The CC of the activated abilities are too high for a mythic. 5 to kill a creature and 9 to gain any kind of advantage is too much. Cut 'em in half.

As much as I agree with the thoughts you outlined in your e-mail (that this is effectively Royal Assassin w/Regen), I don't know that the slightly transgressive nature of the design merits its existence. What I mean is: who is the target audience for this design?

Ignoring developmental notions of balance, the concept puts you in a bind in regards to how you present it. As s creature with Deathtouch, its P/T values are largely irrelevant, so you obviously you make it a 1/1 (or something similarly low). But now that it's a 1/1, you have to make it cheap, because why would Green, the best creature color, have to pay over 3 mana for a 1/1? But then once you add the fight/regen abilities, you have to compensate and make them expensive, otherwise you have a cheap creature that just dominates the board.

But now we have this thing that doesn't really appeal to Timmy (it's a 1/1 fungus), it's definitely not efficient enough for Spike ("you mean I can pay 4GGGG to kill a creature every turn? thanks?"), and Johnny's too busy playing with all the sweet Johnny tools you put into the set.

So the dilemma seems to be this: costed aggressively, it does things green should never be allowed to do —without actually breaking any rules of green— but costed where it requires investment on par with what it does, it won't appeal to anyone?

I can see the activation costs dropping to something akin to and respectively, but giving something like a G/W or U/G deck a flat-out Doom Blade plus buyback will not fly.

I think there's enough “HOLY SHIT!" on this card that it will make drafters and sealed players want to play it at all costs (and disappointed when they can't make the deck work around it). It's absolutely one of those cards that looks so outright broken at first blush that people scream that we killed the game, but that turns out to be far less dangerous than it seemed.

I don't disagree with either of your assessments, except for on one point in Houlding's notes: in limited, all three player psychographics will want this creature if the costs are right. Not every card is for constructed, and there are plenty of variations on Johnny.

I'd see this card on a list and freak out, and not just for the audacity of it. If we're not seeing it as a totally broken cheater card, then I don't think it's wrong.

Much of my criticism regarding its psychographic appeal is related to its marketability, not its limited potential. Much like Beguiler of Wills, this is just a flat dud in terms of getting people excited, because it requires a deeper insight into limited (and the game in general) to really understand its impact.

Like, even if this were as powerful as, say, Lotus Cobra, it's unable to capitalize on those intangible qualities that defined the hype over that card, because no one has crazy memories of that time they cast Slaughter.

"costed aggressively, it does things green should never be allowed to do —without actually breaking any rules of green"

Disagree. Deathtouch, Regen and Fight are are solidly green keywords (despite Fight being new) and the set cost for Fight is currently in the 1 mana realm. Regen 1-2 mana. Deathtouch is being CC'd at about 1-2 depending.

At mythic rarity, giving people more than what they bargained for is worth it. As it stands now, that card is amazing-like it should be-and would likely hit Scavenging Ooze levels easy.

I had a thought the other night, of making a Fighting Hydra:

Stalking Hydra
­
Creature - Hydra
Spend only to pay for .
Stalking Hydra enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it.
­, : Stalking Hydra fights target creature.
0/0

Not sure if the "spend only " clause is necessary. Would possibly remove that and instead give it an additional ability that could somehow enable an increase in counters.

Or maybe you could go in a hilarious take on Phytohydra:

Fightohydra (Stalking Mycolisk)
­
Creature - Plant Hydra
­, : Stalking Mycolisk fights target creature.
If damage would be dealt to Fightohydra, put that many +1/+1 counters on it instead.
2/2

That last one is pretty cool, and probably a lot of fun to play.

I like mine though.

They beat you to it, brah, and they didn't even fudge around with no Mythic nonsense:

Ulvenwald Tracker
­
Creature - Human Something
­, : Target creature you control fights another target creature.
1/1

They're calling you out, saying "WE DARE YOU TO BUILD A BETTER FIGHTIN' BEAR!"

Son of a bitch.

Funny though how ours is theirs plus tricks.

Re-slotted to Rare. Costs adjusted accordingly.