Druids; a word used to describe a follower of the Celtic philosophy of Druidism, which can still be found today.

The following is a quote from The Religious Tolerance Website:

“Druidry is not a religion. It's a philosophy and you can worship a God or a Goddess, it's up to you. You can be a Christian or a Moslem or anything else and still be a Druid. "But while a Christian will say God made that tree, a Druid will say the energy of a creative force is in that tree."
---Kieron, a North-East UK Druid.

So how does this fit into the theme of magic? Most of us envision a druid as a guardian of the forest, maybe a healer of the natural arts and a wielder of certain magical powers; especially when it comes to creatures of the forest, such as bears and wolves. Maybe it’s possible to incorporate the two views, both the common view and the true value of a druid into one magic card.

Step 1: Main Premise

Hopefully by now, you will be aware of my power ratings, but for clarities sake, I will give a brief reiteration of them for those who missed my last article.

The ‘what were they on!?’ Card – This is the category for those cards you wouldn’t pay someone to take from you. Take One With Nothing; what was R&D on that day, because I recon the world would be a strange place if we all took some.

The ‘Comse, Comsa’ Card – Those cards that are nothing special, but could have their uses. Aven Envoy is a prime example in my mind because we all know there is a better version out there in the form of the Ornithopter, but because of color, type and creature type, the envoy could be better for certain decks.

The ‘Solid Choice’ Card – These are those cards that make for good deck additions, such as Serra Angel and Grizzly Bear. A large number of cards fall into this category.

The ‘Powerful’ Card – These are cards that are ones most people would build a deck around, like the Bringers. This is the field that my vampire will slide into.

The ‘Oh-So Broken’ Card – These are those cards you would chop of your left arm to own. These are things like Black Lotus or the Moxes.

Please bare in mind, this is how I, personally value cards. Everyone has a different view and a different value system, so take this into consideration when reading this article.

From the books I have read and the role play sessions I have been in, I have always seen Druids as ‘Supporting Characters’. They aren’t going to win a battle on their own and the party isn’t losing too much if he dies or is out of action for a while, so I see them as a Comse, Comsa card.

Step 2: Research

Now, how do we link the two views of druids? What would make a good link between the two? Well, because most well known authors picture Druids as following a religion devoted to the forest and the animals, what if we link the abilities of Clerics (Devoted, religious followers) with an animal theme, maybe some form of creature summoning ability.

Now clerics have a variety of abilities in Magic, just type Cleric into the gatherer and you’ll see what I mean; life gain, defense bonus and prevent combat damage seem to be the most common and seeing as we all see druids as defenders of the forest, I suggest we go for a defense bonus.

But how do we work this into the theme of the ‘defender of the forest’ idea? Do we just ignore it and go down the route of Blessed Orator, where by all creatures you control gain a permanent defense bonus as long as the creature remains in play.

Or do we follow a different route? Maybe something like Icatian Priest, where as you pay a cost to give a target creature a defense bonus until the end of the turn (okay, Icatian Priest also affects power ratings but we’re not after that effect).

Personally, I lean more towards the first ability but it’s too open for the feel we are going for. So how about restricting the ability to a particular creature type or even color? If so, the creature type would be something like Beast, Birds, Insects or Wolves. And if we were to follow the color theme, surely it would have to be green. So which do we follow? Or do we go for something unusual? Take a look at Earth Surge.

‘Each Land gets a +2/+2 as long as it’s a creature.’

Now we accept that Druids are ‘Defenders of the Forest’, and we all know ‘Forests’ are a land type, so if we were alter the ability to fit this idea, we would result in something like:

‘Each Forest gets a +X/+Y as long as it’s a creature.’

But what values do we give ‘X’ and ‘Y’? Well the clue comes in our continuing point of reference; ‘Druids are DEFENDERS of the forest’ so we know that ‘Y’ will be a higher value than ‘X’. And we don’t intend to affect a creatures ability to deal damage, so we can say that ‘X = 0’. But we still need a value for ‘Y’, so we need to consider some kind of comparison. Lets look back at our Blessed Orator; he gave all creatures a +0/+1, but we are dealing with a specific creature type (In essence) so maybe we can place the value as ‘Y = 2’.

So for clarities sake, we have:

‘Each Forest gets a +0/+2 as long as it’s a creature.’

So we now can move onto the druid’s creature summoning ability, and I think it’s pretty obvious what route we are going to follow:

‘Cost’: Target Forest becomes an X/Y elemental creature

Why elementals you as? It’s a format that ‘Land to Creatures’ seems to follow in the Ravnica block, just look at Woodwraith Corrupter. But we need a guideline for the values of ‘X’ and ‘Y’, and I suggest we look to the previous block, Kamigawa for inspiration.

The Genju’s were a brilliant cycle of cards in their day, especially Genju of the Cedars, which allowed you to have a 4/4 creature on the table by turn three or earlier in certain decks. It seems to suggest that 2 is a suitable cost to turn a forest into a 4/4 creature until the end of the turn. What if we want the effect to be permanent? Also, is a 4/4 creature really what we want the result of our ability to be? If you work on my calculation for P/T vs. Mana Cost from my last article; ‘Base cost = Power/Toughness Ratio + 1 + Color factor’, then the cost for a permanent 4/4 creature would be a converted mana cost of four, as I consider the color factor of green to be ‘-1’.

But do we make the ability open ended; allowing it to be activated multiple abilities in one turn or a closed ability with a tap in the cost. We come back to our power level choice, an open ended ability is usually attributed to solid choices and powerful cards in my choice unless the cost is heavy, such as discarding cards, life lose or removing cards from your graveyard. None of these fit with a green feel, so I suggest we place a tap in the cost making it a closed ability. So what we are looking at so far is:

‘Converted Mana Cost 4; T: Target Forest becomes a 4/4 elemental creature that is still a land.’

Now we need to break down the mana cost for this ability. This where we hit a problem, there is no green creature in magic that has a P/T rating of 4/4 at a converted mana cost of 4, without some form of disadvantage or ability. So what do we do? We refer to another green creature that has a converted mana cost equal to its P/T rating. The most famous would have to be Grizzly Bears, a 2/2 which costs 1G. The most obvious point is that half its cost is mana specific, so we can draw a comparison to your ability; that half the cost should be in green mana.

So the ability we have created looks like this:

‘2GG, T: Target Forest becomes a 4/4 elemental creature that is still a land.’

So having developed the abilities, we now move onto the creature.

Step 3: The Base Creature

Most creatures in the Comse, Comsa category are usually only 1/1 or 1/2, maybe a 2/2 at best. Also the druid is a ‘Supporting Character’, similar to Arctic Merfolk without the kicker. She isn’t going to win any fighter on her own, but she can be helpful. So I suggest we make our creature a 1/1, in keeping with the whole ‘Background’ feel.

'Creature will be a 1/1'

Now the question falls as to what creature type we should use?

In the days of old, R&D was happy to use ‘Druid’ as a creature type on its own, and the same was true of soldiers, knights and wizards. Nowadays, most creatures have a double creature type like ‘Elf Soldier’ or ‘Human Knight’. Well most people will agree that elves are tree hugging, creature loving race of the fantasy world and so it stands to reason that a druid would most likely be an Elf.

'Creature will be an Elf'

Step 4: Mana Cost and Balancing

The skills are the main point of contestation on this card, as the base cost for a green 1/1 is G. So we need to compare our abilities to existing ones and determine the cost of each. And what better way to do this than refer back to the cards we used for inspiration for the abilities.

Earth Surge values the ability to give all lands that are creatures a +2/+2 at 3G. With this card we are only targeting one land type, so we can reduce that cost by 2 in my opinion and because we only do half of the stat increase it stands to reason we only pay half of what it costs, so that’s another 1 off the cost as we cannot remove the green mana as the ability is definitely green in origin.

As for the ability to change lands into creatures, we must first breakdown the Woodwraith Corrupter. Because his Power and Toughness are at odds with one another we take the middle ground, so 3/6 becomes a 5/5. And based upon my personal value system, this equates to five points of mana. This leaves us with one mana, but the question is what type. Is it B, G or 1? Well we know it’s not black, as the ability does not generally fall under the black section of the color pie so we can ignore that. So we are left with a green mana and a single colorless mana. The simple answer is the ability is green in nature, so it stands to reason that we should take the green mana and add it to our cost, giving us GGG as a final total.

'Casting Cost will be GGG'

The final question is what rarity? Simple answer here is common. Its not big or powerful so its common. [No comment.  ~Streetz~]

Step 5: The Finished Article

The image involved in this card comes from http://mysticangelofavalon.tripod.com, thanks to the owner of that website.

Now something I didn’t do in my last article was play test the card before releasing the article and that’s simply because I didn’t think do it, a huge mistake for any card designer to make. Well I hope to rectify that mistake with this card, but it’s not a good idea for me play test the card myself for two main reasons:

1. I’M BIASED: It’s my card, and as such I have a certain level of ‘love’ for the card. This makes it hard for me to make objective opinions about the card.

2. EVERYONE’S DIFFERENT: People play cards in different ways. While I see this card as a means to create solid creatures, I know that some players may use it as a means to destroy their opponents lands, especially such lands as Overgrown Tomb and Temple Gardens as dual lands are affected by abilities that target either of its land types.

So I’m sending out this call now, for play testers. Anyone is welcome to apply and you will get recognition in my articles. All I’m after is a few people who are happy to try the card out in a deck of their own construction, and I will place the results and conclusions at the end of the following article.

Special thanks go out to chamber for the advice you gave me, I hope it wasn’t in vain and to Mrraow for the save on the last article. Lets hope your not going to have to send me another message this time

Anyhow people, that’s your lot. You can stop reading now. Seriously, stop reading!

Signing Off:

Luthervamplord

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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