Welcome back to NTC #045! This week we have an entry which I'm kind of surprised doesn't exist yet (that I can think of.) A WUBRG creature with five evergreen keyword abilities, each matched to a different color.

That said, finding five evergreen keywords that play well off of each other can be tricky. Two forms of evasion, for example, may be acceptable. But I personally don't find the redundancy exciting. A creature with flying, trample, and menace is just a creature that is less and less likely to be blocked.

Oddly, in the end I ended up with a creature with no evasion. Just a prickly mess that's going to ruin someone's day if it's reinforced with just a smattering of creature destruction backup. But to get there, I had to let a number of keywords rely off of secondary colors. In color order:

White supplies first strike.
Blue supplies hexproof.
Black supplies lifelink.
Red supplies haste.
Green supplies vigilance.

It's kind of weird. Blue, black, and green are not the first color we think of when we think of those keywords. But it works, it isn't really stretching, and I think more people will be thinking about this as a package anyways than as the sum of its parts.

But what is this creature's name (and creature type?)

Akroma, the Overcosted

(less facetious answer coming later, maybe)

I admit, I could not figure out a fair p/t for this. It might be 5/5 or even 6/6. Creature creep sometimes escapes me.

If it bothers anyone, just presume the p/t is higher. Keep in mind, though, that I made this uncommon. It's supposed to be a reasonable choice in draft.

Given Horde of Notions I think 4/4 is fair here.

Mercenary Cadre

­Child of Chaos (Elemental)

­Captain Scalefang
Creature - Merfolk Vampire Dinosaur Pirate
Art: Something like Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, but instead of zombie, vampire, and instead of squid, something crocodile-y merfolk-y

Ok, maybe not :) I looked for a reason to be five colours, and ixalan had the smallest number of tribes that could possibly justify it

Unbound Anomaly

Creature - Elemental Horror

Does Chromanticore not count as "a WUBRG creature with five evergreen keyword abilities, each matched to a different color"?

Maybe I've been playing too much of my Tazri "(Ain't No Party Like A) Cleric Party" brawl deck. But I want this to be a bunch of different adventurers all supporting each other. So it's Band of Misfits, Creature - Cleric Rogue Warrior Wizard. Leaving people to argue among themselves which party members supply which abilities ;)

I had the same idea, Alex, but I like your name and typeline better.

Ah! I missed Chromaticore! I thought the idea was too obvious to have not been done by now. Still surprised there isn't a clean one, but not that surprised.

Also, I noticed that your type line was missing race, Alex. But I admit that it would be absurd to make this a 'Creature - Elf Cleric Goblin Rogue Dwarf Warrior Merfolk Wizard'. ;)

I tried a few experiments with different combination of five abilities, like looking for abilities from five allyy pairs or enemy pairs, but it didn't look very different. I guess some keywords show up in a lot of colours and some colours don't have many keywords.

I wonder if you could find something recognisably five-colour with "five common mechanics" if you include non-keyword mechanics like "exile until". But it would probably just end up as "unsummon target non-black flying creature with power 4 or more and toughness 4 or less" which isn't how colour overlaps are supposed to work :)

Polling is up! Click here to vote on your favorite answer!

Unbound Anomaly picks it up this week. Good job, Froggychum. Though, considering how creature type naming conventions work, I was looking forward to fetching Mercenary Cadre with Cateran Slaver. ;)

See everybody in (((NTC #046)))!

I'd like to thank my life-sustaining oxygen for this victory