Dominaria United Review pt 1

We've got the set spoiler here, so I suppose it's time to start talking about Dominaria United! Folks interested in the Commander spoiler, I gotchu. 

As always, I'm going to start with the mechanics and let's just get the big one out of the way:

Kicker
Look, Kicker is the tried and tested, be all end all of mechanics. Having an objection to Kicker means you hate Magic as a game, really. Always nice to see a classic-the quality of the cards will depend on the cost of the kicker. Standard stuff by now.

Stun Counters
Look, I don't make the rules. Wizards says "stun counters" are a mechanic and...ok. I don't agree with that assessment but like I said, I don't make the rules.

I do think this is a clever way to implement creature control in Blue. In the same way that Fight is a great way to do creature control in Green, stun counters offer something to the color that it should have in a way that feels reasonable. Plus in Blue's case, it is really formalizes something it was already doing.  

Domain
Domain is a thing that always seems like it would be so cool and never is. This time, however, they've done something different: they've printed dual lands at common in a set that cares about Domain. 

That is a big deal! 

So I would say that for the first time in awhile, there's an opportunity for Domain to come into its own. I know that for a lot of Eternal format players this might not mean much, but I think they should pay attention. For the first time, a majority of the Magic community will have the ability to make Domain useful-and that's where their attention will go. (Majority here meaning; people playing on Arena, where a LOT of games take place. The biggest format is still Commander, as far as I know). 

With that kind of attention some innovations could take place, which is cool to me.

Read Ahead
This feels like an odd thing to do to Sagas-you are still paying full price but now you get to skip chapters? The problem with this is that now all the chapters have to have equal value or players will just skip to the best one. Love Song of Night and Day will need special circumstances for players to choose chapter one, ever, and similarly The Phasing of Zhalfir is just better as a Blue Wrath of God. Generally, if you gotta Wrath, you need to do it now-and if you telegraph your Wrath, then opponents know to hold up. 

So this seems like a miss to me. Neat idea, but I don't know how they could execute it better.

Enlist
When I first read Enlist, I didn't do so carefully, so I thought it was really cool!

Then I read it again and saw the qualifier saying the Enlisted creature cannot have summoning sickness and realized exactly what this did: It sucked. 

There are very few creatures that give you a bonus just because they tap. Most of these triggers involve attacking, which makes perfect sense. Once a creature is available to attack, why am I wasting it to boost another attacking creature unless I've already won? 

Plus, the bonus is only for power so any 2/x creature is going to eat your Guardian of New Benalia. (Also, it is HILARIOUS when they suggest using creatures with Defender as ones to enlist, because the power for most creatures with defender is 0 and of creatures with Defender in Dominaria United, in the limited environments where you'd use Enlist, 0 or 1 is the power for most defenders-creatures you want on defense anyway! Great job!)

Swing and a miss.