Why is There Just 1 Flashback Card in Phyrexia: All Will Be One? | MTG Magic: The Gathering Mechanic 

3:56 the fact that a prominent Magic designer is using Scryfall really says something about how useful Gatherer actually is 😅

This is a great idea. I always thought it was silly to avoid shorthand names for mechanics if it wasn’t a primary mechanic of the set

As a new-er player myself who's dyslexic, I find keywords waaaaay better to read than long card text, even if I don't know what the keyword is, learning it and remembering it is a much more enjoyable experience for me than trying to get through a ton of card text on a card my opponent played upside down from my perspective on the other side of the table!

I love this. This is one of the best changes I think I've seen during my time playing this game, and my only disappointment is that you're *not* going back and erattaing old cards to work with them if their text is /exactly/ matching one of these mechanics :P

Landfall better be on that list it's such a simple mechanic with a large amount of reminder text that it would remove the cognitive load of reading new cards.

Really happy to see WotC has come around on one-off mechanics and being more generous with deciduous mechanics. The most problematic type of complexity on cards I think comes from raw word count, especially on cards like the Deans from Strixhaven or Questing Beast, and not from one-off keywords being reused (even with reminder text).

"Good Morning, Good Morning Magic!" ~Magic

I think the old cards should definitely be updated.

I actually think this is a great idea and I think this really helps the readabillity of cards in the future. I mean, at the end of the day thats what keywords are for - they are meant to simpify the writing on the cards so that complex rules can be broken down to only a word.

I like this deciduous mechanics change! Affinity and Flashback have EVOCATIVE names that just feel right to see on cards.

I am excited by both this change and more episodes of GMM....perhaps I have Affinity for Gavin?

I remember this conversation, when Consider was released and actually commenting on it. When I saw Wizards going back to change a number of cards to reword their abilities as Surveil and Landfall somewhat recently, I rejoiced. It's great to see that the people making the game actually listens to the community, and that learn from trying out different things as well. Thanks for making this decision, it's a big victory for those of us who really love synergetic gameplay.

I love that you chose to call this Deciduous. Makes perfect sense and cements Forest to be the strongest card

I'm really happy about all this, BUT the one sore point is the lack of errata for older wordings. Like you said (and I've been saying for years and years at this point), the world is different and looking up cards is so SO much easier these days. Depriving players of synergies that are staring them right in the face seems absolutely ridiculous to me. I'm not saying everything should be errata'ed, some cards would definitely behave in unexpected ways, but the whole "cards need to work exactly as printed" has LONG since been invalid. The planeswalker damage redirection changes, companion changes, even little changes like Ajani's Pridemate no longer being a "may" ability. They all invalidated what was written on cards but made the game better and more cohesive. After all these changes big and small just over the past few years I find it incredibly frustrating that THIS is the hill R&D seems insistent to die on. If confusing newer players really is the primary concern, why be so stubborn about the consolidation and reduction of words?

A couple of mechanics that I would LOVE to see appear anywhere are Cycling, Kicker and Exploit. These three mechanics are all very simple to understand and are all extremely fun!

I was surprised to see one Battle Cry card in the set, but now it makes sense (also following the Surveil change in BRO)! I love this decision from a designer's perspective, as now you can sprinkle an old mechanic into a set as necessary. Thanks Aaron! Modern Horizons 1 and 2 were enjoyable because of all the callback mechanics, even though some appeared on just 1 card. I can understand you don't want standard sets to become that bloated with mechanics, but as mentioned it can help players understand the game better by using the same keywords more consistently.

I hope we can get old cards like emry updated to say affinity for x when it eventually gets reprinted. I think slowly making these changes would be awesome.

Can we all agree that cycling should show up in like every other set? It’s so good!

A special note for Glimpse the Cosmos vs Forbidden Alchemy, the Flashback is something so easy to interpret, you can usually do it before actually reading the card. So when I see Forbidden Alchemy, my brain don't read the card line by line. The first thing I see on the card is Instant, 2U to cast and 6B to flashback, because the alternative casting cost is just so easy to see. This is already enough information to narrow the card down to a really small pool of possible choices, it's probably a one time use effect that generate some value once (and then once again). It's probably a draw spell, a mill spell, a -3/-0 effect, or something similar. Meanwhile, even the first part of Glimpse the Cosmos is very difficult to read, since I have to keep in my head all the possibilities that the card does. Since I know it have a lot of text, what does it do? Is the U an additional cost I can pay while casting it? Is it buyback? Is it Giant tribal? What am I looking at on top of my deck? So yeah, the difference is very big.

This was something I wanted *for years*, I really want to hug aaron forsythe right now! Thank you! You can even reword old cards this was and no one would bat an eye, trust me.

I'm equally delighted this is happening and astonished it took this long. Again, delighted it's happening.

This is a welcome change, and a long time coming.

Freaking thank you!! It was such a drag to read 5 lines of text to figure out, if it is exactly flashback, or just very similar but with some minor twist somewhere.

This also goes along with the current storyline of magic. With Elesh Norn using Nissa to accelerate the Invasion Tree's growth and somewhat merging all of the planes into one. If you're going to have moments like Quintorius fighting next to Junji and Thalia, it would make sense to have multiple one-off mechanics, at least for the time being.

Some guesses for new deciduous mechanics other than surveil, flashback, cycling, affinity, and landfall: Kicker (of course), phasing (out only), Shield counters, stun counters, ward, foretell...

I remember how excited people were when prowess, previously a Tarkir-specific mechanic, became an evergreen mechanic.

This is actually why I wish they errata’d the OG werewolves to have Daybound/Nightbound. It’s kind of lame that a werewolf commander deck is either bad if you use OG, limited in card selection if you use just one of the sets, and clunky if you combine them into one deck

I'm happy for this change. I've talked about this with my friends multiple times. Magic cards these days are often wordy when what they're doing is actually simple, easy to understand, and more fun than older equivalents. But they're wordy just because of how the rules work. I've even specifically had my attention on how "Affinity" has still been getting used, but not the keyword. Taking up so much space for something so small. Happy to see it back. I think there's a LOT of effect archetypes that should be compressed to a keyword. Especially red's exile "impulse draw", though there's still been developmental variation (I like "can play until the end of your NEXT turn"). MTG's design team does good about having accessible and popular cards that teach a mechanic, I believe inexperienced players could handle a keyword increase. Rather, would benefit. Your Glimpse The Cosmos example definitely induces "too long, won't read".

Gotta love the card database pf choice of the wizards employee to be scryfall rather than gatherer. Chef's kiss.

This is absolutely wonderful! There are so many keywords that magic players just know. Also, you're right that anyone can just look up what a specific keyword does if they don't. I kept crying out for "mill" to be keyworded years before it actually was.

This reminds me of something MaRo said a long time ago, and that is to "not fight human nature". Us dummies trying to play this complicated game enjoy when we understand what is happening, and this helps that.

Yessssss. 10/10. Thank you! I would love to see "Impulse X" to replace the block of text that is

I love this so much! It makes a lot of cards way easier to read

I love these videos and the ones explaining the set archetypes :D

I love this, especially for how it will make searching for cards easier

I cant wait for an Emry or Reality Heist to have Affinity proper printed on it. I've always understood the reasoning behind putting the full ability text sans keyword on cards, particularly as one offs in a draft card that would just have to have the rules text in parentheses anyway, but this will be a nice change.

Love this! I agree this can help make things more simple and easy to comprehend in the long run! Reading giant blocks of text is mentally draining, and error prone!

Love this exactly for all the reasons you mentioned!!

I am a big fan of seeing one of cards in sets. Thanks for the video too! I suspected this sort of thing was happening when I noticed consider get the surveil keyword a few months back, it’s nice to see it officially confirmed and explained. This sort of thing restores some hope and faith in the magic R&D team 🙏🏻

Brilliant idea. I think this will help reduce words on card, and the synergy is appreciated

Big fan of this idea! Thank you for continuing to improve magic!

this is a good change - it will help enormously with card searches, as you said: searching for "landfall" instead of "land enters the battefield under you control" is a heck of a saving in keyboard wear! As to which mechanics to do next, landfall is the one I would have suggested if you hadn't already done that! I'm actually more interested in keywording cumbersome phrases like "enters the battlefield under your control" - "enters for you" perhaps?

Hey Gavin, great video! Always love to hear more about the behind the scenes of the best game. Two questions: Why not go back and errata cards like Glimpse the Cosmos to be flashback? Is it because there technically is a small mechanical difference between its current execution and that of flashback? And we have seen Ria Ivor get officially previewed at this point, is Battle cry also on that list of newly deciduous mechanics, or was that a one-time thing just for the compleated Hero of Bladehold?

flash back is one of my favorite mechanics ever, I hope we see more cards with it in more sets in the future!

Intriguing! Keen at the prospect of seeing something like Fabricate come back :D

Loving this a lot, I have been making so many custom card ideas and both reusing old keywords on custom commanders (reused forecast recently like who saw that coming back haha) to other cards with my own custom keywords within an attempted custom set, I highly appreciate the existence of keywords in general, so clean and glad they’re being used more!

Just a gentle reminder that I appreciate all the work you do Gavin!

Absolutely agree that this is a positive and easy thing to do. So many times I have a revelation on reading cards, "Ah, it is just X mechanic". And ironically I get thrown off when the mechanic is just SLIGHTLY different, so I use the card wrong. But, I know Flashback and Affinity and Kicker (I assume?) so it is easy to just catch that and know what I am doing right away. And it helps new players not only see more connecting mechanics, learn faster, and gather more synergistic cards together, but it also helps them catch up with Magic lingo! We all keep using Mechanic names to describe similar effects anyways, might as well do it officially, too.

@5:28 It's me, it's CGB!

5:30 was not expecting to see the one in best of one, CGB

Heroic, Alliance, Ferocious, Cycling, Kicker, Madness, Delve

This is fantastic, it makes sense, and it makes the cards easier to read. 100% Support this

The elephant in the room is that flashback works different that those cards mentioned. For example, Narset Reversal and Remand doesn't work the way you want with your flashbacks spells, but works fine with Mission Briefing target's spell.

Looking forward to your video on the new battle cards :P

I agree, from a design perspective there's 2 things going on here 1 - Using keywords without reminder text assumes people know what they do, new players are bound to struggle with this 2 - Can we leverage existing card templates to make future card text boxes shorter and easier to understand? My favourite example of this is Omnath, Locus of the Roil Other than wanting sets to feel unique there's no good reason we couldn't just put "Landfall" on the card as you've already defined how it works ""When a land enters the battlefield under your control" do X If you need to add reminder text then so be it

Great to hear, doing a flexible card with fewer words is really elegant! As suggestions, channel and adventure have great potential for polyvalent cards and should definitely come around more often! I prefer them to some MDFC's as they are a bit awkward for paper magic (especially draft). For example, Hagra Mauling could have easily been a land as it's back side with a channel for it's front side. It would also be easier to print for you guys.

Grateful for this news, abstracting ideas like this makes cards more readable and easier to teach others how they work.

Hmm if I had to guess future mechanics that would be now deciduous my guesses would be convoke, delve, kicker, dual faced cards, magecraft. That’s all I can think of right now

Really good change, there's a reason why abilities that were written out in earlier sets, like deathtouch, or haste, were given evergreen keywords, and this is just an extension of that philosophy to where it really should have been in the first place. You have to learn a keyword once, you have to read the text of a card that has 2 or more would-be keywords, but all written out as rules text, every time such a card is played.

Currently building a Sevinne deck and I was SO PUMPED for you to say all those cards are just going to work like flashback now! Unfortunately that is not exactly the case, but I am certainly excited for the future of this design space for that deck, but for Magic in general.

Something you mentioned that I've discussed with other people before is just how much the internet has changed the way sets can be designed. Especially in Commander, where you have so many different mechanics overlapping with each other, it shouldn't be expected of everyone to have each mechanic and interaction memorized from a rulebook, which I feel like consequently gives much more room for people in your position to make interesting cards. Similar to what you mentioned, some players only have to learn what flashback does one time, but all players will have to read the second paragraph on Glimpse the Cosmos multiple times.

Still going to fight for Arcane. I know there's added complexity, but I still think assisting arcane decks is relatively low complexity cost. I'm surprised that we didn't even get one in Kamigawa Commander. I fully understand there are major issues with attempting to pull all the cards into a cohesive 100 card singleton deck, but I think having the ability to throw that deck a bone every few years will be a boon for those of us that always try to build some sort of arcane deck.

Great idea! I was hoping this would also include all ability words, though. Since ability words don't have rules functionality and the text still always explains the card, every card that says, "Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control..." should have Landfall. Every "As long as you control three or more artifacts" card should have Metalcraft, regardless of whether it's on the list of evergreen/deciduous mechanics or not.

ABOUT TIME. I had this idea 10 years ago in my sleep NO CAP.

I love that this has a screenshot of scryfall instead of gatherer!

Deciduous keywords random guesses/wishlist: champion, kicker, bloodthirst, foretell, offering, surge If we're talking wishlists I'd also love to see vanilla creatures get the Basic supertype. I'm kind of surprised that "return target permanent to its owner's hand" hasn't been shortened in some way. "Bounce" seems the obvious choice as that's the slang but it's not very flavourful, maybe "banish" so we can have "banish target creature"? Then there can be cards that specifically reference banishing, idk.

Love your content and this video! What you say in this video makes sense and shows a lot of thought went into it. I really appreciate watching this vid ✨ I was guessing we would see more mechanics from the recent 30th anniversary set though.

3:29 I literally only just now notices the apostrophe in the "Brothers' war" name logo thing

8:40 affinity for cards you own in exile LET'S GOOO

Interesting the set that starts the use of one-off mechanics also introduces the most set restricted mechanic "For Mirrodin!".

nice man! well done!

Yes please! Afterlife, convoke, cipher, delve and morph are a couple of my favorites.

This is great! Everything he said is spot on, and I'm very excited to see what quality is life changes this creates!

Finally! I have never liked having set/block-specific mechanics, and would much rather have whatever mechanics that fit each individual card. Flashback is very easy to understand with the reminder text, and I think that goes for most well-made mechanics out there.

I have been singing the praises of this choice. I love it. Not every mechanic needs to come back with any regularity, but things like Flashback, Cycling, scry a couple years ago, even something like hellbent, threshold or cascade, these are really very simple effects that any Magic player can grasp without difficulty. I love just having them available as needed. I like cycling showing up way more than I like a cycling heavy/focused set for example. I would also love to see this for reprints, Mox Opal in a set not built around metalcraft, especially since so many people understand a mechanic because Commander has introduced them to a card with it. Everyone knows Cyclonic Rift. Really just A+ decision, and probably on the short list for highlights of 2023! :)

I remember doing a sight before reading the second part of glimpse the cosmos, then just thinking "It's just Flashback!"

I appreciate the cautious approach, but I’m also kinda like IT’S ABOUT TIME!!!! 😂

This actually is really great. It's always important to have in mind new players, so having text in the cards to explain them is very good, but also evergreen mechanics and terms also help the game, tunring familiaritie and the flow of the game simple for those who play it a lot.

I Like this. I hope it comes into play with things like channel, cycling, and even things like blitz, cipher, and mentor/training.

Very sensible change, it has always been odd reading a complex card only to figure out that it is just a well known mechanic!

One of the best changes Magic has made in recent years.

Flashback, Madness, Surveil, Morph, multikicker, Kicker, Undying, Cycling. All should be Deciduous.

I think Shield Counters made a great addition to the game's economy in general and would love to see them from time to time. Devotion is another mechanic I also think works great with the game and could see more play. There's dozens of 'em that could work, I'm sure. Excited for this because many mechanics have amazing design space within them that could be left unexplored by simply not having enough time under the sun to come back to every plane

Yes yes yes yes yes So glad to hear this. I always heard Mark defend the other viewpoint & never quite got it. Definitely glad to see it

This is something I've wanted since sporemound was printed in M14. Glad to see it finally happening.

This was so clearly the right choice to make and we've been waiting for this change.

That's a good idea overall. Famous mechanics like flashback, surveil and affinity are great for teaching the game. But I believe they all should come with reminder text: suspend ("Venture Forth" from Baldur's Gate) is not an easy one to remember without a reminder. Also, nesting mechanics (like Viral Spawning having flashback if an opponent is corrupted) makes reading harder, even on the second reading for me (and I have 6 years of heavy playing under my belt). I would prefer to omit the flashback keyword and just write the full text.

I'm curious, if it was decided that you will not be going back to errata a lot of these cards, what motivated the errata for surveil in particular? Does it have to do with planned future reprints, surveil payoffs, or some other reason? I suppose it is easier to errata something like surveil which just happens as opposed to flashback which is an ability a card has to have in the graveyard...

I definitely think this is the right direction. Even when I was a brand new player a few years ago, I remember being confused as to why Evolution Sage didn't say Landfall. The explanation that Landfall wasn't a theme in War of the Spark didn't sit right with me, especially knowing that cards existed that cared about Landfall, and those cards would exclude Evolution Sage for what seemed like an arbitrary reason. I still feel this way. Glad to see Wizards coming around on this one.

Other than flashback & affinity: -Cycling for sure -Kicker for sure -Channel possibly -Convoke possibly -Unearth possibly (very clean) -Evoke, maybe? I could see it. -Reconfigure if the design team has kindness in their hearts -Dredge (lmao could you imagine) One cool thing about this design philosophy change is that we might see more Lier, Disciple of the Drowned or Tectonic Reformation style effects that grant these keywords. Like maybe they make a green legend that gives creatures Kicker G - enter with an additional +1/+1 counter or something. I'd love to see a white card that grants unearth, I think that'd be sick. Also, the templating of Viral Spawning is really cool. I'd love to see more of this style conditional-keywords. Like a card with morbid-channel, where you can only channel it if you had a creature die, or delirium-kicker. These kinds of conditions could let them print effects that would be too powerful on rate without them; the versatility of Kicker is so strong in limited that the actual effects are often quite weak at lower rarities, but imagine you had to have a creature die to use it. You'd have an interesting tension between going down on board and being able to play a powerful effect. If the added versatility comes with a restriction-be it deckbuilding, sequencing, or whatever-design can produce a few more cards every set that suit both limited and constructed; these keywords can be used to create constructed-playable cards, especially commons and (more likely) uncommons that don't overwhelm the limited environment. What I'm saying is I'm excited for my cube Honorable mention: -Rebound. Do not expect it, but I think rebound is the kind of easily understood keyword that this philosophy change would open up. Really powerful, so I think it's unlikely, but a red impulse-draw sorcery for just R or 1R with rebound sounds sweet. Rebound on a fight spell, maybe. Rebound on an Undying Evil kinda spell. A Rebound version of Homestead Courage. A snapcaster-esque creature that grants rebound to your next spell. Thoughts: aired. Head: empty.

This is great! My guesses are: Cycling, Kicker, Affinity and Flashback (duh), Surveil (also duh), Landfall, Battle Cry, Support, Bolster, and my bold prediction is the keywordification of Flicker. “Flicker a creature (exile target creature and return it to the battlefield under your control).”

I was worried about the big rules change tbh, but this seems really great for the health of the game! Hopefully cards will become easier to parse in the future.

Yesssss. This is what we need. Especially if these cards get reprinted really soon with the keywords. Now we just need to keyword "Can only be blocked by one creature" (challenger?) "Can block an extra creature each time it blocks" (Sentinel?) "Can only block creatures with flying" (Soar?) "Can't be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less" (Spoopy) etc.

Landfall is one mechanic that crops up pretty commonly outside its dedicated sets.

Absolutely a wonderful idea!

I love that you are doing this, and look forward to more one-off cards in the future. However, can we more consistently use Hexproof from X? New Thrun has exactly hexproof from non-green, but it's spelled out. Likewise when hexproof from was introduced, there was a card in the set that spelled out 'hexproof from abilities' (Shanna, Sisay's legacy) except because it was spelled out, it was so easy to miss that it wasn't straight hexproof.

This is great, I always had to explain to new players I teach why these two cards do the same thing but one is a keyword and the other isn’t. And once they get to a point where they recognize they do the same thing, it isn’t intuitive why they aren’t written the same way.

This is a GREAT change! Hope to see more abilities like devour, ninjitsu or channel get this treatment!

I love that CGB is used as the example for hovering over cards.

Oooooh, I remember cycling returning in Onslaught. I hadn't really been playing Magic since Urza's Saga and some friends were saying "This new set has Cycling! They brought it back!" and I thought "YES! That was so good, being able to chuck lands you didn't need!" Such a big deal!