Daily Card Redesign #83: Martyr's Cause

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. 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:

This card led me to see an interesting history of Magic: The Gathering cards with "Martyr" in its name. This Martyr's Cause original design is along the lines we want, and there's already been an instant called Martyrdom that does this same general ...well, martyrdom. But there hasn't been an Aura that makes any creature you want into a martyr.

And, thus, Martyrize was born.

Note: I followed the templating from the totem armor keyword, as you can see from Felidar Umbra. Removing the damage is important, since the creature you're protecting may not necessarily be dying from a spell effect. If you don't put that clause in, then the creature would just die right away, anyway, because the damage would remain marked on the creature for the rest of the whole turn and state-based effects check that if a creature has "lethal damage," it dies!

With the way I wanted to design this card, I couldn't put "regenerate" without it being weird in that I am replacing the destruction with a sacrifice, thus, removing the need the regenerate - EXCEPT in the case of dying to damage. The only part of regeneration that would be useful would be removing the damage. Thus, that's why the totem armor route is taken and removing damage is explicitly written.