Blood Mox

[Machinus]

Blood Mox
0
Artifact
As Blood Mox comes into play, target opponent may pay X life.
Pay X life, Tap: add 1 to your mana pool.

How do you make a mox fair and not suck? Here is one attempt. Using it more than once means losing a significant amount of life. Combo decks typically run a lot of pay X life cards, and using this card reduces their effectiveness. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Ephraim wording used.

Blood Mox
0
Artifact
As Blood Mox comes into play, an opponent may pay any amount of life. Blood Mox comes into play tapped with that many blood counters on it.
Pay X life, where X is the number of blood counters on Blood Mox, Tap: Add colorless mana to your mana pool.

[xrizzo]

So, if they pay 0 life (dumb) then you have a mox crystal.
If they pay 1 life (reasonable) you have a colorless City of Brass.
If they pay 2 life (high side) you have an Ancient Tomb which taps for 1 mana.
If they pay 3 life (or more) you have a lightning bolt.

The card is still a 0cc artifact which is good for storm count, and can always generate at least 1 mana in a pinch, so it could be usefull.  I think the payment plan is fair though, because you let the opponent choose what is the best X for them at the moment, and assuming they choose optimally, they minimize the impact of the card.

With the current wording, I am thinking it might get played in a slaver type deck, an 'affinity' deck, or a combo deck. 

[SpencerForHire]

Your opponent paying 10 makes this a one use colorless lotus petal that hurts as much as Searing Winds.

[Jacob Orlove]

Your opponent paying 10 makes this a one use colorless lotus petal that hurts as much as Searing Winds.

Like xrizzo said, at a certain life total this switches from being mana acceleration to being direct damage.

I'd like to see counters on the card to keep track of X, though.

[Ephraim]

This also shouldn't target.

As Blood Mox comes into play, an opponent may pay any amount of life. Put that many blood counters on Blood Mox.
, Pay X life, where X is the number of blood counters on Blood Mox: Add to your mana pool.

***

The "any amount of life" comes from Necrologia, the only card I could find that has such a payment. The rest of it is pretty standard wording.

[Necrologia]

W00t! My namesake actually did something.

I'm getting to the point where I never want to see another mana accelerent as long as I live. Will a card like this ever see play in a fair deck or is it just combo fodder? It ups the storm count, lowers the number of spells you have to play (assuming they pay some life) and generates mana.

Grim Monolith is restricted right now. It costs 2, and gives you a net of +1 colorless mana. It's also not reusable. Is a little life loss enough to balance this out, considering that it costs 2 less to play for the same benefit?

I realize that Vintage isn't, or at least shouldn't be the main format used to judge cards, but has fast mana ever done anything other than crush dreams and devour souls?

[dandan]

Note that if they pay 2 life this reduces the storm count you need to kill them by 2 (assuming Tendils). That's a good deal.

How about taking it out of pure combo by making it

As Blood Mox comes into play, an opponent may pay any amount of life. If they do, tap Blood Mox and put that many blood counters on Blood Mox.
T, Pay X life, where X is the number of blood counters on Blood Mox: Add 1 to your mana pool.

It is still DD/acceleration but will not add to those silly turn 1 kill decks' arsenal.

[Machinus]

Is there any other way to fix the card without adding CIPT? I know that fuels combo but the card is really lousy for all other decks too otherwise.

[dandan]

You could make it CIPT only if they pay a certain amount of life, say 2, otherwise CIP normally. That would still stop combo but gives 'normal' use a chance (I think I'd usually pay life so I guess you just made a cheap colourless Shock.

[asmoranomardicodais]

I'd like to see it with the comes into play tapped. Really, the only way this could get abused would be to use it in combo, and making it CIPT stops it from being abused by combo.

[dandan]

I think payment of life should invoke the CIPT clause. If an opponent can't be bothered to pay any life at all, there is no reason to have this CIPT. I don't think the version I posted below is terribly inelegant and I think it works

[Godder]

The cost of using it needs to include Tap. Otherwise, it's either a free Lightning Bolt (or better), or some sort of Channel.

[Machinus]

Thanks for the reminder.

So should there be another clause on the card that says if X>1, CIPT?

[Ephraim]

I think that the suggestions are getting far too complicated. Just consider the template for the current set of suggestions.

As Blood Mox comes into play, an opponent may pay any amount of life. Blood Mox comes into play with that many blood counters on it. If Blood Mox would come into play with more than one blood counter on it, Blood Mox comes into play tapped with that many blood counters on it instead.
Pay X life, where X is the number of blood counters on Blood Mox, Tap: Add (1) Mana Symbol colorless mana to your mana pool.

This may not be the absolute simplest wording, but I'm pretty sure that it absolutely and unambiguously states the way that the proposed ability works. Trim it down from there, but that's a good foundation from which to work.

The current wording, by the way, is a bit off. I made a mistake when I first templated this for you. Instead of saying "Put that many blood counters on Blood Mox." it should say "Blood Mox comes into play with that many blood counters on it."

[Machinus]

If no one has any other objections, I'd like to put this on the clock.

[Matt]

This is really complicated, it has all these drawbacks just to make it not broken. :<

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, I object to the conditional CIP-tapped. It should either CIP tapped all the time or none of the time. That should be enough of a simplification.

[Machinus]

Changes made.

[Machinus]

Let's try putting this on the clock. 24 hours.

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]