Art by Tom WänerstrandPrinciples:
Shared library (scry and manipulating top of library).
Shared graveyard (recursion, graveyard hate, graveyard as a resource).
No lands. Play any card face down as 5 color land.
No mulligans. 7 card hands.
In multiplayer games the first player draws a card on the endstep of their first turn.
No tokens.
No counters (e.g. +1/+1 counters or loyalty counters. Counterspells are fine).
No shuffling.
No Double Face Cards (because I have this in cheap clear sleeves).
No snow.
Everything should be reasonably answerable.
Show off every slice of the color pie.
Modal spells, kickers, and X costs are good.
Interaction is good.
Instant speed is good.
Activated abilities are good.
Card selection, cycling, and cantrips are good.
Minimal ramp.
Minimal face burn.
Minimal repeated/mass card draw.
No land destruction.
Avoid cards that won't get to "do their thing" often.
Avoid cards that are bad.
Avoid vanilla creatures.
Blow-out games are boring.
Winning due to luck of the draw is boring.
Finally opened some new packs with MH2 prerelease which means an update.
I was never super stoked about Corridor Monitor blocking all the X/1s without trading. Parcel Myr fills in as an artifact creature that's less defensive with an ability that is more often relevant.
Young Pyromancer forgoes the multiplayer shenanigans of Tempt With Immortality but is also graveyard hate and comes with a body. Since they're both sorcery speed this feels nearly strictly better.
Akoum Hellhound is fine but is practically vanilla. Dragon's Rage Channeler is card selection and a graveyard enabler. It is similar to Hellhound in that it is sometimes small and sometimes larger.
Thraben Watcher is basically just better than Griffin Protector, and probably in top 3 best 4 drops l with Kaervek and Ravenous Chupacabra. In listening to Mark Rosewater's podcast I've become interested in the idea that cards in a format don't have to be of equal value. Card evaluation or threat assessment skills are better tested if a player has to decide which of their opponent's creatures is a better target for removal. If creatures of the CMC are all equally valuable,l it doesn't matter which creature you remove, but having unequally powerful creatures means the choice is non-trivial.