See Shrubwoods Avatar. I know Shiny_Umbreon and I were having a discussion about auto-kill cards, and neither of us like them. I think this card is fine, though, since it gives you advance warning... kind of. I mean, you can still add four emblems eot, drop this, then swing. I don't know.

I wanted to give these titans some 'weirder' keywords. Like "Protection from activated abilities", which I'm probably going to stick on the blue-white one. I guess I just need to come up with something that works well with clearing the board. I'd use "Must be blocked, if able", but that's the quasi-keyword on cards like Ionized Viashino. Seems weird to pull it forward here. Though it wouldn't seem so weird if I keyworded it. I have been thinking of just keywording that ability anyway...

Meh, I convinced myself. This used to be Haste, now it's 'theoretically worse than Provoke'. I'll need to come up with a keyword later.

how many cards have this ability? two doesn't seem like enough to justify keywording it.

Sorry to give the impression that this only appears on two cards. The actual number of cards in set where "must be blocked, if able." is currently 10. The two previously mentioned, the Viashino's Black-Red partner, Ionized Nameless One, Three of the 'pick twos': Ursilodon, Sciurtilia and Lycolupidae, two global enchantments: Bond of Ferocity and Bond of Malignity, and two Ionized rares: Troglolanche and Dream Fevers. For what it's worth, the cards are all part of 4 separate five card cycles. When I first decided to add the ability, I just assumed it would be on a few cards for spice. 10 cards, though, sounds like a keyword.

Hmm. That's a lot of cycles granting the same keywords. Black won't mind lots of opportunities to gain lifelink (and blue and white are certainly happy with lots of flying and first strike), but green might get a bit bored of lots of chances to gain trample.

That's a good point. That said, and for comparison purposes only, Magic 2015 includes the word 'Trample' on 12 cards. The Ionic cycles are the only place where trample appears in New Mirrodin.

So I'm not afraid of over-using any keywords. If anything, I'm under-using them (with the obvious exception of flying, which needs more than 9 'potential' flyers.) The real problem you're alluding to is that Trample isn't all that exciting. And I agree. I'm more than happy to switch out trample... I just got to come up with another green ability that takes up no more than 7 or so words. And isn't reiterative. I don't really mind extra green ion counters stacking up, but it doesn't do it on the other creatures, so it would be weird to make the green ability 'Bushido 1', for example.

Hmm... think, think, think...