Random Generator gave me Stormscape Battlemage and Fellwar Stone. This one is discussed also in the set comments thread, since it was a very tricky one to hack and I asked for help. I like this version, but I may be a little greedy over here. What do you guys think? Pare it down a little better, probably by removing Green and Red references, simplify harder, use more parity by linking life gain and damage loss to players only (even if we lose a bit of Stormscape in the process) or leave it alone?

Ug. I keep messing with this, and not being happy. I'll come back to it later. Maybe this rock should have a enter the battlefield effect that adds mana and gains life. And a sac and leave the battlefield that adds mana and kills something? I'll probably make that card later.

The funny thing is that this isn't even a mana ability.

Not where I want this card to be, but for right now, a little better. At least this version is printable, compared to a lot of other cards I kept typing out. To be changed again.

Why force yourself to reference all five colors? It makes the design feel stretched, I think.

I like the Pristine Talisman effect. But I can't see why you'd want to add all five colours. "Being an artifact that taps for mana" seems to be enough to take from Fellwar Stone.

It was where the card was temporarily settling, not where it was staying. The incarnations that it shifted through were something like:

­: Add a combination of two mana to your mana pool as long as an opponent's lands can produce those colors [Sic]. If is produced this way, gain 3 life. If is produced this way, deal two damage to target creature.

Which I felt that I could improve upon by adding and . It sounded fine, but when I looked at it in the card frame, it just looked all kinds of wordy. And those random mana symbols just sitting inside the text... blech.

I didn't want to leave it at that, so I switched it up and quickly left it as this instead, which at least looks like a printable card. It is not what I want the card to look like, but I do want to fix the card, and I fear I won't do that if I delete the card.

Edited, and seeing how much I like this version. I like the concept of "If {blah} was paid", but I don't like how it looks when written out. I kind of wish there was a keyword that covered it, since it seems ubiquitous enough to end up on any number of cards.

This is a nice take on the idea. I'd play this in a white-black deck or a blue-black deck.

Originally the Battlestone required you to pay mana like kicker to get the two bonus abilities. The problem with that was:

It was kicker, but it didn't admit it. Kicker is much too ubiquitous to pretend it doesn't exist, and:

This sort of thing might have been fine as a one shot. But mana stones scream "I'm part of a cycle!", and this was gearing up to be one awkward cycle.

So, I stopped putting my head under the pounding sledge for not being creative enough to surprise even myself. The capsule 'cycle' from Alara is a much more fun idea to play with, even if it isn't terribly creative. Which is the point, after all, right?

Time to roll up some random cards and see what the rest of the cycle looks like...