You know I didn't think of the made out of mana thing, but it makes sense so its...allowed.

@Bari: One card doesn't really matter

Since I originally thought about doing these next two, Wizards has tackled Victorian-era horror and now Ancient Greek myths, so I'm fairly convinced that we'll eventually see them tackle these concepts.

I feel as though the kung-fu one is slightly reminiscent of avatar. As for interpreting the animal headed gods of Egypt, I would clump all of them into one new creature type.

A primal twist to the staple races of MtG:

Elves: Twelve-foot tall creatures of interlocking greenish-brown plates with veins of green mana. Large, fin-like ears, with prominent cheekbones and elongated jaws. Somehow tied into beasts, hydras, or whatever big green race you like.

Goblins: Six-foot tall creatures with a carapace of lava-rock and copper-colored skin stretched taut over corded muscles. Ears with an outer coating of stone that allow goblins to charge and gore their prey. Their snouts are triangular with hinged jaws. The goblins are tied into dragons or whatever big red race you like.

These elves and goblins are beyond human understanding. They are deified and demonized by the various tribes of humankind and have little interaction with humans. Priests who wish to meet with the objects of their religion wear special robes into the mountains and forests. These protect them from mana burn (literally, being consumed by the raw mana that leaks from the lands where the elves and goblins dwell) and the voices of Nature and Chaos. Without such protection, these priests would be compelled to acts of savagery, butchery, lust etc. Basically unbridled passions or survival of the fittest type stuff.

The only reason Wirewood Guardian worked was because they'd already established Wirewood Savage.
Honestly, that idea sounds like making things different for the sake of being different, and without the solid grounding and recognizability of the type, it's just... purposeless.

The Scourge elves were my inspiration (though I am not sure why anything needed to be established before going into the monstrous looking elves ), as was Ron Spencer's Goblin Digging Team. I preferred doing something different as opposed to reusing the same, tired old aesthetic and making them more or less quirky humans. After reusing the same sort of aesthetic for these races for 10+ years, it was time to take an axe to the old style, set the bits on fire, and put them out by pissing on them.

Then you are fighting a losing battle against expectations. What makes them elves if it is only your word?
You cannot fight your audience's expectations and if you do something that swerves too far away from what people know and understand of a specific thing, then you're going to induce a disconnect between them and your work.
Essentially, if they don't look like elves, act like elves, or sound like elves, what makes them elves?

Zip.

It has been my experience, as a reader, that authors who strictly adhere to expectations fail to evoke a sense of wonder and awe. Pale, immaculately beautiful and sometimes racist elves? Pointy-eared goblins that're either fodder, dumb brutes, or zany engineers? There's nothing there for me. I find it more pleasurable to read about strange, new races. Things like the Others and the Children of the Forest in A Song of Ice and Fire, or the genetically engineered dragons of Pern. I took what I like--something that inspires a sense of wonder, awe, and curiosity, and decided to apply that to the old stock of elves and goblins.

There have been works that do just that--subvert expectations--to great success: A Song of Ice and Fire, The First Law trilogy, Discworld, Earthsea, Pern, Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, and The Dragons of Babel. The publicity some get for perceived vulgarity, grit, or having a cast of villains and worse villains--First Law, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, The Dragons of Babel--in various corners of the fantasy community presents them as something with potential staying power. Why else would people feel compelled to go on at length about how they're ruining the genre?

My take on MtG elves and goblins follows Pratchett's idea of fantasy having a communal pot: everyone takes something from it, and should give something back. So by revamping elves and goblins, discarding much of what's come before in favor of making them more inhuman, I'm following Pratchett's theory of the communal pot. Magic: the Gathering's elves and goblins have been festering, stuck in a pseudo Middle-Earth stasis for however many years MtG has been around. I've taken them from the bottom of the pot, given them a more primal spin that makes them just as likely to help someone as kill them, and presented them as a "bubble adrift." Rather than long-lived humans, or dangerously stupid humans (in the case of goblins), I've presented a more fey, dangerous interpretation of the two races.

That said, elves are virtually immortal, magically gifted, nature spirits of a sort, which are qualities possessed by the elves I have described. Their elven qualities are what make them elves.

Ok so I agree with you that the best fantasy writers add there own touch to the old tropes, but in magic the gathering, a portrayal of a creature also affects its mechanics, and turning two, generally small creatures, with low power and toughness, into six foot tall and twelve foot tall giants would severely effect there mechanics. Also, when a fantasy writer does a variation of a creature, they usually keep enough attributes that if one just described the thing without saying what it is, on of there first thoughts would be "That kind of sounds like [blank]". If not, then just change its name. The elves could work, but you have to make sure to describe how they love nature and shtuff, which you didn't in your original description. Also, you changed the goblins just enough that its not revolutionizing the goblin trope, but it still doesn't seem like goblins.

Spot on, squid. I didn't blow the bubbles with card mechanics in mind, however. Building on how these could work mechanically speaking, the humans who deify these elves/goblins could take steps to emulate their gods. So you'd have humans who wear the horns of a basilisk to emulate the elven ears. Meanwhile humans who deify the goblins might harvest the bony plates of mountain turtles, fire beasts, or lesser elementals and wear them to emulate the goblin's carapace. In the case of the fire beasts and lesser elementals, the skulls serve as ceremonial helms resembling a goblin's head.

Since this is the thread for drifting ideas, I leave the fine details to whomever would want to work with these sort of elves/goblins. The carapace was inspired by the Akki, while the coloration comes from some of the Zendikar goblins

Some more loose ideas, ideally for a single world in which the above for elves and goblins is true:

Wilderness between cities and towns is filled with strange creatures depending on which continent one is visiting or happens to inhabit.

Allies and mercenaries serve as highway patrol for shipments of goods and services between the cities/towns.

Projectile mana weapons, similar to the bamsticks, are commonplace weapons among the populace that don't practice magic for whatever reason (financial, religious, practical).

Cultures that use iron age weapons use the vocal chord muscles of drakes to give them a miniature electromagnetic pulse effect that allows them to interfere with the projectile mana weapons' firing capability.

Lots of quirky human tribes, nations etc, tying into the idea of peoples that deify elves and goblins. The goblin worshippers are Redcaps (named for the color of the elemental/firebeast skulls they wear) while the elf worshippers are Thallids (a name given based on ritualistic scaring that these humans undergo as part of their faith. They go into a hydra's hollow and battle a hydra. Those that survive have their wounds filled with thallid bulbs that give the survivors a brutish, half human half fungus appearance due to a fantasy version of epidermodysplasia verruciformis).

A white tribe of humans that practice cannibalism as part of their worship rituals. The evil are burned at the stake at high noon. They believe that death by immolation sends the guilty soul on to Trevarth's Cathedral for jugment. At evening the body is eaten by Trevarth's faithful; the evil soul in the flesh takes refuge in the faithful's seed (sperm) or soil (egg) for rebirth into the world, redeemed according to the Trevarthi scriptures. The Trevarthi are, otherwise, a well-learned and very tolerant people. They believe that all the gods are peoples' way of interpreting Trevarthi scripture.

The Old Way is an outdated form of Trevarthi ritual. The windowless chapels remind the faithful of the darkness that Trevarth navigated to sow the seeds that gave rise to the world. Some say Trevarth led his brother dragons through the darkness to create rhe world. Modern scripture ignores this bit: it's all Trevarth, at the end of the day. Priests of the Old Way speak of the Old Plains. Supposedly they lead their followers to these Plains durng the rituals. People who pass these chapels have often spoke of the sudden silence that seemed to fall on the services.

The New Way promotes the spread of Trevarthi scripture, as well as the wealth of learning and knowledge that Trevarthi monks accumulated over the years. This knowledge is bartered--in the form of applying it to help others--for goods and services. The New Way does not abide greed, nor hoarding; this is punished by immolation at the stake and cannibalism of the guilty.

The Modular and Affinity mechanics could reemerge in this world (from the old Mirrodin block). Artificers seeking to mimic the bizarre forms of growth and development found in the rainforests (and other forests) give rise to stuff like Arcbound Ravager and Broodstar, with the counter transfer being similar to the idea of the new predator consuming the old, lesser one. The ones with genes that would be least fit for reproduction. The artifact creatures least fit to deal with the world's threats would be consumed and their "nutrients" harnessed by the stronger, better artifact creatures.

That went on for longer than I intended.

This idea bubbled up some time a few days ago and I am just now recovering it.
It basically is a history where at one point, there were incredibly powerful archetypical beings that ruled the land. They were undisputed in their own power, which aligned primarily to one of the aspects of mana, though it further breaks down so there isn't just one GREEN being.
The only thing on the world that existed besides them was the burgeoning human civilization, but at some time there came a tipping point where suddenly the primordial beings had their rule nixed from them, something about what the humans did threatened them, but in their new zenith the archetypical beings found that they couldn't effect the humans as they once had. Individually, they could wipe out dozens of humans at a time, but as they began to realize, they REAAAALLY should have been paying better attention and their own hubris and ego came back to bite them... so they retreated.
However, humans, in their own arrogance wrote them off and didn't realize that these nigh immortal beings had begun to select certain individuals and combine their essence, giving rise to dozens of new races. Horrified, most of the first generation slew themselves, but the damage was done and these new Descendants threatened humanity's reign, and the primordials retreated to their own demesne to watch their vengeance play out, only occasionally venturing into the world to assert themselves above their distant offspring.

Basically, it's a history based off a reversal of the avatars of Otaria.
Heedless One is the progenitor of the elves, an avatar who embodies the prototypical elfness. She is not a representative, she is the blueprint from which they were wrought.
Same with Reckless One, though the rest kind of break down as they start to swerve hard.

Essentially, I just wanted to do a deconstruction.

Neat. What do you mean when you say they swerve hard?

Zombie isn't a race, and Cleric and Wizard are classes.

Doubtless One, Nameless One, Soulless One: Make them of indeterminate race? Since there's really not much of a restriction on who can and cannot be a cleric, wizard, zombie. Each race has its own mythology surrounding the avatars?

Merfolk:

The Naga create illusions, shifting temples and undersea cities of water held in a state of stasis. The Naga, once content to recreate their piece of the Ethereal Reach beneath the seas of Blodheim now turn their attention to the surface world. They work as mobsters dealing in illusions and poisons, binding criminals and crime bosses to them by offering Naga-made weapons and ships. The ships are created from hunks of flesh cut from leviathans and behemoths. Nerves from the flesh dig into the ship crews, filling their minds with sweet nostalgia in an attempt to draw them into striking bargains with the Naga. The Naga, lonely in recreating a dead world, wish to bring others into their games without sacrificing their impossible dream of living in a perfect past. The tools of the present—bioengineering and chemistry—are turned toward helping the Naga remain in the nostalgia of the past.

Outsiders believe Naga to be concerned with manipulating reality and time. Naga believe that time is as the currents of the sea: shifting, flowing, and ultimately navigable. Providing the world with necessary evils allows them to cement themselves in the present, which will one day be looked back on with nostalgia. By going forward they believe that they will attain that sought after state of nostalgia, where everything is right. Their Timerippers experiment with controlling the currents of reality and time via narcotic minerals taken from the homeland of the Dragonborn viashino. This has brought them into conflict with the Dragonborn, and made them valuable allies to those viashino who fail the Path of the Dragon. Naturally, who knows if the Timerippers are really tinkering with the stuff of time and reality, or if they're just glimpsing the raw stuff of the Dragon Sea (a chaotic reservoir of mana). They're skilled enough in the use of illusions that all the mysticism surrounding the Timerippers could be smoke and mirrors.

That's rather missing the point. Wizards can be human, clerics can be human, it's about SUBVERTING THEM not empowering humans.

... and Naga are SNAKES not merfolk.

And that outline looks to be an awful lot like something for your world, so I wonder why it ended up here.

Orochi-bito are snakes. I see Naga as being more eel-like merfolk.

I have no world, currently. An Umezawa driving an interplanar ship built from the clockwork-retrieved corpses of ninety-nine Bolases fired a concentrated Karona cannon at Ragavikros/Urath, killing it.

What about empowering humans and watching them lose their grip on reality/morality or become mindless puppets to whatever's empowering them? Then it's not really empowering humans so much as watching them self immolate. Alternatively, you can make Cleric, Wizard, and Zombie tribes, as you have Elves and Goblins. Then leave it fuzzy as to what nonhuman race each of the three avatars actually is.

But they aren't. They're explicitly snakes. Specifically cobra.


No. That still isn't the point.
The point is that all the goblins, elves, et al are spawned from the (essential) cross breeding of humans and the avatars.
It's about tainting their bloodlines and giving rise to all the nonhumans that break the humans' iron grips.

Creative liberties.

What have you got in mind to go along with the elves and goblins? Maybe you can connect them to your other three avatars.

There are more than just those primary avatars. Things like Trollvatars and etc.
Probably stick close to the primarily humanoid to easily make that connection without straining disbelief.

But then again, this isn't even an idea I'm really planning on developing. Just tossing it out in case it finds a place in one project or another.

I had an interesting idea the other night about a planeswalker who's goal was to travels around and write guides to the plans he visits, then somehow made a distribution system so he could given them to other planeswalkers so they don't die/learn about the planes they might vist