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CardName: Harvest-Season Hydra Cost: {G}{G}{G} Type: Creature - Plant Hydra Pow/Tgh: */* Rules Text: Harvest-Season Hydra's power and toughness are equal to the number of enchantments you control. Sacrifice an Aura: Harvest-Season Hydra gains indestructible and hexproof until end of turn. Gain 3 life. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Traditions of Glasmarn Rare

Harvest-Season Hydra
{g}{g}{g}
 
 R 
Creature – Plant Hydra
Harvest-Season Hydra's power and toughness are equal to the number of enchantments you control.

Sacrifice an Aura: Harvest-Season Hydra gains indestructible and hexproof until end of turn. Gain 3 life.
*/*
Updated on 30 Mar 2025 by Sorrow

History: [-]

2024-08-27 23:46:02: Sorrow created and commented on the card Harvest-Season Hydra

Its heads are gourds and its body made of vines and leaves.

2024-10-30 13:12:32: Sorrow edited Harvest-Season Hydra:

Was missing UEOT in last ability

There is some subtlety to the rules of templating, but in general activated abilities go below static CDAs, so the Food text should be at the bottom.

Is Food no longer an artifact type?

These abilities feel a little hodgepodge.

Let me try: Harvest Hydra.

2024-11-03 00:31:52: Sorrow edited Harvest-Season Hydra:

Food ability now on bottom

2024-11-03 00:36:18: Sorrow edited Harvest-Season Hydra

Being Food came from flavor/depiction. The core concept is an enchantress hydra, which I feel the first two abilities make evident.

If the creative concept and the mechanical concept fight, sometimes it might be better to split the idea in two to do each idea justice. This strikes me as such a case.

Being a Food artifact creature serves the creative concept, but the Food ability (and the artifact type, too) distracts from the mechanical concept you set up with the first two abilities.

Let me show you my thought process going through the abilities in order:

  • Oh, this is a card for an enchantment-typal theme. You want a lot of enchantments here.
  • Oh, this is a card that more specifically wants to run with Auras. Sometimes I care about any enchantment, sometimes about Auras specifically; also there is tension because each Aura I sacrifice cuts into my enchantment count. I suppose the life gain is a nice bonus and serves the "harvest" theme.
  • This ability wants me to sacrifice the creature I want to be a big beater?! It's also the second way I might react to removal, but wouldn't I rather use the ability to keep the creature around? Well, at least the life gain means it doesn't go away without payoff. Wait, that's the life gain I get for the other ability, too? Why is this here?!?
    (Now checking typeline) Oh! It's a Food! But the Aura-sac ability already covers the life gain part, so does it need to be Food? If it is Food, it's also an artifact. But the text cares only about enchantments and Auras, not about artifacts and Food. If it was some sort of enchantment creature, it would at least count itself for its P/T. Maybe I should double check whether I misread and it counts artifacts and enchantments...

etc.

tl;dr: Being a Food dilutes the enchantment-typal theme - and possibly vice versa (though I read it as enchantment-typal first).


We work with different base terminology, because there is a world of difference between an "enchantress hydra" and an "enchantment-typal hydra". But that's once again a question of whether that's the creative conceit you have in mind or the mechanical one.

If this is top-down, maybe the enchantments/Aura stuff should care about artifacts/tokens/Food.

If this is bottom-up, maybe this isn't the mechanical suite to use a creative treatment on that also pushes you into making it a Food artifact.


Taking this all together, the weird life gain on the Aura ability inspires one idea with respect to the concept. How about you replace the two activated abilities with the following two:

  • Enchantments you control are Food artifacts in addition to their other types and have "{2}, {t}, Sacrifice this Food: You gain 3 life."
    Whenever you sacrifice a Food, this creature gains hexproof and indestructible until end of turn.

Now you can remove "artifact" and "Food" from the typeline, you can add "enchantment" and now have a shorter more in-theme typeline, but due to its own ability the Hydra is still a Food.

You could be extra sneaky and also change the first ability from counting enchantments to counting Food - adding a thematic unity because every single ability tells you that the purpose of this card is to make an enchantment/Food deck, but it doesn't feel like a waste to only lean onto one of the themes.

2024-11-08 16:11:46: Sorrow edited Harvest-Season Hydra

SecretInfiltrator, you did a great breakdown of pointing the problem and what a great solution would look like. That made me think because the choice to be Food was only an added top-down flavor decision and this set doesn't have any other Food themes in green, I omitted the food type. If green had food support this set, I'd absolutely follow your suggestion.

The distinction between counting all enchantments for p/t versus only being able to sacrifice Auras for the activated ability is reflective of my own personal choice. I feel that enchantress can be explosive, so this could have a high body. Of course, a player would want some protection, but I felt that sacrificing any enchantment was too easy. Auras, being the most common subtype of enchantment seemed like the choice that pushes specifics for protection but can still allow the card to be a big ol' beatstick so long as you're playing enchantments.

2025-03-30 20:00:59: Sorrow edited Harvest-Season Hydra:

Removed artifact supertype

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