My only suggestion is that it should have devils. And elementals. But I think all of the monocolors should have elementals.

P/T switching? It is alien, but I don't think that it could fill a color.

It's not big enough for a main theme, but it's a nice idea for a subtheme.

I'll give some thought to what might be otherworldly mechanics for red.

How about: "unearthly creatures which appear out of nowhere"? The main mechanical identity would be haste. You can have a startling variety of flavours of haste. There's "dies at end of turn" as in Arc Runner etc; there's "bounces at end of turn" as in Viashino Sandstalker; there's "haste and can't block" as in Iron-Barb Hellion; there's "haste and attack trigger" as in Thraximundar; there's "haste and tap ability" as in Cunning Sparkmage; and of course plain French-vanilla haste as on Raging Goblin. You could have assorted abilities that synergise with haste, such as a Primal Forcemage-style card that pumps creatures only on the turn they enter the battlefield.

This would mean the gold cards don't get haste, at least not for the first set.

Funny. "Unearthly creatures which appear out of nowhere" says Flash, to me. Though, I see what you're getting at here.

While too much haste can be a bit ridiculous, I can get behind a lot of haste, and a lot of things that work well with haste. I'm not going to go into a litany of things that might do this... but I could see a linear mechanic that encourages tapping all permanents you control, and going all in. Possibly have creature abilities that are turned on only when they are turned sideways, or something like Masako, the Humorless kicking around (Tapped creatures can block / untapped creaures can't block? Sounds like a red Enchant World, but I can't find it).

Also, if we want a feeling of "creatures popping up out of nowhere" we could also have some sort of creature swapping effect, similar to what Ninjitsu does, except without the blocking requirement? I don't know if that works well with haste, or just accompanies it. I also don't know if it's better to tie something like this to a tribe: for example, only allow Devils to swap back and forth, to cut down on the number of crazy interactions this can have with various cards.

"Comes out of nowhere and attacks" makes sense. I keep having a nagging feeling that even that is too subtle for red, and red would rather "just attack" but I think it's a good way to start. And I quite like P/T swapping, although neither is whole theme by itself.

What is red?

• Passionate
• Emotional
• Short-sighted
• Impulsive
• Fire
• Fierce

Nothing is yet suggesting any good unearthly ideas.

A red ninjitu-like ability makes a lot of sense, that's starting to feel like an identity. Perhaps the opposite of ninjitsu, you get the new devil as well as the existing ones, but before blockers, provided your attackers meet some restriction (eg attack with everything). Although simply ninjitsu would fit quite well with a different flavour.

Red is my least favorite color, and I'm not good at designing for it, probably as a result. So you can all have fun with this, though of course I'll contribute something if I have a flash of inspiration.
Maybe you could have something like "Whenever X or more creatures you control attack, you can pay [cost] and put this on the battlefield tapped and attacking."

Whenever all creatures you control are attacking? Or maybe, whenever all creatures you control are tapped, so activated abilities still work? I kind of like the all-in aspect of "gunning for it" red. It's not hard to imagine cards like:

Red Rabble Rouser
­
Creature - Human Berserker
Common
Haste
As long as all creature you control are tapped, they get +1/+0.
2/2

That seems very exciting to me. Maybe we're not supposesed to make everyone happy with these abilities. If you were leary about mono-red and its aggresive tendencies, maybe you shouldn't be playing it, and leave this color to players who really, really like to attack.

1). I may have just readvocated something I advocated previously. Checking... yup I did. I still think this is a good idea, even if we blasted by it yesterday.

2). I templated it wrong, though. If we were to have a Deal 2/Deal 4 instant, that card would have to read "As long as you control no untapped creatures", like the Prophecy "no untapped lands" worked. I admit, that's annoying wording. But that allows it do something when there aren't any creatures to begin with. We could get around this by only using this terminology on creatures, so that you always have a creature, and you can go back to the normal way of saying it. That is, assuming white doesn't start using a mechanic that turns creatures into enchantments...

How about Flash - If you cast this as an instant....bad/limiting effect
So if you cast it in your main phases it sticks around but any other time you cast it it dies/exiles/does bad things to you/etc (flavoured as Red being to impatient to wait for the Portals/whatever is letting them invade to stabilise before rushing through
Instead of red having Sorceries and Instants like "normal" magic, those effects could all be on creatures (with Flash on the 'Instants'). Bodies could be minimal in most cases where the 'spell' is powerful.
Lightning Wisp,
Creature - ????? [1/1]
Flash
If you cast ~ as an Instant, it deals 3 damage to target creature or player. Then sacrifice it.

Plays into aggressive Red nicely. (kinda like a variation on Evoke) Even if Flash hasn't really been a Red Mechanic before. Or we could just use a variation on Evoke (Invoke?) that lets you use the ability at Instant speed.

I'm with you partway with this Camruth, but I think the flavor might be construed as the opposite of what you mean. You draw cards at the beginning of your turn. If you wanted to reward players for being too impatient to hold on to their instants or flash cards, then the reward should be given for playing instants on your turn. Otherwise, it actually sounds like a blue mechanic... being patient and waiting until the end of your opponent's turn.

The other tricky bit is that it isn't a linear ability. We could make a linear ability by making a bunch of cards that liked it when you cast flash/instant cards on your/your opponent's turn, though. It would need to be a high number of cards, though... unlike the fairie ability with a similar style in Lorwyn.

"When all creatures are tapped" seems good to me. I'm worried that it's too similar to normal red aggressive decks, and that something that gives a second wind would be more useful, but I think it's a good place to start.

If you had cards like the "Deal 2/Deal 4 instant", it might make more sense if you did have to control at least one tapped creature, but the wording for that is probably worse.

The instachantments like Ward of Lights were pretty poor. And their Oracle wording is really quite painful. On the other hand, cards that do one thing when cast as a sorcery and something else as an instant feel rather inelegant to me. Even Time Spiral block, explicitly messing with themes of time and speed, only had one uncommon cycle like that. I don't really like that mechanical effect.

If you've got an instant, I don't really want to have it tell me "But if you use me as an instant, you'll miss out".

I do quite like the "As long as all creatures you control are tapped" / "As long as you control no untapped creatures" effect. Amusingly, it also makes Twiddle a better combat trick.

I consider the "isn't that what red already does?" argument a vote for all-in tapping. Like landfall, rewarding players for things they are already doing works rather well.

Also, assuming we make this the red mechanic, we need to put 1CC Twiddle effect in the skeleton. What an absurd trick coming from Red's enemy...

Camruth mentioned having creatures play the role of instants and sorceries. What if we had several Kiln Fiend-like effects (not necessarily with P/T boosting) and some of the creatures literally were instants and sorceries? I don't just mean token-making, I mean something like Ephemeral.

Then again, we're playing with weird creature-type mixes in a second color, and one is probably enough.

I don't have the same reaction Alex has to Camruth's idea, and wouldn't mind a few "creature on my turn, instant on my opponent's turn" sprinkled into the set. Alex cites Auras with Substance as a major rules headache... but that's because the cards in question were auras going away at the end of the turn after cleanup, not creatures that came into play and immediately sacrificed for effect. Possibly in multicolor, or just as a minor aside in Red. It isn't linear, though, so it isn't what we're looking for for major mechanic.

It was just a crazy idea that struck me as a possible way to make red more alien. I agree there could be some headaches to iron out. As to the hold on/use now argument - as long as you cast it outside your main phases it would be an "Instant".

But overall, I agree that the all tapped/no untapped idea is very Red and probably the best way to go.

Any more ideas for red flavour? We originally thought a "hell" theme with demons shifted into small red instead of big black (?) but there's not been much development on it.

Another possibility would be to merge red and black flavour (but not mechanics) as the decadant psuedo-ancient-greek theme with red as decadant warriors instead of dedadent aesthetes; most people preferred all colours to be separate, but I wouldn't mind some being creatively linked.

Actually, it was red having Devils, which are already a creature type in Magic but haven't been much explored (though it looks like they will be in Innistrad?).
The way red mechanics are going with the "all-or-nothing" thing, they sound like a horde of monstrosities that stop at nothing to destroy, or at least some sort of culture that highly value war.
Of course, we could still go in a different direction. The "all tapped or nothing" cards feel a bit awkward to me, but I don't really have any other ideas except pumping up red's caring about instants and sorceries, like Kiln Fiend.

Oh, you're right; I just assumed devils don't exist, but they do (three cards). In which case, yes, that's a better fit.

I was thinking about this on the way home. My first thought was "If each 'Continent' is seperated, shouldn't red be a world of volcanoes?" Then I realized that that was a terrible idea, since it has been done over and over again with red.

But, the exact opposite, a barren icy wasteland in a world more akin to our Antartica has come up a few times in Red, and still seems fresh to me. Also, if we went with an ice continent for red, we could have Yetis. Yetis are pretty cool, and I once talked to a Yeti, and he told me that he really enjoyed attacking with a bunch of his friends.

Oh, and icy wastes doesn't mean we can't have caves full of Devils. That works for me here, too.

I like that suggestion, though my first compulsion was to dislike it. It's a nice change of flavor for red, though, which has had icy flavor in the past, but not nearly as often as volcano-land.
The mention of caves full of devils makes me envision and underground network of flaming crevices.

and hot springs where said flaming crevices are close to the surface. Could also have some fun with Coldfire bluish flames that burn through extreme cold rather than heat. Picture a Blazing Fire Elemental, now picture it burning blue and wreather in icy clouds of mist/fog - very "alien'.

We could revisit things like Frostling and Frostwielder, maybe not as direct reprints but as ideas/inspirations.

I like this idea too.

Mmm, I did like the Kamigawa red "ice and frost" flavour.