Cool Card Design of the Day3/4/2014 - Satyr Wayfinder gets you land without breaking the game for a search-and-shuffle. I argue it's inevitable that we see a more direct Rampant Growth variant using that tech. One important difference is that a card that only does that shouldn't be able to fail (Wayfinder gets away with that because you always get at least the 1/1 body.)
I literally just designed a card like this today. The difference was that it only found basic lands and put them into play tapped. My version is probably too weak, but I wonder if this is too strong.
ReplyDeleteIf it puts the land OTB tapped, it's less powerful than Rampant Growth because you don't get to choose which land you get. It could be restricted to basics, but if you don't restrict it, you'll fine a valid target faster.
DeleteGood points both. I still think ETBT is safer, though (and non-strictly-worse if you can get nonbasics). I've been working on similar ideas re: avoiding search / shuffle-- here's the post with my analysis and designs:
Deletemondaymorningmaro.blogspot.com/2014/03/unsolved-design-problems-library.html
I agree with lpaulsen. Letting the land ETB untapped would make it quite a lot better than Rampant Growth or Farseek at ramping, even if it were worse at fixing.
DeleteOh, I agree that does make it a lot better at ramping. What I'm not convinced of is that what it gains in ramping is so much better than what it loses in fixing that the result is too strong.
Delete(Not that I'm sure it isn't too strong, either.)
DeleteYep the second I saw Satyr Wayfinder, this design popped into my head. Definitely expect to see this card soon. M15 maybe?
ReplyDeleteIf your concerns about shuffling are that it leads to slow play, I would change "bottom of your library in a random order" to "bottom of your library in any order."
ReplyDeleteOn average this will take only 2-3 cards to hit a land. "Shuffling" 0 or 1 cards takes no time at all, and "shufffling" 2 or 3 is very straightforward. Besides, this is how Cascade did it; the reasoning there (which also applies here) is that it doesn't let you stack your deck if you run a deck with 0 targets.
DeleteThere's less concern than with Cascade because it's really hard to build a deck without lands, so the question is what's a bigger slowdown. I suspect most of the players who won't bother to consider the order they bottom cards in if given the choice will just chuck cards "randomly" onto the bottom instead of actually shuffling.
DeleteRecross the paths...
ReplyDeleteNice find. So much better without the clash, though.
DeleteRandom order is necessary it seems, but if so the card is less usefull and more time consuming than rampart growth. It could be reveal the first 7 cards of your library instead and change random to any order.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think this makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I like this smaller-search landsearch anyway, because it means there's more meaningful tradeoffs in building your mana base, if you have to have a high probability of hitting. Although we need to make sure green is still better than other colours.
I'm not sure if "reveal...until" is better than "look at the top N" though. It seems simpler, but I suspect it's actually quicker to look at N cards at once, than to look at each in turn while avoiding looking at the next one. And stands a reasonable chance of giving you *some* choice.
Look at N is surely faster (for low values of N) and could give choice, but the possibility of failure seems like a non-starter for cards that do just that one thing, at least outside of red.
DeleteMaybe:
"Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. Put each land card revealed this way into your hand."
could work since the potential for card advantage offsets the potential for a total miss.
Beast Hunt wasn't well liked, Gift of the Gargantuan fared better but was still iffy, Lair Delve was terrible, Lead the Stampede was pretty good. Mulch was good, but only when you wanted to fill your graveyard regardless. Point is, there are lots of knobs, but a ton of room for error.
I agree with the difficulties, though I'm not sure of the best solution.
ReplyDeleteI think I assumed that a ~10% or a ~1% chance of missing entirely (with 40% lands and looking at 4 cards or 8 cards) would be sufficiently non-frustrating. To me that feels like a reasonable rampant-growth replacement (in a deck which has plenty of duals and few singleton basics) because it's fairly reliable, does acceleration as well as filtering, and comes down on turn 2, which all the existing "reveal the top N" cards don't. But I may be wrong, people may still hate it.
Another option is to have a card that puts land into your hand, and then lets you play an extra land or lets you put a land from your hand OTB tapped. That way if you miss at the fixing and card-draw, you at least may get to keep the acceleration.