­Winds of Change + Incubate

Everyone rummages their whole hands. Why hasn't this seen a reprint recently? Just too cheap? And a variation on Cocoon.

So and old school card, one mana. I'd say Polymorph/Chaos Warp is a good fit for the mechanics mash; but that's not one mana. And, you know, is already published. At least twice.

Put +1 counters on cards in your hand? That doens't make sense?

Oh - actually; I can see a way to do it. How MANY counters should this distribute? Unstable Mutation suggests 3 is about right.

And... ugh; I want this to be more random and allow opponents to take advantage of it sometimes. Maybe it only gets the counters in your end step? Yeah; that works. (Was on ETB)

And now the wording is too much. Ok; falling back on "Old style card" and using old style wording. This used to be an enchantment that gains counters, then move them. Now it just sets up a reality.

I still want opponents to get the first bits of the cherry though - so meh; adding an extra clause. (And yes, change type AGAIN, was sorcery, breifly)

Remove "under anyone's control" 'reminder text' because now it's during an oponents turn makes it obvious anyway - and it fits!

Name... meh.

Could this hit only your creatures? Sure, it's well in-pie for green (though more primarily white) - but would need to cost a bit more.

... What? Your ramblings are somewhat hard to follow tbh.

Why is the upkeep restriction here?

If this isn't limited to a single turn (ie. the next 3 creatures would get those counters even if this was cast 9 turns ago and no creatures were cast during those turns), then you are asking for memory issues and in that case I would rather have this as an enchantment.

Power wise this sucks hard. Why would you want to cast this? For example, having some instant spell that generates three tokens seems way too narrow of a scenario. The payoff isn't worth it. I would assume there are better cards that put counters on creatures - regardless of their controller.

Ok; so the ramblings were stream of consciousness and show prety much exactly why I designed the card this way. The restriction is so that you don't just "Oh, I cast this then cast three creatures" but rather "I have to risk my opponent getting a shot at it". In turn, that's there because otherwise it's not a one-mana spell - which was one of the first constraints I got from the source cards.

Yes; it has memory issues. The actual template was, for a while an enchantment with: ~ ETBs with 3 +1/+1 counters on it. When a creature ETBs under any player's control, move a counter from ~ to that creature. If that was the last counter, sacrifice ~.

This is identical in function and way too wordy. So I went with the excuse "I already said I was designing an old-school card" (again, from the source cards) and gave useful but imprecise wording. The actual physrep would indeed be that you stick three counters on this.

Why would you cast this? Because you're running Hypnotic Spectre and your opponent's hand is empty, and think it's worth the risk they won't draw anything? You're running Meekstone and want opponent to have bigger creaturs than usual? you know you've curved into a 2-drop and a 3-drop hey, maybe the opponent will miss one? And yes; as you say "This, then summon 5 soldiers" is a deck you could try and build.

It aint power-nine, but it's usually going to get you some +1/+1 counters for . It's usable.

Maybe shouldn't be rare though.

I'm not buying those scenarios, but whatever.

I think a simple and interesting fix would be to increase the number of counters and make it a non-flash enchantment. That would increase the reward and drawback as well. Say if it was five, it's quite unlikely you would be able to spend all of those counters by having five creatures ETB under your control. That would mean that the opponent would get their turn to fetch those counters. However, if you were able to pull such a feat off, the card would reward your for it.

> Enchantment
> ~ ETBs with five +1/+1 counters on it.
> Whenever another creature ETBs under any player's control, if ~ has a +1/+1 counter on it, move a +1/+1 counter from it onto that creature.
> When ~ has no +1/+1 counters on it, sacrifice it.

­Afiya Grove looks like a quite similar concept btw.