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Set Mechanics

For this set there are a number of mechanics and keywords. Let's discuss:

Shred

Shred is a mechanic which feeds into "Targeting Matters" perfectly--it lets you assign more targets than originally designated with the spell, thereby sharing the wealth of triggers that happen because of it.

Here is the official rules text of Shred: As you play this spell you may pay its Shred cost. If you do, you may distribute its effects among any number of target creatures or players instead of a single target.

Of course normal targeting rules apply. But with this knowledge, you know that Rescend can give a single creature -5/-0, or you can pay the Shred cost and suddenly five creatures can get -1/-0 or you could give three creatures -2/-0 -2/-0 -1/-0 respectively. How you split up the effect is up to you.

There are six spells with Shred:

Big thanks to my friend Zach for finding the word "distribute" which makes this whole cycle work so well.

Awaken

Inside ourselves are things we never knew we could achieve. And when we do, it is much like an 'awakening' of sorts. And this mechanic is exactly that--these creatures have great and/or stellar abilities, but rely on Awakening to show them off.

With this discard-based mechanic you can have both negative and positive effects of having a creature "Awakened" or become "Awakened". The official rules text of Awaken is: Awaken X (Discard X cards: Put an awaken counter on ~. Remove it at end of turn.)

Please Note: A creature can be "Awakened" only if it does not already have an Awaken counter. Hence any triggers that say "When ~ is awakened" will only fire off when an awaken counter is placed on a permament with no previous awaken counters on it.

You can awaken a permanent as much as you like. But you will only get "When ~ is/becomes awakened" once per turn, unless you remove the awaken counter some other way (with Flicker, or something).

There are over a dozen cards with Awaken. Here are some of my favorites:

Stasis

Stasis is a way of undercosting powerful effects by causing the player to lose the resources by which they played it for a turn.

You have already seen Helix of Creation via the splash page, which is a Tooth and Nail variant balanced by the fact that you must "Time Walk yourself" in order to get those creatures into play. Each of these spells is punishing in some aspect, but very powerful in others.

Resistance

The final keyworded mechanic is Resistance, which appears on three cards. This was a minor combat trick cycle that got its own keyword because I thought it would be much more interesting than a verbose statement reiterated three different times on three different cards.

Hopefully these mechanics look as much fun as they were to come up with. In my mind's eye I'm seeing some cool interactions here.

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