pureferret asked:

What was the council of colours view on Glademuse? Bend or break?

Let’s get to today’s elephant in the room, Glademuse. Cards are most often not designed in a vacuum. They’re designed to fit the need of a slot, or set or deck. We’re usually trying to solve a problem with certain parameters, like color, already in place.

The green/blue/red Commander deck is based on creatures with flash and instants. Each color had slots for monocolored cards for this deck, so the Ikoria Commander design team was looking for ways to play into this space in each monocolor.

Glademuse was trying to find some novel space to push green. When a card like this, with an effect we haven’t done exactly before, comes to the Council of Colors, the question isn’t “what color would most likely do this effect?” but “is it acceptable that this color can do this effect?” because, once again, we’re evaluating what’s before us, not what potentially could be.

Glademuse was a tricky card. Yes, obviously in a vacuum the effect is more blue, but is it green enough to be an acceptable bend? The set needed a green card for this deck. If the answer was “no”, the card doesn’t change colors, it gets pulled from the set and replaced.

It was a universal effect, which we do the most often in green (followed by white - white’s universal effects are most often rules). Green is secondary in card draw (tied with black). Green’s card drawing is usually tied to creatures, which ties into flash, but is understandably odd with instants.

After much discussion, we decided it was a bit of a bend, but acceptable. I’ll be honest, calls like these are hard, and sometimes we look back with time and realize we made a bad call. I’m not sure where Glademuse will end up, but I want to be open that judging color identity of new effects within the contexts of the need of the product is tricky, and we don’t always bat 100% with 20/20 hindsight.