Original card, based on vertical cycle with Sea Troll.

I really liked the new wording on Sea Troll, not caring about if you or an opponent has Islands, just as long as there's water where she's fighting. That, and I needed a two drop that could play early blocker. Oh, and I needed a blue common that interacted with Jinx (and the Sea Serpent slot is currently being taken up by Dark Maze.)

This is an upgrade from Minamo Scrollkeeper and Hammerhead Shark, I know. But we've seen a fair amount of power creep since either of those cards, so I'm thinking this should be fine. The tough nut to crack was art. You'd think finding appropriate fantasy art of a sea troll would be easy enough. Meh. Guess these guys are some sort of land sea trolls. Can't say it doesn't match the ambivalence of their ability.

I like the idea here.

The "attacking or blocking and defending player controls an island" is cute and appeals to the Melvin/logician in me :)

But I think some players may be confused -- if I read it right, it gets +1/+1 on attacking if the opponent controls an island and +1/+1 on blocking if you control an island (which hopefully you USUALLY do, but not always). But I suspect people may be muddled which way round it is, or not realise they could cast this off a non-basic land.

I think the ability plays fairly well -- it's usually a 2/3 defender (except occaisonally) or a 1/2 attacker, but occasionally gets a bonus if defending player has an island (which makes sense, like islandwalk). I like that. But I'm not sure if there's a simpler way to get it across in the rules text...?

Also, there's no point boosting toughness during combat, since it would die afterwards. I think creatures usually get the bonus when they attack or block (though that would be different from Sea Troll). "gets +1/+1 if it attacked or blocked this turn" might work, tho' I don't think it's a standard template. There might be a simpler version, not sure.

Ah. You're right about the ability vanishing toughness outside of combat. Funny. I originally had this at 2/1 with +0/+2, but considered that too good. Turns out, not so much.

So I suppose the first thing to do will be to change this to "When ~ attacks or blocks... until end of turn." That part's simple enough. Won't perfectly match the Sea Troll's wording, but that's probably okay.

The confusion thing... that's going to come down to a matter of taste I think. Altogether, the simplest way to express this creature would be:

"When ~ attacks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn if the defending player controls an Island.
When ~ blocks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn if you control an Island."

It's certainly more spelled out. I'm not sure if it's easier to remember, though. One of the nice things about doing it the other way is that it asks the player to think about why it's doing what it's doing. Once you process it, you 'get' it. By spelling the ability out, a player may not take the time to process the card, only looking up whether or not they have the bonus for scenario they happen to be in.

Or maybe I'm overthinking it? To be honest, I'm too close to the card to tell. One more problem: Spelling the ability out may be fine on the common, but by the time the complex Legendary rare creature is designed, it might be too many words.

I honestly find the spelled out version easier to grok, the repeated words seem to fit a template which I can easily remember, not force me to remember them separately.

I think (I'm not sure?) "defending player" nearly always or always means a player you're attacking, not just any defending player. So people will assume it means that and then notice (or not notice) that it doesn't.

And I think that would apply to "normal" players even more than me, but I'm not completely sure, it may be the reverse.

You could always leave it until you design the rare and then see how it looks.

It doesn't read to me like it cares about your own Islands. "defending player" certainly can refer to you, but it's unusual because most cards will just say "you".

This is an odd problem. Because there's nothing wrong grammatically with the card. Jack mentioned new players having a problem, but I don't think they would. They'd just parse the sentence. It's people who have been playing the game for one year plus that would get tripped up for the reason you mentioned, Alex. They just aren't expecting the card's controller to be a defending player.

If this was me developing for Wizards, I'd stick to my guns on this. Because the only way to debunk that thought process in people's heads is to start using the word 'defending player' in other ways. But this set is supposed to be about conforming to standards, so I guess that's what I got to do. Delta Scamp won't be a problem. It's Sea Troll that bugs me, because it has to conform from:

": [Blink Sea Troll]. Activate this ability only if Sea Troll is attacking or blocking and the defending player controls an Island."

to

": [Blink Sea Troll]. Activate this ability only if Seat Troll is attacking and the defending player controls an Island, or if Sea Troll is blocking and you control an Island."

Messy. But I guess it's what needs to be done.

I'm sorry this is causing difficulties, I certainly think it's ok to ignore it for the moment. But I'm really interesting in it, because I don't think it's just an edge case -- I think it's actually an important part of design making cards that (usually) look like they do what they actually do, and part of that is sticking to "what words usually mean". Like, the same effect can be written in multiple ways, wizards usually use the same way. And Mark Rosewater talks about cards in base sets saying "you draw a card" not "target player draws a card" because even though the latter is more interesting, the first is a little easier to grok for newcomers.

That's why I focussed on this minor templating point, because I could see a problem, but I wasn't sure WHY there was a problem so I wanted to think it through.

I think the new text for sea troll is ok, though I agree it's not great. I do hope maybe there might be a better alternative we'll think of in time.

No no, this is good. You certainly aren't bothering me with this; I'm really interested in the minutia, to the point where I worry about boring other people with my own damn comments.

At the very least, this gives us a record. At some point, I plan on highlighting this set on my blog, and welcoming people to use it. The more general comments on the card, the more people realize that a lot of thought went into this set, and the choices weren't done on a whim.