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CardName: The Worldshell Cost: Type: Legendary Land Creature - Turtle Pow/Tgh: */* Rules Text: As The Worldshell enters the battlefield, exile any number of nonlegendary lands you control until it leaves the battlefield. The Worldshell's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands exiled by The Worldshell. {T}: Add {G} to your mana pool. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Xianlu Mythic

The Worldshell
 
 M 
Legendary Land Creature – Turtle
As The Worldshell enters the battlefield, exile any number of nonlegendary lands you control until it leaves the battlefield.
The Worldshell's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands exiled by The Worldshell.
{t}: Add {g} to your mana pool.
*/*
Updated on 11 Jan 2018 by Mal

Code: MG02

History: [-]

2017-11-12 17:39:32: Mal created and commented on the card The Worldshell

Basically, the flavor of this is supposed to be a Turtle dragon that carries the world on its back.

­{g} usually doesn't get Armageddon-esque effects, so I may change this over to {w}{g} later. I think it's an okay bend in Green since green can destroy lands.

The death trigger is on "dies" instead of "leaves the battlefield" to introduce a greater level of risk for the caster. Might lead to some feel-bad moments where the caster goes all-in only to have it bounced or exiled, but I assume this will be built around in constructed formats where it matters. Stats are pretty malleable, but for a seven mana Amageddon-on-a-Stick that has the option of being one-sided, I think 2/4 base is pretty okay.

Alternate version was a White turtle that gave you Hexproof and redirected all damage to itself, but it didn't feel as splashy. Might go back to that design if this isn't received well.

2017-11-21 22:16:09: Mal edited The Worldshell
2018-01-08 08:26:12: Mal edited The Worldshell:

I have no clue what I'm doing.

2018-01-08 08:26:38: Mal edited The Worldshell
2018-01-08 08:42:23: Mal edited The Worldshell:

Still have no idea what I'm doing. Adding haste and trample so you might think about playing it in Limited.

Making this a land makes balanced and good a herculean task. How about using a nonland card?

I think I like this. Dropping it late game to give spare lands a use; or mid-game as a big risk.

The flavour doesn't quite feel perfect - the lands are inaccessibly underneath the turtle, not on top of it. But maybe the imagery can fix that well enough.

I could make it a nonland, but I actually prefer it as a land. I'm not really concerned with it being good, especially because it has a couple of extra uses outside of being a beater. If you have a sacrifice outlet on board, you can use it to untap all lands you control in place of a land drop. It also begs the player to use Armageddon/Worldslayer-esque effects as well. Those uses alone make me confident that as long as this isn't better than Dryad Arbor, it's okay as a Mythic.

Oh sure, I do generally like it. It's nifty.

But traditionally the land is on top of the turtle; but on the table, it'll be the other way around. So that's a slight mental glitch.

Isn't it weird that this can be used as a finisher in any deck that plays (a lot of) lands? So it's a haste trampling dude in any color. Then there's all the wacky combos. It's certainly good, but the point was that it hardly seems that it could be reworked so that it would be good and balanced (&& operator).

Hm, that's a good point. I'll remove Haste and Trample for now, but yeah, might be a bit tricky to balance. The other thought is making this a plain land with the ability to animate itself for some amount of {g}.

2018-01-10 15:36:22: Mal edited The Worldshell

If it had a {g} cost to animate itself; that would probably be fine.

Well, if I were to turn it into a manland, it'd probably be something like:

>~ enters the battlefield tapped.

>{t}: Add {g} to your mana pool.

>{g}, Exile any number of lands you control: Until end of turn, ~ becomes a X/X green Turtle creature with trample, where X is equal to the number of lands exiled this way. It's still a land. Return those lands to the battlefield at end of turn.

But that seems decidedly less interesting and less combo-tastic than this.

If you're considering manland, the 'Legendary Land Creature' typeline instantly suggested to me the Theros Gods... what if it's got a God-style conditional to become a creature? Like "As long as you control less than X Forests, ~ isn't a creature."

The god-like ability is a pretty good idea and something I'll use if this turns out to be nothing like what I want.

Since this can be played in any deck, I figure I'd remove the haste and trample to separate the creature itself from Green. You're still encouraged to put this in a green deck because it usually generates a number of lands and this can be played as a "free" beater, but control decks "splashing" this card as a free hasty trample beater was a concern. I figure with less keywords and no protection, control decks might not want it (or, if they do, they'd play it as a 3/3 or 4/4 creature while leaving counterspells up for removal).

Its ability being combo-tastic is one of the primary reasons why I want to keep the exiling lands until LTB design, but space is an issue so if it gets too long I'll drop it.

The other consideration for the manland was this:

>{t}: Add {g} to your mana pool.

>{g}, Exile any number of nonlegendary lands you control: ~ becomes an X/X green Turtle creature until end of turn, where X is the number of lands exiled by it.

>When ~ dies, return all lands exiled by ~ to the battlefield under their owner's control.

But it's kind of extra long text-wise.

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