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Dec 13, 2012 -- 1:46PM, Qilong wrote:

I think you have that card up there mixed up. Many cards that were printed as mash ups of other cards were done so strictly because of that mash up. They are also mechanical, but that has a tendency of the designers to find an effective mechanical cross with flavor; it did not mean that Time Spiral was "mechanical" as opposed to "flavorful," where one merely excludes the other. It meant the card's design was inspired by the evocativeness of those two cards, and then mechanical functionality was considered afterwards. An even better example of a highly mechanical card inspired through top down design was Stuffy Doll , but we can go further with Tivadar of Thorn , and indeed most of the other call-back legends of the set, which feature prominently. A top-down design doesn't mean you cannot have a Chinese menu of abilities, or whatever: Ith, High Arcanist was top-down, but was slotted in deliberately to have Maze of Ith , despite that there was also an effort to look at other Ithian cards.

Stormcloud Djinn does not represent the top-down, flavor mash up of a djinn and an electric eel. It represents the botton-up, mechanical mash up of a combination of mechanics from earlier cards.

Time Spiral had far more Stormcloud Djinn s than Stuffy Doll s. It had far more cards inspired by the mechanics with flavor considered afterwards than the other way around. 

But let's agree to disagree, I don't feel this is going anywhere =p