, any further.
Crow_Umbra says... #2
I think it makes sense. It seems like a trend in contemporary design is to reduce "gummed up" boards that lead to stalemates. Some examples are Decayed tokens or creatures, such as ones created by Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia or Gisa, Glorious Resurrector. This is definitely not a comprehensive list, but here's various examples of mostly contemporary designs that create creature tokens that can't block.
The ability to block any number of creatures isn't very common, and is used on very rare occasions. I think it's a generally a pretty low-impact mechanic, so it makes sense it's not going to see much use.
September 6, 2025 11:31 p.m.