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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-19 12:47:43)
Decent card. The funny thing is, that this is such a small improvement on many creatures, that this could almost be costed at
... if it was an uncommon, I suppose it would.
Maybe we can have a wall 'mechanic' that speaks to being a wall, but isn't defender. Like "gains +0/+2 when blocking". I admit, however, that some people will be confused about all these attacking walls. I'd suggest making a new creature type, but I don't think we'll come up with something that gets idea across better than 'wall'.
This card looks like par for the course of what we want to seeing. Good first tack, and a good model to coral the rest of the cards around. The name is almost funny how it gives the wrong impression, though. This is more like a continuous barrage of grapeshot catapults, and less like a gigantic cannon that smashes in walls.
Although, I say this, and I start wondering if I want a cycle of simple spells like Spell Snip to toss Manacycling on. Gah! Why does my Myers-Briggs archetype include a 'P' instead of a 'J'?
I've pretty much come to the decision that this is more a development issue than a design one. Really, the Manacycling ability can go on any simple card. We're going to toss it on the CCCs, but whoever is heading development is more than welcome to move it whereever he or she wants after that.
I tend to agree. I think "can't be countered" is simple enough for common, and I think some way of forcing through big spells is good, but I think it might be a problem if it happens every turn: it usually won't matter, so it won't be a popular deck choice, but when it does it means there's no good answer to a ridiculously overpowered bomb played later.
Interestingly, my instinct is that the Boseiju fortification should be rarer than the Bandit Lord fortification.
Excellent idea. "Number of matching lands" is something that could be done on an artifact but is hopefully better on a fortification. There are "number of mountain" cards, but this is a decent way to make one that works with any color deck.
(It probably should be some other effect than "gain life", though: as a one-off, gaining life is a good choice for scaling with number of lands, but I think gaining 4+ life a turn is too good for common, as it's too hard for your opponent to actually win.)
It would be nice to see a Boseiju, Who Shelters All fortification, too.
Thank you. Yeah, I like those effects. I think they're usually rare, because they're on lands, which makes them quite powerful as you don't need to use a slot up for them, but the concept isn't that complicated.
I think the effect is ok at common (eg. strider harness, battle rampart) as long as it doesn't combo with infinite token combos. I think the concept of "spells this mana is spent on" is usually rare, and is a bit complicated for common, but that most people will understand easily. I think the card as a whole is more complex than ideal (since it won't usually matter that this was on a land rather than a tap effect), which isn't great for common, so I think it's another "not usually, but could be"?
Yeah, I don't know about cost. I compared it to strider harness, but it could easily be tweaked in several ways (or even grant some other bonus entirely).
I like the family of ideas, certainly.
Heeee! Yay, the Hall of the Bandit Lord ability. Nifty. I have no idea if this is suitable for common, but it doesn't seem completely implausible. It's quite expensive for a Battle Rampart.
I like the idea that the mana it can produce matters.
I don't like this effect, but keying off the colours of mana the land could produce would be another way to make "which land" matter.
Hmm. Quicksand was common, but it made quite a difference just having one untapped across the table; a few attacks were made just to "use up" the Quicksand. If it could come back with a re-attach that'd be even more oppressive.
This might also have a subtler trap: the controller might use the ability more than is wise, and effectively mana-screw themselves. I'm not sure if that's an issue we should be trying to avoid or not.
But with all that said, I think this certainly could work, perhaps even at common. One knob we could twist to make this less oppressive would be to bring the damage down from 2 to 1.
(I think the activation ought to be something like "
, Sacrificed fortified land", or perhaps 'Fortified land has "
, 
, Sacrifice this land:"', but those details can come later.)
Oh, I see. OK, then I agree animating is ok. I don't think sacrificing is a great idea at common, but I think we could do it if it's the only answer to making sufficiently strong fortifications without them being effectively unkillable. (In fact, this is mostly a problem with animating fortifications, where endless recurring a creature is very strong. If we can come up with sufficiently many non-animating fortifications, I agree we may not need it, I just wasn't sure if we could.)
Another possibility would be to look for other "free once but hard to repeat" costs, like "exile ten cards from your library" or "exile N cards from your graveyard" or (possibly) "pay ? life". That would in some way be better for animated or other strong fortifications (excluding the black connection) than sacrifice, but neither of those is very flavour appropriate and both were just done in innistrad -- does anyone have any other similar suggestions?
I wasn't sure if it looked too fiddly to say "has defender" and "loses defender" right next to each other, but yes, I think that's probably about the correct functionality.
Another way to make re-fortifying relevant.
Repeatable damage at common is obviously dangerous, but Flame Jab says its possible if the cost is a land. This does 2 damage, but only to some creatures, only once per turn, and at the cost of a land drop as well as a land card.
I chose "target attacking creature" to fit the "mined" flavour, but it's probably a good thing because it means you can't re-fortify and re-use it immediately.
I don't think the idea of animating is automatically uncommon: there's Glint Hawk Idol, Lifespark Spellbomb, and a few others. It was just the nonmana fortify costs I thought shouldn't usually be common. I do see the point about discouraging shifting the Fortification around too easily when it's making the fortified land really good, but we do have to balance that against the complexity of nonmana fortify costs.
Still riffing on becoming a creature, what if the land (or the attachment) was vulnerable some other way. This is a bit complicated, depending on the condition, but it would be one more possible way to make the fortification relevant.
(Most of these ideas are "probably won't work, might work on one card at higher rarity, but hopefully eventually one or two will turn out to be appropriate for one or many cards at common".)
(I considered several mechanics to represent the spying post being "discovered" including the opponent drawing a creature, you discarding a something, the opponent attacking unblocked, you attacking unblocked, etc, etc. But I decided that it wasn't really important yet.)
use mechanic for reminder text
Perhaps just the Walking Wall / Gargoyle Sentinel / Tidewater Minion approach: "Fortified land is a 3/3 Wall creature with defender. //
: Fortified land loses defender UEOT."
Good point, being an artifact doesn't usually help.
I agree animating isn't very common, but the "0/4 wall" was the best common fortification I thought I'd seen so far, assuming "would be just as good as a normal artifact" is a deal-breaker. (I'm not sure, maybe other people are willing to live with most fortifications being equally good as non-fortifications?) which was why I was going with it for the moment.
I agree, by default, normal mana costs make sense, but only if being able to re-equip easily isn't a problem, which it is with "becomes a creature" (or any other fortification which makes the fortify relevant by making becoming attached being a risk), which is why I was thinking of it.
Right, "untap fortified land" is a great idea and a natural fit, and you found an expressive flavour. I provisionally think we have a common fortification :)
It could even be "at the beginning of every second main phase" or "at the beginning of your second main phase" and still be interesting.