What to Expect from Eventide, Magic the Gathering's New Expansion Set

Magic players are buzzing about Eventide, the new Magic the Gathering expansion set. Shadowmoor has been a great set both in limited and constructed and Eventide will fill out the Shadowmoor mini block. The Eventide preleases will be held on July 12-13, 2008 and Eventide will be officially released on July 25, 2008. What can you expect whenever you open a pack of Eventide? Here are 3 things.

Enemy Color Hybrids

This is the biggest development in my opinion. Shadowmoor rocked the Magic world with a set filled with many hybrid cards. However, all the hybrid cards in Shadowmoor were allied colors.

Eventide departs from Shadowmoor by introducing enemy color hybrid cards. If you were wishing for green/black or red/blue hybrids, you'll find them in Eventide. In fact, Mark Rosewater, Magic the Gathering's head designer, confirmed in his weekly column that Eventide would only contain enemy colored hybrids.

Returning Mechanics

Persist and wither were new mechanics from Shadowmoor. Expect to see a couple cards with these abilities in Eventide. I did a quick check on the Eventide Orb of Insight and found out there are 11 instances of persist and 13 instances of wither.

New Mechanics

While I'm glad the persist and wither mechanics are returning, I am also hoping for new mechanics in Eventide. New mechanics keep the game fresh by affecting gameplay and deck building.

The Magic designers did not disappoint me. I checked out an Eventide spoiler (mtgsalvation.com/eventide-spoiler.html) and found these two new mechanics: chroma and retrace.

Chroma is a mechanic that deals with mana symbols. Here is the spoiled card that uses this mechanic:

Name: Umbra Stalker
Cost: 4BBB
Type: Creature - Elemental
P/T: */*
Rules Text: Chroma - Umbra Stalker's power and toughness are each equal to the number of black mana symbols in the mana costs of cards in your graveyard.
Rarity: Rare

Chroma seems to be a mechanic that rewards players who build mono-colored decks.

The second mechanic, retrace, looks very powerful. It allows you to replay the card with retrace from your graveyard by paying its mana cost and discarding a land. Let's look at an example card.

Name: Raven's Crime
Cost: B
Type: Sorcery
Rules Text: Target player discards a card. Retrace (You may play this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.)
Flavor Text: It plucks away memories like choice bits of carrion.
Rarity: Common

I like retrace because it turns your extra lands into a spell. Even if you get mana flooded, you can use the extra lands to play your retrace spells from the graveyard. Retrace may lead to players adding more lands to their decks. Also, retrace will make cards like Extirpate, Faerie Macabre, and Wheel of Sun and Moon more valuable.