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Original Card: Dark Maze ­

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• Changed activated ability to attack trigger
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• Increased power and toughness by +2/+1.
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• Changed exile" to sacrifice.
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• Technically, the defender ability goes away forever. It's a conservation of words thing. I mean, you're going to sacrifice it at end of turn anyway, and there's no reason to stack the end of turn ability seeing it costs . I suppose if you have a Stifle this is relevant. But 99.9% of the time, it does the same thing.
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There's no real reason to wait until the end of your turn and forget to pitch the Maze you attacked with. Likewise, there isn't a real flavor justification for exile. If you want to Disentomb Dark Maze, I don't see why shouldn't be able to.

I suppose it could get a boost in power, but Dark Maze is a defensive card, and I don't want to reward them. Otherwise, I always liked Dark Maze. It does a simple job well.

Yes, it's very solid. Only question is... from the art, name, and mechanic, this looks a lot more like a black card than a blue one...

That's a good point. I don't think it needs to be moved, since it's still a creature that kills you by your not being smart enough to get out of the maze in time (in theory.) But if I need to switch a card into black, this makes a good candidate. Or if a black common looks like it would be a good flavor match for blue, I could make a switcheroo there.

I'm starting to realize that I should build a skeleton. Not to figure out the holes and fill them, but to document all the potential swaps I can make. It's going to be much more difficult if this info isn't all in one place...

Moved into black just to get a feel for what it would look like there. I also removed the ": Dark Maze may attack as if..." to an attack trigger. Although, that creates a weird conundrum. Dark Maze would be the only wall in the history of Magic to not have Defender. I'm not sure which is worse: Funky wording, or the thing that the funky wording is dancing around.

Also pumped the power by one. I mentioned I didn't need to do that, but I guess I'd rather pique people's curiosity in the set by increasing the power level marginally all-around.

Moved back to blue. Blue needs something 'Serpent-y', and this is the closest thing in set.

Kind of bugged me, realizing that the 'Serpent' in common could only attack once. So I buffed it. And re-added the .