You are operating under the false assumption that decks are somehow well ordered in terms of how good they are.  This sentiment being completely wrong, yet widely held is in fact why budget constraints do lead to increased format diversity and competition, they help breed creativity rather than just sheeples.  It's not about a deck actually being better than all others, the problem is that people falsely perceive it as always the best and the game is too complex to simply "see" an alternative solution.  There are always people who will not be constrained at all by the budget, you will not have a lack of competition from that angle.  But in a game this complex there is a danger of lack of real competition due to inbreeding.  It may take a lot of what you call "worse decks" to find something, but when found this makes the competition as a whole stronger...you do realize don't you that the way large mtg tournaments are structured the "average match" is played well above the "average performing deck"?

not only spirit, it violates the letter:
"A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness."
Note the absence of 'supertype' from that list..so straight legendary duals, or straight snow duals are 'functionally identical'

It would be interesting if Eternal Masters did not have black borders.

But that is my point...it is consistent in a way.  It hearkens back to a pre-1900s model of a clockwork universe where there is a ubiquitous substance, "aether", "medicloreans", or "force", throughout the universe.  Sound can propagate through this substance, light is a wave that propagates through this substance and Maxwell's equation's only hold exactly in some preferred frame of reference, hence there is no relativity principle, no one experiences time dilation when traveling long distances, and we have some alternative theory of gravitation, allowing us to hand-wave compressing a sun into a planet.  And the determinism inherent in a universe of prophecies  hint that the underpinnings of quantum mechanics do not hold as well.

It does in fact work with copy enchantment as well, for the copy in play at least so a little lax on the 4 if you can sac or exile the original.

Whoa,
We need to stop at first principles if we think anything in the Star Wars Universe obeys the same laws of physics as ours...that a planet can consume a sun or that people can see things traveling at lightspeed as though time is passing in the same reference frame is hardly a problem when we can hear explosions in space.

No, it does work how evouga suggests[though it is spend X mana in opponent's end step to get 2X-3 since you need to pay for key both times]...
-activate ice cauldron for X=Y
-in response untap with voltaic key
-activate cauldron for X=0...let this resolve..exile unneeded card [which you can still cast later], cauldron gets 1 counter -- last noted amt is 0, last card exiled is unneeded card
-first cauldron ability resolves--exiled needed card last noted amt is Y cauldron gets another counter for 2 total, last card exiled is needed card

so you can activate it twice with key removing 2 counters and use 2Y mana to cast your desired card..you just need to be sure to exile the right card and make the right choice of X with each activation

EDITED: just realized exiling happens on resolution, not as cost...either way it works just order of exile switches

I do think there is a very strong possibility of filter expeditions, I think they will fit well mechanically and thus might even return to standard in an upcoming block [so the expedition is sort of a foreshadow]...I just don't think that one is legit.

Sure, I guess it's possible.  It's also possible it's a troll, people seem wildly passionate about this <>=colorless thing.

Also...found the original source upload.
Now we aren't suffering from 50% tweet compression and you can see it is a fairly reasonable resolution pic.  Zoom in on the expansion symbol or any line of text, is it my imagination or do those areas consistently look less crisp than the rest of the card and like there is a slight aura around them?...artifacts from photoshop layer erase perhaps.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nim8y1r0l14pbfw/fake%20mystic%20gate.jpg?dl=0

also stray ink dots above "pool" in first ability and "Add" in second.

The quantization of light.  You have something there that absorbs light and reemits photons with those discrete energies under those lighting conditions.  I do not believe that pattern is consistent with the ink used on magic cards where you have different colors of ink next to each other at the pixel level in a dot pattern in close proximity shading, you will see the result of the blended spectra.  It is consistent with deskjet printer ink on an overlay or blanked foil where colors of ink are layered on top of each other to produce different shadings, you will see the dominant spectra in each area.

4chan, the original source, has fake cards all the time.  There was a fake Oath Goblin Guide that made it just as far as this has just about a week ago.
It's not about being terrible..its about reflecting 3 distinct wavelengths of light in a small area of the landscape that is simply a shading of the same color in the art.  Bad lighting doesn't make for bad physics. Your expeditions don't do that.

I don't think press printing reflects primary spectra like that, should be more of a blur...it looks very odd to me.  I would not buy a foil that looked like that off ebay.

Edit: yep...just looked at the other spoiled cards on salvation that are foils and they reflect light how I'd expect, this one does not. It is noticeably different.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/650868-oath-spoiler-ayil-eternal-pilgrim
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/651638-new-green-red-legend-russian

and here is original art from PAX in August:
https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/638455196880867328
You can see there should not be foiling effects in those areas, they are simply different shades of sky and water.  What we have here is an office printer using various concentrations of magenta, cyan, and yellow and not typical mtg press printing.

I plan to go

Again, this already fills that role regardless of the definition of <>.  We have seen Wastes.  It does not have W U R G or B in its text box nor does it have the subtype Plains Island Mountain Forest or Swamp.  So its color identity IS colorless.  <> could even mean one mana of any color and this would be the case under the current rules.

Two more points:
f) Wotc marketing material for the prerelease says that Oath is the set that best ever supports two headed giant limited.  How can this be when over half the cards you get in a draft and half in sealed are from BFZ?  Because it is easy to split into two decks, one player can take all the devoid cards and play Wastes.
g) We now have motivation for the last 10 expeditions.  Expeditions are numbered out of 45, so there are 20 in Oath.  10 enemy manlands and 10 filterlands, previewing their return to standard since they work so well with <>.  There will not be enemy battle lands as 8 duals (with the 3 manlands) is too much for a small set.

Yeah, exactly that.  So you could build a deck of devoid cards and Wastes in the current block and Wastes has some subtle but far reaching applicability beyond the block.  You could pay for the abilities on Memnarch with it, cast Ghostfire, crack any spellbomb, activate a filter land with it, etc.


This explains a couple other things in my mind:
a) Why such a sh**ty mechanic like devoid was a major set mechanic
b) Reconciling why the eldrazi like colors so much this time around and are not tied to the one color for their brood like last time
c) Why Wastes is being released in the second set of the block, they wanted enough of an environment to support building devoid decks and needed BFZ there first
d) Why one would care about Wastes in standard when there are about 10 non-basics that tap for (1) and etb untapped and we have one small set for <> to be the focus of.
e) How there can be enough support in the standard format to justify a <> basic land whatever <> means

That's why I said it was a templating change, nothing more.  The point is something motivated them to change their templating, maybe it is as you suggest (though I've never heard that confusion).  It could also be to highlight a mechanical link between sets.

So I noticed a templating change in BFZ which is going to lead me to throw another possibility out there.
Notice that the reminder and rules text for Devoid is "this card has no color"  not "this card is colorless".  This is a reversal from previous sets (see Ghostflame).

So we could have:

<> is a new type of mana, Devoid mana.  Devoid mana has no color.  Change to comp rule 202: Devoid mana may be used to pay for any mana symbol in the cost of an object with no color.

As long as <> is not a color (I don't think anyone is speculating otherwise), regardless of the definitions discussed Wastes fulfills the "need" for a basic with no color identity in commander.

1) If true dual lands were in standard, and there were about 10 different named dual lands in each color pair (equivalent to etb untapped tap for (1) non-basics)...WUBRG basics would be irrelevant in standard.  Likewise, Barry's Land would be marginalized to some basic land search applications in niche decks or they've got to bring the hate to standard; and I'm betting they make Barry's Land a centerpiece not an afterthought in standard.

2) The major argument I've been hearing to even justify <>=colorless (1)=generic is to solidify the terminology and make distinct the difference between colorless and generic, avoiding confusion from new players who ask "why can I pay G for (1)" but not "(1) for G"...that is what I was addressing by saying how it requires errata (which they always do for terminology changes), consistent application and is incompatible with any reasonable engineering of mtgo auto-spending.
3) We already know they require <> in some costs and my arguments against <>=colorless thus are in the context of costs requiring colorless.

Another point against <> simply being the colorless (to differentiate from generic) mana symbol:

Most of us are aware of how sh***y mtgo is with spending our colorless mana, not even allowing us to hold control or something to let us spend workshop mana preferentially.  So maybe they would fix that.
.
.
.
BUT, this mechanic would make colorless mana better than colored mana in many common instances in standard, and more prevalent than it usually is.  So what is mtgo just going to stop auto-spending colorless as generic for you? Are you going to have to hold down control when you cast everything in standard?  Is mtgo just going to be sh**tier to play until rotation?  I will grant that the last one is a distinct possibility; but I do think that in a sense it would represent the antithesis of what colorless \neq generic would be trying to accomplish.  Why should mtgo autospend my <> for (1) now that the distinction would have been made clear.

In other words, either the mechanic and "mana philosophy" don't functionally work on mtgo [your colorless will get autospent] or you have to change the way everyone casts every spell forever in an inconvenient manner [not autospent].

It would be an nice mechanic for us, certainly easy for them to make something Vintage playbale.  But mtgo, painlands in standard making Wastes irrelevant to most decks, changing the drawback of every colorless producing land ever printed or to be printed into a power swing, and mass errata just seem to be too many things against the possibility of simply <>=colorless (1)=generic.


I also do not think it is simply a "type" of colorless mana a la snow.  I do think there is something else up with this mana otherwise Barry's Land is just....marginal...super marginal.....super duper marginal.
And I have a hard time believing that is the case.  They learned that snow as it exists is marginal so they won't make the same mistake twice...er three times (I hope).  But what if snow mana had some existential use outside of being able to pay for [snow] or interact with a handful of cards?

I think this may be actually very cool what they have done here. I do think it may be spent as generic mana or to pay <> costs.  But I'm betting it does something else particularly useful to extend its reach beyond this block.  Power-level wise this could range from:  Maybe you can pay <> to essentially void a color requirement in a cost or something, ie (1)<> or (2)<> casts lightning bolt. To something small like allowing you to spend extra mana on spells (RGBW<> for painful truth for instance).

This makes Barry's Land (and what you can do with your <>) the real focus and something that can outlive the block.  We've only seen 2 cards that require <> to cast or activate, both mythics [it looks like, I can't really tell on the land] and I'm thinking that the set will be more about what <> does than cards that cost <>.

But I think focusing on just "colorless matters" is too low for Barry's Land.  The name is obviously Void mana as others have mentioned.

Seems like a lot of effort for little gain and either inconstancy or mass errata.  And they are going to have to put a heck of a lot of non-basic hate or basic love in standard for anyone to run Wastes if that is the case...otherwise it'll be pain lands all over the place?

I think this possibility is ruled out by the mana ability shown on the non-basic.  It would not say "add <>" if <> only referred to cost payment (like the phyrexian or snow mana symbols)

LOVE IT...except that I can't Waste your Wastes, boooo bad name choice.

Interesting.  You may want to expand the state space to count dredgers and re-evaluate for keeping only in those states where you have library+dredger, I'm not sure you'd keep library alone.

He's nice, but  Jace's Archivist (cheaper, reusable windfall on a stick) not having done anything leaves me suspicious.

And you need the colored sources in play in the first place to cast those instants and have them on the stack the same time as your mox...moxes dont tap on the stack and rituals don't add mana yet:-/...it self balances a bit; not saying 2 straight for all spell types is a good number, just that it's not quite so bad as it seems, I think you have to build around it and I don't think it'd jam into everything especially now that the delve cards are gone.

That's actually what I find interesting about it [or a related mechanic], it seems storm-like in the sense that some thought pyromancer was storm-like when spoiled...cause the closest mechanical comparison we could make was casting lots of spells; but the card doesn't really care about the spell count over a turn (storm) or a sequence of turns (pyromancer), but rather at a higher frequency (between sorcery-speed windows); so how the card would play best would likely end up very different from our initial thoughts.

I see it fits your goal of accelerating when you have multiple things, the cool thing to me about your original idea was the different design it seemed to open up which it then loses. Power level can be scaled however appropriate:
"T: choose up to 2 target spells.  Add 2 to your mana pool  and lose 3 life for each spell chosen this way."
"T: choose 3 or more target spells.  Add 2 to your mana pool for each spell chosen this way."
"T: choose 3 or more target spells.  If those spells are not all controlled by the same player add 1 to your mana pool, gain 1 life and draw 1 card for each spell chosen this way."
All provide interesting spaces of lands that are conditionally good in counter-wars, can be build around, etc.

I like it, it should have a timing restriction though to get around the cheatyface-oldschool-LED-style freebie ancient tomb of using this mana ability for something placed on the stack as the first step in being cast.  Or, you could just make it target and kill two birds with one stone (getting rid of "the stack"):  "T: choose any number of target spells.  Add 2 to your mana pool for each spell chosen this way."