CR11

Wow; flyspeck3. On a common. Noooot a good idea. Ah, but it's mainly because Apex has somehow expanded wrongly.

And Apex makes you total up the power of each player's creatures? Euuu.... Suggest it just be "If it has (joint) highest power"?

Saurids. Soar-Rids? Sow-Rids? ... mmm, not grabbing me as a name. Personally I'd have gone with something like: Hot blooded now.

@Vitenka: Apex is like Formidable except that it counts power instead of toughness and cares if your combined power is higher than anybody else's creatures. It's super swingy but I like it very much, it's also the reason why there are p/t switch and -1/-1 UEOT abilities in this set, to combat that ability.

And formidable was also a sucky mechanic :)

But it was better than this, because you only cared about hitting a threshold, and then it turned on. This one, you have to check both yours, and your opponents, every time you need to evaluate it.

Eh, maybe it'll play well. But I fear the board complexity it brings. Especially with every power changing instant and ability causing it to change.

Apex wants to feel like "Yay! Big creatures! Swing! Smash!" but written this way, ends up in actuarial tables.
If one player is using Apex and the other is playing, I dunno, Blue - it'll be fine. But if two Apex players sit at a table, well, you're gonna spend a lot of time counting and re-counting - and if they wanted to do that, they'd be playing blue.

So yeah, I'd much rather see something either much easier to count, or counted much more rarely. Maybe Apex should only turn on in upkeep?

Specifically, if you didn't have Apex before the +3/+1 but you do now, does this grant first strike? I know the answer, but it's pretty subtle, and it'll confuse a lot of people.

No, it can't grant first strike after the creature got +3/+1. Unless I misinterpret some rules, it would need a "THEN" at the beginning of the apex ruling to function that way. Right now, everything happens simultaniously. Creature gets +3/+1, and if you had Apex before that, it gets first strike too. The whole cards effect is on the stack, you can't just resolve the first part of it and then the second without some sort of timing written on it. Like Hunt the Weak for example. That card NEEDS the "THEN" because otherwise it wouldn't work as intended. Without the then you can also assume that you can use the effects right after the other, but that's wrong. Without a "THEN", no chaining of effects. But yes, it can be confusing, I might change Apex after all, even if I really love it :/

Sorry. As I said, I do think it's salvagable. The general feel of "top of the foodchain, I rule!" is great.

But the implementation right now is just too fiddly and easy to get wrong.

I understand that, I really do. A hard number threshold like with Formidable is also a possibility, but personally I donot like such mechanics all to much. Unless you have a way of successfully interacting with your opponents creatures, it's either always on or not. Granted, mechanics that your opponents can interact with are also tricky.

You got the flavour right, it's top of the foodchain, and unless you are the very best you get nothing!

If it proves to be too hard to understand I will change it to be only for activated abilities of permanents, like Formidable is.

A swap of the effects would also be possible, this giving first strike and if you have Apex the creature gets +3/+1 too.