Blood

Blood is, at the moment, a triggered ability. "Blood -- [condition], [text]" means "Whenever this event after occurs, do this."

Vampires gain abilities from having more blood counters. For example, Outer Child reads "As long as Outer Child has 3 blood counters on it, it gets +3/+3."

There are also smaller such like abilities that may be changed in the future, such as "Drakula's" blood ability, "Whenever this creatures deal combat damage to a player, put 2 blood counters on it." That seems more like flavour for the mechanic, which is conveyed already through the fact that it's creature type is Vampire.

There's also blood +1/+1 counters. This would be the first counters with 2 types so far, and would count as both giving the creature +1/+1, and a blood counter. For example, if Outer Child had 3 blood +1/+1 counters on it, it would +3/+3 from it's 'have 3 blood counters" ability, and +3/+3 from the three seperate +1/+1 counters. This may pose problems later.

Added Friday 17th March (Blood seems like a Vampire flavoured mechanic, and perhaps good enough for a keyword ability. If not, it can certainly be used for a cycle of creatures [common, uncommon, rare])

Etchings

Etchings is a triggered ability that is only active while the card is in it's controllers hand.

Etching X means "Pay X mana and discard this card. You may look at the top X cards of your library. Put one of those cards into your hand, and remove the rest from the game."

X is always the converted mana cost of the card with Etchings.

1R
Joe Blow
Creature - Goblin
Etchings: 2 (You may pay 2 and discard Joe Blow to look at the top four cards of your library. Put one of those cards into your hand and the remove the rest from the game.) Added 17th march '06 (Card searching is considered off flavour for most nonblue colours, but in Fifth Dawn a card filtering effect, Scry, was given to all colours, so the same may occur here.)