Magic: The Gathering‘s next major expansion won’t just be adopting Dungeons & Dragons as a means of free marketing for both products.
Far from it; Wizards of the Coast is going to great lengths in order to ensure that both brands meld together seamlessly, especially in terms of mechanical synergy. One would be forgiven for thinking, after all, that card games and tabletop RPGs have no business being paired together, but judging by today’s reveal, the developer has perfectly captured the flavor of the latter. Nowhere is this more evident than with a brand-new card type debuting in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms.
Explaining their function in a blog post published earlier today, Wizards describes Dungeons as cards that exist separate from a player’s deck. Instead, each of the three so far confirmed will automatically come into play whenever a creature, sorcery or artifact inscribed with the phrase ‘explore the dungeon’ is played. Each time this effect is repeated, rooms adjoining the starting point will be marked as explored, yielding whatever treasure (buffs, card draw and life gain) they contain.
While there’s currently no way for an opponent to prevent a dungeon card from being played or destroyed, the post is keen to stress that this may not always be the case. While the lack of any counter will inevitably raise concerns over balance, a cursory glance over each suggests that these flavorful additions aren’t intended to be meta-defining, though final judgment will, as always, have to wait until the dust has settled.
Magic: The Gathering – Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is out July 23rd in digital and paper formats. See here for some previous card reveals.