I really like the affinity for lands common artifacts from Darksteel. Affinity got a bad name, but those five seemed rather balanced, and I thought it was a shame that we've never seen a set go back and explore some more affinity ideas outside of Junk Winder.

Affinity for basic lands was created because I wanted to spin off of the original five golems, but wanted to make it multicolored somehow. But if you have a spell that requires a pile of basic lands to drive the cost down to CDE, then you're going to need a really powerful effect to make up the difference. So... this.

Quick primer for costs for people who don't want to do the math:
If you have five basic lands, this costs seven mana (maybe you have a nonbasic and a mana Elf.)
If you have six basic lands, this costs six mana.
Seven basic lands, costs you five. Time Warp zone.
Eight basic lands, costs you four Nine basic lands, costs URG.

But what is this card's name?

Affinity for (colourless thing) was a problem because it let you have the big ball of suck, since every deck could do it. Affinity for lands is much more "Cast this only on turn N or more" since it's interacting direcvtly with the thing that makes mana. Heck, it's almost (though not completely) the same as just halving the mana cost. So sure, this effectively costs six. For which you get... an extra turn and a half what the actual? It used to be an extra turn cost but this was quickly deemed to be ridiculous. It now costs, what; 7 if it has a small upside? So ok, six-ish with triple colours and a strong upside; sure; ok; maybe.

What does one call such a thing? Annoyingly Crop Rotation can't be used as a terrible pun. (Your turn is rolling on).

All sorts of terms for time we could try.
You know, I'm gonna go the other way with this. Land Shock. Flavour I hit him in the face with a forest and scarpered

­Second Summer

What's red, green and blue? A second, late summer. Is what I'm going to argue :) Art hopefully shows a second, late harvest (which apparently is normal in some regions, although when best harvest is is apparently at different times of year depending on climate).

I'm not quite sure of the colour-to-season. I think I might have done spring=green, summmer=white, autumn=red, winter=blue, out of season=black. But I think for "summer in late autumn" and "temporal" RG and U work well enough.

Okay Jack's idea is really cool, so I'm going to shamelessly piggy back off of it xD

Seasonal Shift is the name.

Also, on the subject of seasons in MTG color terms, this is how I would guess they fit:

Spring

Primary: Secondary: ,

Summer

Primary: Secondary: ,

Autumn

Primary: Secondary: ,

Winter

Primary: Secondary: ,

Two notes:

Frankly, isn't at all Spring to me, but I was one single digit off from the shards so i switched it for .

I decided to put as primary for every shard it was present in, since all seasons are basically a concept more than anything else. However, this would skew the color balance in a cardset, so if you're inclined to, keep spring , make summer , and turn autumn

Also the reason I put as primary for winter, rather than or is because is an ally color to .

Then, between and ... Well, may be the better fit, but honestly so badly needs a new aesthetic beyond rotting corpses, and I think some sort of 'the dread of winter' approach would be extremely refreshing.

­ doesn't need the ice look, it already has sea-life, traditional wizards, academy look, technology, and archaeology. I'm probably forgetting some.

­ really only has 'corpses/death', 'evil-looking stuff', and 'phyrexians' which are all cool but less variety than .

Oh, cool! I really like that season system. I agree, everything "G primary, two others secondary" fits best, and you could do that in a set where seasons were one focus out of several. I did originally think, G was summer too, but automatically avoided making them ALL green, but now I see you don't have to.

I like your thoughts about winter too. I felt like in the existing pie, U fit well with cold, ice, "freezing", austere, timeless. But your argument that B should fit makes sense. If you think of B as "pragmatic" rather than "evil", it could easily be colour of hibernation, hoarding, skulking, dormancy hunkering down, not just "dead".

The poll is up! Click here to choose your favorite name!

Jack wins with Second Summer! See everybody in (((NTC #093)))!