The idea I like for green right now came from discussion on Monocolored Alien Invaders?. Mechanically, it stretches the color pie a little bit, but maybe that's okay. We could make the entire force a sort of fungal hive mind that converts everything into fungus and then takes control of it, or at least uses it somehow. The "hive mind" reminds me of insects, so perhaps a sort of fungus-insect hybrid is the predominant creature type. I also like the idea of the green plane being full of instinctual, non-thinking creatures, and fungus insects fit the bill perfectly.

I like fungus, but I'm tired of saprolings. Conundrum! Is there any way we can focus on the fungus side of things without touching saprolings? I think that most of the audience would still like some Fungus lords, since there isn't any that boosts their fungus that makes the saprolings, so we may be cool here...

Well, the insect-fugus concept could move away from saprolings and do ants instead.

Ants are funny. If they weren't already typed as being green insects, they would probably be White or Blue. I'm not saying I'm unwilling... I'm just thinking what some other casual observers might be thinking.

­Pallid Mycoderm is a Fungus-pumper. I think fungi could be worth pursuing; I love the idea of the hive-mind fungus-spreaders. Ants still feel very green to me: they have a very structured "society", but it's all still instinct-driven, very much "swarm the predators, feed the hive, spawn new hills" which feels green to me.

One of the original ideas I had for green seems like a bad idea with blue now having flood: I wanted green to spread +1/+1 counters around (graft?) and mutate creatures with them, but with blue having its own set of counters, would this remain a good idea? I suppose those counters each get their own kind of permanents, so it wouldn't be much different from +1/+1 counters and charge counters. Also, they would probably remain mostly in their own colors.

What do you think of this as a representative of Green's themes in this set?

I'm not sure about the Green Control Magic effect, but I do like the quasi-graft influence going on here. Instead of turning the creatures green, though, can we have the text read that those creatures become Fungus? Same functional mechanic, more what we were going for.

It is possible that graft was a bit too goofy in it's execution. Having cards that added +1/+1 counters and/or gave creatures with +1/+1 counters a benefit sounds solid, without a bunch of extra baggage (activating the ability, or moving counters around when creatures came into play). Plus, it's a mechanic without a keyword. Via the concervation of keywords dictate, I consider that good.

Sure. I imagined the control effect only on this and perhaps a single rare spell, but if you think that's stretching to much I understand.
"Graft" without keywording sounds fine, too.

If we want green to turn creatures into Fungi, we'll need at least a couple of cards to make being Fungi mechanically relevant. And I'm not too sure about having a bunch of Mind Control effects in green. But otherwise, this all sounds good.

The original flavor of green was to turn all the creatures into fungus, then to gain all the fungus. Funny how color-breaking flavor immediately gave us color-breaking mechanics. This is fine, though. Green instead needs to focus on making all creatures fungi, then benefiting from all creatures being fungi. Like having a creature with Trample and +1/+1 for each Fungus in play.

That's a better implementation.

I like the idea of fungus. I think there's room for interesting effects in turning things into fungus, even if that's not what every card does.

I've not played with the thallid mechanic: do we want spore counters or not? several funguses have a connection to +1/+1 counters, that would be an alternative? Do we want "make saproling"? I'm not bothered by that, and we have one vote against, but it's traditional. Or do we want neither, and other ways of granting fungus-hood (enchantments, "fungus counters", etc)

Since we're already using an alternate type of counters in blue, I think +1/+1 counters would be best so we don't have to come up with something new. I like the idea of the +1/+1 counters being flavored as spores that infect other creatures. I sort of want to do something like slivers/ graft with the +1/+1 counters, where something happens to creatures with the +1/+1 counters on them.
As a though, we could have a weird flavor in green where something negative happens to creatures with +1/+1 counters on them.

Yeah that is tricky. The cards would be more backwards compatible if they used spore counters instead. It's also funny that those spore/+1/+1 counters are doing roughly the same thing as the flood counters in blue. I didn't think of that.

My fist thought was "We should keep them +1/+1 counters to differentiate from flood counters" but now I'm not sure. There is thought process in my head that goes "Well, they're already linked mechanically. Why don't we make them closer together instead, and embrace it as opposed to trying to hide it." I don't know. I do know that there is great flavor in the idea of "Now you have spore counters, so I suppose you must be a fungus, as well."

Edit: But, on third thought, there aren't ever as many creatures in play as there are lands. Spreading the spore counters around isn't going to be as fun, if there are only 3 creatures. Maybe +1/+1 is better, if for no other reason, than for their repeatability.

I think we should stick to green infecting non-land permanents, probably just creatures; if so, I think either implementation would be fine, but I'm interested in the idea that green gives +1/+1 counters, both to your creatures and the opponent's, which grant various effects or remove various effects...

+1/+1 counters are pretty backwards-compatible too. There are more cards that interact with +1/+1 counters on other creatures than with spore counters on other creatures.

I enjoyed the Simic Graft creatures, Aquastrand Spider and Helium Squirter and the rest. I particularly liked Cytoplast Manipulator who encouraged you to graft onto opponents' creatures; Hunter of Eyeblights had a similar effect. It sounds like a fun flavour to continue with green in this set, although I see one problem: both of those cards were in green/X factions, and were in the nongreen colour. I think this is because there's not many actions on opponents' creatures that green is allowed to get in the colour pie. Recent core sets have offered Arachnus Web and Entangling Vines, but it still might be tricky.

I like tricky. Tricky forces you to be awesome.

"I like tricky. Tricky forces you to be awesome," is a great quote :)

At common, green doesn't get much creature abilities at all at common; trample, deathtouch and reach. Nowadays often shroud. Sometimes landwalk (normally not very exciting). Occasionally vigilance.

Mostly its creatures are just bigger than other colours. But I feel we may be able to find effects which fit, at least at uncommon.

Perhaps, trample, if the blocking creature has a counter on. Something that untap when blocked by or you're attacked by a creature with a counter on? A creature which just gets bigger with multiple +1/+1 counters on the field (or perhaps, to make it less swingy, according to the number of players who control creatures with a +1/+1 counter on).

A Fungal Behemoth that looks at the whole battlefield sounds pretty cool. I like Greater Sporecap too.

We could have a creature that gets +1/+1 for each creature with a +1/+1 counter on it.

And until we make the entire set we will have no idea what to cost it. Yay!

You know, I would be perfectly alright with abandoning the fungal flavor in green, if anyone has another idea. After our long break with the set, coming back and looking at all of the colors gives a new perspective, and while I still enjoy the flavor of everything else, green is just falling flat for me.

I quite like the fungus concept, although I'm worried the "+1/+1 turns things into fungus" is too similar to the "flood counters turn things into islands". I think we should go ahead and try something based on current ideas, but (a) entertain other ideas as well/instead if anyone has one or (b) hopefully when we try it, some aspects of the idea may come to the fore as more fun, and we can build those up more.

I would be alright with sticking to he flavor, but I desire some sort of mechanical shift. Blue and green arevery similar, but with different card types.
I was going to suggest making green into (normal) plant creatures rather than fungi, but this might lead to a story issue: if Aer is separated from the ground by dense cloudcover, does that mean that the other colors are always shrouded in relative darkness? How would plants thrive in such am environment? They wouldn't. But fungi would. Maybe it is the perfect flavor.

Unless the plants had their own sun, which they worshipped like a deity.

Maybe all the green creatures are plants or fungi (and the fungi do the fungus counter thing if we stick with that)?

I like the sun idea, but I think there's plenty of room for plants, funguses, or something completely different to fit into the flavour.

We could do that. It actually hints at a conflict within green, which to me is alright. Wizards did that in New Phyrexia.

A sunflower? Some sort of super-plant that contains elemental sun-fire within it?

I envisioned either a tree with a sun nestled in its branches, or a stag with the sun in its horns.

Like a plant version of Novablast Wurm?

Maybe, but significantly less destructive. Think of the nurturing aspects of sun.

I like the mini-sun in green. I also wonder if the small sun was put there by Aer as a control mechanism. Put a small sun on your plane, and claim that it is a god, and that certain things make it angry or happy. If that's the case, than Aer has better roots (heh) in green, and might use that color as a sort of limited enforcer. Though, whatever is denying power to Aer and causing it to sink would certainly be draining power from this sun as well. The residents of this mini-plane might be going crazy because they don't know how to make their deity happy anymore.

On the subject of fungi and the +1/+1 counters - what I really liked about the mechanic was how it messed with player's normal perception of how to play magic. Since you were throwing the counters on everything, suddenly green became a thinking man's color. It wasn't just 'Hulk Smash!' all over again. I like that. I don't know how many other players like that, though. There's a very big 'Hulk Smash!' crowd out there, who would rather we didn't play games with their color.

I like the sun-as-deity idea. I don't think green should be too much of a planning color, though. Fungi and plants aren't very intelligent, last I checked. Players shouldn't have to put +1/+1 counters on their opponents' creatures if they don't want to. I understand that there will be benefits if the opponents get fungi, but it shouldn't make players not have fun.

"Plants" are currently taking the form of Dryads and Plant Nymphs. As a note, the creatures can have different subtypes, like Plant Cat or Plant Beast. I put in Dryads and Nymphs because I like the idea of exploring some lesser-seen creature types.

Green is currently divided between Plants and Fungus. Can we shift it entirely one way or the other? We talked above about inner conflict within green, and two years ago I said I was okay with that, but now I'd rather not have the monocolors be heavily conflicted.
Personally, I'm in favor of switching entirely to plants. It allows us to keep all of our current themes, with a similar and probably better flavor, since Plants make more sense (to me) as beings of growth than fungus. They can be just as alien and frightening, too, depending on the art direction.
As we've done with Multicolor common, I think we might need to look back over green Commons and revise them a bit.

Some people preferred having some of both (Fungus that buds and plants that don't), but I agree I'd prefer one or the other, especially if we stick with "cares about +1/+1 counters" rather than "cares about fungus".

I thought the theme of "budding spores onto other creatures" was more prominent than "growth"? If so, I think that's more fungus, although I agree agree either works with a good flavour.

If we're having ambulatory plants/funguses anyway, should they be called thallids, or something else?

I'd like to keep hold of the "drop +1/+1 counters on your stuff so that my stuff gets bigger" theme.

I think the reason for having plants as well as fungi was so that a mono-green deck wouldn't all be automatically fungi, there would be some motivation to dropping +1/+1 counters on your own things to turn them into fungi as well.

I suggest dropping the fungi. Plants can have seeds, instead of spores. Same concept, same mechanics, same flavour, different name and half the complexity gone in a flash.

People will easily enough grasp "Some of these plants are in season and budding / dropping seeds; some aren't" I think.

I'm not suggesting any radical mechanical changes. I just think plants make a tiny bit more sense. "Bud" sounds more plant-like, you know?

Yeah, to be honest, this is more a flavor thing, than a mechanical thing. I don't have a problem with just saying that 'budding' causes plantlike growth on creatures. In fact, it's probably more visually interesting to see someone sprout flowers or vines than "random fungus" over and over again.