­Prophetic Prism-land. If it exists, then don't mind me.

First reaction: Yikes! A cantrip land?!

Second reaction: Oh, hang on, it doesn't actually make mana. So that's probably okay. Hmm.

Nope, I don't think Wizards have played with cantrip lands much. The Temple of Triumph cycle are tournament all-stars though, and "scry 1" is like about 40% of "draw a card". (Though New Benalia wasn't very exciting, though even that had its fans.) I'm not very keen on lands that don't actually advance your mana count, though. They confuse new players and need different deckbuilding heuristics: you can't really count them as land slots.

The parallelism between Prophetic Prism and Prismatic Lens is very interesting, and at times you'll want one and at times you'll want the other. This compared to Shimmering Grotto/Unknown Shores, though, is a bit more confusing. The Grotto is clearly fine, not an all-star, but perfectly playable. This... I don't know.

Oh, very good question. Could this exist? Should this exist?

1. Is it balanced? I think it is ok, surprisingly. Cantrips for a small cost are usually ok, it's only free cantrips which are risky. And it's only on the early turns when a small mana cost matters, when giving a land drop to cycle a card is probably as valuable as paying .

2. Is it OK to have lands which don't increase your maximum mana? I wasn't sure, but I'm inclined to agree with Alex it's probably a bad idea.

Good name.

On the name: I was trying to think of a prophecised land, and went generic.

I guess this is stretching the definition of land quite a bit - it does make mana; but not on its own; it doesn't make more mana :)

But given it's a cantrip - it also doesn't actually take up a card slot in the deck. So I think even if a new player counts it as a land, there's no harm done. (Unless we printed lots, and they ran nothing but - that would be dumb enough that surely they'd spot it though.)

The problem is that... say at the start of a game you've got 4 lands including this. And your hand includes an okay 2-drop you can cast without this, and a good 2-drop you need this to cast. Well, the earliest that good 2-drop will come out is turn 3. As for the turns before that? You naturally want to see the extra card earlier, because that'll help you make better decisions... except then you're down 1 mana each turn until you've played out your hand. As in, you've got 2 mana on turn 3, 3 mana on turn 4, etc.

Oh true; playing this loses tempo, so there's a choice to be made. Sometimes playing without this is the right thing to do. Removing all clever decisions from the game isn't one of the aims, is it?