A test card for using horsemanship in the set. Knights and Cavalry are the obvious choice in White, Knights again in Black, Barbarians in Red (think Mongol Hordes) and maybe wolf or boar riding Goblins) Green would use Centaurs and maybe elf cavalry, Blue is the hardest fit though.

Hm. I wonder what the colour proportions should be. Should it be like flying (blue most, white best, black medium, red so-so, green once every ten years), about the same, or in reverse or in another order (you could have lots of white, some black/red/green and no blue if you wanted, but I don't know if it would be unbalanced or not).

I think it'd be fine to have no blue horsemanship. It's not flying flavour-wise, and every colour gets some evasion; green probably gets more landwalk than any other colour. Mix it up so that some colours get lots, some get a bit, and maybe one colour gets nothing except creatures with horsemanreach.

At this point Horsemanship will be chiefly in WGR (in that order) with black getting one, maybe two and blue none. As green already has Reach I don't think it needs the horsemanship equivalent, especially given it will have the 2nd most. Black and Blue just feel like the anti horsemanship colours. (Swampy, muddy terrain is hard to charge through as is any real depth of water). I did want white to have a non horsemanship answer however.

Further, White will have several small horsemanship creatures, Green bigger creatures and red a few that are strong on attack but poor in defense. As this is basically the White Knight of the set, there will be a black equivalent a-la Black Knight and at least one black common with the abiity.

Curiously, this is one instance where horsemanship is weaker than flying. A 2/2 flyer with first strike for would be too good (compare Leonin Skyhunter), but this can't block flyers, so it boils down to "2/2 first strike blocker, or 2/2 unblockable", both of which are okay for (assuming the flavour of unblockable works in white).

That mix of colours sounds good to me.

(It still feels strange to me that flying can't block horsemanship, but admittedly that would be a blow to horsemanship. OTOH, it would make it less like "unblockable" out of set.)

I have considered a new mechanic namd React for now that would basically be Reach for Horsemanship. Elite Pikemen is a react creature without the keyword.

I kinda feel that you could make them blockable by Flying creatures as well which would differentiate it more from Flying (which it was basically created to be with a different name) without it losing too much in power.

I think that if Wizards ever decided to bring horsemanship back in a set that also had flying, it would make sense to have Horsemanship creatures able to be blocked by flying creatures. It also makes it more its own mechanic rather than just a rename of flying - Its evasion but not as evasive as Flying.

This does raise a couple of interesting questions. Should you even have any flying creatures in the set? Portal: 3 Kingdoms doesn't bother, since it's based on historical events and most people don't fly. But, if blue doesn't have evasion, how would you make your blue creatures comparable to the rest of the creatures in your set?

As it stands, blue's creatures have poor stats, but often get flying for next to nothing. See: Armored Cancrix vs. Sky Ruin Drake. I would think that if blue didn't have flying for next to nothing, that they should get something else for next to nothing. Some ideas off the top of my head would be stunning creatures like Orochi Ranger, luring creatures like Alluring Siren or stat copying creatures like Sentinel. ­

I like the idea of having both, but it you do want an alternative, blue already has unblockable.

Shrugs There's a number of evasion abilities in blue, and I'd assume you'd use a couple of them. But what I was getting at is that this gives a designer the opportunity to stretch his mental muscles. Not giving blue any evasion is a bit of a challenge.

I see no reason not to have both - Tempest Block had Flying and Shadow and it worked fine. Historically in Magic if WotC want to do a 'mounted warrior' the most common ways have been either First Strike, Trample, Haste or Power Boosting; Horsemanship allows you to add a new dimension to all the Knights/Riders/Cavalry/etc flavourwise - they're too fast for ground troops to stop.

I'd just like to say that I definitely disagree with Camruth on this point. I think horsemanship is definitely best left as the Comp Rules currently have it. For one thing, Sun Quan, Lord of Wu is getting reprinted in the FTV Legends expansion, and it'd be a horrendous nerf to his power to let flyers block horsemanship creatures. It's a bigger functional change than has been made outside of the two big rules changes (6th Edition and M10) as far as I can remember. Plus it takes away a lot of the appeal of horsemanship: currently people like it in casual because it's close to unblockable, like shadow.

Hm. On reflection, I agree with both: that is, I think that, in general, horsemanship would be more interesting as "can only be blocked by creatures with flying and horsemanship" (since there's still room to make horsemanship creatures stronger than flying creatures typically are) but also, Alex is right that it would be bad to change the existing horsemanship creatures[1]. (Which doesn't really help.)

[1] OTOH, I'm pleased to hear some people have made casual horsemanship decks. Next is banding :) [2]
[2] Quote from saturday: "Remind me how this works? I can block or not block the whole set of creatures, but their controller can decide how damage is divided between them?" "No, it's not that complicated. It's just that creatures blocking it get -1/-1"

I have decided to leave horsemanship as originally created.
As white normally has cheap & good flying creatures and will also get similar Horsemanship creatures, for this set flying will be restricted to UBR (in that order) except again, for one or two white cards (Angels have to have Flying, its just one of those things). Green will have Reach and, conversely Blue will get anti-horsemanship abilities (bled into White for flavour purposes).