The Colorless Mana of Zendikar

I generally don’t like it when blog posts are self-referential about how infrequently they appear on any given blog. That being said, I haven’t been posting a lot recently because I’ve been involved in an in-depth, very time-consuming project - i.e. editing together a playthrough/let’s play/episodic watching someone play a video game experience starring Batman: Arkham Knight. My version of the game’s story runs 15 episodes, each under 30 minutes (except the premiere and the finale, which are both under 32.5 minutes), which equals just under 7 hours of footage. I just finished rough cuts of all 15, which means all the content is cut, complete with music (most of it custom-picked), but I have yet to record voice-over commentary, which will explain both my gameplay and creative choices in real time. 

At this point, I have essentially edited a short season’s worth of content for a television show - i.e. a show that you could watch on your television set, (via streaming or otherwise) rather than in a movie theater. And I did this all on spec - i.e. for free - using content owned completely by Warner Bros., DC Comics, and Rocksteady Games (but with gameplay and creative decisions owned by me). The whole project is essentially meant as a gift, a gift to all those on the Internet who enjoy stories that happen in video games and stories about Batman. I readily admit that I am a member of both camps, so this project is a gift to myself, first and foremost, a gift that I will gladly accept, just as soon as I’ve wrapped it up in a neat little package.

But now that I’ve hit this milestone, I’m taking some time for another gift to myself: musings about another of my in-depth, time consuming hobbies, Magic: The Gathering. The good folks at Wizards of the Coast (don’t even get me started on their OTHER in-depth, time-consuming game, Dungeons and Dragons) have just changed the format of how Magic products are released. And the latest set to come out is Oath of the Gatewatch, the second set in the Battle for Zendikar block, which is the first block under the new system to feature only two sets instead of three. Didja get all that? BFZ-OGW is only two sets, but those two sets constitute an entire block.

In honor of this format-breaking event, Oath of the Gatewatch includes a format-breaking new mechanic - i.e. they’ve added a sixth basic land type* to go along with the traditional WUBRG (White, blUe, Black, Red, Green) structure. This type is called Wastes and produces only colorless mana. It is one of the more on-flavor mechanics, as these lands represent the Plane of Zendikar’s destruction and subversion by the mysterious and terrifying Eldrazi. These Eldrazi are represented by cards that REQUIRE colorless mana, another Magic first. Think more mindless than the effects of a Phyrexian invasion, but more personal than an Ob Nixilis-esque planar destruction.

* Wastes function as basic lands in some ways - i.e. you can feature multiples in Commander/Singleton decks and you can search for them with cards like Evolving Wilds. However, they differ in that you can’t add them to your deck for free in Limited formats - i.e. you have to draft them out of packs just like you would any other spell or nonbasic land.

But looking back at historical Zendikar sets, the Wastes land type is not the plane’s first encounter with creating colorless mana. The first set in the original Zendikar block had no cards that produced colorless mana, lands or otherwise. The second and middle set Worldwake, back when blocks used to have THREE sets each, had only four such cards: lands Dread Statuary (a land that can become an Golem artifact creature), Quicksand, and Tectonic Edge (both representing volatile geographic features), and the artifact Everflowing Chalice (which is just good solid ramping).

But with the third set Rise of the Eldrazi, we see a whopping 18 cards that can create colorless mana, but in a new and unique way. With the exception of one land (the fittingly named Eldrazi Temple) and one artifact (the also on-flavor Dreamstone Hedron), the mana from these cards comes from 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn tokens, that can be sacrificed to add 1 colorless mana (or {C} as it’s now known) to your mana pool. These 16 cards, which are confined to the colors Black, Green, and Red, exist solely for ramping purposes, rather than to fill a need for colorless mana.

The same can be said about the significantly more powerful 1/1 Eldrazi Scion tokens produced by 16 cards (coincidence?) from Battle for Zendikar - about the ramping, that is, not about the colors, because in BFZ Blue replaces Red in the token producing color identity. From a flavor perspective, I see this change as follows: when enough colorless mana was created by Eldrazi Spawn, these lesser tokens mutated or evolved into the far superior Scions. This change would have happened in the downtime between ROE and BFZ.

Following this ilne of thought to its logical conclusion, when enough colorless mana is created from the Scions, it starts affecting the very lands themselves, transforming them into Wastes. This problem has become so pervasive in the time between BFZ and OGW that we need both a new basic land and a new mana symbol to represent it. It’s a great way to use mechanics to tell a story, to which the MTG crew has really been paying special attention since the Khans of Tarkir block. Your efforts have not been unnoticed!

I don’t know what this ultimately means for the Plane of Zendikar, except I do know that the decks based on that plane will continue to have significantly more color-producing basic lands in them than not. And that is an encouraging thought.