CCDD 010413—Bloodcall

Cool Card Design of the Day
1/4/2013 - I recently wondered if unleash wouldn't have been a better keyword for Gruul and bloodrush for Rakdos. This morning, I thought a bit about other possibilities for the Gruul mechanic. I named them all bloodcall, but have five executions for you to consider. They all preserve the Gruul focus on attacking, but are more focused on getting your creatures onto the field rather than into your graveyard.

1

The first is the most similar to bloodrush. What if you could get the same attacker pump, but you get to keep the creature instead of discarding it? Obviously, the ability then has to cost more instead of less, at which point it plays more like kicker than evoke.

2
Putting the creature into play to grant its power feels a little funny (though putting it OTB tapped might help illustrate that he's rushing in to lend his support from the rear); what if we put creatures into play attacking?

3

When this guy attacks, he calls forth his allies to join him. This mostly amounts to one-free-haste-per-turn, but leads into the next, more interesting iteration:

Identical to version 2 except that your creatures are actually cheaper to "cast into combat." I like that this keyword promotes both attacking and playing lots of creatures. I do wish you could combine two of them to cast a single creature for a larger discount.

4

Version 4 limits the possibilities drastically, but is more self-contained:

This is basically ninjitsu (ala Ninja of the Deep Hours) without the cost of returning one of your attackers to your hand (or the requirement of not being blocked). It probably makes sense to keep the commons with this keyword otherwise vanilla, but at uncommon and up ETB effects could be pretty interesting (click to enlarge):

Here's a slight tweak on version 4 with a more generic, scaling ability:

5
I wanted to take one more crack at the idea that multiple bloodcallers could help summon a single creature at a reduced cost. Like some kind of multi-use aggro convoke:

You don't get the creature attacking the same turn, but you do get to play creatures faster as a reward for attacking. If this proved good enough on its own, I would definitely pair it up with a bunch of clansmen with ETB and/or static effects:

You could arguably add the into-play-attacking clause to this, but I think that text is too long and unwieldy  I prefer a shorter keyword because Gruul is a guild of few words. I like the gameplay of versions 1 and 3 best, but 5 is so much simpler. What do you think?