CoB/Fetchland variant

[Tenebrozo]

CARDNAME
 : Search your library for a land card and remove it from the game. Add one mana of any color that land can produce to your mana pool. CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you.

A variant on City of Brass, it lets you thin your deck while fixing your mana. What do you think? Looks good for limited to get rid of excess land, and the damage helps keep it in check.

Current wording:
CARDNAME
Land
Whenever CARDNAME becomes tapped, it deals one damage to you.
: Search your library for a land card and remove it from the game. Shuffle your library afterwards.
: Add to your mana pool one mana of any type a land removed from the game with CARDNAME could produce.

[jro]

This may be far in terms of power, etc., but I don't think it could ever get printed as-is.  A cheap, easy, very playable card that says "Search your deck every turn" is going to cause so much shuffling that games would take too long.  God forbid that you should have multiples in play.

Maybe this could be a combination Millikin / Charmed Pendant, with "Tap, RFG top card of library: Add one mana of any of that card's colors or 1 to your mana pool."  That let's players build around it, rather than making it an auto-include, and does away with the shuffling stuff.

Incidentally, the "or add 1" is to let you get mana off lands and such as well.

[parallax]

It's good to see a fair (not broken) 5-color land. I'm not sure about this card's application in limited, as it seems like rare material to me.

The shuffling thing does bother me a little. Are there any counterexamples (good cards that allow for a shuffle every turn in the early game.)?

I'm not a fan of your version, jro, as mana abilities with random effects are bad karma. Also, it doesn't really fit Tenebrozo's concept of a deck-thinning land.

[Matt]

You could redo the top card version so it at least doesn't completely suck when it flips up a land:

: Reveal the top card of your library. If that card has at least one color, remove that card from the game and add one mana of any color that card is to your mana pool and CARDNAME deals 1 damage to you. Otherwise, untap CARDNAME.

Shuffling every turn is definitely way bad. They almost didn't print the Onslaught fetchlands because they knew they would be 4x or 8x of in every contruscted deck.

[Tenebrozo]

Yeah, shuffling every turn is bad now that I think about it. How about using imprint on this card?

CARDNAME
Land
Imprint - : You may search your library for a land card and remove it from the game. You lose 2 life.
 : Add one mana of any color an imprinted land card could produce to your mana pool.

[parallax]

For power level considerations, this card is almost equivalent to:

~This~ comes into play tapped.
When ~this~ comes into play, lose 2 life.
: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

I think it's too strong, as the life loss only occurs once.

Also, I'm still generally against non-artifact cards with imprint, but I'm willing to overlook that if it makes the card work.

[Tenebrozo]

Would reducing the imprint life cost to 1 and adding a 1 life cost per tapping balance it? That way it would certainly be better as a deck thinner.

[Harlequin]

: Search your library for any number of [up to N?] land cards [with different names?], and remove them from the game.  Put a charge counter on ~this~ for each land removed in this way.
, remove a charge counter from ~: add one mana of any color to your mana pool, ~ deals 1 damage to you.

this way you retaine the 1 land for 1 mana.  aspect, and you also retain the life payment aspect.  I think it needs some sort of additional restriction on how many lands you can remove in one chargeing.  Basically so it doesn't become uncounterable Mana Severance... and also so it means you'll have to periodically recharge it.

[Tenebrozo]

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought, uncounterable Mana Severance. That would be a 4-of in Belcher.

[Harlequin]

Yeah but if you said something like "up to 3" it would definately not be severance (more like a rechargeable Gemstone mine).  Different names (only) could still be too powerful because you could opt to just run a ton of 1-of lands.

Maybe the safest way would be:

: Search your library for up to 3 land cards with different names and remove them from the game.  Put a charge counter on ~this~ for each land removed in this way. Use this ability only when there are no charge counters on ~this~.

[parallax]

Yeah, but now you're making what began as a simple card uber-complicated.

I think Tenebrozo's last suggestion might work.

Whenever ~this~ becomes tapped, lose 1 life.
: Search your library for a land card and remove it from the game.
: Add to your mana pool one mana of any type a land removed from the game with ~this~ could produce.

[Tenebrozo]

I think that's the best wording for it, I'm updating the current version.

[jro]

With the current wording, why limit it to searching for land cards?

Incidentally, I think this would see more play for the sake of being "Tap: Shuffle." rather than "Tap: Thin your deck by one land."

[parallax]

With the current wording, why limit it to searching for land cards?

Incidentally, I think this would see more play for the sake of being "Tap: Shuffle." rather than "Tap: Thin your deck by one land."

Myr Mindservant says that's not a problem.

[Matt]

Myr Mindservant is also terrible.

[Tenebrozo]

As it is, I doubt it can be abused for the shuffling. If you want the mana, you can't shuffle, so the first turns you can't just keep thinning your library. I see it more of a late game option, and that is assumming you are at a comfortable life total.

[jro]

I wasn't trying to say that it would be abused for the shuffling.  If anything, I think the present card is too weak.  Decks would play this to get a land with a 0-cc shuffle effect more than they would want to play it either 1) to get mana of any color or 2) to thin out their deck to give them better draws.  Since there's already likely to be up to 8 shuffling lands in your deck (that don't have a penalty in terms of not making mana for a turn), I don't see why someone would ever choose to play this over fetchlands just for the mana making abilities.  And since fetchlands give you shuffles pretty reliably, unless a deck really wanted to shuffle every turn, I can't see why they'd play this over them.  So, in some monocolored decks, this can becomes bad fetchland #9.

What about just granting it the mana-making ability when it comes into play?  Something like:

When CARDNAME comes into play, search your library for a land of each basic land type.
 , Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color a card removed with CARDNAME could produce.

[Tenebrozo]

Well, I was not aiming to make a top tier 5 color land, just a playable one. Your version is almost the same as City of Brass, tap and one life for any color with a very small drawback.

[parallax]

I don't see why someone would ever choose to play this over fetchlands just for the mana making abilities.

Because fetchlands aren't in block or type 2.

[jro]

Because fetchlands aren't in block or type 2.

Well who knows what's in the "block" or "type 2" that would accompany this card?  Since when is making comparisons to other cards which were in type 2 or block at some recent point in time not valid?  And there's the "any basic" fetchland coming up in Time Spiral (that puts stuff into play tapped).  Besides, block and type 2 aren't the only formats out there.

Anyway, I still don't think this should let you search (and shuffle) your library every turn for basically no cost.  This is effectively a CIPT City of Brass* when it's not doing the shuffling thing, unlike Myr Mindservant, which a) is otherwise a crappy 1/1 b) costs 2 mana to shuffle anyway.

*Because you'll probably have other 5 color lands to pull out, for example another copy of this.

[parallax]

Because fetchlands aren't in block or type 2.

Well who knows what's in the "block" or "type 2" that would accompany this card?  Since when is making comparisons to other cards which were in type 2 or block at some recent point in time not valid?  And there's the "any basic" fetchland coming up in Time Spiral (that puts stuff into play tapped).  Besides, block and type 2 aren't the only formats out there.

Anyway, I still don't think this should let you search (and shuffle) your library every turn for basically no cost.  This is effectively a CIPT City of Brass* when it's not doing the shuffling thing, unlike Myr Mindservant, which a) is otherwise a crappy 1/1 b) costs 2 mana to shuffle anyway.

*Because you'll probably have other 5 color lands to pull out, for example another copy of this.

You can't say that we shouldn't make a card just because there are better choices available to deckbuilders in Extended, Legacy and Vintage. This card might be seen as acceptable mana fixing in a block or type 2 setting.

This card still costs you one mana and one damage every time you want to shuffle.

I think this card is fair as both a shuffle effect and a color-fixer. It compares unfavorably to fetchlands and City of Brass, but it does the job of both. What exactly is the problem?

[Tenebrozo]

I don't think that removing another copy with the ability would let you add any color, any rules expert wants to answer this?

[jro]

It compares unfavorably to fetchlands and City of Brass, but it does the job of both. What exactly is the problem?

That it compares unfavorably to both, while also being a card that lets you search your library each turn.  Why is this a problem?  For instance, it would be real easy to eat up massive amounts of game time playing these abilities each turn, if you were trying to stall.  Just take 20 seconds to decide which land to pull, then pile shuffle every time you search.  I don't think cards that provide plausible deniability to cheaters should get made.  So it's a card that would see only limited amounts of play (because it compares unfavorably, etc.), AND it creates problems with administering the game when it does show up.

And maybe getting a second wouldn't let you tap for any color.  Here's what gatherer says about Reflecting Pool:

10/4/2004 It checks for types the land could produce under all possible conditions. For example, if a land can only produce mana if you pay a cost or if some condition is met, Reflecting Pool can still generate mana of that color. The rule about multiple Reflecting Pools not helping each other out is a special one. That is true since Reflecting Pool does not specify what mana it could produce, so the "perfect conditions" here result in confusion, which results in no mana types at all.

If you can't just grab a second one, that makes this card even worse, because now there has to be some other 5 color land in block or standard to make this into a bad City of Brass.

[Tenebrozo]

But you don't have to make this into City of Brass. You decide which color you need most, then you go for that land.

On the topic of cards that promote stalling, how about Top? That is a tournament staple and, in theory, you could spend 20 seconds deciding the order of the cards when you put them back. I don't think that's a solid argument against a card.

[asi]

I would prefer this at:

NAME
Land
T: Add to your mana pool.
, T: Search your library for a land with a basic land type and remove it from the game.
T: Add one mana of any colour the removed land could produce to your mana pool

In its current version this is way too good. Not because it generates mana, but because it shuffles AND thins your deck. Imagine having two or three of them in play.

[Tenebrozo]

Losing three life a turn and not generating mana while stripping three land out of your deck doesn't exactly sound like abuse to me.

[asi]

It can be, really. Fetchlands don't really thin, because you will usually not draw enough of them to matter, but one life is really a low cost if you and your opponent are in topdeck mode. It does shuffling as well, which is really great with cards like Brainstorm. Maybe I exaggerated s bit about the brokeness of this card, but I just don't want to have this card too repeatable (my suggestion was crap, though).