Part of my Blue Commons Submissions which will be up shortly.

Do we want two creatures with this same effect? Serpent of the Endless Sea is already doing this, albeit with a second ability.

I would say normally one or the other should have this slot. However, given the "islands matter" theme, it could be reasonable to have a second creature, although they may want something more to differentiate them.

It seemed kind of natural to me. If swinging with Serpents is the fun thing to do in this set, then we should have more serpents kicking around. I never did get a vanilla common into my set, but most of the common creatures are pretty straightforward.

I just don't like having more than one creature that potentially can't attack. I mean, flood should stop that, but it just doesn't look nice to me.

Do you think the problem is that it is too much a small effecient beater? If we threw in an ineffecient 8cc Leviathan common, would it also feel bad?

I admit, I've never been too fond of this restriction, either. But I do relish having a set where a mechanic that I would normally be annoyed with, suddenly has some meaning. Or in other words, I never liked that Terror and company had that anti-black clause. But I'd look forward to seeing multiple Terror variants if we were in a set that commonly changed the colors of creatures.

I certainly understand, though, that I am a weird duck, and the things that make me happy, commonly don't make other people happy.

On a side note, I'm none too thrilled with a the thought process that blue should get 3x Islandwalk to make up for the lack of flying. I've got a bunch of reasons for this, but the one that keeps getting to me is: "That's what they did in Lorwyn." I think we came at the whole "give my opponents Islands, now Islandwalk" trick from two different angles, but we're coming close to ending up in the same ground. If we have too many Islandwalkers, I fear that many players won't see what we're doing as something new, and that we're just adding some more cards that belong to Lorwyn, and for some reason we decided not to make them Merfolk.

"If we have too many Islandwalkers, I fear that many players won't see what we're doing as something new"

Hm. I hadn't thought of it like that. I would certainly be happy with some other sort of evasion (even pseudo-evasion like "tap target creature"), and worry that having a lot of islandwalk with no way to remove flood counters will be a bit non-interactive. But I didn't have any other good ideas for blue-style evasion. If we do, I think having a variety of effects fits the set at least as well (a couple of islandwalk is probably still good for the sea theme). But if we don't, I think islandwalk is better than giving blue creatures no evasion -- what else would they do? :)

I'm confident that we can come up with a different type of evasion, if we feel blue needs it. I kind of like the idea of blue smashing in there for once, but I admit, it will feel weird to some players, and it may not have the correct amount of creatures at common to pull it off. I'll think about blue evasion tricks.

Good solid common. Turns on pretty easily in a blue deck, making blue feel like the aggro-beef colour.

Raar! Fish!

Er. I don't think we wanted to go for full old-style islandhome. I think we were happy with the more modern style, just the attacking restriction, as seen on Serpent of the Endless Sea and others.

I agree. Used to have "When you control no Islands, sacrifice ~". Removed.