Card of the Week Contest #436: Beta: Commander's Edition

Thoughts: I hope it's obvious that I chose Ironclaw Orcs.

"Generations of genetic weeding have given rise to the deviously cowardly Ironclaw clan. To say that Orcs in general are vicious, depraved, and ignoble does not do justice to the Ironclaw."

The idea behind it is what would keep such a weak and cowardly clan from being brutally destroyed in the orcish clan wars I imagine exist, and the answer is a king powerful enough to as an individual make up for what the rest of the clan lacks. Her¹ ability is effectively an inversion of the Ironclaw Orc's ability. To match the flavor text claiming she's twice as strong as her clanmates, she's got twice as much power. I made her black and red to give her access to as many orcs as possible for anyone that wanted to make a tribal deck while giving her an ability that'd be useful enough to actually build a high mid-tier to low high-tier deck around. Her cost was of course adjusted in consideration to these other changes.

¹ I liked the mouthfeel of "Ironclaw King" but didn't like how it played with the masculine names the generator was popping out, so I tried the feminine names in desperation. Kharzug popped out and I liked it. Because it's a feminine name by orcish standards, she/her pronouns feel correct to the character's identity, but I like Ironclaw King too much to abandon it. Resolve this either by consider King to be a 'mistranslation' of a gender-neutral Orcish title like "Leader" or Kharzug to be nonbinary such that she uses feminine pronouns and a masculine title, or not caring. Anyway, I think it's neat.

It's not lazy; that's a totally legitimate strategy for naming characters.

If I might suggest a video, this is a world building video about place names, but a lot of it applies pretty cleanly to character names as well and it lays out my goto process after I fail to find an existing name or a decent name generator for what I want @11:48-14:20. The process is simple

• Start with a thematically appropriate seed word (for a fire elemental you'd probably choose a synonym for fire, burn, smoke, ash, etc or a translation into another language, but idioms, compound words, and creative kennings are more advanced options for seed words.)
  
• Muck around with the seed word changing sounds in it keeping these three principles in mind.
  1. An English word's identity is defined most by its first sound, its stressed pattern, its stressed syllables' vowel(s), and its last sound
     
  2. Sustituting similar sounds will create a smaller distance between the source and target (you can feel it out just fine, but understanding IPA and being able to read the chart and translate it into normal orthography will help.)
  3. The goal isn't to keep the connotation fully accessable, but to let it linger at the back of a reader's mind; very few readers of Eragon ever actively made the Eragon-Dragon connection but it still works.
     
• Rinse and repeat until you have something you're happy wit.
  

Ild would be the seed word for this process and step one is a perfectly cromulant place to stop if you're happy with the results, but it doesn't sound like you entirely are, so I thought you might appreciate the speal.

There's also this name generator for elementals, but it's lierally just this process lightly applied to various synonyms of the various elements and tossed in a bag together.

Enlist is basically being a modern take on Banding, only question was what to do with the concept. The wording makes sure Erica doesn't end up with five Flying counters (or similar) - even if to be fair in cases of Protection and Ward duplicates might make sence.

Interpretation 1: What I believe was Daij_Djan 's intent

The ability is a technical shorthand for what's actually happening which is a check whether the enlisted creature has protection of any type and whether Erica has protection of any type. If the enlisted creature has any kind of protection and Erica does not, Erica gets a counter 'mimicking' the quality of that specific protection ability.
So, with protection  if Erica enlisted Akroma, Angel of Fury (pro white and blue) while equipped with Sword of Body and Mind (pro green and blue), she'd get no protection counters as her trigger resolves. If Sword of Body and Mind was destroyed while the trigger was on the stack (thus losing Erica her source of protection), she'd get a protection from white counter and a protection from blue counter as her trigger resolved¹. Enlisting more creatures with different protections would not give her additional protection counters.

With Ward, she'd similarly check if the enlisted creature has one or more ward abilities, whether she has one or more ward abilities, and only on XOR create a ward [cost] counter for each ward ability on the enlisted creature.

Interpretation 2: My interpretation

The ability as non-technical shorthand for what's actually happening which is a check of each possible protectable quality and ward cost, and when successfully procing, giving "Protection from [quality]" and "ward [cost]" counters as appropriate:

So, with protection if Erica enlisted Akroma, Angel of Fury (pro white and blue) while equipped with Sword of Body and Mind (pro green and blue), she'd get a Protection from White counter¹ as her trigger resolves. Enlisting more creatures with protection from distinct qualities would give her further counters, potentially resulting in protection from [white, blue, black, red, green, monocolored, multicolor, all colors, spells that are one or more colors, mana value 2, mv 3, mv 4, mv 3 or greater, even mvs, odd mvs, each mv among artifacts you control, lands, snow, legendaries, artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers, instants, sorceries, , creatures, beasts, demons, dogs, dragons, elves, goblins, god creatures, gorgons, humans, kavu, rats, robots, salamanders, vampires, werewolves, wizards, zombies, non-spirits, 'creatures of the choosen type,' each opponents, 'that player,' 'the chosen player', everything, and sticker bullshit and other silver-border shenanagans²].

With ward, she'd be able to get multiple wards from successive sources, as long as each ward had different costs, potentially accruing various ward counters which in the canon sum to a cost of [twenty-eight generic, fourteen life, discard a card] or ward [28 generic, discard a card] in Erica's color identity. Of course, each individual ward counter would give a discreet ward ability each of which could be responded to individually for people that care about that sort of thing.

¹See 702.16g: “Protection from [quality A] and from [quality B]” is shorthand for “protection from [quality A]” and “protection from [quality B]”; it behaves as two separate protection abilities. If an effect causes an object with such an ability to lose protection from [quality A], for example, that object would still have protection from [quality B].

²Yes I'm in denial. No don't @ me about it.

Currently, the comprehensive rules doesn't have vehicles keep track of what creatures crewed them after the crew ability resolves, so in the current rules you have to activate this card's second ability while the crew ability is on the stack for it to do any damage. If that's intended, all good. If that's not intended you'd either need to change how the ability works slightly (such as changing it to a trigger ability that happens "whenever ~ is crewed") or fiddle in the comprehensives. I'm know I play fast and loose with the comprehensives, so I think either are fine.

The question is if you want to be able to activate the ability whenever, do you want crewing to be cumulative or discrete; that is, which of these scenarios do you want to the way the card works?:

I only brought it up because i was curious how it'd work in the comprehensive, and I checked, and it currently doesn't work in the comprehensive except while the crew ability is on the stack.