Geomancy (How good can red card-drawing be?)

[Ephraim]

Geomancy

Sorcery

Sacrifice any number of untapped lands. Draw a card for each land sacrificed this way.

***

Obviously, drawing cards isn't typically red's thing, but it's an important enough aspect of the game that I think it can be bled to any colour, given an appropriate mechanical and flavour approach. In this case, the mechanic is sacrificing lands -- a very red thing to do. Furthermore, this card requires the red player to have three lands in play and to screw board development in favour of card advantage before it will do anything at all. While that seems somewhat out of red's character, geomancy, divination by study of the elemental earth is strongly in red's flavour.

If this is deemed to be too strong, I could up the mana cost to or even to {R} (and change the ability to Sacrifice X untapped lands. Draw X cards. -- or, if even that's too powerful, As an additional cost to play Geomancy, sacrifice X lands...)

Basically, I've posted here the strongest rendition of this card that I think is printable. This would almost certainly qualify as a rare. Some of the weaker suggestions might qualify as uncommons -- I'm not sure.

[Ephraim]

Current Wording:

Geomancy
{1}{R}
Instant

As an additional cost to play Geomancy, you may sacrifice any number of untapped lands. Draw a card for each land sacrificed this way.

[corncob]

Keep the cost the same and make the sacrifice part of the cost.

[Ephraim]

I was thinking of doing it that way in the first place. I'm not really sure why I didn't. Anyhow, sacrificing the lands is now part of the cost and I updated the wording to match [card]Devouring Rage[/card] and [card]Devouring Greed[/card].

[Matt]

This is hell of weak. It can't ever get card advantage. It could cost just .

[Ephraim]

It can yield a drastic improvement in card quality, though. And red decks are used to operating on just a couple of lands. Also, while I agree that this is weak compared to the options available to the other colours, am I right in my assessment that red shouldn't have card-drawing that is much better than this?

[Nibble]

I really like the idea and flavor of this, but it is indeed a bit weak. Would it be too powerful as an instant? It would make the 'untapped' clause a bit less harsh, and you could do stuff like, eot Geomancy all but 2-4 lands, drawing maybe 3-4 cards, then untap and drop a couple weenies or burn spells.

I don't think this in itself would be too broken for red.. the concept of it caters well to a low mana curve deck that doesn't mind operating on only a few land, but any deck built like that won't run enough land to make this card very good. Adding more land to make Geomancy good means you're drawing more land instead of good cards, and Geomancy is just counterbalancing that.

[Ephraim]

Would it be appropriate to remove the condition that the lands be untapped? That makes it significantly more powerful. I could also, as Nibble has suggested, make it an Instant. One or both of those suggestions would make this more playable.

[Matt]

If the lands can be tapped then it needs to cost like 3R.

[Ephraim]

I think I'll just make it an instant, then. I really don't want to increase its mana cost so much.

[Jacob Orlove]

I like this, but I don't know why. Maybe it's the name.

[Ephraim]

You liked "Aeromancy" too. I know I'm fond of using the "mancy" suffix accurately -- to reflect the magic of obtaining knowledge. [card]Pyromancy[/card] annoys me immensely and [card]Necromancy[/card] I tolerate only because popular usage has warped the initial idea of the word (that being raising the dead to question them.)

24 Hour Clock.

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]