Mechanics
Onslaught introduced a number of major mechanics and featured the first return of a keyword from abeyance.
- Creature types - Many effects in Onslaught (Known as "Tribal" effects) depended on a creature's types, i.e. its species, role, etc. These included type-specific creature removal, power boosts, and abilities which grew stronger based on the number of creatures of a certain type which a player controlled.
- 'Mistform' Illusions - A race of creatures who could temporarily change their creature types to any type.
- Cycling - A repeat of the same mechanic from the Urza Block. It lets a player pay a mana cost and discard the Cycling card from his or her hand in order to draw a card. Onslaught expanded on the Cycling mechanic by using more varied mana costs than Urza's Block Cycling cards and by including abilities that are triggered by the use of Cycling cards.
- Morph - The most radical new mechanic in Onslaught, this allows players to play creatures as "face-down" creatures with no special abilities, except the ability to turn face-up for a cost. This added an element of guesswork to the game which was greater than any previously present. The mechanic would appear on new cards in the Time Spiral expansion.
Read more about this topic: Onslaught (Magic: The Gathering)
Famous quotes containing the word mechanics:
“the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)