Functional reprint of Fire Elemental.

I want a "big red creature" as seems to be common in recent sets. I'd ideally like to vary the template a little, but there doesn't seem much room to do so and "big" fits the "buffalo stampede" concept great without further modification. But any suggestions welcome?

I want a name and creature type for the cattle-like animals (native or imported) on this world. I toyed with an alien-y name, but decided being straightforward is better. But what creature type -- aurochs? ox? what else has magic used?

Technically? Unglued used 'Cow', though I know you don't want that.

This is where Magic's creature type template breaks down. Technically, Magic should have the creature type 'Bovine' so it can slot cattle, buffalo and ox together in it. Why wouldn't they all work together as a team? But, nope, someone made an Ox first, so they're all Oxen now.

On a separate side note, if Frontier World is supposed to be based on the American Wild West, you probably want to call this a "Bison Stampede" instead. There are no buffalo in America, and never was. I know we use buffalo all the time when refering to those huge beasts that used to run across the great plains... but that was just Europeans comparing a different animal to something they knew. Bison can interbreed with cattle, but can't interbreed with buffalo... they're really different creatures. I know that the first time Europeans were exposed to American Bison, they often couldn't help laughing because they looked so weird. They're beards were so big, they reached down to the ground, and threatened to trip on them when they ran! And look at how far forward those creatures are built... they barely have a backside! And what's with that hump?!

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How about antelope?

'Beast' is the fallback type, though.

Hm. Yeah, I want something more exotic than "cow". "Ox" is definitely the magic default, but I like the exotic-ness of Aurochs. I'll leave it for now and decide if I want to switch later.

And yeah, I want something "like wild west, but a bit different". But you're right, I never remember which is bison and which is buffalo and which is something else (complicated because so many new world species get tagged with the same name as a similar but different old world species), but if it sounds like a mistake, it should be changed to something else. Possibly bison, or possibly something more exotic.

I think the magic creature types are actually surprisingly good. Most of the time they sensibly group together similar-enough things into groups large enough to count for tribal, and I can't imagine a lot better way of doing it. Eg. "birds" is about right, even though some mammals and reptiles get their own creature type.

But it's undeniable some odd decisions still perpetuate like having "ox".

I sometimes lament they don't have a way of grouping together creature types into a hierarchy, so all the aquatic creature types have "aquatic" in small print somewhere. That would allow sensible cards like "destroy target undead creature". And it wouldn't be much cognitive load, because 90% of the time, it's obvious which creature types count as aquatic, and if you're not sure, you should be able to look at the card more closely. (In standard -- in casual you'd not care unless you built a deck round the concept.) But it's probably too late to change now, there's too many odd cases where creature types cover non-overlapping concepts, like "destroy target undead creature" would look like it should hit HALF of spirits, or some beasts are aquatic and some aren't.

If I could 'Like' your last comment, Jack, I would have done it already. :)

Why not just make it an Aurochs Stampede and say that aurochs are the natives' version of cattle/bison?

Hm. I think Stampede should have trample, and the trample herd should be green. But stampede sounds more red. How can I separate the aurochs herd into a couple of different cards?

OK, decided this one can be a 5/4 with a drawback, called "restless". Green can have a trample creature.

I considered "unless you control a Rancher" like on Loose Steer, but decided it was probably more interesting without.