­

Original Card: Greater Werewolf ­

­
• Changed cost from to . ­
­
• Changed ability from granting a -0/-2 counter at end of combat to granting two +1/+1 counters now and +2/+2 until end of turn.
­

I admit, I may have gone too clever with this one. But this card is trickier to update than one would first imagine. The oracle wording goes:

"At end of combat, put a -0/-2 counter on each creature blocking or blocked by Greater Werewolf."

So in other words, the werewolf takes a bite out of you now, then it hurts you good later. That is, you feel it later, if the Werewolf is alive at the end of combat. If the werewolf falls to a Juggernaut, nothing happens. That's... unintuitive.

So I tried to come up with a way that the werewolf could grant -1/-1 counters that wouldn't effect the current conflict, and that creatures would feel afterwards, no matter what happened to the werewolf. And I came up with this, because it looked prettier than all the "that creature gains the ability 'hurt myself'" variants that I came up with.

I admit, though, that this answer is funky. I'm not sure people will get what's going on when they look at the card (not that what was going on with the Werewolf was obvious at first blush, either. But we're trying to fix those cards, not complain about them.)

Oh, and maybe I should knock this down to ? It doesn't happen to kill Juggernaut on the block, either. But at least it leaves it a 3/1.

Delayed trigger are a thing. "Whenever a creature blocks or becomes blocked by ~, put two -1/-1 counters on it at end of combat."

Works for me - werewolf bits you, you turninto a big (wounded) werewolf.

Then you turn back, into a non-werewolf-corpse.

Fits plenty of variations of the legend.

Does work extremely oddly if you give him first strike, but eh. "Don't do that" is a perfectly good response to that problem.

I thought they were, Dude, but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. I'm sure, having said that, that people can come up with a good 50 or so cards that use it.

I will say that I don't like the timing intent of the original card. It's too quick, especially considering the original only affected toughness. Seems more like a glitch... like they didn't know how to add the -0/-2 to the damage, so they tacked it in at end of combat.

Hmm. I don't know. I know we can do delayed trigger, but I'm bound to keep this text unless someone tells me they prefer it the other way. I take it by Vitenka's response that he at least groks it this way.