It occurred to me that the simplest way to evolve this mechanic into rare would be to do it in the most obvious way. Just some big overpowered fattties that can take advantage of either of the two ionic abilities. Okie Dokie.

Nifty!

Also, this card made me start to wonder if cards like this could say "put a coloured ion counter on a creature you control". That way it's like populate: Eyes in the Skies and Coursers' Accord work fine on their own, but better if you've popped your Grove of the Guardian first. But it'd probably not be worth the complexity in this case. Thought I'd mention the idea anyway.

To me it feels strange that this is an Angel Faerie that doesn't fly... but I have no idea what the blue ability should be instead.

Well, it does gain flying if you give it the ability... but yeah, I get that. I'm trying to warp a traditional white and a traditional blue creature. Pro Red is evidently a fairy ability, so I ran that. If I could come up with a different 6/3 in Red that felt better I would... but I like Angel Faerie better than Angel Sphinx or Angel Djinn, which don't seem to solve the problem.

I also did think about letting the counters fall where they will. It's tricky but I think you're right, Alex... few will notice that you can put them where you want, but... uh... I probably did it that way due to length of text restraints. 'it' is much shorter than 'a permanent you control'.