I'm back. That was fun. Anyways back to writing about my magic thoughts.
Defender is Dumb
During Onslaught block, Imagecrafter exposed the fact that of all the creature types that exist in magic there were two creature types had rules attach to them, Legend and Wall. To remedy this Legends got the supertype legendary, and walls got the keyword defender. Initially I thought defender was the a ridiculous keyword to give to walls. Walls weren't defenders! They were creatures that just happened to not have a means of locomotion. No one confirmed this, but I suspected that the reason that defender was chosen was because it sound like a positive keyword ability, and market research shows that negative keywords don't go over too well. They did state that one of the reasons that they chose defender was because they wanted to make walls that weren't walls from a flavor standpoint. I thought it was a valid point, and I begrudgingly accepted it. I figured that future wall of woods would be templated as, let's say, Elvish Protectors. However, that's not what has happened.
Defenders are templated in several ways. Some are still just walls, like Overgrown Battlement or Æther Membrane. Some are actually defenders, like Stalwart Shield-Bearers or Hanweir Watchkeep. Some are slumbering, some are tethered, some are turned to stone, and some are just like to hang out. They do all have a common denominator they aren't going anywhere. Defender be replaced with garrisoned.
