Sinking Tomb (land)

[Rando]

Almost every card I've ever made for this little project has been flavor based.  I like the idea of an old cemetary or tomb falling into a sinkhole and taking everything around it down with it.  On a game-play level, it's obviously an uncounterable Tormad's Crypt with a couple extra abilities thrown on.  The mana ability is there because all lands make mana (now, at least) and the milling ability is there to make it a little more then just a Crypt and so you can be semi-proactive.  The card itself would be better if the mill was a non-tap ability, maybe costing 1 or 2 mana to activate, but I wasn't sure if that would be "too good", though it might make a great sideboard card against any deck that heavily utilizes it's graveyard as a resource.

Sinking Tomb
Land
T: add 1 to your mana pool.
T: put the top card of each player’s library into his or her graveyard.
T, sacrifice ~this~: remove all graveyards from the game.

‘Tis a strange thing to see the burial of a grave.

Sinking Tomb
Land
T: add 1 to your mana pool.
1, T, sacrifice a creature: remove all graveyards from the game.

"Tis a strange thing to see the burial of a grave."

[Matt]

2. Please try to state some relevance. Why are you making this card? What place does it have in the game? Please note: not all cards have to be tournament level, but there's always a reason for their creation nevertheless, if even merely flavor.

3. After comments, please edit the original post to include a current wording of the card in bold so us mods know which ones to add. Leave the original cards wording intact so we can see its evolution.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=9079.0

[Jacob Orlove]

This is way too strong a hoser to basically be free.

[Anusien]

Phyrexian Furnace + Tormod's Crypt (with a slight drawback) + a land drop?  Ridiculously good.

[Rando]

RE: too good

Should the activated abilities (sans the mana ability, of course) have a mana cost?  Maybe 2 or 3 each?

[Nova442]

... On a game-play level, it's obviously an uncounterable Tormad's Crypt with a couple extra abilities thrown on...

If you read this a few times you realize the problems ^^;  I don't know if we can make a crypt with milling (especially Whetstone like) and mana production and uncounterability without giving it too high an ability cost to be viable.  In my opinion you'd be better off with a crypt-land and a whetstone-land or a crypt/whetstone artifact.

[PucktheCat]

I think the milling ability is somewhat excessive, but considering only the Crypt-like ability this isn't completely off the map.  It has two advantages and two disadvantages when compared to the original Crypt.

Adv:
It is uncounterable.
It produces colorless mana.

Disadv:
It costs a land drop.
It removes your own 'yard as well.

The ability to produce colorless is a big advantage, but costing a land drop is a pretty big disadvantage.  Wizards has printed a number of cards that are colorless lands with extra abilities that are worth more than this.  Quicksand, Rishadan Port, and Blinkmoth Nexus show that a colorless land drop can pretty easily have a 1-2 mana spell tacked onto it.  Previous lands like Mishra's Factory and Wasteland had something like 3cc effects for a land drop, although these cards are clearly over powered by todays standards.  Here we are adding an inferior version of a 0cc spell.

That being said, printing this would have to be a concsious policy decision to make it easier to hate graveyards.  Wizards has certainly made policy decisions like that in the past, so we just need to decide whether this is a direction we want to go.  If we want to weaken the card it would be easy enough to stick a 1-2 mana activation on this thing.  Having to stay untapped to be able to remove their graveyard is a pretty big disadvantage.

Leo

[Rando]

When considering card interactions, are we to consider Magic as a whole or think more about the cards within TMD set? 

I'm fine with dumping the milling ability if that's what people want.  I don't think I've ever made a card here that didn't get nerfed in some way before final aproval, which is cool.  I think it's bettter to make an overpowered or overcomplicated card and par it down then it is to make a week card and then tack things on, which usually ends up seeming clumsy and unwieldy.

[Matt]

To play up the "tomb"ness of this, maybe make it ", sac a creature: remove all graveyards"?

[Rando]

And get rid of the milling ability?  I like that idea.

[Rando]

Dropped the milling ability; added sac'ing a creature to the cost of the Crypt ability.

[silvernail]

mmm what about:

X, T ,sacrifice a creature : all players remove X cards in their graveyards from the game where X is the sacrificed creature's converted mana cost.

this means its not going to nuke a graveyard without some bigger costing dudes and there fore isnt as strong as an uncounterable crypt.

[Jacob Orlove]

I think the sacrifice a creature version is pretty good, although you may want to up the cost to 1 mana and tap. The X, Tap version is awful.

[Rando]

I'll go ahead and add (1) to the activation's cost, but I have a feeling that may be a bit too expensive.

EDIT: this may be a remedial question, but is there a specific order the costs of the activation should go?

[Ephraim]

I think you have the order correct. Mana, tapping, additional costs: effect. I certainly don't think that this is too expensive. It may be more expensive than it could be, but that doesn't mean that costing more than absolutely necessary is a bad thing. For example, imagine if this had appeared in Oddysey block -- it would have been stupidly broken. The relevance of costs is dictated by the environment in which a card appears. So while you might see this as a little bit overcosted, the additional makes graveyard effects in the set where this appears nominally more powerful.

[Matt]

I'll go ahead and add (1) to the activation's cost, but I have a feeling that may be a bit too expensive.

EDIT: this may be a remedial question, but is there a specific order the costs of the activation should go?

It doesn't matter to the game what order they come in, but certain orders look nicer and are easier to read/remember than others.

Typically you put mana costs first, then tapping, the other costs. For example, take a look at Flooded Strand:



So you've got it exactly right.