CardName: Gravevine Curse Cost: {2}{G}{B} Type: Enchantment - Aura Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Enchant land Whenever enchanted land becomes tapped its controller loses two life and you add {G}{B} to your mana pool. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: temporary storage Uncommon |
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Huh. Revenge of Psychic Venom. Or, alternatively, a relatively decent mana-ramp for yourself; but at a serious cost.
Could this be 1 cheaper? Making the mana ramp actually tempting sometimes?
I think in Limited the main use of this is mana ramp. Dawn's Reflection/Market Festival were very good acceleration towards the 6- or 7-mana Limited bombs.
Used on an opponent's land, this is much worse than straight-up land destruction, which was a bad 4 mana spell (Drain the Well).
Well, it's kinda worse. If you've got some useful way to sink that mana it could sometimes be better. And it works even if the land gets tapped down for some other reason - which some sets can make use of. But yeah; Psychic Venom was very much a bad card and so that part of this one is bad too.
Dawn's reflection is why I'd suggested downcosting by one - this is dual coloured and costs two pain and restricts the colours it produces. So it feels like it could cost 3 instead of 4.
Psychic Venom was actually kind of awesome, considering how you could often force your opponent to 'use' their land via cards like Power Sink and Icy Manipulator. It's only real fault was that Stone Rain and Blight were so cheap that it looked underwhelming in comparison, and there was no such thing as a mono-blue LD deck (not counting Erosion, because that card was actually terrible.)
But now that efficient land destruction spells don't exist anymore, I'd call Psychic Venom pretty damn good, and potentially above the curve. I'm pretty sure plenty of players would give it a second look if it was reprinted in the next set as a red enchantment.
When I say "much worse than land destruction", I mean it's like destroying the land except the opponent can choose to have it "un-destroyed" for a turn if they decide the extra mana is worth the 2 life and giving you 2 mana, which it might well be. I guess I wasn't considering ways for you to tap the opponent's lands, though, like Rishadan Port. That does make this mildly interesting. But I'm not sure an environment that contains several ways to tap the opponent's lands is a recipe for a fun environment to play in.