Magic Untapped takes a look back at Zendikar Rising as Magic: The Gathering returns to the popular plane of Zendikar.
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Video Transcript:
Zendikar Rising, the 85th expansion for Magic: The Gathering arrived on September 25, 2020. It’s the sixth set to take place on the plane of Zendikar following 2016’s Oath of the Gatewatch.
Unlike with the previous few Zendikar sets, the storyline no longer features the Eldrazi. Rather, players are able to see how the plane is recovering from the ruin they caused. Of course, just because the Eldrazi are gone doesn’t mean that there aren’t other dangers that the plane’s citizens must withstand.
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The story of Zendikar Rising was told over a handful of stories that were published on the Magic: The Gathering website. Here’s a summary of it all.
Previous to the story’s beginning, during the events that occurred during the Gatewatch’s battles against the Eldrazi titans Ulamog and Kozilek, the angel Iona left her perch at her skyclave, Emeria, to assist in Zendikar’s defenses. In her absence from the skyclave, which is the ruin of a millennia-year-old ancient floating fortresses that the once-authoritative Kor once used to keep Zendikar in line, would-be treasure hunters used the opportunity to try to loot it. In doing so, however, they set off a chain reaction that caused the rest of the ancient skyclaves, which have laid dormant for centuries, to reemerge.
Now that more of these skyclaves have emerged – each with presumably awesome ancient Kor relics to loot – treasure hunting has become a thriving endeavor in this post-Eldrazi world.
Fast-forward to the aftermath of the War of the Spark on the plane of Ravnica and the Zendikar-native planeswalkers Nahiri, a Kor lithomancer, and Nissa, and elf, are in conversation. The two women somewhat bond over their shared experience with the Eldrazi as Nahiri expresses a want to find a way to return Zendikar to the way it was before the Eldrazi. This caught the elf by surprise.
“You do?” she blurted in surprise, then awkwardly added. “Sorry, I mean, you’re not exactly known for healing. After what you did on Innistrad…”
Nahiri raised an eyebrow. “Says the person who set the Eldrazi free.”
Either way, the two travel back home to Zendikar together and soon find themselves at the entrance to the Akoum skyclave. Nahiri tells Nissa that, inside, they should be able to find a relic that will help them save Zendikar. After looting the skyclave, Nahiri finds a key that she says will help her unlock something called a lithoform core, which is housed in a different skyclave.
As this key also houses some of the skyclave’s power within it, Nahiri uses it to calm the roil – the natural phenomenon on Zendikar in which the land constantly terraforms itself – beneith the ruin. To Nissa’s horror, the energy emitted from the key also kills nearly every living thing in the skyclave including the elemental Nissa had created to assist them in their search.
Seeing the key’s effect on the roil, Nahiri – who has lived since before the roil began – gets excited about the prospect of calming the plane so the Kor civilization can rise to glory once again and make Zendikar great again despite the effect such actions might have on others. Nissa, however, who has never known Zendikar without the roil, grows concerned that the reality that Nahiri is trying to recreate isn’t the reality that best suits the plane. To that end, she travels back to Ravnica to meet with Jace Beleren.
In audience with Jace, Nissa explains what it is that Nahiri seems to be trying to accomplish on Zendikar and how she disagrees with both her methods and her end goal. Jace, trying to be fair, leaves open the possibility that Nahiri might be on the right track. This rightfully angers the elf, who abruptly departs. Jace, thinking he might have made a mistake, follows after her to try to mend things with her.
Nahiri, meanwhile, now lacking Nissa’s assistance, has enlisted a number of other Zendikari to help her loot other skyclaves in search of relics that will help her towards her end goal. With the help of a party of adventurers consisting of the warrior Akiri, rogue Zareth, wizard Kaza, and cleric Orah, Nahiri successfully plunders the Murasa skyclave and locates the lithoform core, which is essentially a huge energy source.
After looting the core, the party finds themselves being chased out of the skyclave by an elemental. In part to demonstrate the power of their newfound relic while also saving their skin, Nahiri uses it to destroy the elemental (though at the cost of turning Zareth to stone as he was too close to Nahiri when she activated the artifact).
Akiri, realizing the danger the relic possesses, tries to take it from Nahiri, but it doesn’t go well and she is flung from the floating structure. Luckily for Akiri, Nissa and Jace were near the base of the skyclave preparing for their ascent when the warrior lands safely in the elf’s net of vines. The trio witness Nahiri leaving in a hurry. Jace is able to use his mind mage talents to quickly scan her mind and discover that she’s off to the Singing City.
The Singing City is where a series of leylines converge, which would allow lithomancer to make a series of changes to the plane from one convenient location. Separately, trio take off after her with Nissa going on her own and Akiri guiding Jace to the location, though the warrior only goes as far the city’s edge before departing.
As he explores the city, the magic of the ancient ruins forms in his head like a humming sound as it threatened to overwhelm his mind. He bumps into Nahiri and ask her to hand over the skyclave core. She, of course, refuses and ventures farther into the ruin. Jace follows despite the humming growing stronger and threatening to drive them both mad.
Jace, realizing the danger, casts a silencing spell to quell the noise for both he and the lithomancer – an action which Nahiri appreciates. In exchange, she allows Jace to accompany her to study the mechanism at the city’s center which she hopes will allow her to spread the power from the skyclave core across the plane.
The pair reach the device only to find that it’s been demolished. Nissa had gotten there first and used her elementals to crush it. Nahiri is justifiably pissed.
Jace tries to keep the peace, but it’s to no avail as the two women have at one another with Nahiri ultimately fleeing deeper into the ruined city. Jace chases after her and, after catching back up with her, pleads with her once more to relinquish the core. Instead of complying, Nahiri calls upon a series of hedrons that come down upon Jace, intent on binding him.
Jace, in response, creates an illusion of Nahiri’s persona-non-grata, Sorin Markov, and distracts her well enough for him to enter into her mind and convince her telepathically to hand over the core. He then takes it out of the Singing City with intent to hand it over to Nissa.
Once at the city’s limits, he’s suddenly pinned to the ground by Ashaya, a living embodiment of Zendikar’s soul as summoned by Nissa. The elemental takes the core from Jace and tosses it to the elven planeswalker. She considers destroying the relic, but before she can decide Nahiri appears and begins tearing through Nissa’s elementals.
That’s when the core itself reaches out to Nissa, informing her that the relic is an ancient piece of Zendikar created to undo damage. It tells her simply to trust in her own strength.
Realizing that she’s almost out of time as Nahiri closes in on her, the elf activates the core as she imagines what she considers to be a better version of Zendikar. Almost instantly, Zendikar changes to Nissa’s ideal version. Eager to explore this new, healing Zendikar, the elven planeswalker drops the now-spent core and leaves the scene, catapulted by a swirling mass of vines.
Nahiri, knowing her chance to launch her own ideal version of the plane is now gone, spouts her frustrations to Jace before planeswalking away in an annoyed huff. Jace, now finally having a moment to consider his own actions in all of this, comes to the conclusion that Nissa was probably right to use the core as she had.
And, with that, the story of Zendikar Rising concludes with Zendikar healing and reforming the way Nissa wants and Nahiri once again departing her home plane in anger. Of course, there’s more to Zendikar Rising than just the narrative. Now, let’s take a look at the set itself in card form.
With design headed up by Mark Rosewater and development co-led by Erik Lauer and Andrew Brown, Zendikar Rising consists of 280 cards plus a variety of variants and promos.
Wizards changed things up a bit in terms of what a booster pack is this time around by getting rid of the traditional booster pack and replacing it with two versions of it: a 16-card Draft Booster that was more-or-less the same as before, as well as a 12-card Set Booster that was targeted towards those who preferred to crack booster packs without the intent to draft them.
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Also, in 25 percent of Set Boosters, players can find a bonus card from “The List,” which was a curated, ever-rotating list of 300 cards from Magic: The Gathering’s past. To differentiate a List card from its original printing, the card features a tiny planeswalker symbol in the bottom corner.
In addition to the two versions of booster packs, Zendikar Rising was also sold via Theme Boosters, Collector Boosters, a bundle, and two Commander decks. Near the end of the year, Wizards also released a Gift Edition Bundle that contained ten booster packs, one collector pack, and other items.
Wizards also released Welcome Boosters, which are sample packs designed to be given away for free to new Magic players as a means to welcome them into the game. Each Welcome Booster contained exactly the same ten cards and included two foils, and cards from Zendikar Rising, Theros Beyond Death, and a few from the different Commander releases from 2018-2020.
Harkening back to the Masterpiece Series bonus cards found in the previous Zendikar block from 2016, Wizards of the Coast released a subset of land cards called Zendikar Rising Expeditions. While the list of 30 lands from across Magic’s history served as a box-topper bonus card for those who purchased booster boxes of Zendikar Rising, the cards, which includes the likes of Scalding Tarn, Ancient Tomb, Strip Mine, and more, could also be found in Collector Boosters.
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Two mechanics make their return in Zendikar Rising with kicker, a keyword ability that lets you pay an optional extra cost for a bonus effect, and landfall, an ability native to Zendikar, that triggers whenever a land enters play under your control.
New with the set are two more mechanics.
First is a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired party system. A party looks to see if you have at least one each of the following creature types among creatures you control: cleric, rogue, warrior, and wizard. Effects then scale based upon the size of your party.
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The other new mechanic is modal double-faced cards. Similar to double-faced cards of the past, these cards have faces on both sides. This time around, though, you choose which face to use when playing the card rather than the card flipping or transforming after being in play.
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In term of cycles, Zendikar Rising boasts 14. Some of those worth mentioning include:
· Mono-colored legendary characters at mythic – four creatures and one planeswalker – each of which having a casting cost of three or higher;
· Double-faced mythic sorceries, each of which have a sorcery spell on one side and a land on the backside that enters tapped unless you pay three life, and;
· Three other double-faced cycles (one at rare and two at uncommon), which each feature a spell or creature of some sort on one side and a tapland on the other.
There are also a handful of card cycles that are broken up not by color, but rather by creature type to play into the set’s party mechanic, such as:
· Relics at uncommon – one for each party class type. They either reference their respective class or synergize with the draft theme for that class;
· Full party creatures at rare, one for each party class type, that each trigger when a player controls a full party, and;
· Expeditioners at common, again one for each party class type. They get stronger if you control another creature of the same type.
In terms of individual cards of note, Zendikar Rising has a handful including one that wound up being banned:
· Agadeem’s Awakening, a double-faced card with a powerful recursion spell on one side and a pain land on the other;
· Charix, the Raging Isle, a legendary creature, that had (at the time) the highest printed toughness of any creature in black-bordered Magic at 17;
· Malakir Rebirth, a double-faced card that has tapland one side and a key combo piece on the other for decks such as “Scam” in Modern and Legacy that want to get around evoke sacrifice triggers;
· Omnath, Locus of Creation – the fourth iteration of the legendary Omnath creature. Despite it being a four-color creature, it was surprisingly easy to cast on or above curve and was easy to abuse if built around correctly. At the 2020 Grand Finals, decks running Omnath, Locus of Creation dominated the metagame with a 70-percent share of the field. As a result, it became banned in Standard in February 2021;
· Sea Gate Restoration, a double-faced card-drawing spell that eliminates one’s maximum hand size for the remainder of the game that also has a pain land on the other side;
· Skyclave Apparition, a white control card that can take out one of an opponent’s threats as a enter-the battlefield ability. It’s seen play in a number of formats ranging from Standard to Legacy and beyond, and;
· Skyclave Relic, the first non-creature artifact printed with the indestructible mechanic in roughly nine years.
When it comes to promotional cards, prerelease participants received the usual date stamped foil rare or mythic rare with their prerelease packs, the buy-a-box promo was a foil, alternate/extended art Orah, Skyclave Hierophant, and the bundle promo was a foil, alternate art Charix, the Raging Isle. The set also continued the use of the universal promo pack that was introduced earlier in the year for prize support promos.
As far as the set’s reception, Zendikar Rising faced a mixed bag from players. A good percentage of players seemed to enjoy the set’s limited experience, but others found the set to be lacking compared to others in terms of constructed play. Either way, here’s Magic Head Designer Mark Rosewater’s take on it:
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So, what’re your thoughts on Zendikar Rising? Let us know in the comment section.
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