Daily Card Redesign #154: Skyhunter Skirmisher

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

ORIGINAL:

REDESIGN:

Redesigning this skyhunter was a cinch! First, I knew it was going to have flying, as all hunters of the sky tend to have. Next, the art showing some super-fast action means I can dip into one of the three abilities that get the point across that this creature is fast: flash, haste, and first strike. 

Yes, I know double strike does first strike damage, and that could represent speed - the original design already shows how this creature skirmishes well by being able to strike twice in one go. But double strike, to me, doesn't do as well as first strike does when the reader is reading it to grok (understanding it because it resonates so well or instantly makes sense because it taps into this innate knowledge you have about whatever concept is being represented) that there is speed going on. I believe that double strike does better to represent concepts that involve hitting twice. Perhaps two fists, two laser eyes, or a double-edged sword, etc.

Anyway, double strike has already been done, so that left the other three. I couldn't do haste, because that's a red ability. That left first strike and flash. I wouldn't want to do first strike for two reasons: there's already a skyhunter card with first strike, and doing a powered-down version of the original design is lame for the sake of creating an interesting/compelling answer for this design exercise (In reality, it makes so much sense that you could just power down to first strike as a means of "scrapping" that slot of its double striker).

That leaves flash. No skyhunter currently has flash. The last thing to do was to check whether there was already a flash creature in Fifth Dawn, especially in white. *checks* Nope. Done.

Oh, and I dislike the name, but I couldn't come up with a satisfying one. You may have noticed that I tend to give my redesigned flash creatures the name "Striker."