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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9698578" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Each type absolutely had specific mechanics, they were just kept simple because of NWO. Kithkin buffed other Kithkin. Giants… also buffed Kithkin, and sometimes Boggarts. Merfolk had islanswalk and turned lands to islands. Faeries had flash and a lot of enters the battlefield triggers. Boggarts wanted to be sacrificed. Flamekin came in red but provided mana fixing in all colors to enable use of non-Flamekin elementals in a base-red elemental deck. Elves produced tons of tokens. Treefolk cared about having high-toughness stat lines. These weren’t keyword abilities, but again, that’s because Wizards’ design directive was actively pushing to decrease cognitive overload, and was therefore trying to keep the number of non-evergreen keywords in each set low. Not to mention the fact that the species types needed to be able to synergize both with other cards of the same species, but also potentially with other cards with the same class type, which might be in a different color combination. Highly specific species type themes would have hurt that interoperability.Bloomburrow was designed post-FIRE, when the directive was exactly the opposite: make each individual card “fun, inviting, replayable, and exciting,” even if that meant making them more complex. By Bloomburrow, they had started printing text on cards that look like keywords but have no actual mechanical function, they just provide flavor context to the following rules text. The design team was accordingly much more able to give every creature type not only general design direction, but highly specific, complex mechanical themes.</blockquote>

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