Artifact "Cycle"

[Upinthe]

Urza's Mill 2
Artifact

If an ability says you can only use that ability once per turn, you may use it up to three times a turn instead.

Urza's Laboratory 5
Artifact

If an ability says you can only use that ability whenever you could play a sorcery, you may use that ability whenever you could play an instant instead.

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Current Wording:

Urza's Mill 2
Artifact

If a nongreen ability says you can only use that ability once per turn, you may use it up to three times a turn instead.

Changes: 1) Doesn't work with green cards





Permanents with activated abilities often suffer in group games, so I thought something along the lines of these two artifacts would help make stuff more useful. I'm not sure on power level though, so I'll make a wording post after i get feedback. What do you think, are these too powerful?[/b]

[Matt]

There's probably at least one card that these break to hell and back.

Illusionary Mask gets slightly better.

Planeswalker's Mischief gets hella confusing.

Aggravated Assault takes the cake, though. Note that none of these cards actually BREAKS the rules, they're just really hard to figure out - most people won't know what do to when you Assault at EOT.


Okay, the Mill one seems mostly to make terrible cards playable - Security Detail comes to mind, and also stuff like Chronatog and Avizoa get a lot better. Knight of Valor, Goblin Vandal, and Crazed Armodon become really damn good at what they do. Sawback Manticore becomes a fucking machine. Pulsating Illusion becomes a super-Psychatog.

But the Wirewood guy and Quirion Ranger are two of the only GOOD cards that would benefit from the Mill.

However, the scariest cards, I think, are Instill Energy and Wall of Roots - GGGGG for 1G is pretty good, and turning a BoP into a Lotus (or a random Elf into a Workshop) is crazy strong, and these cards aren't bad at all on their own. And of course this severely limits the kind of abilities that could be made in the future.

[Ephraim]

Urza's Laboratory definitely seems like an interesting idea. I don't know for certain how it should be worded, though. At any rate, the current wording doesn't seem quite precise. It's powerful, but you've given it a high enough cost that I think it's okay.

Urza's Mill instills a deep fear in me, though. Abilities that are limited to once each turn are usually limited such because they'd be very abusive if they could be used more than once. Having a 2-casting-cost artifact throw that out of balance seems like it's begging to break Quirion Ranger or Wirewood Symbiote - creatures with abilities that I think are very strong already.

[Upinthe]

Okay, I agree on the Mill, so I'm going to go ahead and slap nongreen on there to prevent dirty mana abuse. That should ruin any chance of it being a problem.

[Matt]

I think that's the textbook example of what we in 'the biz' call "missing the point."