Another attempt to get a similar style card as the Terrain Warping Beacon. More words, but possibly enough flavor to warrant it. Originally this was blue-white birds, but those mechanics were killing the birds, so I changed it over to imps in black-red. Don't like the fact that this is stopping us from using Imps in set. I'm changing over to Weirds, since it's rather rare for those things to pop up.

I don't get the point of this being a fortification.

That's fair. I think I like the Terrain Warping Beacon better anyways.

I like the flavour here. In fact, I think that almost justifies the fortification-ness, even though I think we should avoid "just artifact" fortifications as much as possible. And I would suggest just "blue and red birds", that feels Aeran to me.

However, are these birds supposed to be sacrifice fodder, or are they supposed to be able to attack or block?

How about a rarer-r fortification where you can get the birds at any time, but the aerie is destroyed if enough of them die, or something?

Oh, heh. I forgot to add Haste. They have haste. Their supposed to be attacking, not just flying around the coop, though, that in itself is kind of interesting. Not common, but interesting.

Fortifications that are not artifacts, huh? That is interesting. A lot of these designs don't feel like they need to be artifacts do they? But... what would they be then? We can't make a new card type "Fortification", because of Darksteel Garrison. Although, we could. Future Sight was supposed to be about what the future might hold, not what the future will be... so we're only kind of bound by the Garrison.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this? How would you feel about the card type "Fortification"? Do you think it would need a color, if it existed? Or maybe it would be kind of unique in the fact that it is colored sometimes? Or is the whole idea the wrong road to walk down?

Ah, sorry, I wasn't sure if that was deliberate. I think doing things as well as just attacking seemed very Aer, so I thought maybe these would.

­Fortifications that are not artifacts, huh?

Oops, sorry. I agree that's an interesting idea, though I agree that it probably won't go anywhere, but I didn't actually mean to suggest that -- I meant fortifications that aren't just artifacts, in the sense that this mechanically this is more of an "artifact" than an "artifact -- fortification", since mechanically the difference between this and "Artifact. , ." isn't much, but I really like the flavour of this being a fortification (and the cost is enough it may matter than you can amortize it over two turns).

You can just say "Sacrifice those tokens at end of turn" to avoid killing everything else that shares a creature type with it.

And yes, I think we'd like to avoid Fortifications whose abilities work just like a non-local artifact where possible, but the flavour here is good.

(It would be very problematic to try to claim the word "Fortification" for something other than an artifact subtype that attaches to lands. Although the only printed Fortification is from Future Sight, the Comp Rules have full support for them, and references all over to "Auras, Equipment or Fortifications".)

Well, I'm glad we're in accordance with Fortifications being artifacts. I'm up for any amount of wackiness, but was afraid that I was starting a long drawn out debate. Turns out that I misread Jack, and, while it's an interesting idea, that's all it is.

On my card: I think it's probably a fine effect, but not something we want to lead with on our first pass at fortifications. It probably gives the wrong message. Had this been a second block with fortifications, making a few flavorful ones that act like enchantments would probably be recomeneded. This one just has bad timing... but it does a good job showing what not to do.