For Challenge # 034 inspired by Jack V's Island Turtle.

Thank you for expanding the Enormous mechanic!

LOL. I love the gold rush flavour. I originally assumed Enormous would only make sense on creatures (after all, other permanent types could use loyalty counters like planeswalkers), but the flavour here works well.

I'm not sure how it should be balanced; tapping for RR even once may well be too good, but I don't want to make it have to be tapped.

Well, if it was just once, then it's much worse than Simian Spirit Guide... since you could use that at instant speed, and it didn't take up a land drop. I agree, that's really, really hard to balance, but it seemed like one of the few times you could get away with ": Add ." so I went for it. If it looks too good, remove a gold counter. It's probably still a good card starting with 3... just not busted.

I may be too pessimistic, but am I reading it wrong? Simian Spirit Guide produces . This produces , and if you play it on turn one, will almost certainly be usable once and probably twice more.

I was probably being too cautious, but I tend to assume wizards are extremely paranoid about fast mana that can be played on turn 1, because it helps ridiculous legacy combo decks, and they especially don't want ridiculous combo decks in standard. IIRC there's really really little (spells, lands or artifacts) that produces two coloured mana on turn 1, but there are some that produce that aren't one of the "traditionally overpowered" cards, so maybe it's not as risky as I thought as first.

(Simian Spirit Guide gives you +1 mana, and this card gives you +1 mana. It also happens to give you a land, but the mana boost is the same if you played a Mountain and discarded the Spirit Guide. That's what I was getting at.)

Well, no, it's perfectly fair to be pessimistic. I'm often the one down on this sort of card when other people design it. People just don't understand what 2 mana on a land does. They'll add a drawback like "Discard a card" or "Lose 2 life" and think it's fine... but, really, the land is still busted. In half.

So, yes, I might be falling for my own foible. But, you know these already exist. They're called things like Peat Bog, and they had no impact on the super-combo heavy Urza Block. Obviously, this had something to do with the fact that they come into play tapped, but losing that land drop is killer. We talk about card advantage and the ability to get fast mana and know just how awesome they are, but being ahead of the curve is another way to win games. Intentionally putting yourself behind the curve is really punishing. If this card had 3 counters, the best you could hope for is to get three rounds of 1 extra mana... then you wouldn't have any extra mana. The three rounds might not be consecutive, but if your opponent never gets a space to attack you by that point, you're probably winning anyhow.

On the subject of fast mana on turn one - yes, Wizards is super cautious of that, and also for good reason. I suppose this card is one of those break points of "at what point do you not care about cards from the past breaking cards of the present". The real fast mana problem comes from uncontrollable cards that keep 2-for-1-ing your mana or better. Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal or Grim Monolith, for example. Lands that can produce two mana aren't necessarily borken because, without the other hyper-mana accelerating cards surrounding it, it just makes another mana on round 1. Or, in other words, you can't cast a Dwarven Motherload into another Dwarven Motherload. You need something like Explore, I suppose... well, okay, I admit that's a pretty good way to go about abusing this sort of card. ;)

For all my blathering, there's a point where I should shrug and say "I really don't know. The truth is that cards like this need to be tested. And the truth behind the truth is that Wizards has probably already tested cards like this and said "No.", because otherwise we'd see them."

Jack: Are there any cards that produce on turn 1 that aren't overpowered? I thought Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors were both pretty powerful during their times in Standard. I guess Crystal Vein wasn't a problem, but that's more like a colourless Lotus Petal.

I suppose jmg's right that this needs to be tested, but I think it's almost certain to be way overpowered.

"the mana boost is the same if you played a Mountain and discarded the Spirit Guide. That's what I was getting at"

Ah! OK, I see. But you have to include the cost of the card: for a 5-cost spell, adding it as a 5-cost rider on a land may be reasonable, but for a 0-cost spell, the card is the only cost, so giving it for free to a land is likely to matter a lot more. After all, you couldn't make it tap for RRRRR and say "well, it's no worse than 4 simian spirit guides" :)

"I'm often the one down on this sort of card when other people design it."

LOL. Oh yes, me too. As I've made an effort to design sets rather than cards, I've tried to bring my instincts more in line with reality, but I still have a tendency to under-cost things often. It seems like amateur land designs are broken 90% of the time and unplayable 10% of the time, so you can save a lot of time by assuming anything that enters the battlefield untapped is broken (especially fast mana) :) I don't actually do that, but I am immediately suspicious of anything that can produce CC on turn 1, as wizards seem to have steered very clear, although I agree, there almost certainly is some places where it's correct.

I agree with you on things like Peat Bog. I assume it is a significant difference that it's tapped, as it rules out same-turn combos, although I agree, 2 mana shouldn't be automatically disallowed even if it makes me suspicious. In fact, there seems to be very few lands between Peat Bog and Ancient Tomb, where you'd think wizards would have found some design space, but they don't seem to have done. That means its hard to judge the strength of any lands that ever produce more than 1 mana, as there's nothing in modern design to compare them to: there's old, broken lands, and early-modern fairly weak lands, and cloudpost, and that's about it.

"I really don't know. The truth is that cards like this need to be tested."

Yeah, I really don't know either. I know enough to be suspicious, but not to judge which things that seem a little suspicious are actually going to be a problem, and which won't. It's also difficult because if it is broken, it'll probably be broken in some degenerate combo, but it's very hard to tell if the land is actually ok, or if we just get lucky that there's no combo available immediately, but it's likely to produce one later (or restrict following sets too much)

Alex: I certainly couldn't think of any (I wasn't playing when any of those were standard), but I found crystal vein when I searched gatherer, so I thought maybe I was too paranoid after all.

FWIW, I thought lotus petal was ALSO considered overpowered (although presumably only in conjunction with artifact-recursion decks?)

So yes, my default assumption is that anything like that is broken, but I can't be sure that's always right :)

I think an argument can be made that Phyrexian Tower isn't overpowered. It's damn good, but damn good is what Mythics are made of. It doesn't defend me very well, however, becomes creatures aren't free. Still, I don't think I've seen too many people packing 4xOrnithopter 4x Phyrexian Walker just for that early boost.

­Temple of the False God isn't broken, but... well, yeah... that makes sense. If the Urzatron isn't broken, it's still damn strong. It may be modern's forerunner very soon, and it's certainly played it's part throughout Magic history.

It's strange. With some cards, it's really about the environment their in. Serra's Sanctum for example can be considered a bad card... but when it's good, it is explosively good. Urza block had plenty of abusive enchantments since it was, secretly, the enchantment block. But I wonder if anyone would have played the Sanctum back then if there was no Replenish and Opalesense. It definitely would have made a deck somewhere in extended, eventually... I'm not arguing the card is fair. I just wonder where it would have popped up...

Yeah, I excluded "sacrifice a creature" lands: I think they're a lot safer because they're unlikely to go off on turn 1.

And yeah. Looking at Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Santcum, and Tolarian Academy, it might be an open question which is broken, but it turns out that two are good and one is completely broken, because there's sufficiently many affinity decks waiting to be made, but nothing quite the same for enchantments.

Shouldn't this be Motherlode? :)

Wikipedia confirms "lode" is correct, though I hadnt noticed it :)

In the discussion of 2-mana lands, note there's also the Boros Garrison cycle. They don't really count because you have to bounce a land, but they're the only recent 2-mana lands.

And indeed, Lotus Petal is considered overpowered, although I'm not quite sure why given that Simian Spirit Guide is okay.

Yeah, I saw a forum thread asking "why is lotus petal worse than simian spirit guide" and I realised I had no idea. I'd so much internalised the idea that 0-cost mana artifacts are ALWAYS overpowered I didn't question it.

I assume it's some combination of:

• increasing storm count
• being subject to graveyard recursion
• increasing affinity/metalcraft
• producing any colour

I assume "everyone knows" which decks are likely to need it and they care about some of those things -- but I don't know which are likely to matter :)

The bullet points that Jack mentioned are roughly why Lotus Petal is broken nowadays in legacy. During it's time, Lotus Petal was broken because other cards in the environment were broken... it just used Petal, Mox Diamond and Dark Ritual to do the broken thing it was doing faster. Hatred decks, for example, could often seal the deal on round 2 approximately 45% of the time (assuming you aggressively mulligan), and round 1 sometimes if you played with Goblin Berserkers. They did this because: ­