CCDD 072516—Linked

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/25/2016 - Thematically, linked represents a psychic connection/ability. Mechanically, it's grandeur meets Panglacial Wurm. Take a look at the first card and then we can discuss more.

When I search my library, or look at the top of it, or reveal cards from it, if I find Silent Twins, I can exile it. I would probably only do that while I control Silent Twins, in which case I get to draw a card for each copy I exile. The mana cost is there so that my first tutor effect isn't just also a free Ancestral Recall.

Being impossible to use without outside assistance means we can make the face value of these cards solid and still have a decent effect. All the more so when that effect costs mana.

Safe to say these first three cards aren't equal in power level and would need a bunch of testing to get right. Their power level in Limited (and in Standard) is directly related to the number of reasonable ways to trigger linked.

Effects that aren't card advantage—or busted when you get three of them for free all at once—can be free of additional costs.

For Limited, only the commons will matter, but we can also make some higher rarity cards for consideration in Constructed.

Remember that needing to have one copy of the card in play is an important knob in balancing these effects. It would be busted to get {R}{R}{R} by exiling three Firemind Savants with some search effect on turn 1 or 2, but having to cast an otherwise 3/2 vanilla on your third turn means you won't be getting that free mana until turn 4.

We can have a lot of fun with linked rares.

And finally, while it serves a very different purpose, there's nothing stopping us from putting linked on non-permanent cards:

That does highlight one of the larger concerns I have with linked: That you can use it to thin your deck for free without any intent of casting the cards. You do risk being stuck with them in your starting hand, but if you make a deck full of them and find a way to search on turn one (Evolving Wilds) then the rest of your deck could be a dangerously tuned stack of 10 or 20 cards. One solution is to limit linked to triggering on look+reveal but not on search (see Buried Treasure). Another is to require a mana payment to exile. I don't love either, but I will say a cost-to-exile removes the need for cost-on-trigger from the first three cards.

What other issues do you see? Other uses? Design a card?