Mechanic: Waylay (Red/White)

Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.

Following up the last worldbuilding post developing our RW faction, we have a custom mechanic for red and white - Waylay. It's inspired by quick ambushes, surprising your opponent, and will primarily play in a more aggressive deck. However, there are defensive / controlling applications as well, and these will likely play a minor role in non-RW decks that end up with some red or white Waylay cards. The mechanic is a template for a certain type of triggered ability, and will appear on cards with the following text:

Waylay — Whenever a creature you control deals damage, if that creature entered the battlefield this turn, [some effect].

Let's look at some nuances of this mechanic and some card designs to support it.

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Basic Idea

Generally in Magic, a creature doesn't deal damage on the turn you play it. Most creatures have to wait a turn to attack, and usually you aren't playing them on your opponent's turn (when they could deal damage on defense). So this mechanic needs some combination of aggressive creatures, surprise defenders, and other tricks.

Clarifying Triggers (for Rules Nerds)

Notably, Waylay doesn't specify combat damage; things like fight effects, direct "burn" damage abilities, etc. still work. However, the ability is still limited to one trigger per "damage dealt" event. All these events produce a single trigger:

• An attacking creature is double-blocked and deals damage to two blocking creatures
• An attacker with trample deals damage to both a blocker and its controller
• A creature ability "deals 1 damage to target creature and 1 damage to its controller"
• A creature ability "deals 1 damage to each opponent"

The only typical situation where a creature would get multiple triggers from one action is attacking with double strike. If a creature deals damage on both the first strike damage step and the main combat damage step, and it entered the battlefield this turn, then it produces two Waylay triggers.

Enablers

Waylay is a payoff mechanic: it looks for the player to meet a certain condition, then provides a (beneficial) effect when they do. Generally, and especially at common (the lowest rarity / power level for cards), the majority of cards with Waylay payoff should not help the player trigger Waylay. This means that design (and deckbuilding) require a balance of both payoff cards and enablers that help trigger the payoff. Here's some different enablers:

Haste

I showed this card previously, and it was designed with Waylay in mind. Haste will be centered in red and will pull a deck towards aggressive and proactive Waylay strategies.

Flash

On the white side, Flash is a more reactive / defensive mechanic, enabling Waylay triggers on surprise blocks during an opponent's attack. There's a little bit of tension here for the RW player though: getting the Waylay triggers from a Flash blocker, usually losing the creature, has to be weighed against keeping that creature around to attack in a likely-aggressive deck.

Noncombat Damage

This sort of effect is a good way to get some extra triggers without flooding the set with Flash and Haste creatures, though you've got to be careful. Versatile ping effects like this should be pretty sparse at common, since they can get card advantage by removing an X/1 or finishing off a creature after combat. The design above might be too strong in this context (though it has appeared at common before). If it feels overpowering, we'd probably swap this creature for a 2/1 that deals 1 damage to each opponent instead.

Instant-Speed Tokens

This is effectively Flash by another name, and will play similarly in terms of defensive focus and evaluating a trade + Waylay trigger versus keeping the creature. Like with the ping effects, this should be pretty sparse, but a couple of these effects will support Waylay a bit more.

Creature-Based "Burn"

This type of spell can be sort of be evaluated as bad direct damage. It's much less consistent than a "deal 3 damage" spell, and on some boards where the opponent has a large enough blocker, it might do nothing. But with Waylay triggers in play, you can at least guarantee some value from throwing a 3-1 to its death, even if this would otherwise be a dead card.

Blink

I don't have a blink card designed yet, but one trickier source for Waylay triggers would be blinking a creature at instant speed, then using it to block or giving it Haste. I'm not sure how much blink support the set will have, but it would be a way to get a little more white support for Waylay and diversify Waylay interactions.

Off-Color Solutions

There are some ways to broaden Waylay support a bit with cards not in RW. This card has above-rate stats but has a drawback of damaging its controller. The way it's worded, you'll almost always take a hit the turn you play it (unless you can give it Haste). But if you have Waylay payoffs on the board, that first-turn hit could be a net benefit; good for Waylay, and a good tonal / flavor win for a black card in general.

Similarly in green, fight / "bite" spells that have a creature deal damage to another don't care about summoning sickness, and could be timed for Waylay value

Also, our previous custom mechanic, Vitrify, grants Haste to animated lands. This means it can also work with Waylay, though only if you animate the land you just played this turn and then attack with it. That's fairly restrictive and not necessarily how you want to use your Vitrify creatures, but it's an option if you have both Vitrify and Waylay in the deck.

What's Next

The WU and BW color pairs are still very open for this set, so it's possible that Waylay (likely the more defensive / controlling flavor) will get broader support there. I think mechanics often feel a little stronger in a set if there are 2-3 archetypes that engage with them differently, as opposed to only applying to a single archetype.

But before that, I think working out black's themes and worldbuilding is my next task. I think the existential and political ramifications of the corrupting ooze that represents black so far are going to be important to the setting overall, so we should get some more firm answers there.