Some quick design notes on this new mechanic -

· colors.

· Rewards stalling. Useful when trying to break a stall.

· Not necessarily linear. Multiples of this mechanic in a defensive deck is desired, but in tempo decks you don't want too many of these.

· Closer to White for a Anti-W mechanic. Synergises well with laws. I am willing to concede that under the flavor of UG being allied with White and Greeks/Samnites having a better relationship with Rome than the Gauls and Carthaginians.

·Not actually sure I want to encourage stalls.

·Green cards will usually involve making the creature a bigger threat. Blue cards will improve your card quality or get rid of certain issues.

·Unsure about timing of trigger. Your end step renders the card a bit more newbie friendly in helping you get an effect immediately. Opponent's end step allows for more interesting counterplay in White by tapping down things to deny the trigger. Upkeep is dumb. Each end step seems hard to balance.

·Name sucks. Pure Pokemon. But it doesn't sound particularly White unlike other names I had for it.

Hmmm, if you remove that "if ~ is untapped" restriction does the design suffer? I'm just thinking is it really necessary. The card itself is like Geist of the Archives, Sigiled Starfish, or Aether Theorist. The p/t of 1/3 already discourages attacking so adding that scry clause makes it even more nonsensical to attack with this. It might as well have defender if you ask me.

The mechanic kinda reminds of me inspired, funnily enough.

The card name is nonsense, but "Biding (your time)" sounds okay to me.

I'm thinking of adjusting the trigger to be "at the beginning of your opponent's end step" to encourage more interaction (though it won't come up TOO often in gameplay). I figure this mechanic on defensive cards will read better than if the mechanic was on, say, a Wind Drake, where you have to choose between attacking and holding back for the bonus. The latter will probably appeal a little more to spikey players.

Actually, that was my exact opposite reaction. My first thought was "shouldn't this be on a Wind Drake?" With Wind Drake, there's a choice to be made (which is why it appeals to Spike.) With a 1/3, the vast majority of the time, there's no choice. Scry 1 is almost always better than 1 damage. That's why people don't attack with Merfolk Looter.

But no one was ever planning on attacking with a 1/1 ground pounder. You could attack with a 1/3 flyer... but you can't. Mostly, this card is an annoying tease... one that neither Timmy, Johnny, nor Spike would be particularly happy with.

I don't know about being unhappy. I think Johnny will be happy with a 1/3 flyer blocker that gives you a scry every turn! And on the rare occasions you need to attack with it instead, you can do that.

The problem here is now that this is basically exactly equivalent to ": Scry 1" but takes a heck of a lot more words over it.