See Giant.

Do you think faze will really be relevant enough of times to warrant a keyword?

In this set, maybe not, but in Link's Alternate Magic Reality it's the evergreen keyword.

Faze came about when I was trying to brainstorm an evergreen mechanic for . You can see the first use over on Liquid Doubt, and if you search for cards I've made with faze in the text, you can see that some still use old wordings.

I don't remember which comment has my stipulations for the new keyword, but they were roughly as follows:
• It needed to fit in both and , so that it could appear on cards.
• It needed to affect combat in some way.
• It had to be a keyword that could go sensible on non-creatures.
• It couldn't be an evasion ability.

My analysis of other evergreen keywords added the following rules:
• It had to override a rule of combat to make it work differently when involving that creature.
• It couldn't be a triggered ability.
• It couldn't manipulate power or toughness.
↑These are why I regarded prowess as a failure.

I felt that faze fit all of these qualities, so I've wound up using it since then. It's not perfect — it's a bit complicated, after all. I haven't honestly thought about it much since then. I don't know if anyone's asked your specific question before; maybe they have and I forgot. Is it relevant enough? I don't know.

I do like that it:
• Feels red to care about power this way.
• Feels blue to twist the rules this way.
• Plays on both red's dislike of Walls and blue's -x/-0 abilities

Quite insightful, thank you. It's certainly an interesting idea and I can see the connections to , yes.

I was wondering whether you had done concrete playtesting with it in some custom environment and got a gauge on the number of times / likelihood of it being actually relevant - or if it would end up being almost close trinket text - which in itself may propagate other problems like people often just forgetting it when it would be relevant given those scenarios are few and far between.

Unfortunately not. My activity here and around Magic design in general tapered off over the last few years, but even when I myself was more active with it, I didn't have a group I could bother to playtest anything with me. Only one of my friends plays magic, and he has no interest in custom cards. That's part of the reason my interest slowly faded away, to be honest.

I'm glad you've given your perspective, though. Your concerns may well be valid. I think it would be slightly more relevant than you think, but perhaps not enough to be evergreen. There are enough creatures with imbalanced P/T that I think it's slightly more than trinket text, but without proper playtesting I'm unsure.

I just settled on it years ago and haven't really given it critical thought since. Another issue I can see now that I'm thinking about it is that I missed a stipulation when I was laying them out for myself:

• The keyword should be an upside

Faze isn't an upgrade, since there are situations where it would be a disadvantage. It's a sidegrade.

If I'm inclined, I might return to the issue and see if I come up with an alternative.

Edit:

Stun (Creatures must tap in order to block this creature.)

✓ Would fit alright in .
✓ Alters the rules of combat

👎 Isn't that relevant or useful