[Preview] Gemstone Cavern

[Implacable]

This card was just posted on magicthegathering.com:

Gemstone Caverns
Legendary Land

If Gemstone Caverns is in your opening hand and you're not playing first, you may begin the game with Gemstone Caverns in play and a luck counter on it.  If you do, remove a card in your hand from the game. 

T: Add 1 to your mana pool.  If Gemstone Caverns has a luck counter on it, add one mana of any color to your mana pool instead. 

Rare-Time Spiral

Whadda' ya'll think of this as a decent mana-fixer for some decks?  It certainly is bad to get Wasted, but unlike Gemstone Mine, it sticks around forever.  It's like a better version of Chrome Mox/Mox Diamond (assuming, again, that you're on the draw, which is easily arranged).

[FlamingCloud]

Seems pretty useless to me.  Would be playable if it was left in its original form.

As is, it is worse then mox diamond and chrome mox, and those cards are almost unplayable(only a few decks can make any use of them).

[Smmenen]

URL? 
I don't see it on the main page.

[Draven]

URL? 
I don't see it on the main page.

Here you go Steve... at the bottom of the page.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bd238

[BreathWeapon]

This card has to be worth testing, it gives you turn one Mana Drain on the draw and an additional land drop in combo. I think in the end that it is going to be too conditional because it doesn't produce colored mana on its own and is Legendary, I couldn't[/color] care less about the card.

Edit: Is it seriously "could not care less" as opposed to "couldn't care less?" I think either is appropriate, as the first states that you think it is irrelevant and the second states that while you see the down side you are willing to disregard it. The first also seems like such a double negative, because it is essentially saying that you don't care at all. Is this an idiomatic expression or can you actually prove you are right?

[Draven]

This card has to be worth testing, it gives you turn one Mana Drain on the draw and an additional land drop in combo. I think in the end that it is going to be too conditional because it doesn't produce colored mana on its own and is Legendary, I couldn't[/color] care less about the card.

Holy crap-tastic Batman... I didn even notice it was Ledgendary. Wow... way to take a neat idea and make it worthless... Seriously, why does it have to be Ledgendary? If someone has multiples in their opening hand, that is great and all, but they are going to lose alot of their hand. You would need a Draw 7 in order for multiples in the opening hand to be okay.

[pyr0ma5ta]

Maybe a year or two ago, nobody played Lotus Petal in Mana Drain decks.  Nowadays, it's rare to see a t8 Drain control list that doesn't play Petal.  Reaching UU on Turn 1 is just important; doesn't this fit the bill?  It's a huge tempo gain on the draw, but certainly horrible to get Wasted.  Big risk, big payoff, sideboard material in Drain deck mirrors?

[Draven]

Maybe a year or two ago, nobody played Lotus Petal in Mana Drain decks.  Nowadays, it's rare to see a t8 Drain control list that doesn't play Petal.  Reaching UU on Turn 1 is just important; doesn't this fit the bill?  It's a huge tempo gain on the draw, but certainly horrible to get Wasted.  Big risk, big payoff, sideboard material in Drain deck mirrors?

I definatly agree that UU 1st turn is awesome, but there are two huge disadvantages to this. You already named Wasteland, basically, if your opponant Wasted this, you would be 2 cards down in your opening grip before you get a turn. Granted you can Brainstorm, Ancestral etc in response.

However the 2nd, bigger issue is in order for this card to work 40% of the time, you need to run 4, and after the first the other 3 are dead draws. Yuck!

[hollowbody]

Maybe a year or two ago, nobody played Lotus Petal in Mana Drain decks.  Nowadays, it's rare to see a t8 Drain control list that doesn't play Petal.  Reaching UU on Turn 1 is just important; doesn't this fit the bill?  It's a huge tempo gain on the draw, but certainly horrible to get Wasted.  Big risk, big payoff, sideboard material in Drain deck mirrors?

But you have to be on the draw. So you have UU 1st turn, but not to counter anything your opponent does on THEIR first turn that may spell disaster for you. I think its drawbacks are too much. The best you could do with it would be to have it in play, toss and ESG and mana leak, but then you're talking 4 cards to stop 1 from being cast. Again, too much going the wrong way for this card.

[pyr0ma5ta]

Reading is tech?  I mentioned Sideboard material for the Drain mirror.  It's true that you will still need a turn to go get Drain up, but isn't that better than waiting another turn?  As for turn 1 gamebreaker spells on the play against your turn 0 Gemstone Caverns, that's what fow is for, amirite? 

[BreathWeapon]

Reading is tech?  I mentioned Sideboard material for the Drain mirror.  It's true that you will still need a turn to go get Drain up, but isn't that better than waiting another turn?  As for turn 1 gamebreaker spells on the play against your turn 0 Gemstone Caverns, that's what fow is for, amirite? 

Why would you play this over Red Elemental Blast in your SB?

[hollowbody]

Reading is tech?  I mentioned Sideboard material for the Drain mirror.  It's true that you will still need a turn to go get Drain up, but isn't that better than waiting another turn?  As for turn 1 gamebreaker spells on the play against your turn 0 Gemstone Caverns, that's what fow is for, amirite? 

Reading is tech?  I mentioned Sideboard material for the Drain mirror.  It's true that you will still need a turn to go get Drain up, but isn't that better than waiting another turn?  As for turn 1 gamebreaker spells on the play against your turn 0 Gemstone Caverns, that's what fow is for, amirite? 

Ok, but then you're talking about a turn 2 empty mitt. If you're playing Gemstone, ditching a card to do it, playing an island to get UU, having a drain in your hand, AND pitching something to FoW in addition FoW itself, that's a whole lot of cards that you're committing just to stop your opponent from doing a couple things, and then you're in topdeck mode.

Why would you play this over Red Elemental Blast in your SB?

yeah...what he said.

[Imsomniac101]

Something you guys are missing. The card says that you can remove any card in hand. That means that if you have multiples of this in your opening you can remove the other one.

[EnialisLiadon]

Edit: Is it seriously "could not care less" as opposed to "couldn't[/color] care less?" I think either is appropriate, as the first states that you think it is irrelevant and the second states that while you see the down side you are willing to disregard it. The first also seems like such a double negative, because it is essentially saying that you don't care at all. Is this an idiomatic expression or can you actually prove you are right?

The point of the expression is to say that you're completely apathetic about something.  If you say, "I couldn't care less," then you do indeed care about it.  If you say, "I couldn't care less," the correct way to say it, then you're saying you don't care at all.  It's hard to explain it without simple repeating the two takes on the phrase--they're rather self-explanatory.

Anyways.

Is this the "official" version of Luckyman's Paradise, or whatever that pseudo-invitational card was called?  I'm not sure I like it all that much.

[jcb193]

According to Randy:

"Well, the rules problems weren’t nearly as hard for us to solve as the fact that the card is incredibly powerful. You just did not lose when you got 'lucky' and got to put one of these cards into play for free, never mind the games where you plopped down two or three of them! Our first adjustment was to make it into a legendary land, that way you could only ever drop one at the beginning of the game. That version was still so powerful that every single deck in the FFL ran 4 of them. Eventually we concluded that there had to be a cost associated with using what turned out to be an incredibly powerful ability. Now if you’re going second and you want to start with this in play, you have to remove a card in your hand from the game. It’s still quite good (it’s basically a better Chrome Mox, but only when you go second) and still shows up in FFL decks.

"So to answer your question, Jyri, we had to tweak it a bit to keep it within sight of being fair and balanced, but we’ve done that now and the fully developed version of Tsuyoshi Fujita’s design will appear this fall in the first set of the next block, codenamed 'Snap.' The full text will look like this:"

[FlamingCloud]

According to Randy:

It’s still quite good (it’s basically a better Chrome Mox, but only when you go second) and still shows up in FFL decks.

Thats funny, its only better on the draw when its a 1 of in your deck due to it being legandary, if you have a hand full of stuff you don't want to pitch you can't wait to pitch something else either.  Doesn't assist with academy, affinity or anything else.  Plus you can play chrome mox without imprinting things for 1 storm count, or pitch dead copies to thirst. 

So basically Chrome Mox is better even on the play.  Way better on the draw.  And Chrome mox is still a horrible card in most vintage decks.

There is no way having turn 1 drain online is worth two extra cards, in vintage petal is essentially only played in decks with yawg because its 2 storm count, or 2 mana of any color, and it pitches to thirst, and can be tinkered, and boosts academy.

Gemstone Caverns is much worse then either mox and will only see play in decks that play diamond/chrom mox already (because they are that turn 1 mana oriented.  Discard(instead of remove from game) alone would have been a big enough nerf without needing the legandary, together this killed what would have been an amazing card.

They are going out of there way to make 4/4 creatures for 2, razia's and simic skyswalloers, but producing the next chrome mox is not allowed.  It seems they are not willing to produce cards that would be 2-4 of in every deck after what happend with chrome mox.  Invitation cards should be immune from this type of omega nerfing.  Bob and Pikula are not impressed with gemstone caverns and rakdos augermage.

[GrandpaBelcher]

I examined this when its finalish form was first posted on MTG a while back.  It's a weird card to think about.  You want to play four because you want it in your opening hand.  If you're not playing first, though, you could still play four and Wasteland your opponent's copy with your own thanks to the legendary rule, which makes non-Lucky copies not quite dead draws in the mirror.  When this happens (outside of Vintage, at least, where things cost more than zero mana), it's as though you're starting the game with the Luckyman on the play and everyone has one less card.  It's bizarre and might completely warp the thought process surrounding the opening turns.

I'm planning on testing it, though, for sure.  Having pre-first turn Stifle (or Brainstorm) mana up sounds pretty good to me.

[Draven]

I think the "problem" with this card is we are looking at it from the Vintage point of view. If you look at it from the non-Mox Standard point of view, it is actually pretty good. First turn Sack Tribe or Oracle is amazing in Standard.

Also in Standard, the only thing you will have to worry about is Ghost Quarter, but you still get a basic, so you are still ahead a land.

I don't mean to talk too much about Standard. In Vintage, this card is trash, but instead of saying "OMG this card is the suck" we should say "OMG in Vintage, this card sucks."

(I know I slammed this card earlier, I still agree, I am just modifying my statement to "In Vintage...")

[Mantis]

A decent card that may find it's use. I agree that it's not sideboard material, if anything it should be maindecked. Anyway, look at it this way: you can play it from your opening hand by removing a card if it allows you to Brainstorm/Recall on turn one or if you have Drain in your hand + another Island. If you are unable to do so, you can always just play it as a land that taps for colorless mana. I don't think you will want 4 of them in your deck meaning you are too dependant on being on the draw to make your mana base work. Additionally it's also a Legendary Land, therefore I think 2 is the maximum number I would fit in, unless this card proves to be absolutely nuts.

[Glix]

This card is terrible.  It would have been good, but now its a legendary conditional chrome mox.  Control decks don't play Chrome Mox.  Combo doesn't play Chrome Mox.  Chrome Mox isn't played.

That being said, there is one single deck that could play this: Ichorid.  That's it.  And thats a maybe.  A rather large maybe.

Why did it have to be legendary?  Why!