More efficient than Belcher (except that you can't use Lion's Eye Diamond to help pay for it), and Mana Severance makes it really easy to fulfill, without even the risk of nuking your whole library and having an opponent make you draw at instant speed.
Mmm... ignoring the power-nine; this is actually really fun. It is perfectly possible to land-strip a deck (I had a Green-red deck that did it regularly - sometimes as early as turn 7) and this as a finisher is fantastic.
I don't see why you would have an explorer ability on a land search spell anyway. If you have more lands, you're less likely to need to spend mana fetching more.
Yeah, that seems better. A Rampant Growth that turns into an Explosive Vegetation, costed in between the two. (Reminiscent of my card Expansion in that way, although I backed off from getting the full Exploding Vegetables into a conditional Cultivate.)
...Unfortunately this does have another problem now, which is that this card changes the number of lands you have on the battlefield. And the Explorer check is written after the text which changes the number of lands, but is evaluated before it.
Seek the Horizon shows this is just really underpowered. I also think of Explosive Vegetation and Dawn's Reflection. Note that you get Cultivate for cheaper than this, which is better than the bonus version of this. I think you depowered this a bit too much!
2012-10-15 11:08:48:
Alex
commented on the cardset Siluras
jmg's idea sounds like a classic example of the kind of "forcing players to make hard decisions" kind of tension that so many designers got criticised for in GDS2.
2012-10-15 11:07:09:
Alex
deleted a comment on Siluras
2012-10-15 11:07:05:
Alex
deleted a comment on Siluras
2012-10-15 11:07:04:
Alex
deleted a comment on Siluras
For Explorer: My first thought was that you could feature a bunch of cards in your set that encourage returning a land to your hand as part of the cost, to increase stress. That said, it would take a lot of cards with that mechanic to matter, since the Explorer deck would simply choose not to play with them. You could force the explorer deck to play with them, but I don't know how much fun the explorer player would have. Example:
Instant
As an additional cost to play ~, return X lands to your hand.
Deal X damage to all flying creatures.
Explorer - If you have more lands than all other players, target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.
Personally, I love stress. Many other players don't however. Ah well.
Maybe the Explorer cards should care about lands that are in your hand instead? That brings a fair amount of variability... though, it's probably very different from whatever you were planning.
I can't ever think of a time where a spell card in my hand would be with putting one +1/+1 counter on a creature I control (for feral 1). Maybe I just haven't play tested the cards and saw the power, or I overvalue card advantage too much. :)
Yeah, it definitely needs work. It was an attempt to help out colors other than green take more advantage of the Explorer mechanic. Maybe it needs to have more stealing in it.
The idea was waiting for your opponent to map out the land, then sneak in and steal those maps, getting the lay of the land while the opponent does most of the work.
I like the idea, but this is such a white mechanic that I have a hard time seeing blue do this. It's especially vexing, since this is one of those things blue really wants to do (get more lands) and is denied, since that encourages players to play two color decks.
I do admit, though, that if this card was white, it would probably search for Plains only. I'm not really certain what color I'd use for this the way it's written... though I suspect Wizards would wait for a multicolor set and cost it . I also get the impression that this card became blue due to 'Treasure Maps' -> 'Pirate' -> Blue. I don't see any reason one has to follow that formula religiuosly, though. I like it when flavor has to go out of color for legitimate reasons.
Yes, I know the name needs work. Have a laugh for now though.
More efficient than Belcher (except that you can't use Lion's Eye Diamond to help pay for it), and Mana Severance makes it really easy to fulfill, without even the risk of nuking your whole library and having an opponent make you draw at instant speed.
Mmm... ignoring the power-nine; this is actually really fun. It is perfectly possible to land-strip a deck (I had a Green-red deck that did it regularly - sometimes as early as turn 7) and this as a finisher is fantastic.
25 Black Lotus, 30 Ancestral Recall, 5 Wilderness Conquered.dek!
Erm.
There is also Wilderness Conquered
The relative number of lands seems unimportant compared to "Do I have enough lands to cast my stuff yet"?
And if I'm using 3-mana slots for landsearch, then I'm probably casting at the 8 level.
I don't see why you would have an explorer ability on a land search spell anyway. If you have more lands, you're less likely to need to spend mana fetching more.
Which may make it confusing for some players.
Yeah, that seems better. A Rampant Growth that turns into an Explosive Vegetation, costed in between the two. (Reminiscent of my card Expansion in that way, although I backed off from getting the full Exploding Vegetables into a conditional Cultivate.)
...Unfortunately this does have another problem now, which is that this card changes the number of lands you have on the battlefield. And the Explorer check is written after the text which changes the number of lands, but is evaluated before it.
The non-explorer effect here is awful. Could it at least be Rampant Growth rather than Lay of the Land?
Seek the Horizon shows this is just really underpowered. I also think of Explosive Vegetation and Dawn's Reflection. Note that you get Cultivate for cheaper than this, which is better than the bonus version of this. I think you depowered this a bit too much!
jmg's idea sounds like a classic example of the kind of "forcing players to make hard decisions" kind of tension that so many designers got criticised for in GDS2.
For Explorer: My first thought was that you could feature a bunch of cards in your set that encourage returning a land to your hand as part of the cost, to increase stress. That said, it would take a lot of cards with that mechanic to matter, since the Explorer deck would simply choose not to play with them. You could force the explorer deck to play with them, but I don't know how much fun the explorer player would have. Example:
Instant
As an additional cost to play ~, return X lands to your hand.
Deal X damage to all flying creatures.
Explorer - If you have more lands than all other players, target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.
Personally, I love stress. Many other players don't however. Ah well.
Maybe the Explorer cards should care about lands that are in your hand instead? That brings a fair amount of variability... though, it's probably very different from whatever you were planning.
I can't ever think of a time where a spell card in my hand would be with putting one +1/+1 counter on a creature I control (for feral 1). Maybe I just haven't play tested the cards and saw the power, or I overvalue card advantage too much. :)
If this searched an opponent's library for the land, I would have less of a problem with it being blue.
Yeah, it definitely needs work. It was an attempt to help out colors other than green take more advantage of the Explorer mechanic. Maybe it needs to have more stealing in it.
The idea was waiting for your opponent to map out the land, then sneak in and steal those maps, getting the lay of the land while the opponent does most of the work.
This is crazy with Valakut, the molten pinnacle if you're somehow behind. I bet a deck could abuse that combo somehow.
I like the idea, but this is such a white mechanic that I have a hard time seeing blue do this. It's especially vexing, since this is one of those things blue really wants to do (get more lands) and is denied, since that encourages players to play two color decks.
I do admit, though, that if this card was white, it would probably search for Plains only. I'm not really certain what color I'd use for this the way it's written... though I suspect Wizards would wait for a multicolor set and cost it
. I also get the impression that this card became blue due to 'Treasure Maps' -> 'Pirate' -> Blue. I don't see any reason one has to follow that formula religiuosly, though. I like it when flavor has to go out of color for legitimate reasons.