CardName: Spellstone
Cost: 0
Type: Artifact - Lyxian
Pow/Tgh: /
Rules Text: When Spellstone comes into play, Exile a card from your
hand.
1: Place a Ritual counter on Spellstone.
T, sacrifice Spellstone: Return the exiled card to your hand
and add X to your mana pool, where X is the number of Ritual
counters on Spellstone. This mana may only be used to cast
the card that was exiled.
Flavour Text:
Set/Rarity: Chroma Core Set Rare
Spellstone
R
Artifact – Lyxian
When Spellstone comes into play, Exile a card from your hand.
1: Place a Ritual counter on Spellstone.
T, sacrifice Spellstone: Return the exiled card to your hand and add X to your mana pool, where X is the number of Ritual counters on Spellstone. This mana may only be used to cast the card that was exiled.
Most of the time, it turns 8cc spells into 4cc spells with Echo. At first, that sounded busted to me, but now that I think about it, it's probably close to fair. Some things to watch out for:
Wildfire or any card that operates like Wildfire. I could play this and a land on round 1, then a land and activate on round 2, then a land and activate on round 3. From this point on, I have the ability to wipe the board... so I can just sit here until my opponent over extends. That doesn't sound like a very interactive game. We don't see many cards that operate like Wildfire anymore, but I'm sure you could find a replacement. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if Obliterate was reprinted one day...
There's no real way to use this card the way you indicate, since, when it goes to your hands, the spell changes zones, and Spellstone forgets what it was. You can change this to say "A card with the same name as"... that fixes your problem. But now you have a different problem. You can use this Spellstone to cast any number of spells with the same name (making this a particularly spicy combo piece for, say, Empty the Warrens). You might be able to get some wording that allows the mana to only be used on one spell... but it sounds so awkward, and I wouldn't bother. It's better to just adjust the power level of the card, and let it do the crazier, more direct thing. Perhaps ": add 2 counters"?
I assume this is colorless only? , not X? That would probably help balance some of the power level concerns, plus make it better in a very specific high-casting cost artifact deck. That deck could probably use the shot in the arm.
You can use curly brackets {} to turn the 1 and T into symbols. This seems like an interesting way to be able to suspend any card.
Most of the time, it turns 8cc spells into 4cc spells with Echo. At first, that sounded busted to me, but now that I think about it, it's probably close to fair. Some things to watch out for: