Nature's Fighters

With the new evergreen term "fight" that was introduced in Innistrad, Green gains a lot of potential to be able to battle creature threats and obstacles in a Green way.

Here, I designed some Green fighting creatures.

This was inspired by Eager Brute by Pasteur.

While the card works a lot like Unyaro Bee Sting, it does benefit from being a creature since it can sometimes survive and attack. It could also work with creature pumping effects like Gaea's Anthem or Primal Forcemage.

It would also be interesting to have a version that has the ability "G: this gets +1/+1 until end of turn" although it's rare for Green to get that ability nowadays. (While Unyaro Bees' pumping ability was an homage to older designs, Timbermaw Larva arguably did have a similar ability.)

This card pushes the color pie somewhat. I don't like the idea of Green getting a strictly worse direct damage spell like Unyaro Bee Sting or Hornet Sting to show that Green is worse than Red at damage spells. It should get an ability that plays differently, such as Black's drain spells or White's "ranged damage" effects (dealing damage to an attacking or blocking creature.)

While I don't think this card ultimately breaks the color pie because it has a Green flavor and it only does things that an Artifact can do at this mana range (both in terms of flying and direct damage), it would be sad if it's only justified because of inefficient cost.

I tried to see if I could justify a Green flyer at a lower cost by making it more belligerent (and thus likely to die.)

I thought of making it cost GG, but realized that against a deck with many small creatures (like an Elf combo deck), this bee would be like a Green delayed Arc Trail that also gets to attack sometimes, which might be too good.

I do think that a cheap flyer might somehow be justified in Green through having a short life span. Not because of a countdown timer like Fading, but rather because it keeps getting into fights with other creatures. That would be a niche that's not occupied by other colors' flyers.

But I also think this would be more Green if the caster didn't have so much control over dealing damage. Prey Upon is very Green, because you need to provide the creature yourself. When a fight spell comes with a body attached it's too similar to direct damage.

I thought the fight effect would feel more like a combat encounter between creatures if it was like this:

I think this card feels like a bee. Bees attack whatever violates their hive. They sting something once and then die.

The fact that it eventually dies fighting another creature, rather than continually hitting the opponent through the air until blocked or removed, arguably makes it different from Blue or White's flyers.

I like the fact that it makes you want to play Giant Growths and Auras. In fact, it might even be slightly oppressive in Limited when it gets an Aura on it. But the opponent can attack back with multiple creatures.

The next card is a rare that makes these guardian bees:

This is like Master of the Wild Hunt, except less oppressive. Your opponent has to try and attack you every turn so s/he can squash a bee and keep the population down. Otherwise, s/he will quickly be buried under a swarm of bees.

The wording of the second part is somewhat weird and could use some massaging. I wanted a straight up "Whenever a creature an opponent controls attacks, each bee you control fights it." But that would create a lot of unnecessary triggers if you have many bees and the opponent attacks with many creatures. I wish the term fight could be tweaked to handle fighting multiple creatures at once (such as the victim of a Master of the Wild Hunt does), but that would be tricky.

I hope you enjoyed this, and I would like to know if you think this fits Green or not.