For the life of me, I don't get why I like the XCC sunburst cards, but I do. I guess I'll just have to take grief from people who don't like them and assume that there are people who are fascinated with the idea like me.

I have, however, decided that if I'm to go forward with these buggers, they've all got to feel unique, and there's got to be a damn good reason why I'm asking people to double down on a certain color... in other words, the mechanic being used on these cards normally requests CC or CCC to appear on the card in the first place.

So what is this card? It's a phoenix. And, yes, that is a weird ability in red, never mind RRR where it normally resides. The question is... when you looked at this card, did you immediately go "Oh. This is a Phoenix." and accepted the mechanic, or did you say to yourself "What's this red creature doing with a black/green ability?"

Upped activation from to because, evidently, that's a phoenix requirement.

I didn't get that it was a Phoenix. If you want it to be a Phoenix, why not give it type Phoenix? The phoenix ability is generally only red because of the strong flavour, and retheming it loses that flavour.

I can see your point about making XCC cards have a good reason for having CC, such as the strong precedent of phoenices.

Mostly, I wanted to see if people got 'Phoenix' out of it without making it a Phoenix. I, unfortunately, didn't think it would work. Problem with the Phoenix is that they naturally come with flying. That's a bit strong compared to the rest of the cylce, but I guess I'll have to add it and see what happens.

Added flying, added another to the activation, and made a Timmy, somewhere in the world, fly into a murderous rage.

Well, we still don't know this thing's P/T, so it's hard to assess its strength against the rest of the cycle... :P

Given the steepness of the additional cost, I'd say it could come straight back onto the field.

Also, Worldheart Phoenix feels like what this card wants to be.

Returning it to the field means your not paying its cost, which means no counters, and it's probably 0/0 base so that would be rather pointless.

In my haste to 'fix' the card, I forgot to remove the funky "exile a land from the graveyard" bit that was chunking it up. That still seems like a good phoenix variation, but this card is already a bit busy. Also traded out RRR for 3RR, because I can only be so cruel. I get the impression a lot of players will play this in 4 color decks over 5, so the 3RR activation seems astute to me. That's the same reason I didn't do Worldheart Phoenix's activation. I want the card to be playable in 3 and 4 color decks... or maybe even in mono as an annoying 1/1 flyer.

Oh, whoops. Thanks for that.

You never specify what X is. I feel like that should be frowned upon.

I don't know. I think it's kind of liberating. X is anything you want it to be. Feel free to pay if you want.

Personally, I like it better than the current wording on Emblazoned Golem:

"Kicker . Spend only colored mana on X. No more than one mana of each color may be spent this way. If Emblazoned Golem was kicked, it enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it."

Sure, it's much more clear what's happening to the X... but there's a whole sentence dedicated to making people feel better about themselves. As far as I'm concerned, that's a waste of space.

This is the Engineered Explosives approach. I always thought it was somewhat elegant, although dude's right it'll confuse a couple of players.

I think it should cost . Skyreach Manta is already awful. More importantly, why gem counters if they only give +1/+1? They should be +1/+1 counters.

Gem counters have color, which interacts with the rest of the set's mechanics. For example, green gem counters have a different effect than red gem counters do on some spells.

Yeah, a lot of the XCC creatures are bound to look out of place out of context. I would also like to point out, Shiny Umbreon, that if I costed the card , then Red would gain a 1/1 flyer with an ability for ... never mind the ability to scale upwards, or the bonus gem counter abilities. That can't be right.

You got to keep in mind that part of the reason why Skyreach Manta was a 2.5 star card is that you always had to pay 5 to get it.

Skyreach Manta was awful? Huh, I remember it being a Shinen of Flight's Wings or Air Elemental most times I cast it, which was plenty good enough on turn 5 or 6. Vitenka's cast it as a 5/5 on turn 4 before.

I could cast it on turn 3; but I'm not sure I ever did.

Actually, I didn't want to attack that because I was afraid of getting into that fight, but Skyreach Manta was far from terrible. Considering that people windmill slam 3/3 flyers for 5cc in limited, The Manta would give you that same ability with any three colors. Sneaking a fourth color in was easy enough in Mirrodin, so, yeah, that made this an Air Elemental in common.

The big point that Shiny Umbreon brings up here is that, like it or not, these cards will be perceived to be bad. Mostly, because people will assume that you need to spend to get full value. You don't need to use all 5 mana types, and that's one too many, but I can't protect this card with my arguments when it's in a booster pack. I'm choosing to live with this, and let the cards be liked by a small group of people who think like I do. It's likely that the card wouldn't make it through Magic's pit, though.

At least the XC commons will help solve some of the extra red confusion, however. As soon as people figure those out, the XCCs should be easier.