Random Generator gave me Ali from Cairo and Forest. Forest color shifts Ali green. It also presents a bit of a problem. My first thought was to do:

­
Creature
As long as you control at least five creatures, you can't lose the game
4/3

But that wasn't really a color-shifted Ali... just something I wanted to see. Oh well.

Also, I get the impression that the p/t should be better than this... I just didn't want to mess with Ali's signature p/t. I think I'm going to shave off the top. The ability is roughly as broken at 3 as it is at 4...

Originally, this put 'that many 1/1 Saproling tokens into play', but I guess reversing damage gets a little closer to a green color shift. Though, it's kind of white, admittedly. Hmm...

"This turn"?

Oh, you mean you didn't want this card to auto-win you the game as soon as you activate it? Okay, we'll restrict the ability to just this turn. ;)

The card still bugs me. It kind of gets to the central question that keeps popping up in this challenge. "How literally am I supposed to take the smash-up?" I don't know. But I like this card better when it makes creatures, than when it reverse life, so I'm setting it back to that.

Hee. This is fun. Whose control are the Elves meant to enter under? I... think it'll be the player who would be damaging you, but I'm not sure.

~ deals damage in the form of 1/1 elves?

It even curves out nicely into Volcano Hellion, if your colors are being cooperative.

Ha! To be honest, I didn't even consider the Elves coming into play under your opponent's control. But now that you've mentioned it, I see that I must contribute to the ever growing horde of Elves that can't seem to get Ali out of the Junipers.

Huh. Volcano Hellion threw me, so I looked it up. Ali from Cairo "does not prevent damage, it prevents the damage from turning into loss of life." I suppose that means that infect is a good answer against Ali. Interesting.

That's a REALLY odd ruling, given that the card outright uses the word "Prevented"

Mmm... but that sentence doesn't even make sense on the original card. First the card tells me that damage that would reduce me to less than 1, reduces my life to 1. Then it tells me that "All further damage is prevented". What further damage? If I was to take Ali literally in 1993, I'd probably decide that he lets my life total hover at 1, but prevents all damage dealt to creatures, or dealt to my opponent. Funny thing about cards that old... maybe that was the designer's original intent? It's kind of hard to prove anything with such ambiguous old wording.

­

heh. No, reading it as a normal English sentence it's obvious what it means to say. Though it should probably be a semicolon not a full stop between the two clauses, to make it completely clear it's a further explanation.

As it happens this exact issue was discussed fairly recently on the templating forum, over here.