New Ally Color Uncommon Signposts

More iterating! I'm really starting to get the feel for how I see each of the five allied color pairs playing out so, I've been doing some tweaking. Here's where the signature uncommon card for each of them looks at the moment with an explanation of what type of gameplay I'm trying to foster:

Green and red is the pairing intended to really play up mutate. Initially I had this elemental growing whenever your mutate creatures grow. But I think a better choice here at uncommon is to give it a targeted trigger to make sure you can mutate whenever you attack with this. It is possible to target itself, so if need be, it can attack as a 5/5 trampler. But I did want to make it possible to start turning other mutate creatures into bigger threats each turn.

Despite my intent to try to make green and white the color of collecting and spending +1/+1 counters from creatures for value, it doesn't really seem to be playing out right and gets stranger and stranger the more I try to template it, given that white does not have access to mutate. So with fecund primary in green and white, I had to come to terms that this set is putting them in a familiar go-wide space for green and white. What does make this a little different is that the nature of fecund means that your creature has to die before you get your tokens. So it encourages some early aggression and trades in this color combination.

I've remade the Corpse Kindler into this guy to more clearly emphasize red and black as the reave colors. Because it's not common, it can have repeated triggers and even some scaling. It clearly tells the player you can increase the threat level of this ogre by playing more spells that remove cards from your graveyard.

Blue and black remains the only color pairing where they don't share dominance over a mechanic, but I think that's okay. As I recently wrote about Dimir, the two are thematically connected, not necessarily mechanically. Blue will have graveyard spell recursion. Black will have reave. Both colors will have the ability to trigger this ability. I think I am going to pull mutate from black. It's not fitting properly, but both colors will have some access to fecund.

Initially I was going to have him suppress anything blocking or blocked by it, but that feels more like a member of the corps than a signature card for the suppress mechanic. Since the play concept I envision for them is for them to hold big creatures back while picking away with evasive creatures, rewarding that play pattern seems to be the right choice. (And yes, these are still people riding giant seagulls).

I think I'm not going to overly design for enemy pairings, but will make some useful multicolor uncommons for them if people want to give them a try. I think I do want to keep the vermin theme for green and black because it fits the nature of the set so well. Black and white will still represent zombie survivalism. Maybe I should go with tribal-type rewards for enemy pairings, since the ally colors are all about the set mechanics.