What do you think of the new watermarks?

Watermarks look good. Isn't shallan blue though? Always struck me as a bit of a nerd.

She is a scholar, but her calling is natural history and we needed a Radiant.

She is a scholar, yes, but as Samuel, said, her focus is natural history. She probably should be blue, but we need to balance the colors of the radiants. Maybe, in the far future, with other books, we will make a blue version of her, but for now, the blue radiants are Jasnah and Renarin.

*and Kaladin, whose flip face will be .

Thoughts on balancing?

I kind of tried to make her as blue as possible, without actually making her blue. Her White surgebinding ability represents her lightweaving, but since I couldn't call it an illusion, I decided to call it an avatar, i.e. it's an avatar of Shallan.

Woah. Cool design. I like the front, but I'm not sure how well the back represents her radiant self. How about this:

Shallan, Royal Ward

Legendary Creature - Human Advisor

Lifelink

Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you gain 1 life.

At the beginning of each upkeep, if you gained life last turn, put an investiture counter on Shallan, then if Shallan has three or more investiture counters on it, transform it.

2/3

////

Shallan, Wayfinder of Urithiru

Legendary Creature - Human Surgebinder

When this card transforms into ~, exile any number of target creatures you control, then return them to the battlefield under your control. Those creatures gain hexproof UEOT. (represents the use of the Oathgate)

­: Invest Shallan.

­, Remove an investiture counter from Shallan: You may cast creature spells as though they had flash this turn. (more Oathgate)

­, Remove an investiture counter from Shallan: Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains lifelink UEOT. (since I took lifelink off the flip trigger)

3/4

That sounds awesome. "Make it so."

Just a side note, I'm pretty sure you can use gender specific terms on legends. I know I've seen it somewhere, but I can't find the card. I'll keep looking.

Edit: it's on the Origins creature-walkers. It either just applied to walkers, or they haven't errataed everything else yet.

Okay, I mad the changes, but that is way too much text on the flip side. Any ideas on simplifying it?

How about just hexproof for the flip trigger?

Edit: After looking into it, I found that the use of gender pronouns is in fact for planeswalkers only.

Sure. That might free up enough room to incorporate some flicker into the second ability. Let me see how it goes.

Okay. I'll change them all back to it then.

Edit: Thoughts on CMC?

CMC 3 seems fine.

Not to mention the fact that the color indicator won't display correctly here.