Land Designs

Oh sweet baby Jesus no no nono...

*cough*

Every single Green deck that I've ever made accepts this offering.

Center of Learning
Land -
When you draw your second card each turn, untap Center of Learning.
::t::: Add .
::t::, exert Center of Learning: Add .

Heaven's Gate
Legendary Land
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
: Add .
, , Exile a white creature card from your graveyard: Draw a card.

I dunno what you're talking about.

More seriously, I'll come up with something else at some point.

lizstar Jungle Circle Is a pretty straightfoward concept - play stompy, draw cards. Otherwise, it's an arguably more forgiving Library of Alexandria that will always cost - the other potentially fitting comparison is Mikokoro, Center of the Sea. I actually this is relatively fair because most of the time this hits the boards in Constructed you would still have to pay like 3-5 mana on average to trigger the draw, but it's still definitely higher up there on the power level (and every green EDH deck would automatically run it). I think its only notable concern if anything is that it's just too easy an auto-include in any deck that wants it, and I mean like Oko levels of auto-include because it's a land slot that gets turned into repeatable card draw in any deck that has a decent mass of creatures. Good design, could be in a set, but I would carefully track its power level.


Lady Mapi So I actually really like this design (to the point I almost feel bad for putting the symbol restriction in) so I'll judge it as intended (the hybrid symbol is kind of a meh fix to representing the generation aspect here, but again, good design, so I'll overlook it.) I think this provides an alternate interesting way to storm off that would definitely get Modern/Pioneer players brewing for some way to break it. What's interesting to me is that in the worst case, it still functions as a half-decent dual outside of Storm, which could certainly matter in Limited. Would love to see this in a set in its original form.


melono Heaven's Door Gate almost feels like it would be more white if it could target any graveyard, knowing White's graveyard-hosing abilities. It's an acceptable design, though I'm one of the people in the camp that admittedly feels we should be careful with how much card advantage White should get (as opposed to keeping its control tools strong). Rather ambivalent about it overall, I think it works but its competition is very stiff here.

Flo00 Interesting how by default this won't be able to do much on your own turn. Even in Standard,Stormfist Crusader exists and things like Mikokoro/Geier Reach Sanitarium could turn this into a more effective way to generate mana even outside of EDH than people might assume it to be. I think this could actually end up in a set. It might not be what people are expecting, but it'll get them thinking, and really, a good build-around design should do something like that.

Daij_Djan - No to legendary imho. This is going to end up in a very specific type of deck anyway (read: U/W Miracles) and I feel like stapling that on is going to result in a pretty negligible nerf in the formats that would care about it because most of the time they're also formats with things like Force of Will and Moxen. While it seems powerful on paper I feel like it would ultimtaely get tried in a lot of decks and ultimately settle into 1-2 archetypes in Modern/Legacy/Vintage each because it's fast mana but not necessarily faster than some of the other options there. (I honestly don't think this is faster than Tron, at the very least.) Powerful, but the simplicity is good enough here to warrant them in a set as is.

gateways7 - I think I'm more worried about what this would give Dredge than anything else, otherwise it's an acceptable topdeck/gas type option for RDW. ETB-tapped was a good card. There isn't much else to say about the card, but I think in this case that's a good thing - set-worthy as is.

kefke - I think the 'at random' just barely saves this card from being busted, and while I get what you were going for, I think the current state of it might make it difficult for it to find a home in or influence a deck significantly. The main reason Hollow One worked is because it was able to flood its own deck with a critical mass of spells that didn't care that they were discarded (Phoenix, Bloodghast, Hollow One, Faithless Looting etc...) and I don't think this really adds much to that archetype, meaning on its own it's kind of just a bad gas spell. It works, but I don't think it's the most graceful design.

thaneofglamis - So it's essentially cycling 0 if you cast an enchantment spell on the same turn.... I think it's clever. You ideally want to be cycling this as much as possible but by the same coin that probably shifts it towards something like Boggles or Enchantress that can play a critical mass of enchantments, or possibly some new gimmick deck entirely. Obviously needs a specific type of set but I think this would be a great cycle to have in an enchantment-based one. If I had a concern to raise it's probably that for limited this at common might be too much free card advantage - consider bumping it up to Uncommon if you do put it as a cycling in a set.


1st:Daij_Djan
2nd:Flo00
3rd:thaneofglamis

Aviary Outpost
Land
: Add .
Whenever you draw your third card each turn, create a 1/1 blue Bird creature token with flying.

Lemme just try to sneak in a last minute entry.

Today is indeed the day! This challenge is now closed – please no further changes of entries!

EDIT: And here we go!

Problem is: Those cards are creatures themselves, so they are easy to remove. Putting the same effect on a land makes it much harder to get rid of (compare rarity of Merfolk Looter to Desolate Lighthouse) - also the card gets much wordier (and therefore more complex) as a land because of the ETB and mana abilities (which as your linked article says increases the rarity). I've seen you use that article as a reference once in the past (and to be honest didn't agree with you back then either), so I have already read it - but I don't see it affirming it your rarity unless I'm missing something.

The card gets wordier, yes, but what I have still falls within what is considered acceptable for an Uncommon to have (it's actually still in the range where wordiness would be borderline-acceptable at Common). How about some other factors from the guide? "Saboteur" effects start at Uncommon, and token generation at Common, so a "Saboteur" effect via a token fits comfortably into that slot as well. In terms of appearance in the world, Investigate is an Innistrad mechanic, and in Innistrad it would be pretty reasonable that a base of operations for a group of inquisitors would be something that "you don't see all the time, but would expect to encounter with some regularity". As for complexity, it requires a specific board state, but the wording is pretty straightforward. That's characteristic of Uncommon cards as well. That leaves size of effect and how it impacts Limited. This is probably where there could be the most room for debate, but I honestly don't think the situational ability to generate Clues for a mana cost is big enough to warrant Rare, and as a final argument to that, I present "Ongoing Investigation", which does what my card does, but better, is also an Uncommon, and while not as hard to get rid of as a land, is still harder to get rid of than a creature.

...and on the subject of being harder to get rid of, I'd counter that's offset with my design by the fact that a cost must be paid each time the ability is activated, as opposed to it being a one-time payment, like every officially-printed card with a similar effect. It has to tap itself as well, so that's taking away a total of 3 mana for a token that then costs still more mana to activate - and the token itself is a potential removal target unless the player has the full 5 mana free to spend. Meanwhile, outside of the risk of creatures being lost in battle, which is still a factor, I don't think a Clue-generator is going to be a high priority for removal spells anyway, though feel free to disagree.

Now, if you don't agree with the guide in a general sense, that's fine. Those are MaRo's rules. I personally think that MaRo's design sensibilities are crap, but this board does tend to bias towards WotC's - and by extension his - idea of balance, which is the whole reason I went looking for what he bases rarity decisions on in the first place. Any card designed using that guide is going to be closer in rarity to what it would officially be evaluated at. Which I am fine with us all agreeing is a terrible guideline.

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Flo00 - Can I cheat and submit a card I designed ages ago?



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