Other than having some sort of Lovecraftian horror feel, we don't have much direction here. We do have the idea of changing other lands into islands, though perhaps, with the way we're seeing monocolor as invaders, this is something that could bleed into multiple colors. Personally, I think mill might be a good direction. It's oft-maligned, something like enchantments. Can we make it better?

Literally giving creatures the horror type might be a good thing, too.

Mill is not that new, but there might be new ways to do it. The obvious implementation is "deals damage to a player in the form of" like mindstrike, although I don't think that's enough on its own. Things that spring to mind:

(i) Ways to make it less an all-or-nothing mechanic (ii) Ways to make it interact with creatures (iii) Other ways to interact with it, eg. cards that let you filter your opponent's deck while milling (probably that make it hard to lock them out completely, but punish them for relying too much on a couple of big cards), cards that care about cards in your opponent's graveyard.

I like the flavor. These things are so alien that they drive you insane.

We could do something similar to what Dimir guild did in Ravnica and give blue a number of linear ways to win. That worked in Ravnica, specifically because of Transmute. I don't know if it would work so well without the tutoring...

We could also give blue something that looks like clash, because of its tendency to rearange libraries. So, the goal isn't to mill... it just works very well with the other blue mechanic.

Otherwise, playing with Morph makes quasi-sense for a Cthulu race... and we've seen that before in blue. Though, I must admit, I think I'd like to advice Morph for mono-white... it works much better in a combat oriented color and gives options to an otherwise option-low color.

Flash could be an interesting mechanic to build around, that's both linear open to being modular for other decks to tag onto. For example, if we had a number of cards in blue that gave a benefit for when you played spells during your opponent's turn, blue would greatly benefit - but you other colored instants would still trigger it.

Where did this discussion of morph come from? Did I miss it somewhere?
What about creatures with abilities like this:
Mindnumbing 2 (When this deals damage to a player, look at the top two cards of that player's library and put any number of those cards into that player's graveyard. Put the rest back in any order).
It's selective milling that lets you choose what your opponent will draw. It's very wordy and it might be too mean, and it doesn't need to be keyworded. But it's a thought.

So... Fateseal 2? Except the cards go the graveyard instead?

It's possible, but it is very powerful, and it doesn't look it to a lot of players. You'd still need to connect to make it work, though, so it can only be so bad... but if this is what we're working on, I'd probably push to have it not always trigger when it deals combat damage, since there's only so much design space one can use with 'only triggers when combat damage is dealt'. But, I suppose, then it really is Fateseal.

The morph idea is just me ruminating ideas off the top of my head, and isn't meant to be taken seriously. I'm still not sold that mill is automatically the way to go for blue, but I can be. I still think "target player puts the top two cards of their library into their graveyard" could make an excellent rider for a lot of spells, but I don't know if that automatically means we have a mill theme.

I thought morph was a strange idea at first, but now I like it more: in several colours it could tie in to the invader theme in different ways.

I agree mill is still only a "maybe". And I also think fatesealing is too strong and too unfun, but some lesser filtering may be more plausible, though I'm not sure exactly what. Perhaps something like "one player divides into two piles, the other chooses one", although that's too complicated for a common mechanic.

Sorry, I don't mean to seem like I'm pushing mill. I just got a bit excited about it for a minute. There are definitely other possible blue themes.
Maybe we could bring back flood counters like from Aquitect's Will and Quicksilver Fountain. We could have creatures do different things depending on the number of flood counters/ islands on the battlefield, and the flood makers wouldn't even have to be parasitic.

Too go along with that theme, what about a card like this in blue:
Wave Burst
Instant
Counter target spell if its controller controls an island.

This works well with flood counters, and also makes sense if you think about the fact that the colors have existed in isolation for a very long time. They would have developed ways of dealing with themselves.
Note: This is just me brainstorming.

Oh, now I like this. Not a bunch of cards that change lands into Islands, but a bunch of cards that add flood counters that make lands Islands in addition their other types? That's definitely a mono-color strategy. While this idea has been around since the beginning of the game, there hasn't been a block that's gone hog wild with it in blue (Lorwyn was close, but not quite). And I love the fact that we can print a bunch of nasty serpents and have them all be playable. That's some good linearity.

Sounds good to me.

I was thinking of flood counters when I suggested "becomes an island". (And perhaps turn creatures blue too?) I think it would be an interesting flavour. And I like wave burst. But I think counters need to be used sparingly, else you can colour-screw someone too easily, which is presumably not fun.

I also considered having an automatic way of removing flood counters, like "pay 1 to remove" so you can have lots and gum your opponent up, but it still doesn't lock him/her permanently. But that wouldn't work well with existing cards that give flood counters. You could possibly have a keyword that says the opponent can pay to remove flood counters when you grant a new one, or something, but it would be messy.

Actually, I was assuming we were talking about lands becoming Islands in addition to their other types. That would allow us to flood the board with Islands, without crimping on whatever game your opponent is playing. They can still tap their lands for Black mana, because their lands are now "Basic Land - Island Swamp". This also allows you to play with cards that need varying amounts of Islands... some that require your opponent to have just one, and some that require your opponent to have five, let's say.

But turning your opponent's lands into Islands, straight up? That's probably a very bad idea in mono-colored land. If we have cards with casting costs like , turning one Swamp into an Island is going to mean game.

Ah, hm. I see there's been some of both in the past, I just assumed flood counters would mean only, when that's not necessarily the cast. I'm not sure. We agree we definitely don't want lots of "become island only". But it's harder to make "become island as well" interesting in multiples; you can design cards that care about how many islands your opponent or all players control, but it interacts less with existing cards.

I wonder if it's possible to have both, a bit of permanent island-only and a lot of temporary island-only, or a lot of island-as-well and a lot of temporary island-only, or have a bunch of "flood counter, island as well" effects and some "target land with a flood counter on becomes an island only". That's what I was thinking when I suggested the idea, but I suspect it would be too complicated and not have enough play value.

We could probably have them all be "island in addition," and maybe one rare or something that makes them "island only."

I propose a keyword, maybe even as simple as Flood, that puts flood counters on lands whenever you do stuff. But should the trigger be something simple like attack or damage? Or when you cast a spell? Maybe it can be an action like proliferate.

I think action. I like the sound of "When ~ ETBs, Flood target land."

I like the "Flood" idea. I think flooded lands should be Islands in addition to their types (as in Aquitect's Will), but it's fair to have one rare that removes their other types (like Quicksilver Fountain). I don't think it's sensible to have much more than that in the remove-type category.

Then we can have a number of tentacled sea beasts that can only attack if defender has islands; a number of other creatures with islandwalk; a number of blue cards who do things to people with islands, such as Seasinger and Wave Burst above. This is probably deep enough to be the blue cards' major theme.

Come to think of it, "tap target island" would interact with and scale with the number of flooded islands. That would be simple, but give a reason to make many islands early. (We may well not go that route, but at least we've not cut it off.)

This can also be color-fixing for blue in limited. Perfect.

Oh yes, of course! It enables us to have more cards with or in their costs. Very nice.

I'm envisioning a Serpent of the Endless Sea reprint that gets first picked consitantly...

I kinda like the idea of using Fateseal (though not too heavily) toimply the sanity gnawing unnaturalness of the blue invaders.

So, to be clear, our implementation of flooding is subtly different to that of Quicksilver Fountain, in that the duration of our flooding is permanent as opposed to "tied to flood counter", and the flooding is additional instead of a replacement for the mana ability.

Out of interest, it seems like most of the "put a counter on X, it has a static ability" abilities are durational and tied to the counter. Are there any examples in Magic of putting a counter on something and it permanently having a static effect (not tied to the counter)?

Yes. Sensei Golden-Tail, is what springs to mind, thought I believe there are others. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Our version is closer to Aquitect's Will than Quicksilver Fountain. Perhaps it is wrong to make the change permanent, and we should have the mechanic perform like Aquitect's Will. We haven't actually discussed that in-depth.

There's a number of really old cards that used to say "Use counters to represent this change" but the effect wasn't officially tied to the counter. Alex, being the insane fount of Magic lore that he is, probably knows them off the top of his head. That's a crazy ability of yours, Alex.

I'm not 100% sold that the ability shouldn't be tied to the counter. In fact, I've championed the concept of counters with abilities in the past (you know, besides +1/+1 and -1/-1), so you think I'd start arguing about that here. Both ways, though, seem correct. If I may:

Counters have abilities written into them:

I personally like using the card as a marker, if that helps - the way people do with Oblivion Ring for example. You're supposed to put the card in RFG and the oblivion ring on your side of the table - but you actually put the ring on top of their creature to mark what it's doing, just as if it were enchanting it.

Of course, that won't work with cards which flood more than one thing.

/me laughs out loud at @jmgariepy :)

...Actually, as it happens, most of the older cards that said "Use counters" have been errataed to not use counters at all. Quarum Trench Gnomes, Aisling Leprechaun etc just set up static abilities. Cyclopean Tomb has an effect whose duration is explicitly limited to the presence of the counter.

I believe one stated reason that Sensei Golden-Tail uses counters is because unlike most cards which permanently change others (like those I mentioned above), his effect is cumulative and it matters how many times you've done it. You can give something effectively Bushido 5 (technically 5 copies of Bushido 1) by activating him 5 times.

I think it's better to follow Aquitect's Will rather than Quicksilver Fountain, because flood is already following Aquitect's Will in one way: the "in addition to its other types" line.

Reading back - I think I REALLY like the idea of "Mindflay" as an equivalent to infect. Presumably it'd want to be 2 or 3 cards per power.

You could also put in something like threshold that cares about the size of your opponents graveyard to continue the horror. "Your brain melts. And now most of my creatures are abombinations with +2/+2 and tentacles."

Ooh... I missed Aquitect's Will precedence. I never really played with the card and just chalked it up to how I thought it worked, as opposed to actually reading it. Guess that's another for the 'for' column...

I don't think it makes much difference to gameplay as there aren't that many cards that remove counters from lands, but the modern template seems to always be "as long as it has a counter on", presumably because it makes more sense in the case where the counter is removed, so we should probably stick to that.

If we want to flood our opponents' lands with counters, what simple spell effects could key off the number of them? Many of these are much too swingy ("draw a card for each" may appear at uncommon/rare, but will be too useless or too overpowering), so I tried to think of as many as possible effects that could care about x islands in the hope that some would be both (i) useful and not too strong or too weak and (ii) not too punishing as an anti-blue splash:

• counter target spell unless its controller pays x
• draw x cards, discard x cards, or look at the top x, or scry x, or fateseal x,
• tap x creatures
• target creature gets -x/-0
• mill x
• aura "at the beginning of its controller's upkeep" or creature tap with "tap enchanted creature unless its controller pays x"
• x creatures gain islandwalk
• a 1/x
• at unc/rare: P/T = x
• draw x cards

(Hm, maybe a soft counter could be "counter target non-blue spell" and key off the number of islands its controller controls -- that would avoid the hose-blue spell :))

I think someone already mentioned that exact counter spell somewhere. The other ideas are pretty nice.

I second the 'counter target non-blue spell' idea. Whoever came up with that first must be one cool dude. ;)

I'm just putting the thought out there: What if flood was "Put a flood counter on target land. (Lands with flood counters on them are Islands in addition to their other types.)" That gives flood counters actual rules meaning, which I don't think our current functionality does. Does it?

Hmm. A pretty subtle change. Thinking it through... Our current interpretation as on Flood Crab has slightly shorter rules text, and significantly shorter reminder text, than the proposed change:

> Put a flood counter on target land. (Lands with flood counters on them are Islands in addition to their other types.)

> Flood target land. (Put a flood counter on it. It's an Island in addition to its types.

Either way needs a change to the Comp Rules, but the current approach is just defining a new keyword action like many new sets do, whereas adding meaning to a counter is rather more unusual. I... think I prefer to stick with the more "normal" (and shorter) version we've got at the moment.

The reason that I suggest it is that it makes it possible to de-flood a land without bouncing it, using things like Aeran Banker, which would actually be quite a confusing inclusion if it didn't hose flood.

Ah! Sorry, I wasn't sure what you were getting at. You're right, we're likely to want some counter removal, so that has to turn off flood.

That could be done ruleswise either as:

• "Flood -- put a flood counter on target land. It's an island in addition as long as it has a flood counter on"
• "Flood target land. (Put a flood counter on target land. It's an island in addition as long as it has a flood counter on)"
• "Put a flood counter on target land. (Lands with flood counters on are islands in addition as long as they have a flood counter on)"

With possible minor tweaks. The last seems most plausible, but I'm not completely happy with any of them.

Mmm. There's one benefit to giving rules to a counter. We can print the counter on the token sheet with rules text right on it.