I think this cycle of lands works well.

How many sets currently have this type of color fixing at common? There was one in one of the Shards sets that filtered a colorles into any color. This card only filters into two colors, has two other abilities but also comes into play tapped. Has some argument to being upgraded to uncommon and also some downsides for it to stay at common?

Oh, guess I just noticed it doesn't tap for a colorless. Suppose it could tap for a colorless and upgrade it to uncommon but that would be alot of text!

It's certainly way too wordy for a common. It's also "not a real land" in that it doesn't tap for mana. I can see why you want a sacland with Test for Lands, but there's no way you can have this many words on a common. I don't see a very sensible solution.

I'll admit, I'd been a little concerned about the wordiness. I know that I need a decent amount of color fixing in this environment, as there are multicolor cards and each theme spans at least 2 colors. What I run into though is the challenge of presenting a land that can produce more than one color of mana and still look creatively original in a common slot. Then I look at the fact that I've already got a cycle of 1-drops with Test for Land and I wonder if these need it too.

It's certainly simple enough now to fit at common. I actually quite like this design. I would not call it a high pick, but when you start thinking about color fixing, it seems ok to pull a couple of these.

It doesn't have the Test rider, but the more I looked at them, the less I liked it there. Sure, you sac them for a mana diversity boost and then you have them in the bin, but in the long run you're ditching bad active land for maybe no land at all.

This build actually allows you to get mana the turn it comes into play (sac), or to get 2 mana after that (tap, sac combo).

Actually that's 3 mana; is that too fast? On turn 2 that could make for some degenerate plays, giving you up to 5 mana.

It's currently better than the Ancient Spring cycle, which were the same but had to tap to sac, which is probably fair enough -- I think we need more common mana fixing (for constructed, limited probably has enough), and I quite like the "mostly black, but a bit of UR" combination.

However, I agree the combination may be a little swingy: If you can sac without tapping, two of these could give five mana on turn two, which would wipe you out landwise, but could be devestating if you can play something big unopposed for several turns. That's not unreasonable -- compare something like scythe tiger. But you probably don't want it to be the norm every game.

Conversely, I know I find this sort of land especially annoying when I have to wait for the mana, but don't get the benefit till later, there's a big incentive to cash it in immediately, which is a bit nihilistic (or just get annoyed if you have to tap to sac).

Random ideas:

• Perhaps offer a choice between sac-the-turn-it-comes-into-play or a standard tapland?
• Perhaps find a way it could sacrifice something else with a "test for" under some circumstance?
• Give up and reprint an existing cycle (I don't like that, especially if you want a common cycle, but depressingly often there's just no good land that hasn't already been printed)
• Make it a tapland for black that has a counter on it can spend to produce another colour (similar to previous things, but can do more if you want to make common land slots from it)

Bombshell and Jack seem to be reading this as "Sac: Add ". As far as I can see it has "Sac: Add OR ". That means it's much less degenerate: on turn 2 it gives you 3 mana, just like the Ancient Spring cycle do.

However, Jack does have a good point. If you topdeck this and you're on 4 mana with a 5-drop and a 6-drop in hand, do you sac it immediately to cast your 5-drop? It's probably not a good idea, but the card tempts you to do it anyway.

Oops. Yes, that's much more reasonable, sorry. Thanks, Alex. Although I think the same sort of problems apply, but much less so.

The tempo trade-off was exactly what I had in mind with these; if you play one per turn, no matter how you use them you'll never net a an average of more than one mana per turn — unless you win on the only turn you pop one.

True dropping these on T1 & T2 means you can have 5 mana available on T3 but I think the drawback of losing 2 lands in the process is a fine balance.

This cycle looks like the Seafloor Debris cycle at first, but it's in fact very similar to the Ancient Spring or Ebon Stronghold cycle. Nice.