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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-15 22:05:45)
Wizards talked about tribal lands before. Cards like Auntie's Hovel almost were tribal lands. The reason why they didn't do it? They were too afraid that it would create a new Great Furnace, or would, at least, be compared to affinity.
Not to distract too badly, but I'm pretty sure a good uncommon or rare land would be:
: Untap target land.
or,
Add 
.
, 
, Sacrifice an untapped land: Search through your library for two basic lands, and put them onto the battlefield. Then, shuffle your library.
But these are one shot ideas... not full cycles. That is, unless we think that two common non-basic lands and a Chromatic Sphere are an acceptable alternative.
But back to the thing at hand... I like the Krosan Verge idea. It gets us there in both mono and multi. As written, though, it is very, very powerful. I think that one of the reasons why that card was acceptable is because you could only pack 4 of them in the worst color combination in Magic at the time. Letting players play 9 in a deck means a lot of land on that side of the table (given elbow room)... and may get people to make decks with large casting costs and very little color requirements. A bit of the opposite of what we're trying to do. I'm focusing a bit too much on this one suggestion, but that's because I like it... I'm just not sure what to do with it.
One more try:
, Sacrifice ~: Add 
or 
to your mana pool. Search through your library for a Mountain and put it on the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
Out of interest, are we aiming for a tribal theme within this block? Because Alex's random card generator just gave me this:
Tribal Land - Vampire
~this~ enters the battlefield tapped.
2, T: add three mana of any one colour to your mana pool
Tap an untapped permanent you control, T: add 2 to your manapool.
Obviously just a mismatch of abilities, but I don't think Tribal Lands have been done :)
I thought his idea also had hybrid rather than gold.
But yes, there are some similarities. I think that's fine. The sets will naturally acquire a lot of different implementations pretty quickly. The "only gold has flying", for example, is pretty new and eye-catching.
I do appreciate lands with drawbacks other than ETBT, but there are a lot of points in favour of ETBT. It's incredibly simple, it doesn't need any counters or other tracking of state, and it doesn't cost anyone any life.
"ETBT Unless" is quite powerful and flexible. I do like it, although it's not really suitable for common.
I like "
: If you control a Swamp or a Mountain, add 
or 
to your mana pool." I also like the idea of a modified version of the Graven Cairns cycle. I'd propose:
ETBT
: Add 
, 
: Add 
, 
or 
.
Camruth's idea isn't particularly appealing for monocolour: why would a monoblack deck ever choose that over a Swamp? It's only useful if your deck contains some cards that want
. But I do think there's potential in having them asymmetrical between the two colours.
A few other ideas: how about a version of the Krosan Verge idea? Something like:
: Add 
.
, 
, Sac: Search your library for up to two Swamp and/or Mountain cards and put them onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
ANOTHER option is to have them add a single colour of mana with no drawback or 2 colours with limitation. eg:
: Add 
to your mana pool.
, 
: Add 
to your mana pool.
Uncommon Dual-Land
Uncommon Dual-land ETBs tapped unless you control 2 or more lands.
makes a fine land for both mono and multi
.
Mono because you can just tap it for
Multi because you can use it to filter mana if you need to.
How about ETB tapped unless you control 2 or more lands? kinda opposite of the Scars Block dual lands. Means they aren't as useful in the early turns (but you can still play them if you have no T1 play in hand) but aren't quite so restrictive in later turns when you need to be hitting your mlticolour spells.
Hmm... we seem to be having a little problem here. cards that add
are bad for multicolor, and cards that add 
are bad for mono.
We could partially solve this by making no 2cc multicolor cards. Therefore, if you have
or 
, you can cast something with 
. Most people wouldn't even notice their absence. Of course, that's a pretty healthy restriction we'd be putting on ourselves.
Also, I don't know about you guys, but I hate ETB tapped. I know why there are so many of them in existence... but there are so many of them in existence! I'm not saying I'm unwilling to see them... just that by the time I read the first line of text on those things, I start off by frowning.
That seems like a sensible suggestion, particularly the part about making enemy-color versions.
Except that it has a completely different flavor, if I remember right, and we're going in a different mechanical direction except for Jack V's desire for morph, which Jay Treat also used for Muraganda.
What about something like the Graven Cairns cycle from Shadowmoor ? We could differentiate them from the originals by having them add enemy colours rather that allied colours (but only if we are doing enemy multicolour cards - otherwise they would need to be allied colour). Helps both Monocolour and Multicolour decks. Have them ETBT or some other drawback/slowdown to drop them to uncommon. OR
: Add 
or 
to your mana pool.
(or 
, or something else), 
: Add 
to your mana pool.
Dual Land
Land
Dual Land ETBs tapped.
Just another idea that popped into my head. As always, not all of my ideas are great/work but hopefully they may spark an idea in someone else that does.
It was just a crazy idea that struck me as a possible way to make red more alien. I agree there could be some headaches to iron out. As to the hold on/use now argument - as long as you cast it outside your main phases it would be an "Instant".
But overall, I agree that the all tapped/no untapped idea is very Red and probably the best way to go.
Just re-read Jay Treat's entry for the GDS2. It seems very similar to what we are doing here, but mono is native.
Changed "green" to "fungus."
That's a better implementation.
I don't care for the first or second, but I like the third well enough.
Shards also didn't have much multicolor because that set was advocating CDE casting costs. You can only have so many of those cards in common. Too many CDs, and the set wouldn't feel triple color. Hence, a bunch of cards that supported CDE (like the obelisks and common tri-lands), but not many CDEs.
I think we have a little more room for play, since we're only adding CDs at common. I did check Ravnica, though, while we're on the subject. Turns out that they only had 13 non-Hybrid multicolor cards at common. With Hybrid, the number jumps to 23. Maybe we should aim for somewhere in the middle? 18 - 20 sounds fine. We may just find that the feel like 5 multicolor cards anywho...
I like the first one and the last one a lot. The second one reads to much like it was made for monocolor and the cycling seems tacked on.
Helps both decks? Perhaps something like:
, 
: Add 
or 
to your mana pool.
Which is a bit restrictive on the player, but gets them there. Although, it may be a little too close to the signet.
Alternative idea:
: Add 
to your mana pool. Use this ability if you have 
in your mana pool.
Basic Landcycling
Or, maybe
: If you control a Mountain or a Swamp, add 
or 
to your mana pool.
Like.
The original flavor of green was to turn all the creatures into fungus, then to gain all the fungus. Funny how color-breaking flavor immediately gave us color-breaking mechanics. This is fine, though. Green instead needs to focus on making all creatures fungi, then benefiting from all creatures being fungi. Like having a creature with Trample and +1/+1 for each Fungus in play.
I don't have the same reaction Alex has to Camruth's idea, and wouldn't mind a few "creature on my turn, instant on my opponent's turn" sprinkled into the set. Alex cites Auras with Substance as a major rules headache... but that's because the cards in question were auras going away at the end of the turn after cleanup, not creatures that came into play and immediately sacrificed for effect. Possibly in multicolor, or just as a minor aside in Red. It isn't linear, though, so it isn't what we're looking for for major mechanic.
What about "ETBs tapped unless you reveal a [color] card and a [color] card from your hand"? Something like the Lorwyn duals, I think.
: Add [color] to your mana pool.
, reveal a {color] card from your hand: Add {color} to your mana pool.
Or perhaps:
~ ETBs tapped.
I'm not really sure about this, I'm just brainstorming.
That makes sense, not just for color fixing, but also because the multicolors are the natives.
Unlike in Alara, our multicolor faction is a faction itself, and doesn't "belong" with or to any of the monocolored cards. I think we should keep the division even at higher rarities, which Shards did not do. This might be difficult at higher rarities, but it would feel right.
If you hit the "Add skeleton" link, on the Generate page there's some sample stats. For Shards of Alara, a set with a heavy multicolour theme, those stats are:
| Shards of Alara | commons | uncommons | rares | mythics | total |-------------------|---------|-----------|-------|---------|------ | White, blue, black, red and green | 15 | 7 | 8 | 0-1 | 30-31, x5 = 152 | Multicolour | 15 | 20 | 10 | 12 | 57 | Artifacts | 6 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 10 | Lands | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 10 | Total: | 111 | 60 | 52 | 13 | 229
Note that there were only 15 gold commons total. That's two for each colour-pair plus one triple-coloured gold common. Compared with fifteen coloured commons in each single colour.
rourke's proposed numbers precisely match the Shards common frequencies. My gut reaction is that I'd like a bit more gold than that, but I fear that even 25 gold commons (four for each allied-colour pair and one for the enemy pairs) might make Limited decks too hard to play.
If we want green to turn creatures into Fungi, we'll need at least a couple of cards to make being Fungi mechanically relevant. And I'm not too sure about having a bunch of Mind Control effects in green. But otherwise, this all sounds good.
Since the set has a multicolour theme, I think the common cycle of lands should be colour-fixing and affiliated with the multicolour natives, but we could have an uncommon cycle affiliated with the monocolour invaders, and this would be a fine entry for that cycle.
And especially with a heavy multicolour theme, we'll need something at non-rare. I think the desirable attributes are:
It'd be awesome if we found something that fit all those criteria, but failing that we want most of them.