Cool Card Design of the Day4/15/2011 - I know you've seen a lot of Clone variants from me over the last couple months. This isn't the last, either (though it may be the textiest), but I swear it's just a fad. While I certainly enjoy copy effects, I have no special love for them, it's just that when a designer starts thinking about variations on a theme, each iteration begets another and so you tend to hit a lot of similar notes over a period of time. If I'm still posting a clone variant every week next year, I invite you to call me a dirty, dirty liar. For the time-being, I invite the ladies to call me a dirty, dirty boy.
I'm always amazed, no matter how cool an initial design is, how much room there is for improvement, if you continue to think critically about it. Check this out:
Clockwork creatures always remove positive counters rather than gain negative counters, but by breaking that convention, the card becomes much cleaner. Additionally, by actually looking up cards that function similarly, like Duplicant, we are able to produce a card with fewer holes and more accurate templating. We could remove imprint from this card entirely and just copy a card in a graveyard, like Body Double, but I think replacing that card nails the flavor I was going for better.
As a black spell (Reanimate a creature, it gains "Put a -1/-1 counter on this at the beginning of your upkeep") this would have been great in Shadowmoor, I think. The "dark" mirror of clockwork creatures is very fitting of Phyrexia as well.
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