Card of the Week Contest #324: 20/20 Vision

As a kiwi, our early and strict lock-down has certainly been the most acclaimed event this year. While we may be (for the most part) back to normal, here's one for all those who have to presently struggle through this pandemic. Hope you are all staying well and safe.

Devastating Bushfires
Sorcery 
Multikicker 
Choose target land, then choose another target Forest or Plains for each time Devastating Bushfires was kicked. Destroy each of them.

The stuff that's been going on this year has been frankly depressing, so here's a more light-hearted riff on the looting that's happened. If this is too far off the original challenge, let me know and I'll make a different one.

Covid-19 seems to have been one of the biggest factors of 2020, so here's a Pandemic Plague for y'all.

Pandemic Plague

Enchantment
When Pandemic Plague enters the battlefield, put a -1/-1 counter on up to three target creatures.
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player may remove up to one -1/-1 counter from a creature they control. If they do, that creature gains defender until end of turn.
Whenever a creature with one or more -1/-1 counters on it blocks, becomes blocked, or fights another creature, put that many -1/-1 counters on the creature it is blocking, blocked by, or fighting.

I reposted the image and included the full text

kefke: As a Magic card, your design is perfect.  As a commentary on the events of this damned hellish year, it shows a bit of naive insensitivity.

I know this isn't the first "real life events" prompt we've had this year (pretty sure this is the third, at the very least), but this is definitely the one that's drawn the most politically related cards so far.

Let's try not to get too pushy about what the cards represent unless the card is extremely insensitive - feel free to ask the mod team (sans Daij, as he is sick) to take a second look at cards if necessary.

Ah yes, because the entire world is America...

That aside, I think that people are assigning moral weight to colours of mana, and that's a little weird. Neither Black nor Red have any inherent moral weight to them in the context of the game. For instance, Sorin is a primarily Black-mana character (mono Black in about half his appearances), but is one of the "good guys" of Magic. There's also Liliana, who was a member of the Gatewatch, who are typically acknowledged to be the Good Guys of the Magic stories. In fact, speaking of the Gatewatch, there's also Kaya (). Or I could mention, Windgrace, one of Urza's "Nine Titans" that he recruited to battle Phyrexia, who was Black, Red, Green.

Yes, I could pick a colour combination that people would find more happy and sunshine-y, but from a design standpoint, if I am trying to make a good card, Red/Black is the colour combination that makes the most sense, and neither Red nor Black carries an inherent moral judgement. What do these colours mean?

: Power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, uninhibited.
Also, lets throw in one more line from the blurb here, "Although if taken to extremes, black's selfishness and lack of ethical restraint can result in tragedy, at its most basic level black is not inherently evil. It has a very cynical world view, and its core philosophy is that of self-determination and release from society-imposed limitations." (Emphasis mine.)

: Freedom, emotion, active, impulsive, destructive.
Here's one for Red, "Red loves life much more than any other color and so it believes that all people must live to its fullest." (Again, just grabbing the most relevant line to make my point.)

You can look at as being the "Chaotic Evil" of colour combinations if you want to. Sure, that's one valid way to interpret it, and there are a lot of cards that back up that interpretation. However, by what the colours in Magic actually mean, it is equally valid to see it as the combination of opposing oppression by any means. I certainly never said which I view it as, and I don't appreciate all the tut-tutting I'm getting by people who decided that their interpretation was the only one possible.

How would this handle mutated creatures?