Misc Design for future sets.: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity
Mechanics

CardName: The Furnace Cost: Type: Legendary Land Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: When The Furnace enters the battlefield sacrifice an artifact or return The Furnace to your hand. The Furnace enters the battlefield tapped. {T}: Add {R}{R} to your mana pool. Sacrifice an artifact, {T}: Add {R}{R}{R}{R} to your mana pool. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Misc Design for future sets. Mythic

The Furnace
 
 M 
Legendary Land
When The Furnace enters the battlefield sacrifice an artifact or return The Furnace to your hand.
The Furnace enters the battlefield tapped.
{t}: Add {r}{r} to your mana pool.
Sacrifice an artifact, {t}: Add {r}{r}{r}{r} to your mana pool.
Updated on 13 Jan 2015 by Vonmarcus

History: [-]

2014-03-15 02:17:57: Vonmarcus created the card The Furnace
2014-03-15 02:18:43: Vonmarcus edited The Furnace

Hee! Exciting. Lands that produce multiple mana are very, very hard to balance; but you may have done a pretty good job with this one. ETBT definitely helps.

The main ability (tapping for {r}{r}) is immensely powerful. But you have to sacrifice an artifact to get it out, which means it's very unlikely to be accelerating you on turns 1-2, unless you have an Ornithopter; most other tournament-playable {0}- or {1}-drop artifacts are themselves manafixing like Mox Opal, so there's not much point giving them up for this.

The last ability reminds me of Lake of the Dead, and is probably okay, although it's easier to make artifact tokens than Swamp tokens. Krark-Clan Ironworks indicates that even artifact tokens can be sacced for mana without too many problems (though the Ironworks was the centrepiece of notable decks in multiple formats).

This is certainly a scary card - eyepopping, in the way mythics should be - but I think there's a good chance it can be balanced enough to not get killed by development. Nice!

I'm not sure how much more this can be balanced, with out messing with the meta. Any thoughts on how to help balance it?

I think I agree with Alex - you've nailed it.

Sacrificing artifacts for 4 mana is exciting. That's not a bad thing.

There are repeatable artifact token creators - but Myr Matrix costs 5 to make a token; so that's perfect - and everything else I can find needs you to cast a spell, or taps, or has other limits.

You probably can make this go infinite; probably using Pentavus or similar. But three card combos that make infinite mana aren't a problem.

So really, this is an extra mana land, at the cost of an artifact. Well heck. Wild Growth is an extra mana, at the cost of an enchantment. So that part seems to me to be exciting, but probably not a problem. (It's still worth keeping an eye on though - if you have things like Pentad prism that are used up and then it's no skin off your nose to feed them to this, then it's a bigger tempo advantage.)

For whatever it's worth, my attempts in this space were Cistern and Redmine.

Hmm ok. Good to know. Also I don't think that you can make this go infinite with some way to keep untapping it.

It would have probably been broken in Mirrodin, but not necessarily in Modern. As long as you keep it away from sets that can really abuse the card, it should be fine.

I admit, whenever I see a land that adds two mana to the mana pool, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Almost every land that's been printed like that, so far, has been broken (to the point that Wizards doesn't even seem to bother doing it these days.)

On a side note, I'd also make sure not to print any tier one artifacts that cost {1} or maybe even {2} that have a solid enter the battlefield, or leave the battlefield ability. This card seems mighty good with Ichor Wellspring, for example. Probably not busted. But if the Wellspring was any better, it would be.

I will keep an eye on the sets cheaper artifacts to help keep this in line.

2015-01-12 23:50:34: Vonmarcus moved the card The Furnace from Phyrexian Descent 1 into Misc Design for future sets.
2015-01-13 15:45:20: Vonmarcus edited The Furnace

Add your comments:


(formatting help)
Enter mana symbols like this: {2}{U}{U/R}{PR}, {T} becomes {2}{u}{u/r}{pr}, {t}
You can use Markdown such as _italic_, **bold**, ## headings ##
Link to [[[Official Magic card]]] or (((Card in Multiverse)))
Include [[image of official card]] or ((image or mockup of card in Multiverse))
Make hyperlinks like this: [text to show](destination url)
What is this card's power? Kindercatch
(Signed-in users don't get captchas and can edit their comments)