CCDD 071118 - Half-Lords

Cool Card Design of the Day
During GDS3's first challenge, I came up with an idea for Imps that I ended up discarding because, after iterating, it didn't feel like it fit the tribe anymore. I still like the idea, though, so I figured I'd walk you all through my thought process so we could discuss whether the core idea of a "Half-Lord" is salvageable in some way.

The initial concept was a set of cards that split all Imps you control into two piles, representing the opponent not being able to keep an eye on all of your Imps at once. They could choose a pile to "watch", which wouldn't receive the bonus - but the unwatched Imps would grow stronger in the process. This was my first cut at the card:

The concept was solid, but I was concerned it wouldn't feel good to cast this with an odd number of Imps. Only getting one +1/+1 counter across three Imps wasn't a good rate. My next attempt changed it so that there were two bonuses: the "watched" pile got bigger, while the "unwatched" Imps did some dirty work:

Variants on this led to some weirdness, however: it often was correct to put all of your Imps in one pile, leaving a second empty pile. This didn't feel good, especially because newer players wouldn't necessarily understand that a pile could even be empty in the first place. The piles as a whole felt a little messy. I next tried a version where the player controlled the outcome, removing the piles entirely:

This version lost all of the flavor that I'd liked, however. It didn't feel tricky anymore, or like anything really Imp-like. It didn't have the "it" factor that drew me to the original idea anymore, and I dropped it for more fruitful pastures.

...sort of. You could imagine a version of this ability where an opponent chooses either +1/+1 or loses life for each Imp you control. In fact, that version, cranked up to 11 in every way, ended up as part of my submission:

However, the underlying idea had drifted enough from its initial state that I didn't feel like I could salvage the "Lord that boosts half of your team" concept, even though I really liked it.

That doesn't mean, though, that outside of the context of Imps and Tribal challenges, the idea doesn't have legs! I'd love to see what some Artisans can come up with using this or related technology. What context does an ability along these lines make sense for? Is there clever flavor that makes this mechanic immediately grokable? Show me what you've got!