Elder Spawn

You know what mechanic I miss? Upkeep costs. Upkeep costs were great. They made sure you remembered that your overcosted beaters can't come cheap -- that they required work, damn it, and you couldn't just go reanimating dudes willy-nilly.

Well, that last part actually does kinda sound good, but it's not really needed. Wizards eventually did the right thing and made reanimation expensive and graveyard tutors scarce (A lesson quickly learned after Entomb crapped all over everything), meaning that upkeep costs aren't really worth bringing back.

More particularly for this card, Elder Spawn is a black creature. Just because it lies sleeping at the bottom of the sea, Cthulhu isn't blue. I get that Elder Spawn could refer to the oldest of a line of creatures that spawn -- like urchins and corals and crustaceans -- but the word's just too firmly entrenched in Lovecraftian horror, especially when paired with "elder."

So, what's the easy fix?

Note that we kept the Island-munching part and gave it the protection ability so strongly implied in the original. I actually really like this card -- but it feels pretty red, actually, doesn't it? Right now, it's blue for flavor reasons -- it lives at the bottom of the sea, so it's blue, like Spongebob Squarepants. It's secretly a red creature, like Mr. Krabs. This kind of color bleeding's OK now and again, and as a one-of, or if it was in theme -- like, say, in Apocalypse or Time Spiral -- this would be OK. Legends has just enough color champloo that I'm OK letting this slide. Still, what could we do that would feel blue?