Self-porting lands

[dandan]

This was an idea I had a while ago as a 'fix' on an overpowered land card someone else suggested:

Name
Land - (land type)
T; colour-related ability
Opponent may pay 1 mana to tap CARDNAME

As the downside is potentially so bad the ability could be cool.

What colour-related abilities could we use?

Red - Haste, Fling, half strength POP, Tim ability
White - First Strike, En-Kor
Blue - Phase out creature you control, Unsummon creature you control, Force Spike
Green - Pump (+1/+1 too weak!), Trample, Animate Forest
Black - All players discard, point of Pestilence (with Pestilence downside too), Fear


Latest Wordings

Lagoon
Land -- Island
T: Counter target spell unless its controller pays 1.
1: Tap Lagoon. Any player may play this ability.

Lowlands
Land -- Plains
T: Either all attacking creatures get +2/+1 or all blockers get +2/+1
1: Tap Lowlands. Any player may play this ability.

Stagnant Marsh
Land -- Swamp
T: Stagnant Marsh deals 1 damage to all creatures and players. At end of turn, if there are no creatures in play, sacrifice Stagnant Marsh.
1: Tap Stagnant Marsh. Any player may play this ability.

Corrie
Land -- Mountain
T: Change the target of target spell with a target
1: Tap Corrie. Any player may play this ability.

Mangroves
Land -- Forest
T: Until end of turn, target creature you control cannot be the target of spells or abilities.
1: Tap Mangroves. Any player may play this ability.

Changes
Brendan - Red changed to Shunt, White powered up to Jihad

[Ephraim]

Can't you always respond by using the card's ability, though? In that case, certain of the lands would have definite advantages over the others. If the "blue" land bounces a creature, your opponent just taps the land and then casts his burn spell. It's not a very useful ability at all, if the land can be tapped by your opponent. On the other hand, if he tries to tap the "green" one, you just respond by giving one of your creatures trample or +2/+2 or +2+2 and trample. So if he does it during your upkeep, you can't cast a creature and then pump it...Not a big deal.

They might be more useful if you go the rhystic magic approach. Give each of the lands an ability that says "Perform effect, unless an opponent pays 1 life." Even at that, they'd still be really powerful and some of them would still almost always get countered.

[GerryMander]

Kinda reminds me of that Rhystic land from Prophecy.  That card was crap.  Mebby this card should produce mana plus the ability

Example

Happy Mountain
Land
:  Add to your mana pool.
{R}{T}:  Happy Mountain deals 2 damage to target creature or player unless any player pays .

[dandan]

I like the idea of self-porting lands. It is functionally very different from Rhystic effects as your opponent has to pay in advance to deny you the chance to use the ability OR THE ABILITY TO GET MANA (kind of important in a land and so far overlooked). This is sometimes an advantage for the opponent AEOT port your land, and sometimes a downside (making certain abilities hard to stop).

The abilities I listed were suggestions but hopefully show that the fact that the opponent can tap the land at any time has a huge effect on some abilities and a lesser effect on others (as Ephraim pointed out well with his 2 examples). I haven't come up with concrete suggestions as the mechanic is the point of the thread, not the effects. I think the mechanic is simple, elegant, previously undeveloped, has a multitude of strategic applications (increasing the effect of player skill) and increases player interaction.

This could be one of those ideas that is impossible to balance with the cards being either too weak or too strong in certain situations. However I would like your suggestions for how a card of each colour should look. Take into account that the opponent may very well be able to much around with the land to prevent optimal timing. I think we can agree that as a mana-producing land, these cards are very weak so we have the opportunity to add relatively powerful effects (more powerful than we might add to a land that taps for 1 colourless, for example).

The abilities I think are most suitable are:

Force Spike (nicely ironic)
Pestilence (with sac if no creatures in play)
+1/+2 (shades of Pendelhaven)
Goblin War Drums ability (hard to prevent but fairly weak)
First Strike

I would prefer to have abilities which are powerful but lose potency because the opponent can affect the timing, so the first 2 abilities are a good fit whilst the last 3 are OK but I think there must be better options (couldn't think of anything better). I did consider Mother of Runes ability for the Plains but I think that is slightly too good as it effectively makes a creature unblockable.

[Ocifer]

No, for white use the En-Kor ability over the Mother ability. It'd be a much better fit.
Force Spike for blue would be perfect.
I'll think on the others.

[Jebus]

This might seem odd, but could make these work more towards their spirit.

[Manacost here] : If ~this~ is untapped, [color related ability], then tap ~this~.

[Manacost here] : Tap ~this~.  Any player may play this ability.

[Ephraim]

If it is desired that the effects be truly useful, I'd say avoid combat tricks and give them abilities that may be played only when you could play a sorcery. Then, your opponent can lock you down every turn, if he or she wishes, at a significant cost. Or, you get to use the ability.

[dandan]

I agree that we should chose abilities that are significantly affected but timing, although I feel it is unnecessary to make them sorcery speed effects. Force Spike is a good example of the sort of thing we should be aiming for. The ability is strong but the downside that your opponent can turn off your countering and your precious blue mana supply is also strong.

The En-Kor ability is cool but causes a number of rules problems if it can be activated many times but is very weak if it can only be activated once. (See LIFE for an example of En-Kor combo fun). I agree it is still probably a better fit than MoR as that would be usable during your upkeep to make an attacker unblockable (probably) and I prefer abilities that are more timing dependant,

[dandan]

New wordings and concrete suggestions added

[GerryMander]

well... maybe you should make the ability work as a sorcery or something to combat any timing issues...

[Jacob Orlove]

These have basic land types. Why?

[dandan]

1. So they function as mana-producing lands (saves a line of text)
2. So they interact with hosers and cards that look at land types
3. Note that they are non-basic lands so get hosed by the usual suspects there.

Although these are lands plus an ability they have a major drawback. Having your opponent tap your lands is about as annoying as it gets. CIP tapped and pain are stale as drawbacks for lands. This is new and is quite hard to assess.

The new land template allows us to have fancy lands that are still one of the five basic landtypes. Lets use that. I see no good reason not to let these be standard landtypes (Plainscycle to get them, Tithe etc). This is very different to some suggestions that are basic lands plus something, these cards are non-basic lands that start with a huge minus.

I am very surprised that nobody has commented that these cards are too weak. I think they are hard to assess but are more likely to be too weak than too strong (a good starting point for lands IMHO)

[brendan]

The blue and white ones are really really awful. The red and green ones are just bad. The black one is still sub par but vaguely ok.

[dandan]

Thank you for your comments, I am glad to see I am not alone in assessing the power level of these cards as fairly low.

I think you are underestimating the usefulness of the Island, it is bad when you are mana-screwed but Blue often runs more land than other colours and it is a threat albeit one that can be turned off.

The white one sucks pretty badly but that is White for you. Short of an Abeyance effect most White abilities suck on this sort of card. Even Eye for an Eye would be weak (likely to get turned off) but it might be slightly better than the En-Kor ability I suggested.

The Red and Green abilities were fairly weak as Red and Green are the colours least likely to suffer from having their lands tapped, both of the abilities are quite good even when the opponent forces you to use them.

I am very open to offers as this suggestion is about the mechanic far far more than the ability. If we can agree that the mechanic makes these lands weak, then we can use powerful abilities on them to make them balanced cards. Feel free to suggest effects for these cards. I really think you should rethink the Force Spike one, the ability is a super fit to the card and it is more powerful than it appears.

[brendan]

Yeah I was thinking about them over night actually and realised that I had severely undervalued the blue one. It's vaguely like a strip mine where your opponant gets to choose the land that's destroyed. Costs you a land drop but costs the opponant one too, because they're pretty much going to have to spend the to stop it every turn.

The problem though, is that this makes tapping the land during your upkeep to be strictly superior to not tapping it, since they deny you the option of mana as well. I think it could be upped to a double force spike and that really wouldn't affect the power level of the card much at all since you'd still be able to shut it down with .

The drawback on these lands is very very strong.. They would need very strong abilities if they were to ever see print.

You could up the white one to Holy Day or even Exile. Up the red one to Shunt. Up the green one to giving some massive +/+ and trample to an attacking or blocking creature.... Even with such powerful abilities on them I think they would still be ok because of the drawback. The trick is to limit them so they are effects that wont be used during their controllers upkeep or main phase, so you always have a chance of turning them off with .

The black one is pretty cool though.

[Matt]

I gave the wordings a much-needed cleaning. Some issues arise: I find the black one the worst-designed, and the red one has a minor wording problem.

The black one doesn't seem like an ability a stagnant marsh would have. I would prefer some sort of "bog down" ability, not damage. It's also not very affected by the timing that auto-porting brings to the table. Lastly, I'm not sure how you want the card to function - should it be sacrificed any turn that no creatures are in play (a la Thran Quarry) or only on turns when the ability is used? The current wording is the latter option. If you want the former, you should move to sacrifice clause up to the first position to make clear that it's not tied to the activated ability.

The red card's ability is somewhat difficult to word correctly. What I have technically works but is very awkward. Things would be simplified if instead of text-splicing the ability on, it was more a cost of the ability: "T, tap an untapped creature you control: Corrie deals one damage to target creature or player."

But the red one is also an ability that doesn't suffer much from timing, so I think it should be scrapped altogether and go with the Shunt suggestion. I would not alter the green one however - making things hard to target is exactly what mangrove forests should do.

[Jacob Orlove]

The green one can also be shut off on your turn, leaving the creature open on theirs. I think it's fine.

[dandan]

I had completely forgotten that I could choose attacking or blocking creatures as targets, that makes timing much more important.

I like Shunt for the Red one
I still think Force Spike is strong enough, you can't always turn these off and a Force Spike dramatically increases the chance that you will tap out. If an opponent uses 1 mana during their turn you could tap the land in response and do something like Brainstorm, bounce, etc, making the tapping option not always the correct choice. This is very specific to the Blue land but I think Force Spike is perfectly balanced, I feel I'd put them in every casual Blue deck I have and I don't know if I'd put them in 'competitive' decks.
The untargetability of the Green one fits flavourwise and is an underdeveloped Green ability.
By specifying 'attacking or blocking creature' I think we could give a politically incorrect Jihad effect to White +2/+1
IMHO Pestilence is very timing dependant, I did intend it to sac only if used, otherwise it sucks way too much. I am open to suggestions on good black timing dependant abilities as I accept that the card could be used in response quite often.

Regarding power level, be careful when writing these off. Remember that you can untap lands, fetch lands at instant speed (fetchlands) or just mana-screw your opponent. For example IF I made the Green one give a massive power boost and Trample to an attacking creature, Tog would have a field day (via fetchies).

These lands are weak but any land that can generate a useful ability are potentially useful and I think it is very easy to overrate the drawback (it is a big drawback but you can construct decks to avoid the drawback). I would view a Mana Leak Island as a gross mistake even if you could turn it off.

[dandan]

Cards updated

I strongly disagree about the Black one's flavour. Pestilence and disease in general is a logical consequence of such stagnant water. It also fits that prevention can reduce the effect. It might be a good idea to limit the effect to combat. This would also mean that it is no longer necessary to balance the card with the 'end of pestilence' sac clause.

[dandan]

24 / 72 hour clock thingy

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]