Multiple Card Challenge

Somewhat inspired by your Land Designs entry:

Reckless Mining
Instant
As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard two cards or discard a Mine.
Draw three cards.

I wanted to be careful about this being too advantageous compared to Cathartic Reunion or Thrill of Possibility, so I played around with the costs a bit.

Blast the Quarries
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast ~, tap and exert a land. (An exerted permanent won’t untap during your next untap step.)
~ deals 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker. If the exerted land was a Mine, ~ deals 4 damage instead.

Heavy Demolishment
Sorcery
Discard your hand. For each land discarded this way, ~ deals 1 damage to each opponent. For each Mine discarded this way, ~ deals 2 damage to each opponent.

Quarry Cartographer
Creature - Elf Scout
When ~ enters the battlefield, search your library for a Mine, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.
2/2
"Blast away from the sacred glades, lest you provoke the elken guardians."

Revenge of the Naturalists
Instant
Target land you control becomes a 3/3 Elemental creature with haste until end of turn. It’s still a land. If it's a Mine, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
"You mine what you buried."

Paradise Gem Dreamers
Creature - Elf Scout
: Add .
, Exert ~: Add one mana of any color. Activate this ability only if you control a Mine. (An exerted permanent won’t untap during your next untap step.)
1/1

Rogue Miner
Creature - Elf Rogue
You may exert Rogue Miner as it attacks if you control a Mine. If you do, draw a card and you lose 1 life. (An exerted permanent won’t untap during your next untap step.)
2/2
"'The mines are for a better future.' What a joke. My ancestor's graves are torn apart for their profits."

Worksite Insurance
Instant
This spell costs less to cast if you control a Mine.
Counter target spell unless its controller pays .
"Their sabotage efforts mean nothing as long as the quartz is not scratched."

Union's Verdict
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Mine you control
When ~ enters the battlefield, exile target creature an opponent controls until ~ leaves the battlefield.
"We won't cover for this criminal scum anymore. Send him to the brigs."

Mining Union's Command
Sorcery
Choose two:
- Draw a card for each Mine you control.
- Untap each Mine you control.
- Return target creature with converted mana mana cost less than or equal to the number of Mines you control to its owner's hand.
- Return target Mine from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Mining Quarry
Land - Mine
: Add .

Owakar Vein
Land - Mine
:: Add .
, Exert ~: Add or . (An exerted permanent won’t untap during your next untap step.)

See - Cloudcrest Lake cycle. Plane could favor enemy colors or feature all 10 color combinations depending on set size.

Bountiful Vein
Land - Mine
: Add .
: Add . Activate this ability only if you control five or more Mines.

Gatefall Knight
Creature - Dryad Knight
Vigilance
Whenever a Gate enters the battlefield under your control, this gets +3/+3 until end of turn.
1/3

Gateseer Mage 
Creature - Vedalken Wizard
, : Draw X cards, then discard X cards. Spend only mana created by Gates on X.
2/2

Gatecrash Imperiorex
Creature - Dinosaur
Spend only mana produced by Gates in order to cast this
7/7

Expanding Gateway
Land - Gate
When ~ enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you control another Gate.
: Add one mana of any color.

Rakdos Telecular
Land - Gate
~ enters the battlefield tapped, unless you control another Gate.
: Add or .



Also, Teleculars for all guilds.

Flo00 - Mining Quarry was a Draft design that I wanted to emulate a basic land without actually being Basic (since I felt with a full cycle of Mining duals it'd ultimately be unnecessary). That said I think it would've probably helped to add a small effect like Cradle of the Accursed had in hindsight. Glad you liked the cards overall and thanks for the win - for what it's worth, I liked everyone else's cards too.


Your next challenge is to take an iconic card like Delver of Secrets and make a series of cards referencing it like Aberrant Researcher and Docent of Perfection did. A cycle, a series of increasing cost cards, a more indirect mechanical/niche reference like Misson Briefing being clearly based on Snapcaster Mage or Asylum Visitor being based on Dark Confidant etc...., it's up to you. One thing I will say though is that I am interested in the reference cards being competitively playable in their own right in some format, so don't just make a Gitaxian Probe that costs .

Good luck!

Something that a big chunk of the Magic fanbase would immediately recognize for some signifciant reason. E.g. Nicol Bolas is icomic to Vorthos as a major villain or Sol Ring is one of the best constantly reprinted ramp cards in Commander.

Negation tends to see play in protecting combo decks while Summoner's helps find things like Primeval Titan to win. It's not my first though but you could make it work.

Spirit-Guided Emissary
Creature - Elf Shaman
When Spirit-Guided Emissary enters the battlefield, you may exile any number of cards from your hand. Add for each card exiled that way.
2/2

Akale, Guided by Spirits
Legendary Creature - Ape Shaman
, Exile a card from your hand: Add mana equal to the exiled card’s mana cost.
She never seeked their guidance. Still she’s just grateful for it.
2/2

Even the flavor is a hint to the Spirit Guides.
EDIT: Thanks for the catch ZephyrPhantom!

I hpoe this isn't overdoing it:

Paradise of the Lost
Enchantment
Whenever you exile a card from your hand, put a guidance counter on it and add .
Sacrifice Paradise of the Lost: Shuffle all cards you own in exile with guidance counters on them into your library.

The first ability also works great with suspend and foretell. The second is a slight nod at Riftsweeper.

Forced Guidance
Sorcery
Exile your hand, then draw that many cards. For each card exiled this way, add one mana of every color that card is.

No problem. Nice to see that other people spend some thoughts on my designs
I adapted the wording of Elemental Resonance for this.

Faith in Ferocity
Sorcery
Target creature you control with power 4 or greater gains "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, draw two cards."
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)


Faithful Truce
Sorcery
Each player draws two cards.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)


Faith in the Wicked
Sorcery
Reveal the top two cards of your library. You lose life equal to their combined mana value. Then put them in your hand.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)


Spellbinder's Faith
Sorcery
Draw three cards. You may then discard a creature card and a land card. If you don't, discard your entire hand.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)


If you hadn't noticed yet, it's a fill in of all the other colors of Faithless Looting.

Based on Young Pyromancer.


I know that Ancient Pyromancer triggers itself, but I feel fact that you still have to pay the spells cost to get the next trigger seems reasonabl: it's basically 'instants and sorceries you control have a replicate cost equal to their mana cost.'

Flo00 - Thanks for continuing to tag me and other judges for judging. It's hard to keep track of multiple games at once sometimes.

Flo00 -

Spirit-Guided Emissary - A creative spin on Burning-Tree Emissary that might seems powerful but isn't a strict upgrade since the ideal use of this kind of card typically requires you to keep your hand full of extra creatures to develop a wide board. I like that it forces you to carefully consider just how many cards you would get rid off to try and put some more stuff on the battlefield as if your opponent is holding back removal or a boardwipe you will get wiped out hard. Strong but still reasonable in the right environment; probably for the best that it is not a .

Akale, Guided by Spirits - Keeping things like Somberwald Sage, Rosheen Meanderer and the like in mind I think this is fairly reasonable at four mana as well. It's a fairly straightforward card but not a bad one and I think people would find it equally exciting as a regular big mana enabler and a commander. I like in general how this acknowledges you have to be conscious of the cards in your hand when playing this kind of strategy like the Spirit Guide does.

Paradise of the Lost - I feel like this one is deceptively explosive and its main saving grace is that the typical combo intense decks Spirit Guides appear in would rather play their game-winning 2-4 mana plays instead of this on turn 2. It feels a bit more comparable to Medallions given what it can broadly do and might enable some kind of unusual Storm engine. I'd like to see this card get playtested by someone willing to build a deck around it to see if it is powerful or broken in less powerful formats but ideally it encourages something new and unusual in Legacy.

Forced Guidance - And a much safer design to round it all off. I think this would normally be printed at 4 mana when you are trying to compete with the likes of Wheel of Fortune and Wheel of Misfortune I can see what you are going for. It is an interesting challenge to Storm decks because they normally want to sculpt a very specific hand and drawing this at the wrong time might make it about gambling your existing hand over getting a new one (or trying to manuever it in a way that it will keep your Past in Flames gameplan on track.) I think this would mostly get tried by existing Storm builds without being certain if it's a key piece or not.

Overall: You pushed your cards pretty hard but given the nature of the prompt I would rather someone be risky and interesting than play it too safe. I like that you made me think about various formats and if some kind of new deck could arise from them or if existing archetypes would try and adopt them into their gameplan, and most of the card succeed in that regard.

melono -

Ah yes, Faithless Looting, the card that died for Hogaak's sins. One of the strongest aspects of Faithless Looting is that it fuels itself and like-minded cards by letting you discard heavily on turn 1 without much drawback, and you can even discard Faithless Looting to itself to play it later if needed. I think the problem here is that but not letting the other nonBlue cards do similar things, they're automatically struggling to be comparable to Faithless Looting's level of power, with only the Black one really managing to make up for it in a vacuum via sheer card advantage.

The white one would require some very careful use of Hullbreacher, Alms Giver, or 3 mana Narset, two of which are (at which point you might as well play regular Blue draw spells), but I could see it happening - at the very least, I'd like to play it, and I could see this being something I toss over to R&D's Secret Lair if anyone's interesting in facing off with it.

I'm not really sure what the Green one would work with - shame it's not power 3, because Delver of Secrets and Tarmogoyf would have a field day with it if it was.


Overall: Your Blue and Black members of the cycle are great, either capturing what makes Faithless Looting interesting well or providing a dangerously potent amount of card advantage that would kick it upstairs to Legacy or even Vintage. Your Green one falls just short of being the kind of pushed card I'd like to see, and while your White one makes sense it's in a weird limbo where it requires a bunch of cards that might not make it worth the effort when you can just play Brainstorm or something similar. I think you should've picked a format that all of these would've been focused on and stuck to that specific format, so that maybe they'd all be a little closer in powerlevel, or perhaps looked a bit more closely at what Faithless Looting itself is used for.

hydraheadhunter -

Baby Pyromancer - I think the payment hurts this pretty bad honestly. Cards like Monastery Swiftspear and Clever Lumimancer are good precisely because the power boost is free (even if temporary). Take away the need to pay and this is the exact kind of card I am looking for.

Experienced Pyromancer - A pyromancer lord of sorts? I guess it could be considered in Prowess decks to help double up triggers and overrun the opponent. Seems kind of dependent on multiple cards being around though and doesn't do much for 3 mana by itself which makes me hesitant to say it meets the prompt. I like it and think it could see print, but competitively playable? Not as sure - it certainly doesn't have the raw card advantage of Jeskai Ascendancy, a card itself isn't the most famous combo in Modern. It's a 3 mana Panharmonicon if used right so maybe there's something there though.

Ancient Pyromancer - Interesting to me because normally WoTC would never print something like this on purpose if they couldn't help it, but doing it on purpose to allow for pseudo-replicate strategies is quite interesting and possibly a good win condition in itself - imagine resolving a bolt next turn after you play this. It's less dependent on specific cards than its lower costing kin and does threaten to win the game if it sticks around.


Overall - I think there was a bit of playing it safe here (which is understandable) but it would seems that most of the cards are a bit too weak to stick with the appropriate decks of their time.


Winner: Flo00

Sure is ok. The CotW poll is actually a pretty close race between the two of us. I'm really excited to see who is going to win

Judging at some point in the next three days.

That was very interesting. Thank you all!