Sharecropper

[Ephraim]

Sharecropper

Creature -- Townsfolk
1/1

: Untap target tapped land an opponent controls. Add to your mana pool one mana of any color that land could produce.

***

The direction in which I was initially going to take this card was a tax collector who would tap an opponent's land and draw off the mana. Then, I realized, that ability was strictly better than the ability of [card]Sylvok Explorer[/card], which of course also reminded me that the ability I was giving the creature was green. Then I realized that I could do something just a little different and make a very white ability. Although green is traditionally the colour of creature-based mana generation, it has been bled into red. There is no reason, then, why it can't be bled into white. This creature is sort of like a Birds of Paradise or a Llanowar Elves, except in exchange for the mana boost, it also gives your opponent an opportunity to boost his or her mana as well. I think it's a fair, interesting variation of the mana-generation ability that is also solidly white.

[Ephraim]

Current Wording:

Sharecropper
{1} {W}
Creature – Townsfolk
1/2

{T}: Untap target tapped land an opponent controls. Add to your mana pool one mana of any color that land could produce.

[MrZuccinniHead]

nice work on the ability combined with the name.

[Marco]

Looks like Benthic Explorers.

[Jacob Orlove]

This may be too strong at one mana, but at two mana this runs into the problem of competing with Talismans and the like. Maybe make it 1/2, or give it a more useful creature type?

[Ephraim]

Heh -- this does look like Benthic Explorers. Well, I guess it's time that white actually got something from another colour, rather than the other way around. Anyhow, everybody knows that Alliances was not the pinnacle of colour pie development. I'd be happy to make this a 1/2 for 1W. I'm having trouble with the creature type, though. This isn't really a soldier or a cleric -- white's flagship creature types. It doesn't really qualify to be a druid (like Diligent Farmhand) -- all of them except for Quagmire Druid, which has a green activated ability, are green. Townsfolk really does seem like the right creature type for this.

Now that I look closely, this is actually a little different from Benthic Explorers. Benthic Explorers' ability no longer targets and it requires that the Benthic Explorers' ability do the untapping for it to actually generate the mana. This does target, but generates the mana regardless. I may end up changing the wording of this to match Benthic Explorers though. There's probably a good reason why they worded it the way they did.

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, it pretty much is a townsfolk. Maybe we could make that somehow meaningful?

[Nibble]

There's probably a good reason why they worded it the way they did.

The only reason I can think of is if you had multiple of the creature, you can target the same tapped land multiple times, to get 2-4 mana in exchange for your opponent only getting one. While it's not the biggest concern, it probably would be fairer to adopt the Explorers' wording.

Jacob: Townsfolk as a mini-tribe would actually be pretty interesting. They've always been around, are primarily white, and have a good flavor to them. Perhaps we can convince Marco to make his Peasant Militia a Townsfolk, too? To me, a peasant militia is more townsfolk than soldier, really.

[Marco]

I'd be okay with that. If we can make townsfolk more meaningful.

[Ephraim]

You could also make it a Townsfolk Soldier. My card is purely Townsfolk, but I imagine there's room in white for a subset of peasantry who occupy many of the various positions in Magic, but who still qualify as Townsfolk. Militia have the flavour of Townsfolk Soldier, hedge wizards and village priests have the flavour of Townsfolk Wizard and Townsfolk Cleric, respectively. It really is an organizational unit unique to white's philosophy. Green and red are typically too disorganized to develop even towns, while blue and black aren't pastoral enough to bother with anything less than cities.

[Ephraim]

24 Hour Clock

[MrZuccinniHead]

would it be safe at 1/3?  1/3 makes it much better in limited.

[Ephraim]

It probably would be safe at 1/3, but I'm not going to push this one. I'm definitely aware that there's a tendency to push cards because they aren't as good as they can possibly be, so I'm going to try to be a little bit more conservative with cards I create from now on. A card that's a little bit weak in some regards, but interesting in other regards is totally okay with me.

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]