Thoughts on this card's power level?
Custom Cards forum
Posted on July 5, 2015, 12:55 a.m. by -Logician
I've already come to a conclusion on what I feel like the power level of this card is, but I'm just curious about your initial reaction.
Land
- [T]: Add two mana in any combination of colors to your mana pool. Each opponent may add three mana in any combination of colors to his or her mana pool.
KillDatBUG says... #3
I don't think it's busted at all; if anything, it seems like the drawback would make the card unplayable.
July 5, 2015 1:45 a.m.
I think that at the very least this card would also have to be legendary and would have to enter the battlefield tapped.
2 mana is enough to cast a 3/2 creature, and these days 4 mana can get out anywhere from a 4/4 to at 5/5 on the high end. So if you drop two of those lands in the first couple of turns you could easily have 7 to 8 power on the board by the end of your second turn. The mana fixing the card offers would also allow for the inclusion of all the best creatures in just about any format that the card is legal in. Being able to have 4 mana available to you on your second turn without having to cast any additional cards to make it happen is game breaking.
The land would need to be legendary to prevent you from having more than one on the board. It would have to come into play tapped because otherwise, even if it is legendary, you could still play one the first turn and then on the second turn you tap it for mana, play a second one, sac the tapped one because of the legendary rule, then tap the new one for two more mana and cast a 4 mana spell.
July 5, 2015 1:56 a.m.
I agree that the most powerful aspect of it is when used with something like Grand Abolisher.
If this was a card though, cards like Scavenging Ooze just get better so that you can dump the three free mana you get instantly. A turn one two-drop from your opponent could meet even the most watered down of counterspells like Cancel.
The moment you start running Silence, Xantid Swarm, Grand Abolisher, and other cards of the like, you actually start committing a lot of real-estate in your deck just to abuse a land that isn't really going to drop a bomb any faster than Ancient Tomb (though admittedly it's certainly more consistent).
One powerful aspect of this card that shouldn't be underestimated though, is that the player using it is more prepared to take advantage of the dynamic game-state change as it hits the field. The moment it comes into play, the game state changes significantly. All of a sudden the opponent might have three additional mana that he or she may not have thought he or she would have, and perhaps would have played their previous turn different had they known otherwise. Certainly, against a player who's ready for a land like this, it can be more of a burden than a blessing, and your turn one 2-drop could be met with something like an opposing Electrolyze right off the bat.
SaberTech I know that four mana sounds pretty good for pumping out some beefy creatures on turn one and two. How about a turn 2 Thrun, the Last Troll? Except that with all that mana you gave me, I can Geth's Verdict and have four mana left over for something else (like a draw spell maybe), and if I have a land left over from the previous turn, that's actually the opportunity to cast a spell for up to 7 mana. I seriously argue that if your deck isn't equipped to play something at instant speed in Modern or Legacy, then this land wouldn't be your only problem. In standard, it can vary a little bit more, admittedly.
Very powerful? Yes. More game-changing than Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise were? I wouldn't say so. If I were to lower the power level of this card in some way, I would allow the opponent's three mana to be used to cast spells as though they had flash, so that at least they can always sink that mana (if you have a Grand Abolisher in play, good for you. That's good synergy.).
July 5, 2015 2:09 a.m.
The fixing might be too good though for turn one in old formats.
Might actually consider this, just to stop it from being a useful land on turn 1:
- Add to your mana pool two mana in any combination of types that lands you control could produce. Each opponent may add three mana in any combination of colors to his or her mana pool.
July 5, 2015 2:18 a.m. Edited.
Interesting design. I agree that it would be pretty busted in older formats, but it is a sweet design nonetheless.
July 5, 2015 2:32 a.m.
While 3 mana is definitely the benchmark for being able to cast no-condition counterspells and kill spells these days like Cancel and Hero's Downfall that an opponent could theoretically use to stop whatever you try to do with that mana, that would only be a downside if an opponent has that sort of card in hand. That may be more likely in extended formats like Modern and Legacy but Standard is a different story. Unless you are limiting the card's release to a special product then it is going to have to be printed in a set that will be Standard legal at some point.
Having a land card like that in Standard would eliminate the viability of weenie aggro decks unless there were a lot of cheap creatures with flash printed as well. It would be a meta with midrange decks on steroids because of the fast mana with excellent fixing. If there are any decent discard spells like Duress in the format, that would be effective for removing an opponent's instant speed answers to the threats you want to cast. Theoretically, with that land you could cast two Duress on the first turn. In response, other decks would need to saturate their lists with an abundance if instant speed answers, which would constrain deck variety and result in a very limited meta. The limited card pool of viable answers would cause your card to completely warp the Standard meta around it since there are very few answers printed these days that deal with lands.
July 5, 2015 2:42 a.m.
My previous post was written before I saw those changes you proposed. I do like the limitation that you put in the revised version that limits it's usefulness on turn 1.
July 5, 2015 3:04 a.m.
My intent for the card is actually to be vacuumed into a single set. I'm trying to design a set for competitive metagame play that runs at about the pace of a very fast standard, but not quite at the pace of modern. I see my set as a "Vacuum Set," which is just a term I'm coining that means that cards in this set are designed to be played only with other cards in this set, and are not to be played with real cards.
One very powerful spell that costs 3 mana at instant speed in my set is "Call to Rescue," which is a 2W Instant that searches your library for a creature with converted mana cost 2 or less and puts it into play. No doubt that it would probably be a cornerstone of the format, and I expect many strategies to be employing it. So naturally, this land will cause the opponent to cast many a "Call to Rescue," probably a solid 10-15% of the time. Also, I do not have any cards like Grand Abolisher. I do have some that make spells cost more mana, but not a card that opens the window for the opponent to not be allowed to cast spells at all. One of the primary synergies with this card that I'm expecting to be abused is with a late-game creature that has, "Whenever an opponent adds mana to his or her mana pool, you also add that mana to your mana pool. This mana doesnt leave your mana pool as steps and phases end." So in essence, when your opponent is confronted about whether or not to accept three mana from the land, they have to consider whether or not it is worth it to also be giving you another three mana.
I'd be lying if I said that my set tends to the hyper aggro player, which is a good point to bring up. I really like my games to go long, and in that desire lies a flaw in my set design. It's not impossible to build a hyper aggro deck in this set, but there's an abundance of a set-wide mechanic called "Recuperate" that allows creatures to endure in the same way Regenerate, Percist, and Undying do. Here's an example of Recuperate.
- Recuperate-[COST] (The next time this creature would die this turn, you may exile it until your next upkeep for its recuperate cost instead.)
Like I said, that mechanic is set-wide, meaning it exists in all colors much like scry exists in all colors. There's several synergies in the form of triggered abilities occurring when a creature recuperates, and even a creature that makes it so that when a creature recuperates, it returns to the battlefield immediately instead of during your next upkeep. All that is to say that a midrange deck can craft a board presence that's tough to answer. Even the main board wipe in the set tends to the recuperate mechanic.
Brink of Extinction 
- Destroy all creatures.
- Until end of turn, whenever a creature recuperates, put a +1/+1 counter on it when it comes back into play.
- (Evolution refines savage perfection. -- had to include the flavor text)
Red does have access to this 1-drop instant answer:
- Severing Strike deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to you. It cant recuperate this turn.
White has access to a fun little spell here too for at instant speed.
- Choose one -- Tap target creature; Exile target tapped creature.
- Buyback
and at the same price of ,
- Destroy target creature with power 4 or greater. It can't be recuperated.
And there are a few others that deal with recuperating creatures, but even so, the tools that midrange and control have access to are most likely overwhelming. It's partly my goal to remedy that in the last bit of the set. I'm only 290 cards deep, with a 400 card goal. Plenty of room for improvement.
July 5, 2015 11:20 a.m.
Popalofiti says... #12
IT'S OVER 9000!!!!
But seriously, it is too good, opponents can only have that mana during your turn, meaning only things with Flash or are instants can be cast. I know that certain cards can change it up a bit (i.e. Hypersonic Dragon), but there isn't much else.
July 5, 2015 1:14 p.m.
KillDatBUG says... #13
Okay, to all of you guys saying that this is incredibly busted: What decks would you want to play this in? Not combo, because the card only serves to make all forms of combo weaker to countermagic while also solving none of combo's problems. I doubt fair decks would want it either, because fair decks don't need fast mana with a drawback as high as this. Combine that with the innate weakness to Wasteland, and you'd start to understand why this card wouldn't see any play. Producing colored mana doesn't matter, especially when Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors already fulfill the same role you'd want this land for: Acceleration. And they do that without the very high drawback that this land has.
Conclusion: This card is just fine in its current form. If anything, it's probably straight-up unplayable, like that Day's Undoing card that everyone thinks is "busted".
July 5, 2015 1:50 p.m. Edited.
Meh, I'm bored right now so I'm willing to debate my opinion on the topic if you would like. That being said, -Logician has already stated that the card is intended for a stand-alone set, so that pretty much negates any reason to really argue on its meta application in current formats. From what -Logician has said it looks like the Land Card's (I'm just going to abbreviate "Land Card" to LC for now) design has been crafted to accommodated the meta that the rest of the set is designed to promote.
Just for fun though, if you do want to debate a "what if" scenario of releasing the LC into the current MtG formats then I'm game. I'll be addressing my position from the perspective of what the LC would do to a Standard format though, since my perspective is that if the card was released in an official set it would have to be Standard legal at some point.
July 5, 2015 4:10 p.m.
SaberTech Yeah I'd be up for that debate. The land is called Archmage's Palace if you just wanna call it that instead.
Btw Day's Undoing is bad. Usable mayyyyybe in merfolk on main phase 2. That's about it.
As for Archmage's Palace in legacy in its original form, the fixing is just really, really good. Like ridiculously good. You could just start splashing in cards with double off-color, like a Bant deck sideboarding in Hymn to Tourach. That seems pretty insane. Would I play this card in ANT? Maybe. Turn one double Duress, or duress + Ponder seems good. Is the opponent going to throw a counterspell at one of them? It's good for me either way. What if the opponent kept a hand of like, Deathrite Shaman, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Liliana of the Veil, Hymn to Tourach, Ancestral Vision, Land, Land? A totally keepable hand, and they get zero value from three mana on the opponent's turn. The most backbreaking thing an opponent could do on turn 1 against your Archmage's Palace honestly is to either counter your first spell, which isn't a big deal (they can do that with force of will anyway), or brainstorm. So if the opponent brainstorms and that's all, they were just given 3 fride of your opponent getting three free mana isn't really that harsh honestly. The fact that this land is nonlegendary also adds to its power. If I have three of them in play in a 12-post deck that decided to copy it or something, and on my turn I give you 9 mana... like.. what are you going to do with 9 mana? Seriously. What's in your hand that you're going to spend 9 mana on? Maybe like, hard cast force of will and then something else for four mana at instant speed. I guess, but agaee mana and only used one of it. Not really all that. That said, the downsin, that's why you play discard. If you discard cards from their hand, they can't abuse the mana. Can you imagine Explore with this card? All of this is to say that Archmage's Palace would not see zero play in legacy, but I also don't think it would be destroying the format. It would see a fair amount of play.
I'm not much into standard right now, so I can't say how powerful it would be there. I would think it would be pretty impressive though, as the fixing would be off the charts. It seems like it would enable 5-color control with very little effort.
July 5, 2015 7:26 p.m.
Popalofiti To reiterate, if your non-standard deck doesn't play cards at instant speed, that's not ordinary. That's a bit odd, and totally your own fault. This is not a game that playing only sorcery speed cards makes a lot of sense in. Will you always have an instant speed card in your opening hand? Maybe not. But will you always have Archmage's Palace in your opening hand? Only 39.94% of the time.
July 5, 2015 7:31 p.m.
-Logician I'm not well versed on the meta in legacy, but from what I do know I think that your assessment of Archmage's Palace's (the original version) impact on the Legacy format seems fairly sound. I do think that the card may open up avenues for new combo decks though. At the very least, it would give a lot more speed and open up more options to Storm decks.
The original version of Archmage's Palace can do some unhealthy things to a format though. The mana fixing is too good. The pros and cons of playing five colour decks is that you can play all the best spells but it comes with risks regarding mana consistancy. But say you could play a deck where you are running 4 Archmage's Palace, 4 Mana Confluence, and a bunch of dual lands; you would likely be able to cast anything in your hand pretty consistently and often a turn or two earlier than normal because Archmage's Palace produces 2 mana. Situations like that can kill deck diversity because it means that it is easier to play all the best cards available in a format fairly easily. While this might not be as big an issue in the extended formats, for a more limited format like Standard that can make for an incredibly stale meta. Variety in Standard comes from having a bunch of powerful cards and/or strategies but having to chose between them because of mana restrictions. Add a card like Archmage's Palace to the mix and now what might have been two or three different deck archetypes can now be merged into on deck since all the core cards and best support cards can be played together with far less mana issues.
The general answer that people may throw around is that "Counterspells can stop it," especially since the mana that Archmage's Palace gives an opponents basically lets them cast counterspells for free. But like you said in your previous post, that only works if the opponent has a counterspell in hand. You also have to look at what types of counterspells are being used/available. Say you drop two Archmage's Palace over your first couple of turns; you'll have 4 mana available to you on your second turn. This means that you could easily cast something with a mana cost too high for Spell Snare to stop, or you could cast a 2 mana spell and still have enough mana to pay to an opponent's Spell Pierce.
Granted, in a format like Modern where people might be playing cards like Collected Company or Gifts Ungiven, giving an opponent 3 mana can be a big gamble and that would work well to limit the pervasiveness of Archmage's Palace in the format. In fact, it may see the least play in the Modern format. But I do think that in Standard the card will have an unhealthy warping effect on the meta that would lead to it being quickly banned.
filledelanuit says... #2
It seems busted as hell. There are way to many decks that cannot play at instant speed or the deck with the land could play cards like Silence or Xantid Swarm.
July 5, 2015 12:59 a.m.