I designed this card before the Companions got spoiled, but in some ways it's trying to fill a role similar to theirs. I'll let you decide whether that's a good or a bad thing.
Here's another card from the Have They Really Never Printed This? file.
For today's design, we have a silly pun in the vein of Charming Prince.
Nothing too groundbreaking today, just a neat little Act of Treason variant.
Magic has lots of lands that tap only for colorless and then activate with a specific color or combination of colors, like Academy Ruins or Blighted Woodland and their respective cycles. But the activated non-mana ability has to be pretty good to make a nonbasic Wastes playable. One way to narrow that gap: start from a land that's slightly better, like Shimmering Grotto.
Magic R&D has a hard job. Sometimes they make mistakes. Staying true to the Play Design vision for a card while balancing it properly for Constructed seems especially tricky; I understand why printed cards might end up with problems on either front. So this isn't criticism. I just wanted to prove something to myself: Pushing Questing Beast for a specific role in Standard didn't require a text box with eight lines, three line breaks, and multiple disconnected abilities.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I liked designing Commanders that pushed popular color combinations in a different direction, right? Well, meet the brute-forciest of brute-force solutions to that challenge.
Evasion is a bummer. I mean, yes, it's a crucial and valuable part of Magic gameplay, from flying to menace to straight-up "can't be blocked". But evasion abilities are fundamentally an invitation not to interact, and decks can abuse those abilities to the point where interacting through combat just isn't a viable strategy. Is there a way to make cards that would punish those decks?