Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.
- It's kind of hard to find appropriate post-damage effects for red and white! If you look at (common) triggered abilities in those colors, a lot of times it's stat boosts, granting combat keywords, tapping creatures, or "target creature can't block this turn." While there are some cases where Waylay might be triggered by noncombat damage and produce value with combat abilities, most Waylay triggers are probably coming from combat itself.
- The payoffs for Waylay (cards with a Waylay ability) generally need to be played before the enablers (haste, flash, etc.), with some exceptions. That means that the overall distribution of creatures with Waylay has to be pretty low in the mana curve, especially if the average RW deck doesn't want to play many expensive creatures at all. At common, you definitely feel this crunch on the design space.