Daily Card Redesign #157: The Striders

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.

ORIGINALS:

REDESIGNS:

I would have liked to have changed the names but still kept the neat similar-sounding name thing going on, but I spent too much time trying to come up with a pair of names that did that but also kept these guys within their respective collector number slots.

The original designs are peculiar in that while the flavor of each card is aligned with one side of the war, for gameplay, each side would want to use the other side's card. If the Phyrexians win by infect, then they'd have no use for a card that causes life loss. Conversely, if the Mirrans are trying to win by dealing damage, they'd want the card that causes life loss. 

In a vacuum, the original design of Pierce Strider is more valuable than Peace Strider, because life loss is a bigger deal than life gain. However, I enjoy that the context of the set, with infect around, makes it so that this life loss might not actually be desirable due to a poison strategy.

For my redesign, I chose returning cards/discarding cards. I figure that letting the opponent choose what to discard rather than you being able to was the way to go, otherwise it'd be too strong. But I didn't want it to be too narrow, so creature or artifact made sense. 

Referring to creatures was important for the Mirran side since I wanted a card that said, "Hey, I'm here to possibly help you attain the number of artifacts you need to have metalcraft be active."