Strangely better than Sunburst, since Plant a Bomb infers you can get more in set. Oh... well, I suppose people never had a hard time getting extra +1/+1 counters on creatures... you get the idea.

I'm not sure why I want this cycle to be 3CC. If I do add some Sunburst, I'm bound to add more... but I like encouraging occasional 4 color decks, and it feels like you have to work for that cost more than CDEFG. Strange.

Prism counters aren't gem counters, so this is a nice 0/0 for 5.

You never know when you'll need an expensive 0/0.

Yes... hehe. Thank you.

The extra in this card's mana cost is rather irritating from an aesthetic POV. It means it can't sunburst up to 5 without help from something like Sphere of Resistance. Skyreach Manta didn't need it.

­ would solve that, with the added advantage of making people stop and frown while they puzzled it out.

Probably wouldn't even need to be 3, then.

Skyreach Manta was a one-of in a small set. If there were 5 different Skyreach Mantas, they'd probably do something about it.

That being said, you're not wrong. This is uncommon compared to common, and I'm very aware that while this makes my inner Melvin go "Neat!", it makes my inner Vorthos go "Ick!". I'm thinking on this, and will probably change it over, since Vorthos trumps Melvin most times.

­ taken into consideration. That sounds like a good one of... Maybe a green Sunburst creature with ?

There were 5 different Skyreach Mantas. Or at least, there were a whole bunch of common and uncommon sunburst artifact creatures. I recall a discussion of Suntouched Myr where someone from R&D said how it had been a 2-mana 0/0, but was bumped up to a 3-mana 0/0 to make it better.

And personally, I'd say 5 mana with no-more-than-one of any colour is the perfect Melvin spot for a sunburst-ish creature. Who appreciates the idea of using Sphere of Resistance to make a 5/5 Etched Oracle who survives the card-drawing? Okay, mainly Johnny, but I'd have thought Melvin likes the rules subtlety that sunburst gives maximum potential at .

Personally, I always just used Energy Chamber for that trick. Sunburst made me want yellow mana, so it has that going for it too :)

You know, I was going to go into a player psychographic spiel, but I'm going to save the "That paladin can't do that because he's lawful good, and that means blah" for another day. It can get too involved. I've noticed before that my personality doesn't line up with the player psychographics anyways. Sometimes, I'm just a JMGariepy, and I like very strange things, like cards that are intentionally bad. I think this is one of them.

But I am willing to concede that there are very few JMGariepys in the world, so I'm changing the casting cost to . I think most people would argue that that looks better, even if I'd be the odd man out. The strange part now, though, is "Is this worth a cycle?" With I'd say "Yes", since it would be a bit odd for 5 color players to pack all 5 in the same deck... you want to focus on one color with 3CC. With 4C however, you could put all 5 in the same deck without really thinking about it, or just use the best one. It was kind of the problem I had with the Bringer of the Red Dawn cycle. Short of the White one that went in a specific deck, Players had a tendency to ignore the green one, since it was the same but worse.

Eh, I sometimes flat=cast the bringers - but I do see your point. There's also the need for less-good cards for the whole "Well, I want x, but do not own it, so will settle for y or z which do almost what I want" leading to interesting trade-off choices.

I may be overthinking one card in the early stages. It's possible that there will be enough space for both a Sunburst card and something weird like a Sunburst card. It's probably best to remember this conversation and move on.