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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. ­

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.

I mentioned before in Irini Sengir that I wanted to sneak a few more multi-colored cards into the set. I don't want to force it, though. It makes sense in my mind to give it to Granny, though, since the base card and my extrapolation on it were so boring (the original card gives -1/-1 until end of turn. I changed that to a counter. Ho hum.) Granny is full of unlife. Every quote by her in this set ends in an exclamation mark. I figured this semi-random ability would make things more exciting, and does a good job expressing her capricious nature.

Nice. Seems fun. Does the ability need to cost since the card is already black and red? That's a rather more restrictive/specific cost than the original's , and it's rare to see multicolour activations like that. Maybe it could just be , ?

I think the templating would go something like:

> Choose two target creatures. Put two -1/-1 counters on a random one of those creatures.

...hmm, that's not quite as natural as I'd expected. Could consider rewording the ability, anyway.

The ability seemed rather strong for cost, so I kept the activation cost restrictive. Though, I could be wrong about that. The ability might be a "Looks great. Doesn't do what I want it to do." or a "Looks great. Plays better, shutting out the opposition."

But you're probably right. Better to assume the former and let the card prove itself to be too good then assume the latter and never prove nothing. Activation will be soon.