Thoboes, the Mana Flow
Custom Cards forum
Posted on July 9, 2017, 9:45 p.m. by Postmortal_Pop
A while back someone was talking about a land commander and that got me thinking. I wanted to make something that was powerful but not so powerful that it was immediately banned from our group.This is what I came up with..
Thoboes, the Mana Flow Show
I draw inspiration for the ability from Fist of Suns and partly of Mycosynth Lattice and Chromatic Lantern. I have two main balances for it, firstly, the ability spreads to all players, meaning you only get the benefit of a 5 color land and a 0/3 body. Secondly, as a 0/3 with no protection, it dies to bolt is your opponents really dont like it.
What do you guys think? does it work? any major problems?
I mean... it's not a creature is it? Doesn't that mean it couldn't attack or block or be dealt damage?
July 9, 2017 10:15 p.m.
I'm pretty sure they changed that rule so any land that can produce any color of mana could produce any color of mana though.
So basically, this would make every player have pretty much anything at their finger tips for 5 mana. Which is insanely broken since it would mean regular turn 5 Kozileks and Ulamogs.
July 9, 2017 10:21 p.m.
If you would get mana added to your pool that's not a color in your commander's color identity, it now just stays that color instead of reverting to colorless (like it used to). This was changed shortly after Oath of the Gatewatch presented the first difference between generic and colorless mana in card costs.
So, basically, if you HAD a way to add WUBRG to your mana pool to take advantage of the Fist through, say, Exotic Orchard, you could use it even if your deck was, say, Dark Jeskai colors.
July 9, 2017 10:22 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #6
Non-creature, non-tribal cards can't have creature types.
It also doesn't do much good to give a noncreature land a P/T box.
July 9, 2017 10:25 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #7
What was intended and what was provided are two different things. Part of proofing cards, as with proofing anything, is pointing out missing pieces.
July 9, 2017 10:47 p.m.
Also even if this was a possible thing in any deck, this is still ridiculously overpowered.
You put an ability from a 5 cost artifact and half of the ability from a 6 cost artifact onto a land, which doesn't require you to tap for either of them. Not to mention, it's easily searchable using Farseek or Karametra, God of Harvests and activates any number of cards involving dominion, converge or otherwise.
This is too good powerful honestly.
July 9, 2017 11:02 p.m.
CastleSiege says... #9
Thoboes, the Mana Flow
Legendary Land Creature - Elemental
Thoboes, the Mana Flow has all basic land types.
Players may spend colorless mana as though it were mana of any color.
Players may pay rather than pay the mana cost of spells they cast.
0/3
There, I think that's formatted a little better for what he intended.
July 9, 2017 11:03 p.m.
CastleSiege says... #10
Now that the formatting is a little better, I think this card would be a little more fairly balanced if one of those two abilities were removed.
July 9, 2017 11:07 p.m.
Honestly even one of those abilities makes it pretty much powerful as a 0 cost 0/3. Even if it hits all players and is now vulnerable, it's still extremely powerful. Especially since you have to recast it 3 times before it's more expensive than a card it's based around.
July 9, 2017 11:19 p.m.
Also any power boosting thing and this becomes much better cause it'll be commander damage too. Which if you cast a red/green land and played a Mass Hysteria or Concordant Crossroads before, you could find ways to deal serious commander damage super easily on turn 2.
July 9, 2017 11:28 p.m.
Winterblast says... #13
So, what you have created is a Dryad Arbor that enables everyone to play ANY spell for 5 generic mana. As it is a creature it has summoning sickness, but it would be quite easy to ramp into 5 mana on turn 2, for example with Mana Vault...with a lot of artifact speed in the deck it's even realistic to get 5 colourless mana on turn 1 without being able to tap that land in the same turn.
Example:
turn 1 - fetchland, fetch this broken land, Lotus Petal, sac petal, Mana Vault
turn 2 - any land, tap all for 5 mana and cast Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and get the CAST EFFECT!
I mean I would totally play it, but having fist of suns and mycosynth lattice on a fetchable land is completely broken. There's a reason why at least mycosynth costs 6...
July 10, 2017 5:39 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #14
Heads-up: The commander tax won't even apply to this card because lands aren't cast. You can't be charged mana for playing lands. So it's always free.
The rules would need to be updated to apply the tax whenever a commander is "played" instead of "cast."
You might consider exploring some space other than this Fist of Suns effect.
July 10, 2017 7:51 a.m.
Postmortal_Pop says... #15
Wow, I haven't been on here for a few days, I'll try to address as much of this as I can.
Firstly, I didn't even notice that this would be fetchable, I only did all types because it looked nicer than the tap ability so that can go. It would probably be better to not have it tap for mana at all.
We decided out of fairness that the commander tax still works here, that's one of the reasons I kept it weak physically so it can be killed.
I'm aware of the missing supertype, cardsmith doesn't allow custom supertypes, so I just went with it.
I was aware of the fast cast eldrazi, it was a worry I had for the card, but my intention is to have a commander that lets you play 5 color without spending thousands of dollars on just the land.
Really, my 2 goals here were to make a relevant land creature and make a commander who's sole purpose was to provide reliable mana fixing. I added fist of the sun because I felt that just color fixing wasn't much and I needed to physically have the symbols on the card.
Funkydiscogods design isn't bad, but it's not quite the feel I'm looking for. Any more ideas would be fantastic to hear, I'd really like to make this functional.
zandl says... #2
Feels outrageously broken. If it has all basic land types, it's fetchable with any fetch-land. It also hugely favors decks that have access to colorless mana naturally, meaning the only decks that would use it are those trying to spam (essentially) Eldrazi on turn-5 while opposing decks would probably not be spending 5 mana for their own spells in the first place.
I get what you're trying to do, but dear lord is this busted.
July 9, 2017 10:13 p.m.