CURRENT WORDING

Untrained Apprentice
U
Creature – Wizard
When ~this~ comes into play, target opponent may draw a card.
1/3


Academy Dropout
2U
Creature – Wizard
T, sacrifice Academy Dropout: Add 1 to your mana pool for each artifact you control. No more than 3 can be added to your mana pool in this way.
0/1

Changes:
None so far.

Untrained Apprentice
U
Creature – Wizard
When ~this~ comes into play, target opponent may draw a card.
1/3

His power is so unfocused that he can never actually hit his target. Instead of making you draw a card like he wants to, he makes your enemy draw one.

Academy Dropout
2U
Creature – Wizard
T, sacrifice Academy Dropout: Add 1 to your mana pool for each artifact you control. No more than 3 can be added to your mana pool in this way.
0/1

This guy just never quite made the cut at the Academy. He wasn't quite good enough. I was thinking, though, of changing the ability's flavour so that he is destroyed if more than X mana is added to the pool this way (while still limiting the maximum) – that would explain why he dropped out of the Academy: he valued his own life too much.

I can see both of these in common slots. If Academy Dropout was cheaper it could maybe be uncommon. I'll add a current wording post momentarily.

What about making it so that once it's every colour you gain WURBG whenever it dies, but you can't sac it?

Wouldn't this be a little crazy in a deck with Skullclamps?

I like it, though.

"Feed the golem one colour at a time, and in return you will get a rainbow."

With the shuffle clause, you might be able to get away with an activation cost of 3.

It seems like the spell forces casters to concentrate (in the chemical sense of the term) their coloured mana...

Circle of Purification
"No! Concentrate! You have to intensify the mana to force the spell out of the circle."

Or something. I realize that flavour doesn't fit with the enchantment's effect on gold cards, but that's all I've got.

All these attempts at errata and still nobody (including myself) is satisfied... I think that means it's time to let this one die.

If you think about it, shorter threads are actually better in many cases. It means your original design doesn't need fixing.

I love this card and its flavour text.

It would be really cool to proxy the TMD set and play with it, actually.

Done.

I think the ", discard it," part doesn't need to be in the text. I like it other than that.

You're right. How does it look now?

Mana Singularity
4
Artifact

As an additional cost to play Mana Singularity, sacrifice two untapped lands.
All spells cost up to 2 less.

Yes, that's true, but I don't see putting cards at the bottom of your library as a cost – I think that should be on the effect side of the colon.

Isn't the second ability a little unbalanced? For 1BB you're getting three cards back from the grave – one into your hand, and two into your deck where they can be tutored out.

I don't really see "put two cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library" as a cost.

It should have the clause about spells with X in their casting cost in parentheses (If the spell has X in its casting cost, X is 0).

Is this still broken? Or is it okay now?

Nifty. I think you mean "Vying Mermaid," though.

What about X spells?

What about "all other creatures of this colour get this ability?"

I thought of a new "fix." Now when the Singularity comes into play, all of your lands get nuked (I may add a "can't be regenerated" clause as well). The other guy's lands are still fine, and he gets to use the effect first, making it an even riskier play, because you have to come back from a mana deficit. (Of course, Moxen get around this.)

Of course, if the enchantment is removed, the cards are gone. That's a pretty significant risk.

Perhaps the other pile should be removed from the game?

That doesn't work, because buyback, kicker, and so forth are not considered part of a spell's mana cost... unless I'm sorely mistaken.

I dunno that this would be in flavour for white, but that idea is definitely worth thinking about. Or possibly some kind of cumulative upkeep, as was also suggested.

What if, in addition to this, I gave it a Naked Singularity effect? Each colour of land produces a different colour of mana? That makes the ability harder to abuse while also discouraging the mono-colour strategies  that the card's ability would normally support.

Is this balanced? Useful? Can/should it be tweaked?

Good idea, I'll do that.

That's true, it's broken with Welders. What's the best way to fix that?

Oops. Time for a new name...

I had this idea when I was half-asleep in bed last night, I'm surprised I remembered it this morning when I woke up. ...anyway, this card is supposed to be a tapless accelerator that affects everyone, like Mana Flare. Of course, I had to disallow artifact and X spells, and I think allowing the Cylix to affect activated abilities would be overkill.

Any thoughts?

Mana Cylix
5
Artifact
Whenever any player plays a spell, that player may choose to pay only the colored portion of that spell's mana cost. Artifact spells are paid for normally. If a spell has X in its mana cost, X is zero.

Edit: Turns out "Mana Cylix" is taken, so I renamed the card to "Mana Singularity."

_____________________________ ___________

Current wording:


Mana Singularity

4

Artifact

All spells cost up to 2 less.

What would you cut for the Void? One Trinisphere?

With this volume of draw/tutor effects, drawing extra Trinispheres after the first couple of turns might not be so bad – as has been pointed out. But there's a lot of redundancy in the soft lock components, and they don't seem to get along all that well. You want to lay a first-turn Trinisphere or a first-turn Chalice for 0, 1, or 2, but once one of these things is on the table it reduces the effectiveness of the others, because they all affect the same range of spells in terms of casting cost. Deed also generally affects this same range of spells. I realize you're basically hoping to ride a couple of lock pieces to victory, but I'm nervous about playing so many spells that aren't at as useful in multiples or in combination – which is one of the things I always liked about Sphere of Resistance, even though it hits you too. With all of the artifact mana you're packing, Sphere of Resistance might be worth considering.

I really like the idea of Juggernaut, though, because when coupled with all of the artifact mana in the deck it dodges the problem of setting yourself back with your own Chalices.

I'm trying to decide if a budget version of this deck would be at all viable. Cutting the Lotus and Moxen would hurt, but they could conceivably be replaced by Ancient Tomb and maybe even Chrome Mox. I'll have to see if anyone in the budget forum is talking about it...

I'm a first-generation Canadian. Engineering student and game junkie. In addition to Magic I also play Netrunner (not that it's been in print for the last eight years) and various computer and console games. I've been reading TMD for about a year now, but didn't post much on the old boards.