I wanted to make a "shade lord." At first I thought of having it grant a bonus to other shades as a static ability, but then I realized that pumping them made much more sense.

I'm still wondering about some details of the card. Specifically, cost, P/T, cost of the second ability, and whether the second ability should affect all shades rather than just other shades. Please feel free to let me know what you think.

"Pumping them made much more sense" - I'm not so sure. Should a Bird lord give all Birds flying? Shades already have a way to pump themselves. What they need is something like evasion, or lifelink, or a way to make the pumps last beyond EOT, or a mana-doubler like Crypt Ghast.

The flying argument doesn't make sense to me, because you don't have to pay every turn to give birds flying. You do have to pay for each individual shade to pump itself. This unifies that, and I think it's a valid way to approach a Shade lord.

It's valid, yeah. But I'd rather see something that said, maybe, "At end of turn, for each Shade creature you control, that creature's base power and toughness become equal to its current power and toughness". (Huh, that ability reads much less confusingly than I'd expected now that we have "base P/T" terminology.)

I agree with Alex's analysis but see Link's point. Shades already have an ability to pump themselves, this currently makes that ability irrelevant. It is definitely a lord though.

In my opinion, I'd merge both abilities into one Shade pump, and then give it a second ability that affects Illusion creatures as well. The word being "Ephemeral" as it is...

Bonus Round: Make it apply to Nightmares as well.

I see your points, and that makes sense. I'll modify the first ability, and give it a second. However, this began as a shade lord, so it will not affect illusions or nightmares. The name is just a placeholder.

I made a few changes. Let me know what you think.

What if it was something crazy like "Whenever you activate an ability of a Shade creature, you may counter that ability. If you, put a +1/+1 counter on that creature."

It's quite powerful as-is, of course, though Shades aren't exactly a scary tribe to be supporting.

Better. The 'Shade' in the first ability should be capitalized. See: Elvish Archdruid and Captain of the Watch.

Alex & Link's ability suggestions is are good solutions for the "shades stay pumped" dilemma.

Another Idea: "Whenever you activate an ability of a Shade creature, each other Shade creature you control gets +1/+1 UEOT."

I like your idea. I don't want to create too much power creep, but heck, Wizards is pushing creatures so much I might as well do it.

LivesByProxy, I liked your idea enough that I used it. I wanted to make it apply to activated abilities of all Shade cards, but it would have made the templating weird, and WOTC never prints Tribal cards anymore.