Original card: Roots ­

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• Changed name to 'Root'.
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• No longer enchants creatures with flying. Now enchants creatures with power 4 or less.
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• No longer taps the creature on resolution.
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• Now removes flying from enchanted creature.
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Originally, incapable of figuring out what to do with this card, I changed nothing. That's where the conversation starts, anyway.

The name was changed to a verb to reflect this is an enchant creature. Other than that, I found this card resistant to my attacks. It doesn't belong in green (I don't know what color it officially belongs in. What color hates on non-flyers? I never figured that one out.) Neither does Entangling Vines, but the card exists none the less.

I also thought of removing the "enter the battlefield, tap a creature" line and dropping the cost to . But, I don't know. It's already breaking the rules. Seems weird to hunt one part and keep the other. Also thought about tying this to power. Green likes things with high power, roots can keep low powered creatures tapped (roots are only so strong, after all.) Not sure. Opinions are certainly welcome.

It would make so much more sense as something like "Enchant creature // Enchanted creature loses and can't have flying." Maybe you could add the doesn't untap clause, but that's really blue.

It would. But while Earthbind is flavorfully similar to this card, mechanically it's a very different card. That, and the set already includes Mammoth Harness, so we'd just be doubling down on 'auras that remove flying'.

Also of note: I could color-shift this card to white. Unfortunately, Serra Bestiary is in the set, so we'd end up with two similar Pacifisms in white. Seems excessive.

I'd almost be inclined to leave this as-is, green has occasionally got "pacifism, but worse". It's not really in colour, but I can't see any small fix that would make it better without completely remaking the card.

IIRC, "creature without flying" most often shows up in red in earthquake-like effects, but I don't think it's that red hates non-fliers specifically, it's just a common flavour thing or red weakness. Red hits fliers too. Any white could do that, but I agree, white doesn't need more pacifisms.

The options seem to be:

• flip it to flier-hate, which is flavourful and on-pie, but duplicates mammoth harness
• Leave it as-is, which twists the pie a bit.
• Add a power restriction (and maybe add loses flying as mostly-flavour); that's on-pie, but further from the original card.
• Shift to another colour (but none seems good, the flavour is so green)
• Make a more extensive mechanical change

None of those are great, there's a tension between "how much do you want the cards to stay the same" and "how much do you want them to fill a skeleton appropriately" alas.

I think changing it to a power restriction is the best bet.

It sounds like a reasonable change, especially after Jack's mention that it could be an anti-flying tag with little consequence. I'll probably be switching over to:

Root
2G
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature with power three or less.
Enchanted creature loses flying and doesn't untap during the untap step.

It's a departure, but at least you can see why the changes were made when you look at the card.