Protean Palace
Custom Cards forum
Posted on Oct. 6, 2019, 3:43 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
The fetchlands are powerful, but essentially all they do is replace themselves, so they are only truly powerful if their player can replay them multiple times (which, in this game, should not be especially difficult).
Therefore, I wanted to create a fetchland that could be used repeatedly, obviously with a drawback to prevent it from becoming too powerful, and this is the result of my efforts.
Protean Palace Show
This land is legendary to prevent a player from having multiple copies on the battlefield simultaneously, and its activated ability keeps it tapped on the next turn to prevent it from being abused. I did not need to write a mana-producing ability on it, because having a basic land type will automatically provide such an ability.
What does everyone else think of this card? Did I do well with it?
Haha true. Lands matter decks would probably rise with this land card. Because you can activate it in instant speed so you can keep the mana up for an answer on your opponents turn.
October 6, 2019 4:18 p.m. Edited.
DemonDragonJ says... #4
TypicalTimmy, does the "C" in "cEDH" stand for "competitive" or "casual?"
October 6, 2019 4:36 p.m.
this is a variation of the excellent Myriad Landscape , but somehow even worse - takes 8 lands tapped over 6 turns to have the same oomph Myriad can generate with 3 lands over 3 turns.
October 9, 2019 8 a.m. Edited.
It kinda reminds me of a variant of Thawing Glaciers . It's better on its own but for decks that can untap it , it is worse.
I'm kinda struggling to see where this actually fits in.
I wouldn't say it's powerful so on the aspect of balance you've not gone overboard on the powerful side, but it may actually be acceptable to lower the activation to 2 from 3 without too much of an issue.
Personally after seeing Prismatic Vista I kinda hope WotC will print more similar looking variants to boost basic land types in general.
Kinda looking forward to Shard or Khan -esque fetchlands. We have had the Panorama cycle , but they are much too slow to be considered anything but budget alternatives. Something like;
Panorama Fetchland (Esper)
Land
, pay 1 life, sacrifice ~ : Search your library for a basic Plains, Island or Swamp, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.
And...
Khan's Fetchlands (Mardu)
Land
, pay 1 life, sacrifice ~ : Search your library for a basic Plains, Swamp or Mountain, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.
They are essentially fetchlands for basics but can grab a wider array of lands to compensate that they grab basics and thus cannot mana fix as well as standard fetchlands, which with the dual lands can essentially grab any color.
Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse are quite slow but are still useful for decks that want to cycle through their deck, gains benefits from sacrifice or additional land entries.
We need some better basic land filtering to rival fetchlands and their crime buddies; true duals , cycling duals , shock lands , and battle lands .
October 10, 2019 7:21 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #7
Boza, the difference is that Myriad Landscape must be sacrificed, whereas this land is reusable; I added both the "enters the battlefield tapped" and "does not untap during your next untap step" clauses to prevent it from being too powerful; if it had only one of those clauses, I feel that it would be too easy to abuse.
October 10, 2019 2:04 p.m.
Post-scriptum: I just noticed this doesn't say basic land in the search clause. So it is indeed a recurable fetchland... Kinda wish it did say basic land in the search clause. /PS
Cards that basically does the same but don't "pause" (not untap):
Frontier Guide , Journeyer's Kite (not onto the field), Perilous Forays , Sword of the Animist , Thaumatic Compass Flip (not onto the field).
While most of these are more vulnerable than say a nonbasic land (depends on the format though) and may or may not require some additional hoop (the Sword and Perilious) or straight out costs more mana or the same amount of mana to output the first land - the pause on this makes it worse than most of these alternatives - even those that don't put them on the field.
You also lock this into just finding one specific type of basic lands. I really think you could buff the card in a few various ways without causing much of an issue.
Either reducing the activation cost, removing the pause-clause (no pun intended) or enabling a way to circumvent the pause-clause.
For instance;
"Protean Palace enters the battlefield tapped.
As Protean Palace enters the battlefield, choose a basic land type. Protean Palace has the chosen type in addition to its other types.
, : search your library for a basic land card of the chosen type, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library. Put a rest counter on Protean Palace, it doesn't untap during your untap step while it has a rest counter on it.
: Remove all rest counters from Protean Palace.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove all rest counters from Protean Palace."
Functionally much the same but with an ability to sink more mana into it, to basically become a Journeyer's Kite . The difference is slightly more mana investment in the long run, it being a land, and that it only searches for one type of basic lands - but dumps them onto the field.
saluma says... #2
Amulet of Vigor Just got better!
October 6, 2019 4:16 p.m.