The Elder Dragons are not very good cards. How about a redesign?
- They should be mostly aimed at Elder Dragon Highlander, so they should do well with multiplayer / casual.
- Elder Dragons should be big and cool.
- They should be different from normal creatures in some way.
- Elder Dragons are not Planeswalkers.
What I ended up doing:
- These are all creatures with loyalty counters on them. At any given time, their toughness is equal to the number of loyalty counters on them, and they each ETB with 7 loyalty counters on them. Loyalty abilities work the way they do on Planeswalkers (once per turn at sorcery speed).
- Flavorfully, Elder Dragons are hunting planeswalkers; they're happy to stick around and help you out if their particular form of mayhem is happening, but they're happy no matter who gets hurt.
- Each one has abilities that call back to particular cards -- they can cast ancient (and hence more powerful) forms of well-known effects.
- The most powerful ability can't be triggered right away, but shouldn't be too hard to get. (This seemed important for Commander, where they can be re-cast each turn after you hit 7 mana.)
- These have terrible names, but part of the exercise is not changing the names. Oh well!
The cards:
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Chromium: can cast improved Castigate or Time Walk + Ancestral Recall. Cares about spells that cause life-drain mostly; I'm not totally happy with this trigger.
Nicol Bolas: can cast a better Reanimate or a goofy ability that lets you make two players attack each other in multiplayer (for Bolas, his character is so well-defined that I felt like I needed to hit it). Cares about death and discard.
Palladia-Mors: can cast double Lightning Helix or a souped-up Overrun. Cares about big creatures fighting.
Vaevictis Asmadi: can cast double Maelstrom Pulse or Channel Fireball! Cares about players getting hit hard or drained for life.
