For Red Commons Submissions.

Definitely a red slot for firebreathing. We may move this to uncommon if Intimidate+firebreathing for R is too much for common, but we'll try it at common to see how it plays.

Whoa. There's only ever been one one-drop firebreather: Flamekin Brawler. There are a few two-drops, most notably Immolating Souleater and Pyre Charger. But I think adding intimidate is perhaps a bit much.

Yeah, you're right. I think we want a firebreathing card at common, so we should remove intimidate. It would be ok for this just to be a vanilla fire-breather, but does anyone have any other suggestions?

It could have conditional intimidate (if you control all/at least three tapped creatures, or if you activate the ability at least N times) but that's probably still too complicated/good for common. It could have a limit on the activations. Any other good ideas?

Well, I'd suggest a -2/2 Intimidating Fire-Breather, but I think other people would have a problem with it. (I don't. Thumbs up for justice.)

Do you need to keep this card for it to fill a slot in the curve, Jack? I haven't looked at red for a while. Will soon, with everything finalizing in the other colors.

Also, if we're going to have evasion in red in this set, shouldn't we have "can't be blocked by flying creatures"? Seems like the place to pull that seldom used line...

There's still plenty of room to move CMCs around.

I agree, "can't be blocked by flying creatures" is a gimme, it should be on some card, this one would be fine if we keep some evasion.

I'm amused by -2/2, although perhaps a 0/2 with "XRR: +X/+0" would be more traditional for common. In fact, I quite like that idea. I suppose it needs the "spend only red mana" clause, despite that being ugly, which makes me want to print -2/2 again, but I still don't think that's a good common :)

ETA: In fact, one evasion creature is probably right for red, and we already have Cavern Stalker which I like, so we probably don't want any others.

I do like the -2/2 on this guy, but we should do something to help this guy, unless we're okay with this one playing retarded half-uncle. Flamekin Brawler is so much better than him, it hurts.

OK, this should either be -2/2 with intimidate, or a more normal firebreather. For now, I've gone with the simpler version (which is probably still reasonably good, I think firebreathers are crippled by needing a big mana investment, so starting off at R 0/2 or 2R 2/2 makes them pretty good). But if anyone wants to suggest anything else, go ahead.

Well, right now this is Flamekin Brawler exactly. I think we'll get a few confusing questions as to why we needed to reprint Flamekin Brawler, but change his name.

Did you get a chance to try -2/+2 with Inimidate? Is that a playable card?

I don't like negative power at all, but maybe that's just me. If we have it, it just feels like something that should be a theme, and I don't think we want that. If we made the activation on a 0/2 with intimidate, perhaps it could be in a verticle cycle with Seethe Lasher.

Sorry, we probably should have tried that, but what we wanted for this card got lost in the shuffle. I keep coming back to this -- I like it, but the intimidate version is definitely pushing the upper bound of common red creatures in both power and complexity.

My worry is that commons should not be too swingy. I think this is comparable to Bladetusk Boar (which is quite good, but notice that red usually gets very little evasion other than "can't block" at all, Bladetusk Boar was a promising exception), except that it's often less good (becuase you need to dump RRR into it before it does anything at all) but sometimes better (because if you have 6 mountains to spare, you can often squeeze through 4+ damage per turn, which is a very efficient finisher -- there's a reason X burn spells aren't usually common any more, because too often the win comes out of nowhere).

But if I get to playtest again, I'll try the intimidate version.

"I think we'll get a few confusing questions as to why we needed to reprint Flamekin Brawler, but change his name."

It doesn't have to be these stats, it can be any small firebreather. But it's totally fine to print a reprint with a new name -- I think wizards do that whenever it's convenient to have a reprint, but the original name or creature type don't work.

It doesn't have to have intimidate, or amy keyword, really.

I like the , but it does kind of break our, admittedly, no longer running cycle of colored breathers. Maybe I should just accept that. The double red activation already does something which I wanted: move people toward mono, but in a more subtle fashion.

I like the symmetry of the cycle of firebreathers, but I think it probably servers our needs just as well if we have individual cards that are firebreath-y, even if they don't fit into a cycle, as long as it's not a "broken cycle" of 4. Do people agree?

If so, this can be whatever's best for red. Currently it looks like it will either be a simple firebreather, or an intimidate firebreather that's either -2/X or costs XRR (they function almost the same mechanically, so we can decide which version of the templating we prefer later). Is that a fair summary?

I agree a random smattering of firebreathing-ish effects with no particular pattern may be best.

I have to say again that I really don't like the idea of negative power.

Certainly the -2/2 looked very bad, much worse than Flamekin Brawler.