Angus Mackenzie

Wow, a handful of rough ones right in a row. Angus is a home run, in my opinion -- splashy and a little weird; a nice connection in that he's a Scot that fogs, a neat little historical / geographical / Magic trivia intersection; and he's not insanely costed. He's not an amazing card -- three-mana fog every turn is good, but this guy is fragile and the cost to your tempo is significant -- but he's definitely neat.

There's only two changes I'd do to him, neither of which are significant.

See? Minor changes all around. There's no need for the timing restriction now. The larger toughness lets him better get into defensive combat on turn three or four and it plays into his gestalt as a defensive dude. It's more a psychological than a meaningful change, to be honest; I prefer utility dudes to be 1/1s or to have more-flavorful power and toughness. 2/2 is the generic aggressive-dude power and toughness; x/3, where x is 0, 1 or 2, is the template for small, defensive dudes.

There's a solid argument that his ability is overcosted -- you're already paying three mana up front for nothing, and then three mana again every turn -- but, properly protected, this guy has the power to just turn off whole swaths of decks. Charging three on the front end of the ability for what you'd normally pay 1 mana and a card for seems a fair trade, especially when that ability is "only you get to attack." Compare this to, say, Blazing Archon -- that's 9 mana to have this ability without any activated costs (and a 5/6 flyer, but at that price point, the body you get on the dude starts becoming an also-ran). This card's way more relevant in any matchup that doesn't involve Animate Dead.

There are some alternate-reality cards we could do with this guy, but, just to be clear, he doesn't really need to be rewritten.

I like this one because it's actually more tempo-based, it's more aggressive and it's the kind of control card that Wizards likes to print these days. I'd definitely play this in EDH, and it's the kind of card I could get excited about in Standard. (Anything that lets me play a Legacy threshold-style deck in Standard is kind of exciting.)