Random generator gave me Greater Mossdog and Wickerbough Elder. If Aerie Ouphes said "Destroy target artifact", I would have called it a day right there. But it doesn't, so I got to move on.

The problem with both of these cards isn't that they're hard to mash up. That's easy enough. The problem is that they're both kind of degenerate in the way they operate. The parts that aren't degenerate are the same (3/3 green creatures for ), so I'm forced to stare into the Abyss for as long as it stares back.

I did think of making this creature sacrifice to destroy an artifact, then exile 3 cards in your graveyard to return to hand. That seems like a fair couple of abilities. That also feels like cheating, somehow. It's like I'm acknowledging the two abilities and saying 'no thank you. Imma do my own thing.' Dredging for artifacts? Cute, but not enough Elder. Hmm. There's got to be some middle ground here. Somewhere where I can accept both the abilities, but balance them, without taking up too much space.

I don't see why Wickerbough Elder is degenerate, and I also don't see why your proposed solution is cheating. Combining a french-vanilla dredge card with something else that ends up being able to recur from graveyard without using dredge? Sounds like precisely how mashups are meant to work to me.

I'd be tempted to combine them into "While ~ is in the graveyard you may pay to destroy target artifact or enchantment. If you do, put this back into play from the graveyard."

Infinite naturalise is pretty powerful; but this would make you jump through the hoop of getting it killed each time. Or, alternately, you can kinda regenerate it; but only if there's something for it to destroy on its way back in.

@Alex: Sorry, I suppose I didn't mean 'degenerate' so much as 'circuitous'. Both abilities tackle Magic in a sideways fashion, which is fine for one card, but tends to pile up when both abilities join forces. Most of my initial entries just ran too long, or made you wonder "So what's the point of doing all this busywork?"

I don't know... you might be right that my proposed answer was a good enough spiritual successor. I try too hard sometimes.

@Vitenka: I did think of just going big and splashy, yes. I'm gonna give this a think.

Well, I had to finish this if I wanted to get any new work done. And this seems to compromise some of the my problems. As soon as I realized that Greater Mossdog's ability didn't need to be tied to the graveyard, the card came together better. It's still wordy, but probably okay as a one-of. Oddly, I like this form of spell-shaping (maybe for just one card, normally), but I get the impression that 10 of these would frustrate the 'I don't wanna self-mill' Timmies.

Technically, you target the artifact/enchantment when you activate the ability, not when you apply the replacement effect. Actually, can you even target during replacements?

why not? redirecting damage does this all the time.

This wording works fine; dude1818's statement is true but not a problem. It works like Words of War: you announce the target when the activation resolves, and then at some point later the replaced ability will instead affect that target, assuming it's still on the battlefield. (Indeed you can't target in replacement abilities.)

However, this has slight problems in that I can pay before casting Harmonize, all three abilities targeting the same artifact. Then that artifact will get destroyed just once, but I'll still get three +1/+1 counters on this. That I think is counterintuitive.

That is counter-intuitive, but I don't think it's true. The extra activations should get countered for a lack of valid targets, so the Elder won't get any more +1/+1 counters.

I admit, that that's tricky, and I don't like cards to get tricky. I think most people would get the 'purpose' of the card, and play it the way they assume its supposed to work, or be on a level where they try to house the card, then get corrected by someone who knows the rule. Still don't like tricky, though. Don't know how to solve that without including yet another 'If you do'... or flipping abilities around again.

Nope. The key is, no destruction happens when the ability resolves. It only gets destroyed later in the turn, when you actually would draw the card/s.

Ah, you're right. I just wasn't think about this the right way. Alright, two 'if, then' statements. Not what I like, but it solves the problem.

Yeah, sensible. Not pleasant, but it does fix it.