See Challenge # 105.

Random gave me Mox Jet... unbelievable.

Wow, one of the power-nine is causing problems when they re-introduced it to the environment. Who'd have ever expected that?

Well, Wizards response to this was just to give up and ban them. Let's see if we can do better.

Ok, so. Any answer to this needs to be turn one at the very latest. Later in the game, it's no worse than a mana-elf.

And I'm tempted to think that the punishment should be so harsh that you don't have to have the answer card in every deck, just enough of them that the metagame deals with the problem.

Or, oooh - castable from sideboard? Mayybe.

What shall we target? Well, it's a mana maker, that's common all over the place; it's an artifact - still too common. It's a zero-cost. There's very little in that space - some kobolds, the 'thopter; that's about it. If we catch them in the AOE; it's not a huge problem. (Most decks would be using those for the 0-cost recursion anyway)

So the obvious thing to do here is have quite a steep cost based on the CMC of a permanent.

So - my blunt hammer card is: " - Exile target permanent with CMC X; you may cast ~ from your sideboard; if you do, lose X life"

And it'd have to be an interrupt; otherwise they get the mana that turn and it's too late.

Maybe better to make it a counterspell? That's cleaner.

I fear I'm creating a "Run four of me" monster, even when there isn't a mox in environment - it;s just so good to eliminate other cheap cards, such as combat tricks. I could make it 4x or 8x I guess? Ah heck, let's pretend we had to drop this into antiquities - which is about when you'd have wanted to nuke the moxen anyway. We'll make it artifact specific - so it looks more like a colourless/black take on Artifact Blast; almost always you'd prefer to run blast - but when there's no cost or you didn't draw one, here's an option for you.

And because we need everyone to at least have ACCESS to four; we'll make it uncommon. And up it to 3x because after all, we don't want people to just counter every random 1-cost and 2-cost artifact.

Bwahahaha at the whims of the random generator.

Great answer, though :)

"Wow, one of the power-nine is causing problems when they re-introduced it to the environment. Who'd have ever expected that?"

­:D

Excellent answer by the way. I could see myself arguing with the rules team for this card, even if if I know I'd lose that fight.