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Jan 20, 2013 -- 5:09PM, K9GM3 wrote:

Reflect (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, you may copy that spell or ability and choose new targets for the copy.)

Fits in both blue and red, fairly easily understood, and useful without shutting your opponent down like hexproof or protection do.

On the other hand, it's kind of obvious, so there's probably a reason it hasn't been done yet :') 

Limited design space. Also, as written, it lets you use one giant growth to give Infinite +X/+X. Also, It's not combat related.

Jan 18, 2013 -- 9:59AM, Rush_Clasic wrote:

Jan 14, 2013 -- 8:31AM, alextfish wrote:

Skillhaste does have a couple of problems though:
* It doesn't accomplish anything at all unless the creature has (or can gain) an activated ability. This is a problem because one of the times they most often want a blue creature keyword is when creating a cycle of cards with some other effect as well. (See for example Frost Titan , where they had to use a four line ability because blue's general creature keyword ability, flying, wouldn't have fit the cycle.) Skillhaste would only be useful in the fairly small subset of those cases when the cycle's other ability is a effect.

I agree that its a short coming of the ability that is has to be attached to activated abilities to be meaningful. But I also find that to be acceptible; you wouldn't need to rewrite the comp rules much for this ability. It can just be a subset of haste, the way landcycling and multikicker are. It doesn't solve the cycle problem. Weird that you chose an example where two parts of the cycle aren't keyworded.

Not weird at all. That's the point: blue is so short of creature keyword abilities that on cycles where they'd really like to have keyword abilities for all five colours, they sometimes just can't. And in some of those cases they'll then change another one like red to be nonkeyworded so as to avoid breaking the rule of five. 

The development power of the Titans is a very different topic, but as a design issue, Frost Titan illustrates the problem of a shortage of blue keyword abilities.

I do like the red hasty self-bouncers: Viashino Sandstalker , Viashino Sandswimmer , Glitterfang , etc. Glitterfang in particular was great in its set because it let you trigger Spiritcraft abilities every turn. In Gatecrash a similar card would have been great with extort (and plausibly also with battalion).

Jan 22, 2013 -- 10:43AM, Rush_Clasic wrote:

Is there an article talking about Frost Titan specifically having the keyword problem? If so, I never read it. The existence of Inferno Titan makes me think that they weren't strictly looking for keywords. (Though the fact that they gave deathtouch to Grave Titan sorta suggests the opposite). Either way, I agree with you that skillhaste wouldn't solve this problem.

Firebreathing is basically a keyword. It's been there from the beginning, and shows up in every core set*. It hasn't been keyworded, becuase they like playing with it and some of regenerate's issues come from being a keyworded activated ability. I think it should be considered a keyword for these purposes.

*I didn't check this.