Cool Card Design of the Day9/12/2013 - This land cycle is primarily about exploring the use of scry as an alternative to traditional cycling. I also added three words to the ETB clause, that make a colored ETB tapped land slightly more functional, apparently to distract from the primary idea. [shrug]
EDIT: Officially breaking the two ideas from this one card into separate cards.
Yeah, I agree that the first sentence on the card is a distraction. Why not just reduce the scrycling cost to 1?
ReplyDeleteNot sure I see the connection.
DeleteThere is none; it's just to tweak power level in exchange for ETBT.
DeleteThough I also feel like the whole point of cycling lands is that if you draw them late, you get to immediately try again. It would feel pretty bad to draw this late, scry some awesome stuff to the top, and then die anyway before drawing it. Delayed gratification is a touchy thing in game design, I guess.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely not equal to cycling, though I don't think it's worse. Cycling often just draws you a dead card (though it always at least gets you one card closer to gas). In contrast, scry gets you up to two cards closer to gas, but it doesn't get you a card to use immediately.
DeleteCycling is better on the turn before your would lose, but scry is arguably better in a stall.
ETB tapped unless you pay {1} is a really interesting idea, though yes, should probably be a post on its own. Unlike shocklands, it never accelerates your mana the turn you play it, but unlike most things, it fixes your mana for free the turn you play it.
ReplyDeleteFor discard-to-scry.. yes, seems a good minor benefit that could offset ETB tapped on a mono (or dual??) land. I don't know about the exact cost.
Hmm...
DeleteFixier ETBT Dual
Land (unc)
~ ETB tapped unless you pay {1}.
{T}: Add {R} or {G} to your mana pool.
off topic but do you think there could ever be a land that has a etb trigger to pay mana for something. example is
ReplyDeleteland
etbs tapped
taps for W
when cardname etb's paw 2W put a 2/2 knight into play
It's certainly plausible. The Zendikar spell-lands all being free might well be an indication that they tried it and it felt like a violation of land-ness. Outside of game philosophy concerns, land-kicker seems both reasonable and interesting for gameplay.
DeleteI like both of the new cards better. The dual land seems like a variation they will certainly do at some point.
ReplyDeleteChris Howlett had precisely discard-to-scry as a keyword mechanic in his custom set Arcunda. He even gave it the same nickname HavelockV did, scrycling.
ReplyDeletehttp://multiverse.heroku.com/quicksearch?q=scrycling
I played in a playtest with it. It's not exactly exciting, but it does the job of smoothing Limited play.