Pushes the envelope? Yeah. I figured I'd rather run this flag, though, and see what happens, then go for the much milder "Add one mana of any color to your mana pool."

It's got a weird vibe to it. In some senses, Simian Spirit Guide is much better, giving you a colored mana, which doesn't need to land, and provides a better body if you don't need the mana. This, however, is an etb creature... which, in theory, is supposed to be better... though constantly bouncing this for the mana boost seems like a waste of resources. If you can cheat it on the field, though, that's quite the boost. Wizards is sorry they ever printed Rite of Flame, but it's easy to imagine how that card could get out of control. I suppose part of the question of whether this card is too good for an environment is "Is there anything substantially good on round 1 in this environment that costs ?"

I think the fact that this creature doesn't have any power and it's not an artifact makes it a lot less scary. If it was a 1/1 and/or had Artifact as one of its types, I could see it being pretty broken in some kind of aggro deck or Affinity. Without that, it's the kind of card whose ability wants it to be in an aggressive deck, but its body doesn't match up well for that. I couldn't see spending a card on this body in a Zoo deck, for example. Maybe some sort of equipment deck is where this would find a home?

I'm not too concerned about it being useful enough. I know plenty of combo decks that would love to go off one turn earlier, and, you know, free chump blocker while we're at it. That almost makes the stats on this card an unfortunate by-product of our Magic times, since it could be cooler, if only it wasn't for the damn deck that abuses it and doesn't really appreciate the bonus creature, the way that a Zoo deck would. Ah, well.

Fascinating. An eye-opening common that's clearly useful but probably doesn't actually break anything. Good job.

@jmg: One turn earlier than what? Specifically, which ritual is this card replacing that is slower than this card? Every playable ritual I can think of generates at least two mana (well, except for Rite of Flame, but the idea with Rite is that you will typically cast more than one), and this card only nets you 1 mana, and also it's colorless, which is a pretty big deal. Also, the chump blocker is usually going to be worthless, since you are only going to cast your rituals the turn you are going off. If you're going off, you usually don't intend for your opponent to have another attack phase, so the 0/2 body won't matter.

Hmmm... combo with Blasting Station perhaps? Or, hmm. Turn 1 this + leonin scimitar equipped for a 1/3?

Or turn two you could use it to drop 4 mana's worth of equipment onto your one-drop, which might be pretty scary - but isn't really much worse than using any other ritual.

60creatures.dec would certainly use this as a substitute for Tinder Wall: basically all it's used for is ramping into Myr Superion, but in this case the blocker sticks around. Also, it can theoretically be an attacker if Signal Pest is there.

@Cymerdown: Well, that's kind of the point I was making. This card just hovers below being abusable. Had it added colored mana, for example, it would probably be better than Lotus Petal, which is one hell of a good card. Some would say broken.