Zendikar Spoiler: New Mechanic, Landfall, on the Mythic Rare Rampaging Baloths

The Magic The Gathering player base was buzzing on Twitter and various forums when the Zendikar card Rampaging Baloths was spoiled. This mythic rare had a new mechanic called "Landfall." Here is the complete spoiler text.

Rampaging Baloths
4GG
Creature - Beast
Trample
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a 4/4 green Beast creature token onto the battlefield.
6/6

This is creature is very powerful and it makes mana flood (drawing too many lands) a good thing instead of something that causes you to lose the game.

Landfall should greatly change the way the game is played. Players will to be shy to add extra lands to their decks because they know that with enough Landfall cards, their lands will often function as spells. I think this is great for making MTG a more skill-based game without adding complexity since there will be less losses to mana screw (not drawing enough lands to play your spells).

Some shrewd players are saying that Landfall may give us a clue to the theme of Zendikar. They predict that Zendikar will have a land based theme. This prediction seems very possible when you consider what Mark Rosewater, MTG head designer, mentioned a couple weeks ago. He wrote that the recently spoiled full-art basic lands in Zendikar was very much related to the theme of the new set.

Also, think about the old mechanic Kicker. Kicker was revealed to be in Zendikar on one of the spoiled commons in Planechase. Kicker is a mechanic that thrives on having a lot of lands, because you need extra lands to pay Kicker costs.

With this in mind, I believe Zendikar will have some awesome new lands including creative designs on manlands.

Some currently overlooked cards should become playable with the Landfall mechanic. For example, consider Knight of the Reliquary. With Rampaging Baloths in play, you get a 4/4 creature every turn by using her ability. Also, Terramorphic Expanse is awesome with Landfall. Who knows, maybe the panoramas from Shards of Alara or the landcyclers from Conflux will become playable in the Zendikar Standard tournament format.

Control oriented cards should be stronger since control decks thrive on playing a lot of lands. However, these types of decks will probably not be blue-based as they have been in the past. The current trend by the MTG creators seems to be to push the other colors and weaken blue, since blue has been strong for a long time.

All in all, Zendikar looks like another winner from the MTG design and development team.