Hole filling, I chose Raise Dead and random generator gave me Teremko Griffin. I tried to give the feel of a Raise Dead that was simultaneously granting flying (returning to your hand), while invoking a feeling of banding (returning two creatures). I may be off base. That wasn't a simple combination.

Originally, I made returning the creature to your hand an additional cost, and at instant speed, but it read really weird. I could hear some people say "Why is this worse than Raise Dead? While others would declare that Rescueing creatures wasn't really black. So I... well... you can figure out the rest.

I'm probably going to revisit this tonight. It bothers me how much you have to squint to see that Teremko Griffin in there. It doesn't help that, by the time I flipped the flavor text on end, it ended up coming from Ravnica of all places. Thinking... thinking...

Do people think that Simulacrum tricks are inappropriate for black nowadays, no matter the flavor? I mean, what if the card looked more like this?:

Meat Shield
­
Instant
Return target creature from your graveyard to your hand. Prevent the next X damage to yourself, where X is equal to the returned creature's toughness.

This is one half of Rise // Fall, for what it's worth. I'd say the Meat Shield version is less out-of-flavour than the current one.

That's fair. I'm moving this to workbench so I can take another stab at it in Alpha.