As an alternative to just having "Flying, vigilance", we could give this cycle Enlighten abilities, which would help us get more Enlighten at common. The problem is, the simplest phrasing is:

> Enlighten - Whenever you draw a card, you may have ~ gain vigilance UEOT.

Problem is, you draw a card on every one of your turns, and your turn after your draw step is the only time that vigilance is relevant. There's no difference to this over just "Flying, vigilance".

We could make it "...you may pay . If you do, ~ gains vigilance UEOT". But that might feel unnecessarily harsh. It also makes this fairly simple cycle start getting pretty wordy.

I provisionally like this cycle.

You could have this be "Enlighten -- untap ~", although that's more complicated, more open to abuse, and probably impossible to extend to the rest of the cycle. Is there any sensible wording for triggering off drawing a card other than your draw step, which would make sense for this sort of once-per-turn ability?

Actually, making these cards have enlighten kind of turns me off. If I'm playing with these guys, I probably already have an enlighten deck. Let's say I have two enlighten creatures on the board. I can either play this, and have three, or I can trigger enlighten. I can't have both, therefore, I am sad.

jmg: Expensive cards with cheap cycling options are always thus. Chartooth Cougar is famous for confusing new players - "Why would I want to discard this useful creature to just get a land?"

And you say "I probably have an enlighten deck", but at the moment, there's only three enlighten cards in the common skeleton. And they're all in the enemy-colour commons, too. I just want to get a bit more enlighten at common so that it feels like something that actually exists for limited.

Yeah - I'm certainly seeing this as more like cycling. It's an option on a costly card if you can't afford it right now. I already said I'd rather see it named manacylcing to make the comparison obvious.

We could also make it all upside by using evoke?

One other thing manacycling does is let you run a colourless dual-colour (mayybe even tri-colour) deck. Would the urza's lands be efficient enough for it to work? I think it'd be worth a try.

Heh. We had the Evoke discussion on Loretower Guard.

As pointed out on Tel Eria Guardian, this is very similar mechanically to Aeran Elf. I think I'm inclined to make this a Assault Zeppelid variant. Perhaps 4/2 trample flying?

4/2 trample flying isn't great, because that looks a bit too good next to Flamedance Warden at 4/1 flying. Hmmm. I'd be fine with a 3/3 trample flying for 5 (you get less efficient than Assault Zeppelid because you have the option of manacycling), but 6 feels quite unpleasant.

Aha. Give this the 3/3 flying first strike stats from Loretower Warden. Then let Loretower Warden be a low-power high-toughness creature, like Sanctum Plowbeast. Senate Jurist is 3/4, so Loretower Warden could be 1/5 or something, like Jelenn Sphinx.

...Except I don't really like a 3/3 flying first strike for , because white has to supply both the flying and the first strike, not leaving much for green to do...

Taking the discussion over to Tel Eria Guardian.