Elder Dragon Wurm

I know this card's greatly beloved by more people than just me. You know how I know?

 

That dragon's particularly wonderful. It's fun, it's silly, and it's scary. It's a great EDH card, it's a great limited card, and I suspect that it's going to make great splashes across kitchen countertops throughout the casual world. Truth be told, I'm a little intimidated to design a card behind Slumbering Dragon. On the bright side, there's plenty of defensive mechanics that feel white, as opposed to red.

It's not very inspired, and it's got some restrictions I'm not happy with. The first is the rarity; those of you who played during Fourth Edition may remember Carnivorous Plant, an innocuous-looking wall. It's properly rarited, to coin a verb, at common -- that is, it's properly raritied in a world in which draft isn't a thing. Draft was, indeed, a thing, during Fourth Edition's run, and the plant was just a beating. That's right -- a creature that couldn't attack was just a savage, savage beating. It completely invalidated nonflyers with power 5 or less and toughness 4 or less. Sure, Terror and Swords to Plowshares could trade with it -- but not much else could. The problem was present for casual groups, too, but at least even crudely constructed casual decks could run a complement of Air Elementals. This card wants to be uncommon; it's not terribly interesting, and it doesn't do much. But it can't be -- limited would be miserable as long as this existed at uncommon. (To be fair, modern card pools have far more removal options available. Cards like this are much, much less painful now.)

The second problem is an old one; remember Akron Legionnaire? Essentially, cards that do nothing but attack slide along a very linear scale. They're either too much hassle for the upside of big power, or they're priced appropriately (meaning they're too much hassle, generally), or they define the curve by being best-in-class. You can move that scale by giving dumb beats some kind of synergy -- Wake Thrasher is generally good, but Goblin Piledriver's a real beating in a goblins shell. Using those kinds of conditions is an excellent tool, because it lets you push the envelope in a very narrow way. You can create a narrowly amazing creature that must be supported by a bunch of fair dudes; the overall lower power level of the prospective deck lets you make that one dude stronger than it has any right to be otherwise. (Of course, you have to be careful when doing that, or you end up with affinity.) That kind of deck-construction restriction is what we're trying to implement here -- requiring defenders is a fairly steep drawback. (It doesn't hurt that Legends has a minor -- very minor -- wall subtheme.)

All that aside, current Magic design seems to like -- and I shudder as I say this -- "value-added" dudes. The designers don't want giant dudes with drawbacks anymore; they want dudes with upsides. That can be blunt, like with the titan cycle, or it can be more subtle, like with duders that essentially have built-in auras: Wake Thrasher's a 1/1 for U that has a built-in aura for 2 that says, "Whenever a permanent you control untaps, enchanted creature gets +1/+1." I think those second kind of creatures are really nice because they lend themselves to deck construction. You can run Wake Thrasher, and he'll be solid, or you can find ways to cheat in more untaps in a phase to push him farther. Add in more cards that key off untapping and you're suddenly creating a deck with a theme, and it's an organic process. Compare that to Primeval Titan, where its impact on deck construction essentially ends at, "I've added some amazing lands I probably would have run anyway."

So, with that said:

This is something I could imagine being printed in Rise of the Eldrazi -- but it is a little far afield from the original card. Maybe we can meet half way?

My apologies to the people I stole these images from. They -- the images, not the people -- had no data attached and they were on a generic Photobucket-style site.