Sunday, February 17, 2013

Daily Card Redesign #48: Redwood Treefolk

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.


Redesign:


Seems like such a hack job, no? Actually, no! This is a strategic design. Here's why:

1) There are no common creatures in the Portal set with vigilance. I know that green hadn't yet really established itself as a color with vigilance, but since I already use the future to my disadvantage when redesigning cards, I could also use the other side of that coin and take advantage of how in-color this is.

2) There are no green creatures at a mana cost of six while there are plenty at five. And increasing the mana cost by one just for the ability means I don't have to increase any of the stats the Treefolk has. I'd rather not have a power 4 or a toughness 7 common creature.

I wanted to give this Treefolk reach, but Giant Spider is already at green common, so I didn't want to overload that area. I mean, look, it even looks like this tree is reaching with its third arm! "Reaching Treefolk." So I settled on vigilance.

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