Moss of Life

[jeek]

Moss of Life
GG
Creature - Moss
This comes into play with 1 +1/+1 counter.
Remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature you control: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool.
0/0

Yeah, the name sucks, I know. :/

[asmoranomardicodais]

Why not make this just cost G? Even then, it's probably on the right power level, since Wild Cantor does about the same thing, and its a hybrid cost.

[Ephraim]

Why not make this just cost G? Even then, it's probably on the right power level, since Wild Cantor does about the same thing, and its a hybrid cost.

I think that it is appropriate to cost this at {G} just because of the combinations that it creates.  With this in play, Shifting Wall becomes a super Wall of Roots, most of the Arcbound creatures become a little bit nutty (As though Arcbound Ravager weren't strong enough, now it gets "Sacrifice an artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.)  The problem isn't that this card is a Wild Cantor.  It is that this card has the potential to make every creature in your deck at least a Wild Cantor.  Truth be told, even if we make this card, I'd put a big note on it in the master list to make sure it gets some proper playtesting before we use it.  I think this card has ridiculous abuse potential.

[jeek]

Yeah, I pretty much thought along the same lines as Ephraim, contemplating even 1GG or 2G for the casting cost. This has the potential, specially combined with some of these graft cards, to set up large amounts of mana to play with.

[Norm4eva]

I would be a little surprised if someone would play this card in Ravager, since any deck that wins with a Cranial Plating attached to an Ornithopter wouldn't be described as particularly "mana hungry".
This effect doesn't seem to be any more or less powerful than Food Chain, and with a few exceptions this will be arguably worse than that card; is there a high enough proliferation of undercosted guys with lots of counters to really make this a problem card? 

[asmoranomardicodais]

Why not make this just cost G? Even then, it's probably on the right power level, since Wild Cantor does about the same thing, and its a hybrid cost.

I think that it is appropriate to cost this at {G} just because of the combinations that it creates.  With this in play, Shifting Wall becomes a super Wall of Roots, most of the Arcbound creatures become a little bit nutty (As though Arcbound Ravager weren't strong enough, now it gets "Sacrifice an artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.)  The problem isn't that this card is a Wild Cantor.  It is that this card has the potential to make every creature in your deck at least a Wild Cantor.  Truth be told, even if we make this card, I'd put a big note on it in the master list to make sure it gets some proper playtesting before we use it.  I think this card has ridiculous abuse potential.

Shifting wall does become a super wall of roots, but even so: 1) You first had to have had a lot of mana to make the wall worth it, and 2) you now have used a slot on shifting wall. Yes, it does have have combo applicability, but seriously, the only thing this could be used for is a weird Elf-ball type deck, where all the creatures rely on this one to even make mana. I just don't see what the problem with turing all your creatures into mana engines in this context is, since you are powering down your creatures, your running those creatures in the first place, and in order for you to get out creatures that have tons of counters on them, you have to already have gotten a lot of mana. Most of the time, this WILL be a wild cantor, and only late game will the fact that you can sac any +1/+1 counter make any difference.

I admit Arcbound Ravager is a huge mana engine with this, but as Norm pointed out, that is a deck that really has no use for the extra mana.

I really do think this is a very safe card, and if people are still worried about it, rather than make it GG, just make it so you may only sacrifice counters on your main phase, to avoid combat tricks and other bizarre instant craziness. I think that would probably be the best fit.

[Harlequin]

Or just tack on a "Use this mana only to play creature spells"  It seams inflavor for "Moss of Life"

[jeek]

Any have thoughts on a better name and/or flavor text? It seems that the power level of this card is fine.

After a quick look at the thesaurus, I've come up with Osmosing Vinegrowth.

[Anusien]

Actually, what about making it where it removes only one counter per turn (like Wall of Roots and similar abilities) but it can remove any sort of counter?  It would have some nice interactions with Wall of Roots and Darksteel Reactor becomes a mana engine; Wizards has phased out negative counters so I'm not sure how useless this is.


At the very least, why not allow it to remove charge counters as well?

[jeek]

Eh, I don't mind a combo enabler as long as it is useless in storm decks.

As far as charge counters, those usually go on artifacts, and green doesn't interact with artifacts well.

[Harlequin]

I think the restricted use of the mana would be best.

"Use this mana only to play creature spells, or activated abilites of green cards."

I think it would be difficult to build a stormbased green deck.  But it would be a nice enabler for say, and elves or creature based combo deck.

[jeek]

I think it would be difficult to build a stormbased green deck.  But it would be a nice enabler for say, and elves or creature based combo deck.

Right, this would create a new combo deck, maybe. Elves don't really do much with counters, though, so it wouldn't help them there. Is there a problem with creating a different kind of combo deck?

[jeek]

24 hour clock started

[Mindstab_Thrull]

Three mana seems better, although I'd be more apt to make it start off with an initial p/t.. perhaps 1GG, 1/1 with a +1/+1 counter on it. Removing +1/+1 counters is fine; removing other kinds of counters as well would do fun things with Cumulative Upkeep (remove age counters!!) and Unstable Mutation

[jeek]

Three mana seems better, although I'd be more apt to make it start off with an initial p/t.. perhaps 1GG, 1/1 with a +1/+1 counter on it. Removing +1/+1 counters is fine; removing other kinds of counters as well would do fun things with Cumulative Upkeep (remove age counters!!) and Unstable Mutation

Eh, three mana is a bit much for the effect, and having the ability to remove any counter seems really out of flavor for green.

[Mindstab_Thrull]

I wasn't saying removing *any* type of counter was a good idea, although it's perfectly fine if you want to do that. In a vacuum, you have a 2cc 1/1 that you can kill off to get one mana of any colour ONCE. Granted, it has solid applications with Graft and Modular creatures and whatnot, but making a card fit well has to have applications in block as well as elsewhere. Would you play four of these in a deck, regardless of what the rest of the block looked like?

[jeek]

I wasn't saying removing *any* type of counter was a good idea, although it's perfectly fine if you want to do that. In a vacuum, you have a 2cc 1/1 that you can kill off to get one mana of any colour ONCE. Granted, it has solid applications with Graft and Modular creatures and whatnot, but making a card fit well has to have applications in block as well as elsewhere. Would you play four of these in a deck, regardless of what the rest of the block looked like?

No, these would depend on having other +1/+1 counters in the block.