Prayer cantrip?, why not?

this is already a weaker/cheaper sudden strength, does the cantrip really need to be situational? usually you're better off asking why rather than why not

I tend to agree with keflexxx's observations. This is not the card for a prayer cantrip.

Also I argue the decks look cleaner if we keep the angelic revelation mechanic on casting and the prayer/life gain reactions as triggers. Would help us keep focus.

If all designers did was ask why, there's be very few new designs. I can see your point, Secret, and I'll look at an angelic redesign.

this is a massive aside and everything, but i don't really know how you can say that honestly. questioning whether your idea is a good one is a good thing to do, it means you present less bad ideas. that's not the same as advocating never thinking creatively, and you seem to be implying it is.

You don't want to think outside the box until everything inside has been exhausted. Otherwise, you run out of new designs too fast.

It's the exact opposite. If the did everything they could with cycling before landcycling happened, they would have cut the life of cycling. At the point this card was made, we were just starting. This was an idea we could have pursued. We didn't and that's fine, but it was an option.

If you always say "Is this a bad idea" before presenting an idea, you could miss great ideas. Say you present something stupid broken. Someone says, what if we tweak it this way. Then you say or we could do this. Suddenly a great idea is born from a bad one. Throw out ridiculous ideas, then accept constructive criticism and change it into a good idea. But be constructive with criticism. Note difference between your criticism and SecretInfiltrators.

My question isn't "is this a bad idea?", it's "is this a necessary idea?" I'm not saying you should ignore possibly bad ideas, just shelve them until your current idea needs something more. Expanding on your example: in Urza block, the first set with cycling, the only cycling cost was . Wizards obviously knew they'd want other costs eventually, but saved that idea. In Onslaught block, they introduced other costs and cycling triggers. In the third set, Scourge, they introduced landcycling. In Future Sight, they introduced non-mana costs and typecycling. Finally in Alara block, they introduced hybrid costs and expanded on the previous stuff. They kept restricting the box they were in to further mine the design space they had.

There's a difference between presenting ideas that could potentially be bad and throwing out ideas that you've spent zero time trying to think through critically. Presenting an idea that you know could be broken is different than presenting one that you have no idea it could be broken. It doesn't take too much thought to run through a few variations on an idea and see if its grossly increasing the space, outside the scope of the project, or adding nothing to the design. What if I proposed that we add one Pray card to the Science deck and one Re-Engineer card to the Faith deck. That way the audience gets the idea that Science and Faith are both trying to explain the world. That idea is obviously bad. This card isn't as obviously bad, but simply throwing onto the pile doesn't help anyone unless its necessity can be articulated. Like building a deck or a strategy the primary goal is to remove as much as possible. To have the absolute essentials. Pray-trip does not feel essential.

There is too much overlap between this and (((Unshakable Belief))) methinks.

yeah there is, and i imagine belief will win out

agreed, removing