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Old versions of the design
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edit: 3rd iteration

Serpine Drake - Drake

pic
Uncounterable
t: Exchange power and defence.
t: Permanents you control now have shroud as long as Serpentine River Drake is on the battlefield, Serpine River Drake gains a -1/-1 counter and you lose 4 life.
2/4
"Academics maintain that despite its appearance the creature is sufficiently genetically similar to other drakes as to justify the classification."

My own art.

Two other Serpine Drakes can be found here community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/29409961

You have non-standard counters, -1/-0 and -2/-2 (why? -2/-2 could just be "two -1/-1") and TWO types of counter on a single card.

That's quite simply not going to happen. Ever.

Cards like Defensive Stance use concepts like -1/+1, although not counters.

I see how the two types of counter could be difficult to represent and would have commonly occured on this card, so I've simplified the card.

Oct 1, 2012 -- 6:26AM, alan2here wrote:

Cards like this one
gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details....
Use concepts like -1/+1, although not counters.

-1/+1, or -1/+0 is fine. But not as a counter.

There are no power/toughness affecting counters other than +1/+1 and -1/-1 on any blackbordered cards. Do you want to know why?
Because most people like to be able to look at the number of counters on a creature and know what state it's in, without going "Is that a +1/+0, a +0/+1, a +2/+1 or a +1/+1 counter?"

I've adjusted the text to make a -2/-2 counter two -1/-1 counters.

See how the card changes with the abilities used. I like how I imagine the flow of things would be with this card.

You will only ever use one of the two abilities, never both. The card doesn't actually look that interesting to me. And certainly it's not amazing enough to justify a -1/+0 counter.

Find a way to make it work without the -1/+0 counter. 

Fixed. What would you say the power level was now, how many stars would you give it on gatherer?

I'd like to make it uncounterable as well, but as is this seems to make it too powerful for its mana cost and I want it to be 2 mana.

I've just noticed, shroud without an enchantement or similar to give it is going to be hard to represent on another creature. Might this cause a problem? If so I'll look at making it more of a lord sort of effect.

It's a 2/4 for uu, with no weaknesses, it's quite a potent card just for that. The tapping to swap p/t, I suppose I can see that being used, occasionally, as a combat trick in defence, boosting it's power level up a bit. Add in the hexproof/shroud thing, which is also a nice ability (the cost of life is painful, but can be well worth it) and you've got a card that I'd say is definitely too good as a UU creature. Throw an extra on the mana cost?

I'm not the world's best balancer, but this is quite clearly over the curve for blue. 

The 3rd iteration (now in the original post) I think is a bit weeker.

I presume you can tap, swap and in doing so attack, so I've slowed it down a bit instead of -1/-1. I've also make it uncounterable which seems fitting and made it more lord like, so players don't need to find shroud tokens.

Oct 1, 2012 -- 6:59AM, alan2here wrote:

I presume you can tap, do the swap and in doing so attack, so I've slowed it down a bit.

You couldn't actually do that. Attacking taps it, meaning you can't use the ability once you're attacking, and you can't attack if you're already tapped, so there was no way to do both (without untapping it)

The other change, making the shroud thing permanent, (but still require a tap, just once) seems a bit weird to me.

That's helpful to know. I've therefore removed that it cannot attack, given that it can't anyway once tapped. Although you could presumably tap it in response to it being removed, but not at the same time as attacking, as each taps it and it can't normally tap twice.

I confess I don't think i've seen this sort of thing before, but it seems to work nicely here.

Maybe it's still too powerful.

Does anyone like the art?