Well, this sucks. Consider Bant Panorama which 1) comes in untapped; 2) taps for colourless forever; and 3) can find you a better land.

Yes but you have to take the setting into account. The lands in the first set are suppossed to be sub-par as Mana has long been a scarce resource. Taken on its own yes, this is not great but in the context of the set once it is all up, this will make more sense. Also, as the set progresses, this will become much more useful.

Fair enough, but (except for the Mine subtype) this is strictly worse than a basic land. That means there's almost never a reason to put this in your deck.

Sub-par lands is fair game, but I think this takes it a bit far.

Added an extra rider putting new mining counters on this whenever another mine enters the battlefield under your control. Thematically, this represents the fact that as new mines are opened, older mines are being abandoned/decomissioned.

Interesting design, but it's still worse than a basic land unless you have something else that likes counters on your permanents (or that likes being cast with colourless mana). Unless you're planning to say that Limited events with your set will not have basic land provided, so you have to draft the subpar land to play with them as well, there's not much reason to ever play this in a deck.

Took out the sacrifice clause so it always sticks around waiting for new strikes (mines). Also, this card is only ever meant to see play in this block. Certain factions (mainly the Dwarf faction) interact with mines as part of a small 'mines matter' sub-theme.

I agree with Alex. If you have interactions with these cards, I'd at least suggest the Cave land (": Add to your mana pool." and nothing else). If you need mining counters for these interactions (I haven't checked), make the card playable at least. :P

this one is still a work-in-progress. There are cards that care about mines and mining counters.

how is it looking now?

How about removing the "doesn't untap" clause? Does it have to be that bad, and worse than a basic land?

I don't know what it was like before but I'm definitely starting to like it now. I think it will always look odd if you see it in isolation and it can't tap for mana at all. But having skimmed the rest of the set, I can see why it exists. It's definitely normally worse than basic, but may be useful if you have good ways of getting mine counters on.

A compromise might be to start it off untapped or with one counter on, and/or make it tapped for colored (although I like the flavour of tapping for colourless) or maybe for 2 (although that's risky). Then you can see that it's worse than a basic land normally, but you can see what you might do with it if you can get some mine counters on.

changed ETBs tapped to ETBs with a counter. There are one or two ways to add counters in this set and more in Dark Omens. Plus, there are uses for Mines in both sets. I am working on an 'Intro Pack' to post on a details page that will show why this exists and how it works.

One counter is I feel sufficient as it allows you to tap this for the turn you play it.

At least with what I have seen, there aren't a lot of cards that care about mines, and there aren't any in common. I really really suggest that this becomes way better. It's nice that it can tap for 2 in one turn, but it's horrible that it can't anytime later. Even if mine were a strong theme (the cards aren't that strong), it'd be a bad choice to have a bad common that helps good uncommons or rares. It's much more reasonable to have usable commons that get better by good but not broken uncommons or rares. Given that you need to play with these mines, that the effects still cost a lot, etc. I don't see how you think this would be too good. Compare to the Urzatron, for example, or Sift Through Sands, or Dark Supplicant.

this is as good as this is going to get. It will make more sense once all of the Dark Omens cards are up.

Looking forward to those interactions, then. :)

Template issue: it should say "...enters with a mining counter on it." The last ability should be "Remove a mining counter from ~:..."

Went through and checked, there are 5 cards in the set that care about/reference mines. Look for about double that (and a mine intro deck) in Dark Omens.