Sometimes it feels good to come home.

Magic: The Gathering returns to the plane where it all began this fall with Dominaria United, as once again the Phyrexians are attempting to invade and make everyone compleat. Many classic Magic sets have taken place on the plane of Dominaria, including most of the early years of Magic, as well as the universally beloved 2018 set simply titled Dominaria. We're talking elves, Goblins, Urza, and Karn as we take a walk through a world that evokes both nostalgia as well as a desire for something new.

The official Wizards of the Coast preview stream for Dominaria United was yesterday on Twitch.tv, which unveiled about two dozen cards from the new set as well as all of the mechanics that will be appearing in the set. There's not enough time to go over every card revealed, but today I am going to go over the mechanics in the set. It's good to get a refresher on the returning ones, but even more important to establish a framework for the new ones to create a good lens to view previews through.

So, let's go!

Returning Mechanic: Kicker

Kicker is back!

It might be better to say that kicker never left, because basically every mechanic in the game is some variation of kicker, but kicker is where it all started and one of the cleanest mechanics that Magic as a game has produced.

Pay a small cost, get a small thing, pay a bigger cost, get a bigger thing. There's a lot of tension in that simple equation, to the point of presenting very interesting cost-benefit analysis in gameplay that is much more dynamic that appears at first glance.

There's a fun old design story about the development of the card Kavu Titan from Invasion, the set that debuted kicker. Kavu Titan is either a two-mana 2/2 or a five-mana 5/5 trample, but when they were testing it, they were using the card Grizzly Bears as a proxy. The play-tester didn't know this and was winning a lot more by just casting Kavu Titan as a 2/2 every time than trying to kick in, which was a great little lesson in tempo that the developers weren't considering as they were usually looking to save up and kick it.

Our kicker card from Dominaria United is Archangel of Wrath, which does a whole lot for four, five, or six mana. A four-mana 3/4 lifelink flier is a reasonable if unexciting rate, but once you start kicking Archangel of Wrath things start to get out of hand.

For five mana you get to deal two damage to any target, while also gaining two life because of lifelink. This makes Archangel of Wrath both card advantage as well as a great stabilizer. However, for the full six mana you get to potentially kill two things (or one bigger thing), gain four life, and put a great body on the board. The catch here of course is that these kickers are both off color, but the good news is that you don't need Red or Black mana to cast Archangel of Wrath in a pinch which is nice.

It's going to be very exciting to see all the fun stuff they do with kicker this time around!

Returning Mechanic: Domain

The domain mechanic also made its debut in Invasion block, although it wasn't actually named that at the time.

Domain is just a signifier word to denote that the card cares about having basic land types in play. The more basic land types, the better your spell gets, and of course if you have all five land types in play the spell is maxed out. We saw a lot of this in Tribal Flames and Might of Alara back in the day, as dual lands with multiple land types are huge to enable this sort of effect.

There's only one set of multi-lands in future Standard that has basic land types, but it's a very good one for domain in the five triomes of Streets of New Capenna. Getting three types from one land is going to be a huge factor in domain seeing Constructed play. And of course, basic lands will do in a pinch.

An important factor for determining the playability of domain cards is looking at how good they are when you don't have the full payoff. Nishoba Brawler has the potential to be a 5/3 trample for two mana, which is very good, but perhaps the most important part is that the 3 toughness is static. This means it can hang around as a 2/3 or a 3/3 until you get set up, and two mana for a 3/3 is a reasonable rate regardless.

A lot of how viable the domain cards will be will be more about the lands and fixing available than the cards themselves, but the mechanic definitely has a competitive pedigree and that is unlikely to change.

New Mechanic: Read Ahead

Sagas have been perhaps one of the best things to happen to Magic in the last decade, melding great flavor with great gameplay, so it's not a surprise that they would return considering they made their debut in the original Dominaria set.

However, this time there's a twist with the new read ahead ability.

Rather than progressing naturally through the story turn by turn, any saga with the read ahead ability allows you to start on any chapter that you would like. The only catch is that once you've skipped a chapter, you may not go back.

This is a drastic change to how sagas play out.

What was once a slow drip that played out as a progression, sagas now allow you the option to play them like sorceries for an immediate impact rather than have to wait, although you do lose out on the additional value.

The Phasing of Zhalfir is a super interesting card because it can play like a Blue pseudo-Wrath of God straight up, or it can play almost like Parallax Wave to protect your creatures or remove blockers, or if you've got time it can do both by protecting your own creatures from the sweeper effect.

That's a lot of flexibility from a previously awesome but somewhat rigid card type. It was very easy to underestimate the most recent incarnation of sagas from Neon Dynasty, so keep an extra close eye on these.

New Mechanic: Enlist

Enlist is an odd one. Enlist is a new keyword which means:

As this creature attacks, you may tap a nonattacking creature you control without summoning sickness. When you do, add its power to this creature's until end of turn.

That's a lot of words to conditionally tap a creature to only augment the power (not toughness) of the enlist creature, and with all the restrictions of an untapped, non-attacking, non-summoning sick creature, this feels like mostly just a limited mechanic to help break board stalls when things get clogged up and nobody can attack anymore. It's far too many hoops and far too little payoff to be a big deal in Constructed.

Guardian of New Benalia has the look of a decent Constructed card, just like Seasoned Hallowblade before it, but the enlist ability mostly feels like rider text. Without the protection ability and the extra bonus of the scry, Guardian of New Benalia feels very unexciting, and even with them it still feels very medium.

New Mechanic: Stun

However awkward and convoluted enlist is, stun is super simple and flavorful.

Stun is a new form of counter that does the usual "freeze" effect seen in Blue. If a creature with a stun counter would untap, a stun counter will be removed instead. This is just great design; it's fun, flavorful, and a nice way to give some tempo-based removal to Blue.

If Impede Momentum said "draw a card" instead of "scry 1" we'd be looking at a very good Constructed level card, but as it stands it's a very interesting card nonetheless. Locking a creature down for three turns is a very long time, and I love the tempo implications of the mechanic. How long of locking down your opponent's creature is worth a card? This is going to be an interesting puzzle to figure out.

In a time where players rarely run out of cards in hand or things to do with their mana, having more tempo-focused mechanics is a good thing!

Just Scratching The Surface

To say there's a buzz about Dominaria United would be a huge understatement.

This set has been highly anticipated all year, and with the great mechanics we already know about as well as new designs joining a classic story of Magic's first plane and a big bad Phyrexian invasion, this could be an all timer.

I can't wait to see more!