Seasonal Migration Anti-land destruction design. It works with land-based sacrament spells to a lesser extent and the cycle of uncommon,
three land anty creatures. There isn't many peer designs to compare it to. It's also rather narrow, and due to that, there's no reason to limit the design too extensively. Limiting the design to a nonbasic or a basic land only
would have given it some added flavor, but mostly only if nonbasic (in relation to nonbasic lands with sac abilities, of which there are none in this set). So personally as it stands (being sorcery speed with a card draw), it's just barely useful. If you use it to net you a card early in the game, you might kick yourself for it later when you need to get a land back and save yourself from disadvantage.
There is no flavor text on this design because there simply was no space for it. It would have made the text off-center and unappealing. To explain its flavor the best I can; as the season's pass away (go to the graveyard), their pirouette inevitably brings them full circle again. A gift to each living person and the chance to start anew, do things different, and live the season once again.
Path to Newland There were two main inspirations that shaped this design (along with the original development criteria);
Path to Exile 
and
One with Nature 
. It's not a complex design, and that's why there isn't much to explain about it. It pulls more than its weight in being useful, effective, an instant staple (juxtaposed with peer designs like
Lay of the Land 
,
Land Grant 
, and
Rampant Growth 
). It doesn't outshine things like
Terramorphic Expanse 
, or other fetch lands (being that they are one-sided and basically free). When nonbasic lands come into the picture, things get more interesting than ever; it potentially
does outshine even the fetch lands then. Overall, I feel I did an acceptable job matching the appeal of
Path to Exile and
One with Nature (which also was a very popular card when it came out).
The flavor text is the primary source of flavor. It relates to those who make no progress because they think they already have it down, but in fact they have not yet reached their maximum potential (which is your only true-self). To become your true-self, to realize your ultimate potential, you must break the illusion you cast on yourself to ascend.
Beseech Wilderness Modal spells are fun to look at, they're fun to play with, but they're
not fun to develop. Every element must be in perfect sync; if you overstep a single letter, the text goes off-center and the design is unappealing; if you don't do something interesting, you better make up for it in flavor and usefulness, or it will lose appeal. For this spell cycle, being useful and flavorful was all I demanded of the criteria. This was the last set in the block and doing something unique would have been out of the way, and unnecessary. Uniqueness was covered enough in the "you may choose two" clause anyways. So a "does it all" spell is what we have here. Tokens, life, and power. It's the meat, potatoes, and milk of green. That being said, dinner is served.
Rush Hour To design an
Overrun 
common variant was the plan here. To give it some significant differences, it costs one more, is less color-heavy, and opts the offensive power of trample for the defensive power of vigilance and indestructible. In retrospect of indestructible's power, the pump is small but permanent (in the form of a +1/+1 counter). If you've ever been to LA (saying that alone might make you crack at smile). there's some relevance to the hysteria of rush hour in LA and this design. The true flavor of the design is relative to the wildness at the climax (and nearing the end) of the story, when victory for the humans is at hand. The design isn't apart of a "cycle" but a psudo-cycle, in which I take a staple and do an expensive alternate take on it.
Gaea's Wrath Currently, green is the only color missing a board sweep. Given that Gaea is a main character in the story, this was the perfect opportunity to base one around her. Personally, I feel this an amazing concept to base a green board sweep around. The design itself has been a long-standing work in progress. I haven't been able to get it right over the years until just recently. As it stands now, it works into green by being super expensive and requiring a ton of resource building. Instead of using the terms destroy or exile (popular in the white, red, and black peer designs), I opted for a "shuffle into the library" function. I feel this was great to give it a sense of uniqueness opposed to the redundancy of most other board sweeping spells.
Having cantrip was a strategic decision I made; a counter-weight in measure against hand disruption and the spell itself having a high CMC. Flavor-wise, cantrip on this design relates to feminine psychology. Women are well know to be especially secretive. They tend to operate from their subconscious mind. This is a defensive measure and it literally means, they keep their true thoughts and feelings to themselves; only revealing their true nature when they feel they absolutely need to, or when they are absolutely comfortable in doing so. In summery, you can't see through her poooooker-face. :3
Scour the Land This color-bleed spell was implemented to give an alternate measure to a "draw cards" spells. I already have enough "draw cards" functions and I needed something that works with them. Of course, a land-based scry effect gives the ability some flavorful justification and appeal power. Being the only instant spell in the block, it's appropriately costed in measure of that. I didn't mind it being a bit under-powered given all these elements (it still would have made an awesome draft design), but since someone pointed it out, I added the "choose one and put it into your hand" clause and I like it even more now.
Bestial Rage One of five in a color-shifted aura cycle, it's counterpart being
Dust Corona 
. In researching the possible choices, I decided this one was the best because it matched up perfectly with things green already does and things green is weak against. There was also justifiable flavor in the sense of a flying creature's timid nature when it comes to enraged land dwelling creatures. In the event of a conflict, the flying creature doesn't stick around, it generally takes flight from danger. Even a dragon will take flight and take cover when faced with another creature powerful enough to give reason in doing so. It's the basic nature of any flying creature to do this and it's relative to the counter-stance, back-step, side-step, or other evasive maneuver a grounded creature takes.
Briar Embrace This spell is apart of a very interesting cycle that was designed as a development experiment. I implemented many experimental functions in my second block (Bloodlines of the Orient). The purpose of these is to simply and actively prove theories I have on design and development when applied to game-play. In the re-development process of the Mythgard (which came after the first re-development process of Bloodlines), I added experimental functions to further prove theories I didn't cover in Bloodlines. In order to do this, I had to scrap the original cycle of multi-function counter-based enchantments, but that cycle was too over-the-top anyways.
Similar to
this cycle 
, there was no significant difference enough to warrant against the implementation of a casting-based cost reduction cycle of the same operation. I feel at best, these are strong draft format designs. Which is generally great because draft makes up such a huge percentage of Standard play. Being something as simple as an amplifier speeds up any game with ease and being an enchantment in form makes it a unique implementation for any given strategy. Because enchantment is a weak permanent type, and normally only
very powerful enchantments 
make the cut otherwise.
Sandstorm Wall This simple design is the counterpart of
Angelic Wall 
. A color-shifted wall cycle was the basis of therein. I still feel this is a very fun and appealing cycle. It adds some sweetness to draft format play especially (the likeliest home for a basic wall creature in a deck). Based around nature, the wall explains itself so well, there is no need to go into details. And as always, extensively detailed (and witty in this case) flavor-text makes up for the blandness of the design otherwise.
Chupacabra A fun creature type. This was a very last minute patch of a flying, defensive, first blood creature. I omitted design because it no longer had any relevance in the set/block due to other patches. This new design was quickly thrown together to be simple and effective. The fun creature type adds instant nostalgic cryptid appeal. As I matched the abilities to its lore, I'm adding some new details to it as well. These are born from wolves who attack Devil creatures. The wolves' genetic properties are manipulated by the physical radiation of the Devil's body, and chemical properties in the Devil's blood. It turns them from instinctive killers, into intentional killers (by granting them an intelligent malicious nature). This is by the effect of their amplified mental capacity, which sharpens their ability to think, remember, and interact with other intelligent life.
Enraged Earth During the dev. process in the green section, I reserved the first blood ability to non-human creatures. It doesn't belong to the Druid's nature at all. Not a bad thing either, because this encourages more dynamic deck possibilities (it makes well for draft format too). This is because in draft, you tend to take whatever you can, and are lucky if you can get anything you need. Generally, you end up with a mix-match of creatures and spells. Simply regenerate and first blood together make an interesting combination of abilities. There are plenty of
utilities 
in the over-world of content that make it extraordinary too, but these utilities also exist within the block itself.
Hexadragon Traditional lore of dragons is fraught with tales of treasure nabbing and hording. Not to mention, dragons of many different shapes and sizes. This dragon here is like
Doppelganger meets
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker 
. First blood was the first idea for the design. Next was some type of permanent stealing (treasure nabbing/hording) ability. And lastly I had to balance it all in green with a function that logically made sense. The "attacking alone" clause is in measure of fairness and to be used in combination with first blood while also being a drawback. Waiting until the end step gives some extra response time in measure of a counter-tactic. And the "gain control of target tapped creature" supports the flavor first blood (blocking creatures tap), provides balance by being a drawback, and provides flavor appeal (it nabs a resource that has been knocked down and runs away with it).
