Original card: Fifth Edition Wanderlust

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• Preprinted from 5th edition.
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• Changed opponent loses 1 life to you gain 2 life.
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• Trigger is now during your upkeep.
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Poking around to see what else I could find, I discovered Taysir flavor text on a Fifth Edition card. Wanderlust can't be a straight pre-print, though. It's too weak, and doesn't make sense in modern green (makes sense flavor-wise. Pity the mechanic wasn't used much. I blame Feedback and the like for watering the Wanderlust mechanic down.)

Anyhow, I could have made the card black, but I would either need to drop the casting cost to , or increase the life lost to 3 and increase the casting cost (technically, there are reasons why you'd want to play a Stab Wound without the -2/-2, but it wouldn't read well.) Neither of those felt right, so I flipped this to life gain. The name isn't as appropriate as the life loss version, but it still makes sense IMO.

I suppose the real question is whether this needs to be preprinted at all if it's going to come with this baggage. Especially since most people won't recognize the Fifth edition flavor text connection. Not sure. It can hang out in the file for now, though. Probably needs a new name to nix confusion. "Wandering" will probably work fine.

I realized that Fifth Edition probably had a few more quotes on odd cards, so I went digging. Fifth Fallen Angel has some Baron Sengir flavor text, and makes a good preprint so that's in. I don't know what to think of Deathgrip/Lifeforce featuring a conversation between Baron Sengir and the Autumn Willow, though. I got to think about it... but I'm leaning toward 'pretend I didn't see that.'

Maybe I can just let it inspire two completely different cards and keep the flavor text? Hmm...

I really wanted this to be common, like it is in Fifth Edition, but there aren't enough commons in this set to support that decision. It's not that I'm tied up for space in the common slot... it's just that Wanderlust, as it is right now, is a strategy unto itself. With only so many common Green cards, it's warping half of common Green to conform to Wanderlust's strategy, and I shouldn't play that game. Far better in uncommon where people can play into the strat sometime.

I'm still not sold that this is the best execution of the card, either. Now that I'm not tethered to common, I could do a little more with it. I'd say revert the text somewhat, and make the card red/green... but the way the skeleton is aligned, that would make the card take up the rare Red/Green slot, and that would probably be too weird a choice.