It does work. I still don't think it adds much over Urborg Volcano, but it does work. If I had to word it, I'd phrase it as "(Add your choice of or to your mana pool.)" No need to use newbie-scaring terms like "resolves" on a simple land.
In playtest with this in a multiplayer, it was cast by one player, Twincast by another and Reverberated by yet another - hilarity and confusion ensued :-)
Yeah, most of the life swap is white but this also feels kinda like 'target player loses X life and you gain X life'
which is why I wnet with the Hybrid version.
I could change it to "if you have 2 life or less" but the 1 life swap is just cooler.
(It turns out the rules do actually say what happens if gets added to your pool: you choose one half of the symbol at the moment it's added to your pool, as per rule 106.8. This is for Charmed Pendant and Elemental Resonance.)
Annoyingly "1 life" makes it seem too similar to Near-Death Experience, but I agree they would both play well in different ways (and I'm amused how it fits nicely into both w and b :)).
The reason, such as there is, is that adding to your mana pool isn't currently defined in the rules. You may or may not be aware that the symbol currently has two very different meanings. When it's being paid (i.e. in costs such as ", " or the mana cost of an artifact), it means "one mana of any colour or none". The technical term in the rules for this usage is "generic mana". But when it's being added as in the ability on Quicksand, it means "one colourless mana".
In other words, in costs, is less restrictive and more useful than . But when being added, is more restrictive and less useful than .
So there's definite potential for confusion between the two meanings of . (This is why for a long time lands didn't say "add " but instead said "add one colourless mana", such as on Rath's Edge.)
Using hybrid mana symbols in the way you propose would NOT work the same way. Currently hybrid symbols are only ever used in costs: so is always less restrictive and more useful than . If you allow adding to your pool, then... that's still less restrictive and more useful than adding .
By the way, when are you expecting the player would choose what type of mana this would be used as? On Urborg Volcano, the choice is made when tapping the land. But the current reminder text you have here suggests that you'd have a floating in your pool, usable as either or potentially several spells and abilities later on in the same main phase. It seems like you're effectively proposing adding five new types of mana that could sit in pools, and I don't think that's worth it for an Urborg Volcano almost-reprint.
Glad you like it - just popped into my head whilst I was catching the train home.Only change I made was Exchange instead of Swap to bring it in line with Oracle wording on similar cards.
Is it, in fact, at all different from Urborg Volcano?
It does work. I still don't think it adds much over Urborg Volcano, but it does work. If I had to word it, I'd phrase it as "(Add your choice of
or 
to your mana pool.)" No need to use newbie-scaring terms like "resolves" on a simple land.
In playtest with this in a multiplayer, it was cast by one player, Twincast by another and Reverberated by yet another - hilarity and confusion ensued :-)
Yeah, most of the life swap is white but this also feels kinda like 'target player loses X life and you gain X life' which is why I wnet with the Hybrid version.
I could change it to "if you have 2 life or less" but the 1 life swap is just cooler.
Given that - rule 106.8 - how does this wording work ?
(It turns out the rules do actually say what happens if
gets added to your pool: you choose one half of the symbol at the moment it's added to your pool, as per rule 106.8. This is for Charmed Pendant and Elemental Resonance.)
Annoyingly "1 life" makes it seem too similar to Near-Death Experience, but I agree they would both play well in different ways (and I'm amused how it fits nicely into both w and b :)).
The reason, such as there is, is that adding
to your mana pool isn't currently defined in the rules. You may or may not be aware that the symbol 
currently has two very different meanings. When it's being paid (i.e. in costs such as "
, 
" or the mana cost of an artifact), it means "one mana of any colour or none". The technical term in the rules for this usage is "generic mana". But when it's being added as in the ability on Quicksand, it means "one colourless mana".
In other words, in costs,
is less restrictive and more useful than 
. But when being added, 
is more restrictive and less useful than 
.
So there's definite potential for confusion between the two meanings of
. (This is why for a long time lands didn't say "add 
" but instead said "add one colourless mana", such as on Rath's Edge.)
Using hybrid mana symbols in the way you propose would NOT work the same way. Currently hybrid symbols are only ever used in costs: so
is always less restrictive and more useful than 
. If you allow adding 
to your pool, then... that's still less restrictive and more useful than adding 
.
By the way, when are you expecting the player would choose what type of mana this would be used as? On Urborg Volcano, the choice is made when tapping the land. But the current reminder text you have here suggests that you'd have a
floating in your pool, usable as either 
or 
potentially several spells and abilities later on in the same main phase. It seems like you're effectively proposing adding five new types of mana that could sit in pools, and I don't think that's worth it for an Urborg Volcano almost-reprint.
Glad you like it - just popped into my head whilst I was catching the train home.Only change I made was Exchange instead of Swap to bring it in line with Oracle wording on similar cards.
updated this cycle to generate hybrid mana - don't know if that's OK in the rules but I don't see why it shouldn't be.
This is just Salt Marsh. (Which has been obsoleted about 6 times by now, but that doesn't mean it's not a fair reprint.)
Hey, at least Frost Marsh was a snow land.
Fuuuunky.