Land Designs

{And the winner is..}Jartis!

{OLD}
Tomb of the Elders
Tribal Land - Vampire
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
: Add .
Whenever a Vampire enters the battlefield from a graveyard under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on it.

{melono }So, I'm gonna go through my initial thoughts here. It's not legendary, meaning you can run four of them and pump your graveyard vamps to massive size. But it doesn't actually enable that ability itself, other than producing black, so it maybe balances a bit. The other main thing is that since it doesn't check for Vampire creatures, if you put one of these onto the field while you have another in play, it ends up with +1/+1 counters on a land that isn't a creature, which happens very rarely and I think it's because it's maybe a bit confusing. It's a good card, I just think it could do with a slight tweak; more specific wording, legendary, something.

{Daij_Djan }First off, interesting take on manlands. I honestly didn't think we'd seen this before until I researched it, and even then it only turned up one card, Westvale Abbey. But while that card is a land that just transforms and then it doesn't care anymore, this land transforms and still cares about lands, which I think carries oodles more flavor. Interesting choice making it a nonbasic mountain, as that certainly does make it stronger, but nonbasic lands that aren't duals are typically a bit weaker to begin with, so I think there's a bit of balance there. I love cares-about-lands effects, and this card fits in nicely alongside my old buddy Koth.

{burntsquirrelman }A short, sweet, flavorful effect that offsets a prominent downside to its tribe. Doesn't enter tapped, but doesn't really need to, since it's just a swamp with a triggered ability. I may argue the rarity is maybe even a bit too high; it's the kind of rare that's great in constructed, but you'd hate to see it in limited.

{Flo00 }Interesting. I enjoy animating lands, and this land cares about being a creature...but it has no way of enabling that itself. Granted, green is no stranger to animating lands, permanently or temporarily, but it's still a bit odd that in a bad draft this card could essentially just be an uncommon forest that enters tapped.

{Sanfonier of the Night }The idea of a living Gate is totally something the Simic would do, so kudos there. It functions well as a Gate, since it produces more than one color, and it not only pumps creatures, but does so with counters, which is also very Simic. In fact, with as many cards that care about Gates, I figured we'd have seen the subtype expanded on beyond the commons we have. I don't think this is a bad way to model what an uncommon guild Gate should look like when we return to (return to return to) Ravnica

{viriss}It's cheap for token generation, and it gets additional upside, but it's probably fine, since even if you drop it on turn 1, it equates to "Grizzly Bear on turn 2." Fun little bit of flavor making it a Snow Land as well.

{gamma3 }Rakdos Guildgate with Fling/Shock stapled on, paying a bit of a premium for the recursion. Not bad, especially since in dire situations (or for style points) it can sac itself (provided you have the mana for it). Very in flavor; what's more Goblin than risking life and limb to hurt something else?

{ludvikeverviolet }One mana of any color is immediately a little weird, since Goblins are pretty solidly red, but I suppose there's enough goblins that splash other colors that it's justifiable. The obvious draw here is the Krenko ability...and honestly I think it's probably fine? Like, as a land, it's way harder to get rid of than a creature...but with Krenko you only have to pay to get him out. With this you're paying every time. I can see that strategy either going very well for you or very poorly, and not a lot in between. It's...honestly probably a call that's beyond my capabilities to make. As I said, the cost probably makes it fine, but the benefits are incredibly strong. Maybe it would balance better with a Cumulative Upkeep cost? Cost that scales based on how many Goblins you control? Maybe even just a flat upkeep cost. Honestly, I can't say, but I know it'd be fun, so there's that.

{2wb }Spirits haven't gotten a lot of support since Kamigawa, unless you count Orzhov token generation, so it's nice to see some love for the nontoken Spirits. Interesting that you opted for colorless mana, though I think it definitely keeps the rarity down a bit. The activated ability to dig Spirits out of your graveyard is a really nice effect that works thematically in a way that a lot of graveyard recursion doesn't, necessarily, and I like that. I'd even like to use it as a way of storing high cmc Spirits in my graveyard until I can cast them while making sure my low cmc Spirits come back again and again. Fun little card.

{Winner}Phew, quite a few entries. No white mana, though. Strange, I thought for sure we'd see, I dunno, Angel tribal or something. Maybe Foxes or Clerics. Well, regardless, I was really happy with the entries we did get, and while the judging presented a lot of challenges, ultimately I decided on Daij_Djan as the winner, with Sanfonier of the Night and melono as runners-up.