Rare Typed Lands

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JovialJovian
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Post by JovialJovian » 4 years ago

As usual, didn't have a good idea for the white part of a cycle, but also this time didn't have a good idea for the black part either. Forced cycle anyways! The blue one is the first one, then I had a bright idea for the green one, at which point I just soldiered through the cycle.

Sea of Grain
Land - Plains
T: Each player gains 2 life.

Prison Isle
Land - Island
If ~ would enter the battlefield, you may choose target creature. If you do, it enters the battlefield under that creature's controller's control and exile that creature until ~ leaves the battlefield. Otherwise, ~ enters the battlefield tapped.

Stinking Peat
Land - Swamp
Whenever a creature or land card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may exile that card. If you do, gain 1 life.

Treacherous Arete
Land - Mountain
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
At the beginning of your upkeep, choose any target and flip a coin. If you win the flip, ~ deals 1 damage to the chosen target. Otherwise ~ deals 1 damage to you.

Wild Place
Land - Forest
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
Whenever another land enters the battlefield under your control, that land becomes a 2/2 green Wolf creature that's still a land.

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Mookie
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Post by Mookie » 4 years ago

First rule of lands: never be strictly better than a basic. Sea of Grain and Stinking Peat should be entering tapped (or be conditional), or have some other downside. Ignoring that....

Sea of Grain: symmetric lifegain is somewhat interesting, but this is way too efficient - I suspect its presence would singlehandedly invalidate aggro in most formats. It's fine to be better than Sapseep Forest, but this is a bit much. I'd probably add an activation cost.

Prison Isle: I have some color pie concerns for this, since Oblivion Ring is in White's slice. This also looks way too strong - it's Path to Exile in a land slot. If you really want it to be removal, maybe some sort of 'tap a thing, it doesn't untap' effect, similar to Skyline Cascade?

Stinking Peat: sort of an odd effect. Again, may want to add an activation cost to this. I'm not sure if there will be some sort of mill/lifegain combo deck enabled by this, but interesting to hypothesize about.

Treacherous Arete: again, concerns about free activation. Seems extremely oppressive to 1-toughness creatures.

Wild Place: probably the most well-balanced of them - giving your lands summoning sickness and vulnerability to removal are both significant downsides, but free 2/2s are pretty good. May have some memory issues involved with remembering which lands are creatures though.

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void_nothing
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

Mookie hit most of what I wanted to say. I know Prison Isle's flavor is really evocative - the movie Papillon and lots of similar examples have made "inescapable jail for the most condemned criminals on a remote island" a popular fictional trope. But both exile-with-an-out and giving your opponent some kind of recompense for exiling a creature are very white.

I'm actually the most concerned about Wild Place despite how, again, flavorful and cool it is. Field of the Dead is now well-known as a dangerous card, after all, and they have free 2/2s on dropping a land as a similarity. However, of course turning your lands into the creatures instead of getting tokens is a big difference.

Something you could do for the white entry is make the lifegain ability a triggered ability (probably for just 1 life) when you tap it for mana. Of course Stinking Peat has something similar (and I'd make the ability mandatory there as well), so I think it'd be better mechanically and flavorfully to find something new for the Plains entry...
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JovialJovian
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Post by JovialJovian » 4 years ago

Well, the easy solution to the white one and the concerns about the color of the blue one is:

Remote Prison
Land - Plains
If ~ would enter the battlefield, you may choose target creature and opponent controls. If you do, ~ enters the battlefield under that player's control and when it does, exile the chosen creature until ~ leaves the battlefield. Otherwise, ~ enters the battlefield tapped.

But I will point out that color is virtually irrelevant, since it costs no mana to cast, you could put this in a mono-blue deck anyways.

That leaves a vacancy for the Island:

Shifting Seas
Land - Island
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
{2/U}{2/U}, T: Exchange control of ~ and target land and opponent controls, ~ and that land don't untap during their controller's next untap steps.

I was not a fan of stinking peat, but I suppose it could work in conjunction with self-mill or discard, to gain some residuals from the lands getting dumped to the grave:

Stinking Peat
Land - Swamp
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
Whenever a land is put into your graveyard from anywhere, exile that card and gain 1 life.

Treacherous Arete could be made more treacherous to balance it out:

Treacherous Arete
Land - Mountain
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
At the beginning of your upkeep, choose any target, than an opponent chooses any target. Flip a coin, if you win the flip, ~ deals 1 damage to the target you chose, otherwise ~ deals 1 damage to the target your opponent chose.

I feel like the standard these days for permanently animated lands is to make them 0/0s and put some counters on them. Going that route would also make multiple copies beneficial rather than redundant, though in that case two seems too much.

Wild Place
Land - Forest
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
Whenever another land enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on it and that land becomes a 0/0 green Elemental that's still a land.

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