Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: (Generated at 2025-08-18 22:13:12)
And now I'm thinking top or bottom of library gives interesting options as well; one gets you the land back at the effective cost of a draw, the other gives you diversity at the cost of a land.
I'm wary that saying the land has to cost you that draw means that nobody will want to use them when they're in a losing race.
I didn't see the original version of these, but the top-of-deck drawback is awful. It's like casting half a Plow Under on myself. And it's still got the 1-2-2 curve that SadisticMystic mentions. In fact, this seems pretty much strictly worse than Dromar's Cavern in two ways, and that cycle was pretty bad by modern multiland standards.
Clearly, SadisticMystic, you do not know all there is to know about The Crying Game. Although, ironically, that's what some of us Pats fans call any Super Bowl against the Giants.
Okay, that is f•€*ing brilliant. Top of deck is a drawback they've never done before (well, once on that awful U/G beast in Alara block), and it has mechanical relevance in the set. I like it.
Yeah, you not only have incentive clauses in the set that want lands in graveyards, but tucking the land means that you aren't guaranteed a land drop the next turn. This means that the tuck-land always wants to be played at the top of your curve.
Considering scry, Mindstrike, and the recently renovated Soradyne Geologist, I would at least consider putting the land on top of the library. That way people can strategically interact with it a bit better, and you'd still have yourself a distinctly tempo-centric dual cycle.
What's significant about using those words in the same sentence? Here, there's an easier way: "Justin Tuck had a key fourth-quarter sack at the Super Bowl."
One thing to look out for if these do become 2-mana lands is that you could play one and have it put itself on the bottom, but not until after you tapped it for a Lotus Petal-like boost. Your curve with Ravnica karoos goes 1-1-3; playing 2-mana versions of these "fair" gives you a 1-3-3 curve as long as you still have lands to play (which, at least unlike with the Ravnica lands, they don't arrange for you).
In any case, the curve as-is of 1-2-2 is far too weak and no one would want a land drawback that harsh. (Unless, maybe, they wanted to control the bottom card of their deck so they could play Tunnel Vision and call that card out. But who would ever do a thing like that?)
You really think tucking the land is worse than sacking it?
I just said "tuck" and "sack" in the same sentence.
I suppose that with the Crossblighted dead-land cards, the means to get a land into the graveyard would be a good thing. I think my initial goal was to make a dual land that felt like an upgrade rather than an outright replacement, and sacking just felt too destructive.
I think these cards are a good design but could probably be looked at in playtesting a lot more. The only drawback seems to be slowing the player down by a land drop, isn't it? But they don't come into play tapped which in comparison to the Rav dual lands could at least throw down that land again the next turn and equal out to the same amount available.
Ignoring contextual considerations, I think WotC would be hesitant to print this cycle for a couple reasons:
The drawback is actually more severe than it instinctively appears. When sacrificing the land would be better than putting it on the bottom of its owner's library, you might be headed in the wrong direction.
Players complain vigorously when they perceive a "strictly-worse-than" design. (See: Dromar's Cavern, etc...)
With context in mind, you are inserting a vertical cycle of multicolor-producing lands to support multicolor pairings, but you're employing drawbacks reminiscent of Tempest or Kamigawa, where multicolor was an actual rarity and not something they were trying to support.
I'm not sure that Karoos are ever busted, but it is true that the Rav Bouncelands partly defined that format, so I can appreciate an instinct to avoid that level of fixing. However, these are situated near the bottom in terms of effectiveness, and would probably see less play than the Way Stations.
Overhauled!
As I was working on these, Bombshell compared their "replaces another land" arrival to Karoo. I think that if I were to make Karoo Duals, there's no way they'd be at uncommon, and the land they replace would have to be untapped. Any land that makes more than one mana has huge potential to be busted. As is, I already have the Silver Road Way Station cycle in common that offers a one-shot "two mana" turn. Having two cycles of accelerant lands in one set would have been degenerate.
Of course, that doesn't mean I didn't consider these as two-mana lands at the beginning. I did, and Bombshell showed me numbers demonstrating what a bad idea that was.
as far as interaction with the Way Stations goes, I'm fully aware the two don't interact in any special way. I'm 100% fine with that. Not every card needs to interact with every other card. They do share a common thread though when it comes to looking at ways you can trade off tempo for mana diversity and the potential to splash colors.
And in that sense, there's a lot in Soradyne that plays with how tempo develops and shifts throughout the game — mechanics that ask you to trade off attack damage for improved spell effects, a mechanic that fundamentally changes the kind of (and how much) damage you're trying to deal, a tribe built to collectively improve the quality of cards in hand, an array of auras and support cards that work to mitigate the tempo lost when enchanted creatures get two-for-one'd, and so on. I think these will prove fine as they are in this set.
That's a really cool idea SFletcher, but it seems to me that this land could tap for
or 
without being busted. Looking at the common land cycle you have, I have to admit that these uncommon lands don't jive with them well. Can't put a card on the bottom of your library if you already sacrificed it. If you wanted to get value out of these things, 'charge lands' like Archaeological Dig or ETB lands that were poor lands after they did their thing might be a good plan. Also, if I was a player and I saw that something similar to Annex was in your uncommon slot, I'd be psyched.
I've had the same thought regarding the "land in graveyard" clause on this particular card. I've got a couple of "Crossblighted" cards that check to see if there's a land in your own graveyard, and I intend to expand that design by a few more cards (probably maxing around five cards). In those cases, I don't think it should be difficult to know if you've got the land in the bin; you've either gotten the land there or you haven't.
There's a blue mill card that looks to see if the cards being milled include a land, but that's a one-time check, so I wouldn't really put it in this category. I think I've got a black discard card that has a similar clause; same story.
The Pathtracker is sort of a black sheep though. My intent was to have a guy who got better when he could see your "trail of breadcrumbs", and as a top-down design I think this build works. You're right that this is tougher to remember than knowing whether your own graveyard contains a land. It also carries connotations of the Crossblighted dead-land check, which I don't like.
Ideas?
Solid design that definitely has some neat interactions with feint.