Cool Card Design of the Day
In the vein of on-the-nose dual lands like
Luxury Suite, here's a very strong dual land that can only be used in a two-color deck. (Which would support Ravnica's stated goal of being a two-color gold block, but not the Standard environment it actually facilitated.)
To wax every so slightly more on that topic, this is a problem Play Design is constantly solving for: There has to be enough color fixing to support reliably play of two-color decks, but there can't be so much fixing that four- and five-color decks become dominant (which they will inevitably do when fixing is strong enough). A dual land like this is a bit too prohibitive of three-color decks, but could make the perfect cycle when coming out of a gold block.
Hm, definitely interesting. I'd want to try rewording this so that it reads more like an upside than a downside.
ReplyDelete{T}: Add {C}.
{T}: Add {R} or {B}. Activate this ability only if all lands you control can only produce {R} and/or {B}.
Something like that?
The core concept is absolutely fantastic though!
DeleteWouldn't this land turn itself off though, since it can add colorless on top of red and black?
DeleteGood point. "Activate this ability only if other lands you control can't produce any other color of mana," then, to reuse the original wording. The real key to my suggestion is having the second ability be 'unlocked' is better than having the card go, "actually psych, you don't get to do that unless you do this". I hope that makes sense.
DeleteYeah, upside templating is better.
DeleteAwesome!
ReplyDeletePlaying off your idea:
ReplyDeleteRakdos Dual (R)
T: Add R or B. This mana cannot be spent to cast non-Rakdos cards. (Cards are not Rakdos if they contain any colors other than Red or Black in their mana cost).
So this can help cast Terminate and Sol Ring, but not Crackling Doom or Treasure Cruise. Might be able to word it differently and throw in "T:Add C", not sure.
Yeah, that's what iccured to me after our discussion on batching guilds a few weeks ago:
DeleteT: Add 1
T: Add R or B. This mana may only be spent to cast Rakdos spells or active the abilities of Rakdos cards (Rakdos cards have a color identity that is just red and/or black)
That still lets us splash cheaper grixis, jund, or mardu cards. Dunno if that's better or worse. Probably just depends on the multi-block context (as well as the product this is printed in.*)
Delete* It's weird to identify colorless cards with a guild, so I prefer Wobbles' wording, but as soon as we use the phrase 'color identity' the card is necessarily relegated to a Commander/Brawl product.
I'm not sure how either my or Wobbles' wording lets you splash tri-color cards. I guess mine can cast something like Tasigur, but I think that's fine.
DeleteI do think it would be possible to incorporate color identity into standard-legal sets, but it's probably not necessary.
Question: If you had, say, a R/B strictly dual land and a U/W strictly dual land, what would happen? They both could only produce C, but then they should be able to produce colored mana, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think they'd both be turned off, based on the way that Reflecting Pool works. Doesn't matter if they can't currently produce it, as long as they could based on the text box.
DeleteIt is as you said, you create a loop. This "paradox" actually happened in GDS3 with the land that Scott submitted for the top-down challenge. However, the interaction was with Reflecting pool.
DeleteLet's cut the gordian knot Luxury Suits-style and just use either Sage+Wobbles' wording above, or say:
DeleteYou cannot put ~ in a deck with green, white, or blue cards.
T: Add B or R.
Jealous Citadel
ReplyDeleteLand - Mountain Swamp Lair
(T: Add R or B.)
If you control a land that isn't a Swamp or Mountain, Lairs you control produce C instead of any color.
In a RB-only deck, even if you play this alongside other duals you should still always have access to both colors.
You could only play it with dual lands that have the basic land types.
DeleteThis looks like a $200 card.
I mean, This does slot well into a basic-land-type heavy 2-color manabase for Modern, giving you a painfree, tapfree source of both colors. 4 on-color Lairs, 2 on-color shocklands, 1 of each basic, and 8 on-or-half-on-color fetchlands gets you pretty far, but fetchlands are already an issue and this at least keeps it two colors.
DeleteBut as long as you're not pushing your colors, you could still play it with untyped duals: fastlands, checklands, etc might turn off your Lairs; but if you play Blackcleave Cliffs or Temple of Malice into Jealous Citadel, you still are always guaranteed access to at least R+B.
In Modern+ you *could* pull off a Uwbrg mana base with WU-Lair,UB-Lair, UG-shock, RU-shock, and fetches, and some decks might want that.
It should be safe for printing in Standard, and by focusing on the types and not mana production, players should be able to solve the "how does my land work" without any steps of layers or deductions. As for the price, well, just print it everywhere until the price goes down? (and start to phase fetches out of any formats the majority of players will see?)
This would let you play three colors as long as, say, you just use this and the Island-Swamp Lair and 100% of your basics were basic swamps, but that seems like a safe allowance. Hopefully keeping it in the typeline makes it easier to track and reduces the "how do I know what this can produce"-ness for newer players.
ReplyDeleteTo avoid loops with other lands of these kind, could he say
ReplyDeleteRakdos Palace
Land
"add {B} or {R}. Activate this ability only if your other lands could not produce any other colors."
?
Oh, interesting. I'm always looking for things like this, without much luck.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the turning off completely, I wonder if it would be acceptable if it allowed off-colour basic lands (so you can have a legitimate splash) but not other-colour-pair non-basics (so you can't just play 'all the duals').
Or maybe even a sliding punishment, say 1 life for each other dual land? I don't really like that, it feels too much like "pro decks buy the good dual lands, casual players suffer the bad version", but I also don't like the land automatically shutting down entirely.
When I saw the title, I thought this was going to be, producing R or B alternating (so only good if you have R and B, not just one or the other). Come to think of it, that might also help the 2-colour-specifically thing. Although it's hard to have a good mechanical implementation of alternating.
ReplyDelete