Mournwillow Spell Creation (episode 1)
So yesterday at work, I started working on some things and thoughts about Mournwillow.
Let's break the card down, shall we?
This is a 3 power, 2 toughness Plant Skeleton Creature with Haste and a Delirium trigger. When it enters the battlefield and you've achieved Delirium, creatures with power 2 or less can't block that turn. This provides a great early-game swinger who can storm past early-game creatures and lead your early-game army. Or get you past a bunch of 1/1 Tokens later in the game if you're dealing with the Endless Squirrel Loop.
Delirium is a fun mechanic where you need 4 or more card types in your graveyard (aka the discard pile) to do something. Card types include Artifacts, Creatures, Enchantments, Instants, and Sorceries, along with other card types that aren't used anymore. The Plant and Skeleton parts of this card are Creature subtypes; subtypes don't count in the Delirium trigger.
So how do I translate all of this into a spell?
Let's start with the card cost and the tools. I would use a Black-aligned source, a Green-aligned source, and a third source to pay for the "cost" of the spell. I picked out bones (or bones made of clay and charged with Black energy), baneful plants (Green), and a speed booster of some sort (it could be speed powder, coffee, or caffeine more broadly) to represent the Haste and cover the last source we need. (Speed boosters tend to be Red-aligned, so...oops?)
After looking at these and studying the card art, an idea started pecking at my brain. So I also included a taglock for the target and a binding agent (string, twine, yarn, et cetera; ideally black or green).
I decided that this will be a poppet-based baneful spell, a 1 and done hit-style spell. I would tie everything together and leave it somewhere to either decay or scare the target, thus tying in the Delirium.
At this point, I abruptly realized that this was reading like those little dangly things you see in The Blair Witch Project, so I ended up stopping so I could have a whole ass conversation with my coworker/branch manager for several hours about the progression of horror through the past few decades and I had to explain the entire Five Nights at Freddy's lore and what a creepypasta was. It was unhinged.
So what do we have to do today?
Well shit, I dunno. I guess I could go into my correspondences binder and get examples of the plants we could use. Or figure out alternates for the bones/bones made of clay. But I feel like the "bone and plant" combination would be the best.
Please know that my correspondences binder is compiled from various books and blog posts, most of which are UPG-based. It's also not a complete compendium of every type of plant to exist.
It's very easy to find plants associated with Green. Frankly, anything that isn't artificial is associated with Green. Here are some that stand out:
Blackberry root: BG, bad luck, baneful magic, cursing, and death.
Blueberry: UBG, bad luck (bark), baneful magic, cursing, and discord (bark).
Cactus: BRG, baneful magic (needles or spines), pain magic, and strife.
Elm: WBG, baneful magic (slippery elm or elm wood), cursing (slippery elm), and death (elm wood).
Juniper: UBG, baneful magic, binding, and shadow.
Nectarine: UBRG, baneful magic, and hexes.
Paulownia: UBG, baneful magic, camouflage, and trickery.
Peach: BRG, bad omens, confusion (decayed or rotted), and death.
Smoke tree: WBG, baneful magic, infertility, short life, and weakness to illness.
Sumac: UBRG, baneful magic, binding, and cursing.
Walnut: WUBRG, bad luck, death, and infertility.
This gives us a lot to work with, but I think I'll pause here for now until I decide to put it together and try it out!
Cool Links
Mournwillow on Scryfall: https://scryfall.com/card/emn/187/mournwillow
The MTG Colors section of my Tumblr grimoire: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/tagged/section%3A%20mtg%20colors
