Card of the Day - Knock Down

One of the secondary mechanics of Frostmere besides all the snow stuff is Mount.  I posted a lot of cards that deal with this ability last year, and I am expanding on the idea again this year.  This is a powerful common direct damage spell that can take care of an opposing mounted creature that would be a nuisance otherwise.

Card of the Day - Sink into Mud

The art from this is from The Neverending Story.  There was a trivia question from way back when related to the art.

What was the name of Atreyu's horse?

(No Googling!)

Card of the Day - Horse Thief

I thought the flavor of this was spot-on.

Card of the Day - Knight Training

This one seems similar to Tempered Steel, but I'm sure it plays quite differently.

Card of the Day - Ahern Tiger

I wanted to make quite a few cards that do different thing to mounts.  I thought that this would be a nice combat trick for green.

Card of the Day - Legless Brute

This week's theme is Mount.  These are all cards from Frostmere.  None of the cards this week have mount, but they're all tied to it in some way.  Enjoy.

If you have no idea what Mount is all about, here's an example of a creature with mount:

There was much discussion about it in early May of this year.

Fleshing out Frostmere

It's been a while since I've done anything with snow, but I wanted to give you all a glimpse of what I've been doing with it lately.

On the relatively peaceful plane of Frostmere, the Gargut glacier is receding, and something is coming out from underneath it. Only the Ahern forest stands between the glacier and the city of Tersh. Will the forest succumb to the fiery invaders from another plane? How will the red and black mana spewing out of the glacier affect the citizens of blue and white aligned Tersh?

I've sorted out the mechanics that will be included in the set. Here they are in all their glory:

1. Snow, obviously. It's going to be doing a lot of stuff it hasn't before, like having enchantments that tap, as well as colorless snow spells and lots of cool stuff that affects snow cards.
   
   
   
   
   
2. A lot of lands. Since the main focus of snow in the past has been lands, I'm making it a theme of Frostmere. There is a cycle each of common, uncommon and rare lands, as well as a mythic land. And that's just the Snow lands. There will be others as well.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Red and black have cards that can easily get lands into your graveyard as well as cards that count the number of lands in your graveyard. (I apologize ahead of time for the placeholder art.  There's probably going to be a lot more of that in the future.  It's really difficult finding good art for these things.)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Green has a lot of rejuvenating spells to heal the land that is being scorched by the Devils coming forth from the fissure under Gargut.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Blue and white have a lot of ETB triggers on snow permanents, using a new ability word, Snowfall (to be previewed this week!).
   
   
   
   
   
6. Mount! Every color gets at least one Mount creature, with the focus being on green and white.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Mythic Legendary creatures of every color, and two new planeswalkers.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Ice counters. Each color has ways to put ice counters on permanents and ways to use the counters for either good or ill.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Lots and lots of Snow Creatures!
   
   
   
   
   

You can check out the history of snow in a blog I wrote a while back, here.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be fleshing out the set. 

In the meantime, expect a few surprises on my brand new Facebook page, found here!

Card of the Day - Beast Rider

Now that we've seen what mount can do, let's see a guy who likes riding on things.   I feel like mounts should be primarily green and white, and secondarily red.  Black and blue can have one or two creatures with mount, but they shouldn't get too many.

Card of the Day - Bound Nightmare

In this example, you don't realize how awesome the horse is until you sit on it.  Then you win (usually).

Card of the Day - Captive Dragon

Today's my birthday.  My birthday present to me is a big dragon that I can ride on.  Also he gives me flying and first strike.  Bonus!


Edit:  Made it more Dragon-y.  (And haste-y.)

Card of the Day - Domesticated Pegasus

Every time I played Mesa Pegasus back in the day, I wondered why the creature it banded with didn't get flying.  Mount fixes this problem.

Card of the Day - Trained Bhorloth

Green guy.  Grokkable!

Expanding Mount

Two new ideas, now with less text! They both change the way the card works, but done in different ways. Check it out.  If you missed the explanation of mount, check it out here.

The first way is to go the Licid route.  This way makes the mount into an Aura, and attaches it to a creature.  The reminder text lets you know to add the mount's power and toughness to the power and toughness of the enchanted creature.

The second way is a bit more iffy.  It involves making a new card type - Mount.  Instead of putting the reminder text on each card, Mount would have its own rules as a card type.


The rules would be as follows:  Mount is a special creature type with associated rules. All creatures with the Mount type have a mount cost.  When you pay the mount cost of a Mount, attach it to target creature you control.  The creature it's attached to is considered mounted. Add the mount's power and toughness to the power and toughness of the mounted creature. It stops being a creature as long as its attached to another creature. Mount only as a sorcery.

Here's an example with the mount rules.

I feel like the rules are grokkable enough to work, and the card looks a lot more clean. Let me know what you think.

 FINAL VERSION

Edit:  Taking the comments into account, I believe this is the best form of Mount:

 This form doesn't need a lot of extra rules baggage.  It's simpler, more concise, and self-explanatory.  It has the feel of a mix between equipment and licids, while keeping the flavor of riding a mount into battle.  I like it.

Card of the Day - Shadow Mare

So, here's Mount.  This is my version of fixed banding.  I've included the full text to see if anyone can make this more concise.  If you have a better wording, please post it!

Mount (cost) (Attach this creature to another target creature you control. These creatures may only attack or block together. Any creature blocking or being blocked by either of these creatures is considered to be blocking or being blocked by both. You choose how combat damage is assigned to these creatures. Mount only as a sorcery and only if neither creature is attached to another creature.)

Edit:  This was the original version, which I left here unedited.  All the other cards with Mount have been altered to fit the new format.