Homelands Restored: Recent Activity

Ug. A cool concept, but a weak way to portray the idea of a dwarf riding a wolf.

I fixed what I could, but I got to admit that I'm still not a fan of the resulting card. It's mostly upgrades, but then I dropped to sorcery speed, because I didn't want this to cause ground stalls. This is also flagged as a high candidate for uncommon.

But... ug. One of those cards I want to 'fix'. And by 'fix', I mean make a completely different card from the ground up, which is the exact thing I shouldn't be doing, so I didn't..

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Original Card: Heart Wolf ­

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• Reduced cost by . ­
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• Color shifted from red to white. ­
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• Used to give +2/+0 and first strike. Now grants Dwarf Guard for first strike and +2/+2. ­
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• Removed "When that creature leaves the battlefield this turn, sacrifice Heart Wolf." ­
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• Removed from "Activate this ability only during combat."
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This could easily be a functional reprint of Cremate, and that's what I was planning to do at first. I don't like the idea of functional reprinting, but sometimes that's what the card wants to do, I guess.

The only real problem is that headstones... well, they don't exactly scream 'Instant Speed!' I tried to come up with a sorcery speed cremate... but doing that required adding something else... and that required adding something the card never did before. I just couldn't come with anything that just involved playing with the numbers. (Lose 2 life, draw two cards, exile a graveyard card for , for example. At this rate, I'm pretty far from the base card...)

Eventually, I landed on making this an enchantment. And since this is slow graveyard removal as an enchantment, I figured it worked better as a white card.

It's kind of weird, admittedly, just sitting on the battlefield (New Mirrodin would have loved this card, what with it wanting a 'clean graveyard'.) I also thought of adding the word "Imprint --", but I'm sure most people wouldn't appreciate/think the joke was funny. ­

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Original Card: Headstone ­

Nice work.

Yeah, this was a challenge to make mythic, but I really like the result, it feels true to the original card.

Hazdhur needed to become the white Legendary mythic of the set, due to a lack of other options. But, being an old man, I didn't want to beef up his stats by much.

My first thought was to just make him indestructible and move on. But his flavor specifically talks about him dying someday, and soon-ish. I had to struggle a little while before I figured out that I should give him more of a martyr-like ability.

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Original Card: Hazduhr the Abbot ­

I thought they were, Dude, but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. I'm sure, having said that, that people can come up with a good 50 or so cards that use it.

I will say that I don't like the timing intent of the original card. It's too quick, especially considering the original only affected toughness. Seems more like a glitch... like they didn't know how to add the -0/-2 to the damage, so they tacked it in at end of combat.

Hmm. I don't know. I know we can do delayed trigger, but I'm bound to keep this text unless someone tells me they prefer it the other way. I take it by Vitenka's response that he at least groks it this way.

Works for me - werewolf bits you, you turninto a big (wounded) werewolf.

Then you turn back, into a non-werewolf-corpse.

Fits plenty of variations of the legend.

Does work extremely oddly if you give him first strike, but eh. "Don't do that" is a perfectly good response to that problem.

Delayed trigger are a thing. "Whenever a creature blocks or becomes blocked by ~, put two -1/-1 counters on it at end of combat."

I admit, I may have gone too clever with this one. But this card is trickier to update than one would first imagine. The oracle wording goes:

"At end of combat, put a -0/-2 counter on each creature blocking or blocked by Greater Werewolf."

So in other words, the werewolf takes a bite out of you now, then it hurts you good later. That is, you feel it later, if the Werewolf is alive at the end of combat. If the werewolf falls to a Juggernaut, nothing happens. That's... unintuitive.

So I tried to come up with a way that the werewolf could grant -1/-1 counters that wouldn't effect the current conflict, and that creatures would feel afterwards, no matter what happened to the werewolf. And I came up with this, because it looked prettier than all the "that creature gains the ability 'hurt myself'" variants that I came up with.

I admit, though, that this answer is funky. I'm not sure people will get what's going on when they look at the card (not that what was going on with the Werewolf was obvious at first blush, either. But we're trying to fix those cards, not complain about them.)

Oh, and maybe I should knock this down to ? It doesn't happen to kill Juggernaut on the block, either. But at least it leaves it a 3/1.

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Original Card: Greater Werewolf ­

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• Changed cost from to . ­
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• Changed ability from granting a -0/-2 counter at end of combat to granting two +1/+1 counters now and +2/+2 until end of turn.
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Even with the changes, I'm not sure I went far enough to make Grandmother 'playable'. But maybe she doesn't need to be great. People like -1/-1 counters, yo. And she looks good when comparing her to Fallen Ferromancer. I should stop mulling over this.

I was a bit upset when I realized Grandmother wasn't a vampire. Seemed silly to me. I almost made her one, then went snooping around and found out that she's the Planeswalker Ravi, stripped of her spark, and driven mad because of it. Huh. Go figure. Interesting that they didn't drag her into the Time Spiral plot somehow.

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Original Card: Grandmother Sengir ­

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• Changed cost from to . ­
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• Changed activated ability from giving a single creature -1/-1 until end of turn to giving one of two creatures two -1/-1.
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Edit: Note, my first attempt was a black Hill Giant that just activated to give a single counter. ­

Fair enough. I'll be switching the oyster back in the next pass.

Thank you, Alex. I was struggling to find the obvious wording.

"Prevent it from dying in this way" is pretty old-style woolly wording. How about: "for each creature that dealt damage to Giant Albatross this turn, destroy that creature unless its controller pays 2 life."

This is pretty crazy wording. I much prefer the original "doesn't untap". This wording brings up lots of questions. Why does an Oyster with something in it suddenly get utterly invulnerable to all things that would kill creatures? When did Oysters get so bouncy? Why can an Oyster dodge Wrath of God by attaching itself to my own tapped Suntail Hawk first?

Magic has commons like Frost Lynx and Encrust in every set: you just tap the Oyster and put it on top of the creature and it works just like Encrust until the creature eventually dies. You just treat the Giant Oyster like an Encrusting Licid. (Don't actually errata it into an Encrusting Licid though.)

I've been arguing that we should do other things with Haunt for a while now, then what was done in Ravnica. Strictly speaking, you aren't wrong Dude... Haunt is a very simple mechanic at it's core, and exiling a creature on another creature is pretty much what it does. That said, Haunt means a very specific chain of commands to many people, none of which this card do. Maybe I'd think about switching to haunt if... you know... this oyster's flavor was haunting something. But flavor-wise, the oyster is leaving an imprint on someone's leg.

The Oracle template, as it goes (not counting extra bits that I removed, like what happens when the oyster goes away.):

"You may choose not to untap Giant Oyster during your untap step.
­: For as long as Giant Oyster remains tapped, target tapped creature doesn't untap during its controller's untap step, and at the beginning of [your upkeep], put a -1/-1 counter on that creature."

Is that cleaner? I'm kind of too close to this card to say, myself. I will say that I'm biased against creatures that choose to remain tapped. Seems unintuitive to the design of the game. There's also the memory issue thingy too, which is another reason why I prefer imprint. Doesn't sound like a problem, until both players forget that a creature is pinned down by an oyster and shouldn't be untapping. But I can certainly understand the counter-argument. I would like to hear other people's opinions on this.