Daily Card Redesign #7: Empress Galina

Randomizer, grant me something that's not a common!

Crap. An open-ended legendary creature to replace. Well, if I have to use the same art, and the art is of Empress Galina, the card must remain named Empress Galina and do something that Empress Galina can do.

So, the first thing I did was look up what I can on Empress Galina, since I have no idea what she's all about. ...And she freaking traveled 3000 years through time, leading her people of merfolk! That's something to go off of.

I think of suspend. That's perfect. Leading her people can be represented by making her yet another Merfolk lord, like Lord of Atlantis.

Ran out of time to talk and design. Must upload blog post and current version of card now!

EDIT: Fixed a few things with the card itself and am including a few notes here:

I fixed the missing power/toughness and the dysfunctional rules text. In my hurry to make the deadline, I missed some stuff! Now that I'm editing this post-post, I might as well include a bit more information:

First, here's the fixed version:

I have a '3' theme throughout the card because of the 3000 years she traveled through time. She costs two blue mana plus three generic mana. She takes three turns to arrive. She is a 3/3. She grants +3/+3 to other Merfolk.

And, yes, I just basically did suspend. Seeing as suspend hasn't been created, yet; I chalked up this design as doing what Mistform Ultimus did before the keyword changeling (a keyword that grants every creature type to the creature) was created.

I changed Empress Galina from a Legend to a Merfolk Legend. Legendary creatures used to be just creature type of "Legend." But then, later, they added creature types to legendary creatures besides Legend. But not on all of them at the time they first started doing this. For example: "Dragon Legend." But, within the same set as Empress Galina, there was a Treefolk Legend. But she's just a Legend. It didn't seem right, so I made her a Merfolk.

I didn't give it a Lord type, even though she gave a Lord ability but on a grander scale. This is because Kangee, Aerie Keeper is proof of tribal pumping that is potentially massive like hers. Kangee wasn't printed as a Lord type, and he is similar in pumping to this Empress Galina.

The reason why I allowed massive pumping for all Merfolk is because of flavor. She traveled through time 3000 years into the future. Then she led her fellow Merfolk to victory in battle, crushing their adversaries - thus, she lets her Merfolk crush you with extra boosting and potential unblockability-ness with islandwalk.

She is cast on turn five and doesn't come out until turn eight. Games are usually done before turn eight rolls around, so it's O.K. for a game-ender to occur.

Lastly, like I did last time with Deathgazer, my Empress Galina design is within the old card frame and whose rules text is templated with old language because I'm designing her as if it were during that time when the set was being created.

O.K., that's it!