Inspired by Opium Addiction; referencing Black Lotus. Does this make it a mashup? It wasn't randomly selected.

Seems rather worse than Lotus Blossom.

And yes, this is absolutely a mashup; nothing about mashups implies they have to be randomly chosen. It's been a frequent way to obtain "unconnected" cards because that was part of the original idea of mashups. I believe this Goblin Artisans post was the recent origin of mashups, which does use random cards from Gatherer, but doesn't say they're necessary.

If you're using it just for mana; then yes. But it's also getting stompy at the same time. I mean - if nothing else, it's a 2/2 for and 1 life; which seems a nice black cost creature to me.

I'm actually reminded of Primordial Ooze before any Lotus cards.

I'm now thinking about a set with "Costs life" as a theme. Perhaps a little blood-drop symbol or something (though that'd probably look too much like to be used)

At any point during your upkeep?

This barely seems black. Is Lotus misspelled on purpose?

Yes. And lifeloss cost creature isn't black?

I guess maybe it could make only black mana, but then it'd be even less desirable.

That'd feel a bit more black. And you're right, this is pretty stompy too, I'd completely missed that aspect. It's like a Carnophage-Sangrophage unbounded progression all in one card!

(I think dude1818's comment is a sideways templating nitpick. Modern cards say "At the beginning of your upkeep" rather than "During your upkeep". As demonstrated by the Carnophage-Sangrophage progression, in fact :) )

Didn't realise those creatures actually existed; should have expected them to, I suppose.

... so does anything happen at the end of your upkeep? In the middle of your upkeep? "Before things that happen at the start of" you upkeep?

Silly templating. Gonna ignore that :)

It's just a way to get them to trigger. If you want it to be a triggered ability, it needs to see some specific event to trigger off. "Beginning of upkeep" is the most conventional one to use (and the only sane way to get triggers to happen during upkeep these days; you can still have upkeep-only activated abilities like on Eternal Dragon).

It's also worth noting that "At the beginning of your upkeep" abilities only actually resolve at what's normally the end of your upkeep. Imagine an upkeep step with five abilities triggering, a few spells in between, and eventually the bottom one of the stack finally resolves. That was an "at the beginning of your upkeep" ability. It's just the way the timing system works.

And you are of course free to ignore it for your own custom cards, in the same way you're free to ignore any other aspect of templating or make cards which say they turn into bananas.

I might have to, considering my next mashup turned up an unglued card...

Not that this is where the conversation has gone, mind you, but I don't know whether "This seems worse than Lotus Blossom" is a valid criticism or not. It's tough to judge just how good Lotus Blossom is, since it is surrounded by super-powered Urza Block cards. Even if this just stayed a 1/1, I'd say it had one up on the blossom by virtue of costing one less.

I do wonder what would happen if Lotus Blossom was printed in 2014. It would be nice to see that card make a return, away from its block.

Welll.... Pentad Prism is my go-to comparison for such things; slightly fiddlier to cast, but no power-up delay; and you rarely need more than two mana. The blossom does let it get huge, so can be used more like Dwarven Hold; but that's not usually an important advantage.

so it's probably not an unfair card. It'd certainly see use though. I'd not mind this being a little worse that it. the culmulative life cost makes it a LOT worse though; so if it had no upside, I'd consider it a problem.

Now I'm wondering if we shouldn't just have a set of random reprints a couple a day and see what comments they get :) (with suitable "This is a reprint, don't bother saying that" warnings)