Daily Card Redesign #174: Voidmage Prodigy

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:

Oh! A voidmage is a mage that specializes in nullifying magic! I get why it's countering spells. In fact, each of the three voidmages currently in Magic: The Gathering counter spells or abilities.

For the redesign, I could have changed the card's name, so that this could be a different kind of mage, but it was a little difficult for the art I have to work with and the placement alphabetically this card slot is within the set. So, I stuck with the voidmage thing.

Here's a problem, though: there's only so much I can do with rehashing countering spells with a creature to keep it distinct and impressive enough as a Kai Budde card redesign for today's entry. So, I decided to expand my horizons for a moment... 

Other things I thought of that is tied to "voiding" as a word but is not countering spells: Creatures' power becomes 0 until end of turn, exiling spells, creatures losing all abilities until end of turn, shuffling creature(s) into library, returning creatures back to hand.

"End the turn" is simple, elegant, and impressive. And I want an impressive effect for such an important card. There's only been Time Stop (Sundial of the Infinite is a little different) for this type of effect, so it's nice to see it with a morph creature variation!

AND ending turns at instant speed can be used to "counter" spells (exiles them)! Voidmage problem solved!

I wanted the trigger to be upon when it entered the battlefield or when it turned face up, but squeezing in the old wording for flash along with the extra text needed for stating the trigger is upon one of those two conditions proved to be too much to fit within the text box. Only upon the act of turning face up it is.

Because of that, I needed a way to make hardcasting this creature be not totally useless by either not touching the text box or not using up much more text box space. I decided that being a 1/4 was the way to go. I can't make him super large since it's a Human. But Voidwielder as a Human exists, so that will make these stats O.K.!