See Challenge # 112.

The Velorn perfected sounded a lot like vampires to me. I decided the concept deserved a mechanic, so here we have perfected, a tweak on undying.

Here you have to pay mana to get it back, but you can also get it back from mill, not just death.

I decided to make this a vampire even before transformation for simplicity. I couldn't decide on a class type, I wanted clerics to be other black creatures, not the vampires. I decided "rogue" was closest to "acrobat.

I wish I could make the reminder terser. I already left out a lot which would usually be necessary, and it's still quite long.

I assumed that most perfected cards would be vanilla or nearly-vanilla, that gained abilities when they became perfected. I used a +1/+1 counter primarily as a memory aid. Alternatively, I could assume they have abilities which become a lot more powerful when they get bigger (flying, lifelink, etc), and perfected usually grant two +1/+1 counters and no other abilities.

Interesting take on Perfection! I wouldn't have thought of the Perfected as vampires, but that's part of why the challenge is so interesting to me.

For the record, the "bat" pun was unintentional :)

I'm interested how you would have done them, vampires just jumped out at me, as the sort of undead who have personalities, and live with mortals or rule over them. But you're right, you don't want to share your ideas too early, I want to see what other people think first, I bet there's at least two completely different interpretations of perfected I never even considered other people will make.

Finally, I'm catching up with the old challenges. 112 is going to take time, but I'll eventually get there. You guys did a tremendous amount of work on this one. Good on you.

On to this card. When I first saw the Velorn, my initial impression was B/G because of the raising the dead aspect, but immediately switched to G/W when I got a better feel for the tribe. Don't ask questions? Occasional raised creatures are perfect versions of a person, almost saintly? Even the public celebration seems to infer community.

That said, the Vampire approach to 'more human than a human' is certainly legitimate. And to be honest, I kept reading 'not black' into a lot of the tribes (though, it occurred to me that the Wastes could be filled with black creatures. Especially since I read the roamers as R/g) I've yet to go any further than one of these initial entries, so it should be interesting to see where other people take these... and what I do with that knowledge when I get to the end.

Oh, also solid ability Jack. Though, I think I'd use a different counter than +1/+1 counters, to prevent confusion. Outside of that, though, this ability could pop up in any set, really.