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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-19 16:10:20)
Agree on the rootgrapple stuff being good things. Disagree on letting it destroy lands. Unsummoning them to hand is bad, destroying completely is too nasty for something which can, even if only sometimes, be cheaper than naturalise. Heck, it makes it a no brainer. You end your turn? I have green up? You don't have an artifact I really need to kill? Kill a land, draw a card. My turn? Far too good.
Letting it hit plainswalkers - well, I'm all in flavour of everything being allowed to kill plainswalkers for free. But it does clutter up the card a bit.
That's true.
Hmm... most of the versatility of Rootgrapple came in being able to occasionally hit lands. With the CMC restriction we probably do have to exclude lands. But at that point the only other option is planeswalkers, and, okay, yeah, it's good to have some planeswalker answers at common, but it's pretty nasty wording to say "target noncreature nonland permanent". I think it's a lot easier to read if it says "target artifact or enchantment".
Plus, in fact, in this set white has a lot of enchantment creatures, so it'll be great against white if it has the Naturalize wording.
What if it was "Destroy target noncreature, nonland permanent..." plus a cantrip? It's still difficult to use, but at least then it's versatile.
<flavour> If we go with manacycling, we can make it so that the inhabitants of Aer are desperately putting everything into their plight - including sacrificing themselves to generate mana</flavour>
Alex: 'xactly. Whether it's card colour or casting cost, I don't really mind, either makes it work.
Heh. We had the Evoke discussion on Loretower Guard.
I wasn't sure at first, but I think it makes sense to call it manacycling; getting the mana as well as a card feels like a plausible extension of cycling to me (more so than the cards that have complicated "when you cycle..." abilities).
And yeah, Vitenka's proposal is interesting. In fact, I think it would be about equally good to spell out "manacycling -- 3, discard: add
, draw a card" or to have everything after the cost in reminder text. Either way the pattern will hopefully be clear, and either way you can tell by reading it what it does if you don't already know.
V: Heh. Rending Vines had those decisions, and was quite interesting for it.
That's an interesting idea. So on the card it'd look something like:
> Manacycling (3) ((3), Discard this card: Add
to your mana pool. Draw a card.)
But the Comp Rules details could spell it out fully:
> "Manacycling [cost]" means "[cost], Discard this card: Add to your mana pool one mana of each colour this card has. Draw a card."
The reminder text doesn't need to be comprehensive enough to catch the Painter's Servant interaction. Yeah, I could see that working.
If we don't want the odd wording "each colour this card has", we could borrow some technology from Charmed Pendant and instead say:
> "Manacycling [cost]" means "[cost], Discard this card: For each colored mana symbol in this card's mana cost, add one mana of that color to your mana pool. Then draw a card."
You could make "Adds one mana of each colour ~ has" be part of the official expansion of manacycling; and (though multiverse doesn't support it) just expand the flavour appropriately, without needing an extra parameter visible on the card (multiverse would need them, I expect).
I'd like to give this a keyword "manacycling", but I don't like the way it'd need two parameters. Two-parameter keywords usually look pretty unwieldy (Suspend as on Keldon Halberdier), and I feel that'd detract from the simplicity of this ability.
Well, I fundamentally dislike cards of the sort "Here's a thing! But you can't use it. Hah! Sort that puzzle out! Oh, but we've got to balance it on the assumption that you do, so it's not actually a very good thing anyway."
One other thing manacycling does is let you run a colourless dual-colour (mayybe even tri-colour) deck. Would the urza's lands be efficient enough for it to work? I think it'd be worth a try.
Cantrip instead of +2? Works. Lets you not worry so much about putting it in a deck where it might be useless. (Let's you worry instead about whether you should hold onto it or use it up to get rid of it, especially if there's some not-wonderful target to use it up on...)
With "Draw a card", it starts to remind me of Repeal.
V: Indeed it is; but you've given up your 2 drop for it.
The numbers were just a guess, and can be frobbled as we wish. It was just a potentially-interesting mechanic I thought I'd suggest we consider when we get to green uncommons.
Yeah - I'm certainly seeing this as more like cycling. It's an option on a costly card if you can't afford it right now. I already said I'd rather see it named manacylcing to make the comparison obvious.
We could also make it all upside by using evoke?
jmg: Expensive cards with cheap cycling options are always thus. Chartooth Cougar is famous for confusing new players - "Why would I want to discard this useful creature to just get a land?"
And you say "I probably have an enlighten deck", but at the moment, there's only three enlighten cards in the common skeleton. And they're all in the enemy-colour commons, too. I just want to get a bit more enlighten at common so that it feels like something that actually exists for limited.
I can think of at least one card that would combo with; but I suspect it's 'un'.
Wait, wait. I've got another one. "Add 10 Green mana to your mana pool. Then end the turn."
Actually, making these cards have enlighten kind of turns me off. If I'm playing with these guys, I probably already have an enlighten deck. Let's say I have two enlighten creatures on the board. I can either play this, and have three, or I can trigger enlighten. I can't have both, therefore, I am sad.
We may not want to have any landwalk that isn't 'islandwalk', just because blue seems to really have a good grasp of that. Any other set, though, and I'd say this was a good idea. In fact, if we replaced the keyword with anything, I'd probably like it.
Oh. Heh. I didn't even see the fact that it asked for creatures. No, I personally think this should be land and that we should find numbers that fit. If we like "triggers when a land is tapped" then we have to like this card.
The numbers are up to other people. If this is too much of a pain, I'd suggest bumping the CMC and the p/t at the same time. But I want this card to be perceived as playable in draft.
Yeah, this is just... poo. It looks like it's one cheaper than naturalise; but that's only if you are casting something with all the rest of the mana. It's usuall: 
: Destroy target enchantment or artifact with CMC X. Add 
to your mana pool.
And clearly that second clause is all too often going to go to waste.
Could be made competitive at, say X+2, setting aside my other complaints about fiddliness of tracking.
Haha. I do not suggest it, but we could have abilities like "
: Add 
to your mana pool. You may not use this mana to cast spells or activate abilities."
also, you're right. It didn't occur to me how hard this is to use. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you added "Draw a card" it would be close to fair. Well. I guess that would probably make it cost
more.
Um, you might not be able to spend all of it on one thing - but 5 extra mana on turn three is a heck of a lot.
I'm definately against having it be a permanent static ability... especially since blue is doing exactly that. Too many memory issues. As it stands, I don't have a problem requiring one fungus to turn them all on.
The rest... I don't know. The thing I do know is that turning off your creature types could be constructed to be a good thing. Especially if the plants have a very 'out-of-control' aspect to their tribalness.
As a single card, well, I'd not have to keep track of mana often, only if it was in play; so maybe not so bad. It's the "This is a theme mechanic" I'm objecting to. As I say - it does feel very green; but it also feels irritatingly fiddly to me. Which is a shame, because something like "~ has +1/+1 for each mana in your pool" just seems like an ideal green thing to do.
I provisionally like this cycle.
You could have this be "Enlighten -- untap ~", although that's more complicated, more open to abuse, and probably impossible to extend to the rest of the cycle. Is there any sensible wording for triggering off drawing a card other than your draw step, which would make sense for this sort of once-per-turn ability?