­River Merfolk

...why is this worthy of being rare? Ok, FEs rarity scheme was odd (Technically, nothing was rare; but u1 is as close as the set got)

And mountainwalk on a merfolk; even with the tenuous excuse of "It lives in the river" is... dubious. And colour-hate which we don't do much any more.

Still, these were perfectly playable footsoldiers in a merfolk deck.

Drop to common, and... I really want a blue evergreen keyword other than flying.

"Protection from" I guess? Prot-red? That's strnger than mountainwalk in some ways; weaker in others - and blue is just about the only colour that gets to do hate that way.

Flavour it as "You can't set me on fire, I'm underwater" I guess.

White is a more normal colour for prot-red (Kor Firewalker, Burrenton Forge-Tender). But for the purposes of this set I'd say it's fine on blue as well. (Bizarrely, it's most recently been seen in blue - Master of Waves - and red - Vulshok Refugee.)

FWIW the other common blue evergreen keywords are hexproof and... islandwalk! Merfolk Spy, Lurking Crocodile, etc.

I guess I could give it hexproof. I just don't LIKE hexproof.

Islandwalk, of course, completely misses the flavour.

Protection from red is fine in blue. All colors can get protection from their enemies.

Protection from enemy colour is a lot less common nowadays, though.

Ok; given the Vodalian Knights change to be, you know, a knight and thus cost Order of Vodalia, I should probably have this take up the missing spot in the curve. It's very tempting to give this some form of conditional evasion then - maybe unblockable if you cast a spell; along with prowess?

That ends up kinda simlar to the knights, though.

The set does need groundstall breakers. So maybe just "2/1 unblockable" (losing the prowess)? The flavour being... huh. I could write "Landwalk" but I'm trying to be new-style not too silly. Anyway, flavour being they sneak onto your land via the rivers. Which actually, amusingly, would be even better flavoured as "Non-Island Walk" :)

But no. Arguments against 2/1 unblockable? Unblcokable is REALLY STRONG. Especially if you have auras, equipment, and so forth. Which, well, we do nowadays. (Back in ye day, best you could do was slap firebreathing on. Though this set introduced Armor Thrull which actually works pretty well.) But, well, really strong just means you need to pay for it. And it's not even that expensive nowdays. Neurok Invisimancer suggests for this cost, you get a small upside on top. Or Phantom Warrior makes it a bit harder to ping. (But I don't really want another 2/2, because knight cycle and necrite semi-cycle)

So what small upside? Howsabout flash? Being able to surprise fits with the flavour too; and it's not too strong because you're using an unblockable as a chump :) The tension makes this somewhat skilltesting I guess (you're almost always better off just casting it and attacking, but the temptation is to hold it for the surprise)

I think that's where we'll go for now. But I'm not strongly attached to it, and may have a better plan in future.