CCDD 111417—Erupt

Cool Card Design of the Day
11/14/2017 - Erupt is a kicker-subset keyword where you can enhance a spell by sacrificing lands. Because its purpose is to put excess land to use and not to make players mana-screw themselves, it only goes on spells with relatively high mana costs.

CCDD 091416—Flood, Scrub Fire & Firewatch Tower

Cool Card Design of the Day
9/14/2016 - More designs to help alleviate land flood.

CCDD 070816—Flooded

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/8/2016 - Sharing these ideas today because they relate to screwed and deluxe. Where those mechanics looks to mitigate land-screw, these two address land-flood

They're also not Good Enough™, but how they fail is worth discussing.

CCDD 052311—The Embiggen Mechanic

Cool Card Design of the Day
5/23/2011 - I could have sworn there were more aborted Landfall alternatives discussed than I can find here and to a lesser extent here, but I can't find them. Regardless, I'm fairly confident R&D tried out the mechanic I'm showcasing today and shot it down in favor of the Landfall we all know and love (and rightly so). That doesn't make what I'm calling embiggen a bad mechanic, just inferior to Landfall. Check out an example before I go any further.

CCDD 041911—Common Man Lands

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/19/2011 - I was thinking about designs that could make Magic better, and whenever I do that I always come back to fixing land-screw. Every single game of Magic will have a loser, but as long as that loss feels earned (that is, both players felt like they had a chance to win that game and there was some engaging back and forth) good players won't mind. It's the games where you have to mulligan to four or where you never draw a third or fourth land or where you draw six land cards in a row that are frustrating because you lost to forces primarily out of your control. I haven't been keeping stats, but it feels like this happens about every 1 in 5 games, which is a lot. In fact, this is Magic's biggest failing as a game and one of the top reasons we lose players.