For NTC #059 we get a cheap Divination in Green... presuming the other 59 cards in your deck are all creatures and lands. It's probably fine to put four of these in your deck, but boy, is it going to feel bad on the very rare time that you play NTC #059 only to reveal two NTC #059s.

Oh, and what is this card called?

Amusingly; we can make a joke about both its powerlevel and its function in one:
First and Second

(Although that one game where you choose not to, and thus the opponent makes a very bad assumption about your upcoming draw and you win would be... kind of really hard to justify, but kind of fun in a very sneaky way, too.)

Ok, being a bit more sensible - I think if you're going as afar as to introduce this - at common no less - , you're going to want it to show up in later sets. So we want some fairly re-usable name that doesn't tie it down too badly. My first thought was something like "Elfsong" - aiming for a tie-in with the Elvish Piper you really want to have to pair it with; but that's both horrible generic and yet also feels too specific. So instead - I'm going to suggest you want to pair it with Explore (-ation). And also - it's two cards for two mana? Hymn to Tourach wants its license fees. So... Explorer's Hymn. And in casting-usage: I just verbed 'hymn'.

You know, I did think about costing this as . And now that you've mentioned draft, I think I should have done that, given that that would require enough commitment so this wouldn't automatically be a first draft pick.

Normally, I don't like to change what a card does after I submitted it, since that affects how people name the card. Doesn't seem fair. But this is strictly a power-level move, and I don't think Wizards often changes what a card will be named because of a little power-balancing.

So the card was and now it's to give draft more variety. Accidentally, it strengthens Vitenka's Hymn reference in the process.

­Flora and Fauna, also playing up the "two" idea.

Yeah, GG sounds about right. I wasn't quite sure where I would have put it. It took me a few false starts to look for cards that did similar things. There's several that let you dig deeper for ONE creature or land. Lair Delve turns out really close to this, just worded differently, but that's fine, there can be a 2G version and a GG version for different sets. The next closest are Gift of the Gargantuan and Relentless Pursuit.

Forest Stroll

Sylvan Studies

­Ikorian Cartography

I wanted a word that meant like, "a bestiary but with places as well as creatures but I couldn't think of a good one. Maybe "Atlas"? Or "Almanac"? But I figured Ikorian could convey "beasts" and "cartography" could convey "lands" :)

Hunter's Trail - with somewhat similar Ikorian flavour to Jack's idea. (How do none of the many green "dig for a creature and/or land" cards have "Trail" in the name?)

(I assume this would be templated with "put the rest on the bottom in a random order", or failing that "put the rest back on top in any order".)

Oh, right. Yes, put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order is common parlance. Added.

Oh. I had thought the difference where if you didn't pick them you had revealed your next couple of draws was intentional.

You know, that's a reasonable card. It's arguably more powerful, since, if you're packing non-creature spells in your deck, you probably have a good reason. But also because knowledge is power. But my original intention was for this to work like Adventurous Impulse and all the other cards that operate like that. So I errated it toward my intention. Now I'm wondering if I should have errated it closer to the way it was accidentally written.

Ah well, too late now. I've already made two accidental functional changes to the card. Making another one would be straight up confusing.

Heh. Well, as I said - the chance that you're ever going to get a useful bluff out of (when you could choose to look and then not-reveal-or-take) it is almost nil anyway.

I debated what version would end up in the card but figured it wouldn't affect my choice of name much :) I think wizards avoid letting you look at the top cards without being able to change them, to avoid feeling helpless when you know something useless is coming, so it would have to be either "on the bottom" or "on the top or bottom". And the choice is probably too much thinking for common :)

I did CONSIDER whether it was deliberate that you looked at them but had to carefully avoid mixing them so your opponent could see you put them back in the same order. Like carefully following a fairie path without leaving the path. But I assumed that was not deliberate design :)

Alex: Good point "trail" is a good noun here

Gather Provisions

The poll is up! Choose your favorite name here!

I had to be the tie-breaker between Hunter's Trail and Forest Stroll, and I decided to give it to Froggy. I like strolling; I need to do it more often.

See everybody on (((NTC #060)))!