Daily Card Redesign #122: Orchard Spirit

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:

At first, I wanted to give this ghost forestwalk for having what seems to be a kinship with trees. But because Somberwald Dryad already exists in Dark Ascension, I thought it best to go a different route.

You could say that this is just an unnecessarily complicated 2/2. But, that would be incorrect. It's a "2/2 with haste" compared to a Runeclaw Bear as long as you cast it on turn 1. And it gives you  flexibility with when you pay in a tap of a Forest for its 2/2 body. 

I could have written the ability's cost with a green mana symbol instead. But that wouldn't have told as much of a story as requiring a tap of an untapped Forest. What's going on here, flavorwise, is that this spirit is drawing upon the power of a tree to enhance itself. It needs a Forest and not just any land - like a dual land. And it only gets one +1/+1 counter because it's only getting power from its tree brother (the one it is sitting on).

This is why I renamed it to be Oak Spirit instead of Orchard Spirit - because the original name implies many trees - which clashes with the flavor I'm going for in my redesign.