1. Re: Faerie Guard.
Re: Vigilance - Currently WOTC wants us to think Flying is (merely) UW aligned. This is nonsense. So we need a true UW aligned evergreen keyword, and U is the worst color to design keywords for. Historically, it got vigilance, so I'm returning it here. Green vigilance is never really that interesting. On small creatures, it's irrelevant, and on large creatures it removes tension of "do I attack with my fat guy or block favorably with it?"
Re: Prowess. Prowess would make the card far, far too strong. As would Hexproof, the UG mechanic. Which leaves the UW and UB mechanics, the latter of which is notoriously hard to get right. So, again, vigilance works and it's about the only thing that would work.
2. Re: Quicken - Why? Indeed, making it common is perhaps the only way to make it interesting. At (U) or (R), you'll never see it coming. At (C), then whenever you play a blue/x player, you assume their sorcery-spells will have flash.
3. Re: Red 1CMC instant - Yup. IN my Proposal 2, I've ditched the idea of having verticle and horizontal 1CMC instant cycles; downgrading Lightning Bolt to common. With this in mind, there's no impetus to have a 1CMC instant red spell, iconic or otherwise. Quite frankly a rare or mythic card that costs 1 mana feels off in most cases. How is it rare if I can get it down on turn 1. For creatures, you have the excuse that you don't run into them very often. Traverse the Ulvenwald always felt off to me. Sure, it's trying to be a worldly tutor, but it often merely plays like Land Grant.
1. If you exclude Planar Chaos (as you should, since this was a set whose priority was to bend and break all the color's capabilities), there are exactly two cards in Blue with Vigilance; Bay Falcon and Zephyr Falcon. That's not a lot of history to work with. Also, MaRo has talked a bit about why he feels Blue shouldn't have Vigilance, and his answer was that these two colors already have too many other similarities going for them, which I agree with.
Now more importantly, if you want Blue to get its own Vampire Nighthawk, you could just eschew Flying and use Flash/Prowess/Hexproof. It's not the strongest combination of keywords, but it's a better alternative than breaking the color pie.
2. Normally, you can only cast sorceries during main phases and only on your turn. Now Quicken comes along and says otherwise. If a new player just started with Magic and saw this card show up often in their packs, they would expect that this is just something blue does regularly, which is not the case.
Blue's evergreen colorpie status is notoriously unsatisfying. I touched on this in my Evergreen Bingo thread, but I'll say it here: Ideally we'll have 10 2-color pairs for evergreen keywords, not counting Flash, Flying, defender, and other "can be used anywhere, when appropriate" keywords. (This is a rough shorthand, for a finger discussion see that thread).
Blue's problem is that it's tied for #1 at flying with W and #1 at Flash with G; but since both are for every color, saying flying is WU or flash is GU is a mistake.
This leaves us with: UW Vigilance UG Hexproof (which WOTC keeps threatening to retire, despite it's importance) UR Prowess UB ???
We've got a thread about how evergreen BU is difficult to make; I really don't see a reason to open one up for WU or to pretend that Flying is good for WU when it would buck the cycle.
Am I asking you to swallow a pill here? I'm sure I am. Maybe somewhere along the way we'll stumble across an evergreen WU mechanic that makes a lot of sense and we want in every set. Maybe Wizards will hobble Flash to be WU (I hope not!). But until then, I think we need to consider blue getting vigilance.
Flavorwise, blue being "awake" all the time, IE ever vigilant, makes a lot of sense. Green was said to get vigilance to represent beast's predatory nature, always being on. But it never got any iconic vigilance cards. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, it really diminished the strategy involved with fat creatures.
If Vigilance is WU, we get a NICE PLAY DIFFERENCE between the colors. White gets to have vigilance creatures that intend to attack and block. Throwing lifelink of them feels really good. But BLUE gets to have vigilance creatures that intend to attack, then tap to do some kind of special blue thing. Counter a spell unless a player pays 1. Scry 1. Loot. Think of that cool Haste, Defender card blue got; Blue Vigilance can explore the same kind of concept, but instead of tapping 1st turn, you're attacking and then also tapping.
Maybe you don't think it's a good idea to have 10 core set evergreen keywords aligned to each color pair. But by all measures, we've got somewhere between 6-8 set in stone and not moving. WU and BU are the two holdouts, with GU's hexproof a target and RU playing significantly differently than other mechanics (and historically being WUR. But I do like evergreen bingo as both an education tool ("Okay, new player. Can you tell me what the evergreen keyword associated with RB is? That's right, Menace!") and a designer's tool (I want to design a hybrid creature with two keywords. Haste is GRB and menace is RB so it'll be a 2/2 haste menace for :symrb::symrb: )
Re: Flash Prowess Hexproof - I think you're underestimating Hexproof here. The fact of the matter is that it makes this a voltron body not to be trifled with. Prowess, as I've said earlier, plays significantly differently than the other keywords and to put it on blue's member of the cycle feels like a disconnect to me. Maybe I'm wrong here.
Re: 2. You say "they would expect that this is just something blue does regularly", which it is! Blue is #1 at "playing things at instant speed", where it be instants or flash. Quicken effectively gives the next sorcery you cast flash. And that's very blue; no?
But, more importantly, Quicken is a teaching tool. You open a started deck (LOL, I miss those) of magic cards and you separate cards into types. What's the difference between instants and sorceries? Quicken hints that there is one! Quicken helps to teach players the differences between the types, and the value of playing things at instant speed - two essential features of the game.
Maybe I'm wrong and focus groups will show that quicken confuses new players, rather than teaches them. But in terms of design; this is elegant, well costed, and pays for itself by cantripping (also a very blue thing). In terms of limited play, at (C) it matters in an interesting and unique way. In terms of constructed play, it gives control decks a reason to run blue other than counterspells. That's a lot of upside in one card.
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Re: Vigilance - Currently WOTC wants us to think Flying is (merely) UW aligned. This is nonsense. So we need a true UW aligned evergreen keyword, and U is the worst color to design keywords for. Historically, it got vigilance, so I'm returning it here. Green vigilance is never really that interesting. On small creatures, it's irrelevant, and on large creatures it removes tension of "do I attack with my fat guy or block favorably with it?"
Re: Prowess. Prowess would make the card far, far too strong. As would Hexproof, the UG mechanic. Which leaves the UW and UB mechanics, the latter of which is notoriously hard to get right. So, again, vigilance works and it's about the only thing that would work.
2. Re: Quicken - Why? Indeed, making it common is perhaps the only way to make it interesting. At (U) or (R), you'll never see it coming. At (C), then whenever you play a blue/x player, you assume their sorcery-spells will have flash.
3. Re: Red 1CMC instant - Yup. IN my Proposal 2, I've ditched the idea of having verticle and horizontal 1CMC instant cycles; downgrading Lightning Bolt to common. With this in mind, there's no impetus to have a 1CMC instant red spell, iconic or otherwise. Quite frankly a rare or mythic card that costs 1 mana feels off in most cases. How is it rare if I can get it down on turn 1. For creatures, you have the excuse that you don't run into them very often. Traverse the Ulvenwald always felt off to me. Sure, it's trying to be a worldly tutor, but it often merely plays like Land Grant.
Now more importantly, if you want Blue to get its own Vampire Nighthawk, you could just eschew Flying and use Flash/Prowess/Hexproof. It's not the strongest combination of keywords, but it's a better alternative than breaking the color pie.
2. Normally, you can only cast sorceries during main phases and only on your turn. Now Quicken comes along and says otherwise. If a new player just started with Magic and saw this card show up often in their packs, they would expect that this is just something blue does regularly, which is not the case.
Blue's problem is that it's tied for #1 at flying with W and #1 at Flash with G; but since both are for every color, saying flying is WU or flash is GU is a mistake.
This leaves us with:
UW Vigilance
UG Hexproof (which WOTC keeps threatening to retire, despite it's importance)
UR Prowess
UB ???
We've got a thread about how evergreen BU is difficult to make; I really don't see a reason to open one up for WU or to pretend that Flying is good for WU when it would buck the cycle.
Am I asking you to swallow a pill here? I'm sure I am. Maybe somewhere along the way we'll stumble across an evergreen WU mechanic that makes a lot of sense and we want in every set. Maybe Wizards will hobble Flash to be WU (I hope not!). But until then, I think we need to consider blue getting vigilance.
Flavorwise, blue being "awake" all the time, IE ever vigilant, makes a lot of sense. Green was said to get vigilance to represent beast's predatory nature, always being on. But it never got any iconic vigilance cards. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, it really diminished the strategy involved with fat creatures.
If Vigilance is WU, we get a NICE PLAY DIFFERENCE between the colors. White gets to have vigilance creatures that intend to attack and block. Throwing lifelink of them feels really good. But BLUE gets to have vigilance creatures that intend to attack, then tap to do some kind of special blue thing. Counter a spell unless a player pays 1. Scry 1. Loot. Think of that cool Haste, Defender card blue got; Blue Vigilance can explore the same kind of concept, but instead of tapping 1st turn, you're attacking and then also tapping.
Maybe you don't think it's a good idea to have 10 core set evergreen keywords aligned to each color pair. But by all measures, we've got somewhere between 6-8 set in stone and not moving. WU and BU are the two holdouts, with GU's hexproof a target and RU playing significantly differently than other mechanics (and historically being WUR. But I do like evergreen bingo as both an education tool ("Okay, new player. Can you tell me what the evergreen keyword associated with RB is? That's right, Menace!") and a designer's tool (I want to design a hybrid creature with two keywords. Haste is GRB and menace is RB so it'll be a 2/2 haste menace for :symrb::symrb: )
Re: Flash Prowess Hexproof - I think you're underestimating Hexproof here. The fact of the matter is that it makes this a voltron body not to be trifled with. Prowess, as I've said earlier, plays significantly differently than the other keywords and to put it on blue's member of the cycle feels like a disconnect to me. Maybe I'm wrong here.
Re: 2. You say "they would expect that this is just something blue does regularly", which it is! Blue is #1 at "playing things at instant speed", where it be instants or flash. Quicken effectively gives the next sorcery you cast flash. And that's very blue; no?
But, more importantly, Quicken is a teaching tool. You open a started deck (LOL, I miss those) of magic cards and you separate cards into types. What's the difference between instants and sorceries? Quicken hints that there is one! Quicken helps to teach players the differences between the types, and the value of playing things at instant speed - two essential features of the game.
Maybe I'm wrong and focus groups will show that quicken confuses new players, rather than teaches them. But in terms of design; this is elegant, well costed, and pays for itself by cantripping (also a very blue thing). In terms of limited play, at (C) it matters in an interesting and unique way. In terms of constructed play, it gives control decks a reason to run blue other than counterspells. That's a lot of upside in one card.