Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: Recent Activity
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| Mechanics | Skeleton |
Recent updates to Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: (Generated at 2025-08-18 22:15:04)
Okay. After further consideration, I'm seeing that the tuck/top design really only becomes an advantage for the Wizard tribal strategy. As for a full-block consideration, there is a very good reason in what I have planned for Door 47 (set 2 in the block) for these lands to bounce a land instead. I don't want to make them directly comparable to the Dromar-triples or to Invasion/Alara tap-lands though, and for that reason, I think they need an "enters tapped unless" clause.
"CARDNAME enters the battlefield tapped unless you return an untapped land to your hand. 
:Add 
or 
to your mana pool."
I think this build creates a card that comes in almost exactly between RAV shock-lands and Invasion tap-lands, and as far as I remember (too lazy to do a search), it has not been done this way before.
The current design is, I think, playable within the block. At this point though, I'm really leaning towards one of the designs presented earlier in this thread (comes in tapped unless...). To that point, the current model can be adjusted slightly to still allow the tempo interactions I'm going for without feeling "strictly worse" than other uncommon duals. Hopefully that should do something to make them attractive to a wider variety of players who see different advantages in their design.
Something that you're not quite incorporating into your calculations is that what you're saying may justify the current design (which I do like) in a competitive setting, but is strongly antagonistic towards the casual player who might try to play kitchen table magic with just his new booster box of Soradyne.
Even Zendikar, a distinctly monocolor environment with all sorts of triple-black spells and land-emphasizing cards like Timbermaw Larva and Claws of Valakut, had a cycle of tap-duals with a bonus! Quoth MaRo: "We had learned during Invasion that "enters the battlefield tapped" dual lands were slightly on the weak side, so allowing an ETB effect seemed like the perfect choice."
Wow love the flavor of this card.
And the solution to the Pathtracker seems to be simply to change the skin; everything else just falls into place.
It's a reasonable point that a set with gold cards needs to have decent access to mana fixing. It's crucial to a set where "color matters" is a central focus.
I don't know that color can be considered a central focus in SOR. With the exception of the G/U wizards tribal tricks, all of the other themes can be played with just two colors. Feint is strongest in R/G and has some mid-grade bleed into white, but shouldn't (when done) rely on all three colors to be effective. The only other enemy-color or three-color theme grouping is the Crossblighted "destroy everything" faction, and that one is two-color until you look in the uncommon, rare, and mythic slots.
That said, it's again reasonable to say that the two enemy-color groups deserve some way to "fix" their mana. I just don't think perfect dual or triple are the answer.
G/U Wizards is still a two color deck. Limited decks run two colors all the time without the benefit of spectacular color fixing. Innistrad gave us enemy-paired duals, but all of the tribal groupings there fall on friendly color pairs. Innistrad plays fine. Yes, DA gave us Evolving Wilds, and Innistrad has an artifact to search for basic lands. I genuinely believe that between the common and uncommon multi-lands already in SOR, plus an artifact fixer or two, that the mana should be fine in this set.
Within SOR, Aura and Equipment enhancement can be played with just plains and islands. Mindstrike works with islands and swamps. For Crossblight, mountains and swamps should provide the primary base (plains for specific cards). Feint needs mountains and forests. Green/White doesn't have a specific theme yet, and I'm working on that, but a base of forests and plains is obvious there. This leaves us Wizards as the last common-based color group; it just so happens that the one tribe that won't have a dedicated multi-land base also has by far the most access to card selection and smoothing (Both evidence effects, land search, cycling, draw arranging, etc.).
Are ten friendly-pair multi-lands plus a few artifact color fixers enough for a set that dabbles in multi-color cards? I have to think so.
It's a reasonable point that a set with gold cards needs to have decent access to mana fixing. It's crucial to a set where "color matters" is a central focus.
I don't know that color can be considered a central focus in SOR. With the exception of the G/U wizards tribal tricks, all of the other themes can be played with just two colors. Feint is strongest in R/G and has some mid-grade bleed into white, but shouldn't (when done) rely on all three colors to be effective. The only other enemy-color or three-color theme grouping is the Crossblighted "destroy everything" faction, and that one is almost entirely mono-color (red) until you look in the uncommon, rare, and mythic slots.
That said, it's again reasonable to say that the two enemy-color groups deserve some way to "fix" their mana. I just don't think perfect dual or triple are the answer.
G/U Wizards is still a two color deck. Limited decks run two colors all the time without the benefit of spectacular color fixing. Innistrad gave us enemy-paired duals, but all of the tribal groupings there fall on friendly color pairs. Innistrad plays fine. Yes, DA gave us Evolving Wilds, and Innistrad has an artifact to search for basic lands. I genuinely believe that between the common and uncommon multi-lands already in SOR, plus an artifact fixer or two, that the mana should be fine in this set.
Within SOR, Aura and Equipment enhancement can be played with just plains and islands. Mindstrike works with islands and swamps. If a player were to force Crossblight, mountains with a few swamps should provide the primary base (plains for specific cards). Feint needs mountains and forests. Green/White doesn't have a specific theme yet, and I'm working on that, but a base of forests and plains is obvious there. This leaves us Wizards as the last common-based color group; it just so happens that the one tribe that won't have a dedicated multi-land base also has by far the most access to card selection and smoothing (Both evidence effects, land search, cycling, draw arranging, etc.).
Are ten friendly-pair multi-lands plus a few artifact color fixers enough for a set that dabbles in multi-color cards? I have to think so.
Man, I stopped commenting a while ago, because I knew that this was going to end up being too much information to all be useable. That being the case, MHoulding missed one block where the multicolor threat was high and the mana fixing was bad: Invasion block. And, from what I've read, many Wizards employees consider that a mistake. People had a bunch of nifty new three color dragons, but couldn't cast them consistently. A lot of the 'nifty new' didn't get played over the 'consistent good'.
I'm not going to go on the record as saying "This ain't good enough". After all, some of the color fixing was worse than this. (Slimy Kavu anyone?) But if getting people to play multicolor is a goal, then you've got to convince Spike that it's a good idea. And that bugger is hard to win over sometimes.
I think that before you'll ever be able to decide on an appropriate design for this cycle, you need to address what your intentions are for having harsh penalties on mana-fixing in an environment with a fair portion of multicolor cards.
The three "modern" multicolor sets possess what is effectively the best fixing in the game, spread across each rarity. This includes common 5-color lands like Rupture Spire and the Vivid cycle, to the aforementioned Ravkaroos and Alara Trilands. I realize you're not trying to strongly emphasize the multicolor components in a "color" sense, and you've cut down the projected gold count to ~20, but those elements do exist in your set design as a means for expressing the faction-elements.
Do you really want it to be challenging for the player to support their G/U Wizards deck?
Dammit. Gears got turning again.
Other options:
• Comes in tapped unless you sac a land.
• Comes in tapped unless you tuck a card from hand.
• Bounces itself unless you pay
when it ETB.
One question before you set these in stone: What does "put on top or bottom of library" do that "return to hand" doesn't? Because "return to hand" would still be mostly worse than the Lairs (2 colours rather than 3), but not entirely (they can bounce themselves). If the set has things that care about having lands on top of your library (like Cruel Deceiver), then that's one reasonable answer. But otherwise these are pretty harsh card-disadvantage machines.
That two fragile creatures create a possible engine isn't the most dastardly thing imaginable. I'd rather see this card just pushed to Rare if you were that concerned about possible shenanigans.
Or do I keep this as-is (possible add-ons) and make it Aricus Pinn (mythic legendary)?
Well, that's probably not good.
Back to an "if X happened during a turn, draw a card at end of turn" clause?
I think I'm ready to close the book on these and say that barring some huge revelation, they're right for this set. While I'd love for people to jump on something I design and say, "OMG RFOLZORZ BEST BALANCED DULE LANDZ EVRRRZZZ!!!11!", I can (and will) accept "interesting and playable in limited". They do interesting tempo things in a set full of interesting tempo things.
Not every card is designed for Modern. Better to not rank there than to break it or make a set of uncommons go prohibitively expensive — which is what happens to game-breaking lands.
As Maro likes to point out, there's always someone who's going to look at these and see something they want to train to do wacky tricks. Good enough for me.