It was discussed over on How can monocolor deal with flying?. It's a nifty combat trick, and a nifty way for green to block flyers and islandwalkers. Combos very well with pump spells or abilities as well. The flavour even works as something between Fungi and Plants. Therefore, I propose Flash Foliage should be reprinted in this set.

Oh yes, seems an excellent fit. In fact, I would have thought this was really innovative if it wasn't a reprint :)

We'd said we didn't really want a saproling theme, but I think it's fine to have one.

I hope we can avoid the "cast only during" Oracle updated wording somehow :(

It looks remindery anyway - if there's no creature attacking you, there's no target, so it's uncastable, surely?

...and the oracle wording doesn't stop me casting it during MY attack, anyway?

I assume the change is to prevent there being blocking creatures after attackers are declared but before blockers are decalred (since that's the only thing it changes) presumably to clean up some edge case in the comprehensive rules, but I don't know why that matters.

"...and the oracle wording doesn't stop me casting it during MY attack, anyway?"

It says "target creature attacking you", so only if you can attack yourself?

Sure, I can't cast it to any useful effect... But I can't cast it before combat to any useful effect either.

The issue seems to be that people were casting it before declare blockers step, and then trying to declare that Saproling as blocking something else. More details: 1, 2

Doh! I knew there'd be something, but I didn't think of that.

Hm... "onto the battlefield blocking target blocked or unblocked creature attacking you"?

"onto the battlefield blocking target creature attacking you. (Don't take the piss.)"

I hate to be the one to point this out, but if there are 1/1 saproling tokens, then there are no 1/1 fungus tokens. Not only that, but putting +1/+1 counters on a token isn't much fun... which is kind of why I advocated fungus tokens in the first place... less likely to get a counter if it's already a fungus.

If people don't mind, though, I'm all for changing the name and making it a fungus. Or having a rather similar, but slightly different spell, now with mushrooms.

Hmm. I was wanting to create an uncommon blue variant on Aetherplasm or Metathran Aerostat, that puts a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield blocking something that's attacking you (as a sideways answer to fliers, since blue has the fewest common answers to fliers). Probably an instant for to drop a creature of CMC X; like Flash was meant to work, but more interactive because of the combat requirement. On the one hand you can't get your Flamedance Warden out as an instant unless you can stop it taking combat damage; on the other hand this can provide blocking even when the creature couldn't normally block the attacker.

Problem is that starts feeling very similar to Flash Foliage, and I wonder if it'd be too similar to have them both as uncommons in the same set. What do people think?

Good question. Hm.

• Rather than an instant, would it be cleaner to have a flash blue creature which could be put onto the battlefield blocking something? It depends how much we want the combat trick and how much we want an interesting open-ended card.
• I hope it's OK to have both. If not, maybe we should keep the blue one, since green can always have more reach.
• Although that's a shame because the plant flavour works very well here. OTOH, if the oracle text is a bit ugly, maybe we shouldn't reprint this after all?
• If we have small plant or fungus themed 1/1 creature tokens, shouldn't they be saprolings? That seems to be what saprolings are for, and it means our theme is less isolated from the rest of magic.

To be honest, I can't see why we can't do a combination of Flash Foliage and Elvish Piper - blue doesn't seem necessary to get the effect. I mean, the piper has been reprinted enough times, it's pretty much cannon. Either an instant or a creature would make sense by me.

Oh, indeed, green could definitely get "Put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield blocking target creature attacking you". It could maybe even be cheaper than Dramatic Entrance. But I was wanting something in blue :)