Black can't do either of those things.

The first one is a cycle/set theme thing. I can live with it (black did have proliferate in Shards of Mirrodin, after all).

Was this a mistake in copypasting Rebel Tinkerer? They're have the same second effect. Maybe "Destroy target token creature"? ("destroy target artifact creature" would be kinda nonblack too).

I don't like referencing token-ness. What if it drained a player for 1?

Each of the Tinkerers shares its abilities with its allies colors, so the first ability matches the blue one, and the second, the red one. It's not essential that they act this way, or have these abilities in particular, but the design goal was to show an alternative to Tinker's "always choose between the same two options that are really only in white's color pie", that we can show the same "choices and forward progress" theme.

This could also just be a WUG trio instead of five card cycle.

That is a bad design for a cycle. You should never get a red ability without requiring red somehow (for example).

The goal was for it to overlap, yeah. I just copied the original design as it was suggested. I was thinking of the same issue with the 1 damage.

I think 1 damage to each opponent would be more palatable and also more clearly evoke 'progress' - progress towards winning, that is!

dude1818, the goal is to find a hybrid red/black ability that both can do, that evokes a sense of progress. If we can do that, then the cycle is not a bad idea.

A hybrid ability is then something black can do on its own, so it won't really look red. If that's the goal, it would probably be not very visible.

Yes, the goal isn't for it to be a non-black ability or to look red, it's just to be an ability that black and red can share. That's all.