Hmm... I'm intrigued by this, but I worry that someone would break it.

I'm a bit worried that people will play with it and have less fun. But, you know, the game still needs cards for people who don't need molly-coddling. This much I can say: You chose the correct rarity.

I don't like this very much. Your surplus permanents will normally be lands, so all this does is encourage you to sac your Mountains and Plains onto this, putting multiple eggs in one basket, ready for a tidy Boomerang or Acidic Slime to really mana-screw you.

Oh, heh. I thought you removed the counters to add the mana. Yeah, making this card better by not doing that makes it worse in my mind. That's a lot of unfun games.

If you removed the counters this would be horribly worse than the Calciform Pools cycle.

Well; it lets you sacc creatures that are abut to die which is quite nice. hoovering up your plains and mountains seems only useful if you have some way to benefit from lands in graveyard. But oooh, it's really REALLY nice if you're playing, say, blue-gren but want to splash red-white.

I got to be honest with you, Alex. The card could read:

­: Add to your mana pool.
­: Sacrifice a permanent.

And it would probably be played in constructed.

Oh, hold it! It doesn't tap for colorless? Evidently, my mind constructed a completely different card, and the only things I held onto are "White, Red and Sacrifice". That's a bit like looking at Lorthos, the Tidemaker and assuming that he's comes into play with 8 islands and attaches himself to another creature because he is an octopus.

@Vitenka: Something like Boros Garrison or Boros Signet would be far, far better as a way to splash red-white in your blue-green deck. This still needs you to sac two other permanents before it even taps for , and (as jmg eventually realises ;)) needs you to sac one permanent before it taps for any mana at all.

Still, Claws of Gix has its uses, not many of which actually care about gaining life.

Hmm. True. (I've using it myself along with Reito Lantern to keep my Turing machine's battlefield tidy.) And it occurs that this is comparable to City of Shadows (rather better in fact). So... yeah, okay, a niche card, but useful in its niche.

A niche card is good, but a cycle that consists of 5 niche cards? I'm not as sure about that, especially since they're the same niche.

jmg: I'm going to quote you on Lorthos.