Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Power 5


Snapcaster Mage, Stoneforge Mystic, Tarmogoyf, and Dark Confidant. Four creatures, in four different colors, that are all very, very good. They also all happen to cost one colorless mana and one mana of their respective colors. I'm not the first person to point out that there's no equivalent red card. It's probably a safe assumption that Wizards of the Coast did not do this on purpose. Stoneforge Mystic was not, in my opinion at least, very good at all until Sword of Feast and Famine made it strong and Batterskull made it unthinkably broken. But what they ended up with was an incomplete cycle that red mages everywhere are begging them to complete.

So, the question is often asked (I've counted about four times so far on Reddit, the fourth of which made me decide to write this), what would that creature look like? People run out all sorts of crazy ideas about two-drop goblins that have haste and first strike and firebreathing and tap to deal three damage and make everyone Wheel of Fortune when they die. But what I'd like to look at today is how the process of creating a card that fits in with the rest of the "cycle" would actually work.