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CardName: Mystic Totem Cost: 2 Type: Artifact Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Mystic Totem enters the battlefield tapped. {T}: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. If that mana is spent to cast a spell, counter that spell unless its conroller pays {1}. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Link's Unplaced Cards Uncommon |
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: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. If that mana is spent to cast a spell, counter that spell unless its conroller pays 
.
This isn't really part of the cycle with Earth Totem, Light Totem, Fire Totem, Shadow Totem, and Wind Totem, but it does function similarly.
Wait, what?
Ah, got it - usable only to power abilities and pay extra costs etc. Horrible wording to get that effect - it elicited a completed "Wait, I can have a mana, but only if I pay a mana?!" moment, which I presume was your desire.
Actually, the goal was to make the spell cost more, but saying "that spell costs
more to cast" doesn't work, does it?
Ooh, true, it doesn't, because by the time you're spending mana, the spell's cost is locked in. I'm not sure this wording works either though: when does the spell get countered? This isn't phrased as a delayed triggered ability.
You can use the mana on spells, at which point it works like Mana Cylix; or you can use it on activated abilities etc at which point it's Manalith. So halfway between a
-cost artifact and a 
-cost means this clearly does cost 
; the question is whether it's too hopelessly confusing.
I wonder if there's any way to make that more explicit, like having two separate tap abilities, one of which costs
?