Zirconia, the Prismatic Palace
Custom Cards forum
Posted on April 9, 2020, 6:40 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Prismatic Omen and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove are both great cards, but they are not lands, despite giving benefits to lands, so I have decided to make a land version of those cards, as seen, here:
Zirconia, the Prismatic Palace Show
There was already a precedent for such a land with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, so it was not a major stretch of imagination to make a land that was similar to it. I gave this land the drawback of entering the battlefield tapped, to prevent it from being too powerful, but should it have a further drawback than that?
What does everyone else think of this land?
DemonDragonJ says... #3
Funkydiscogod, what about the land making its controller lose a certain amount of life when it enters the battlefield?
April 9, 2020 8:01 p.m.
LordBlackblade says... #4
How about something along the lines of Winter Orb where its effect only works if it untapped? That in addition to it entering tapped would make it essentially dead for one turn before it starts producing value, at which point you'd have to sequence your taps carefully to gain full use of its effect.
April 9, 2020 10:20 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
LordBlackblade, I could do that, but WotC has moved away from using that type of effect, and I also wish for it to be somewhat similar to Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
April 9, 2020 10:23 p.m.
LordBlackblade says... #6
How about an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth where you choose the color as it enters? E.g. As this land enters the battlefield, choose a basic land type. Each land is that type in addition to its other land types.
April 9, 2020 10:24 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #7
LordBlackblade, that is actually an interesting idea, but then the card would not be a land version of Prismatic Omen, which was my intention when I made it.
April 9, 2020 10:27 p.m.
LordBlackblade says... #8
Alright then, let's give it an activated ability using Cabal Coffers as a template for what a powerful ability should cost. From that we could derive a land that ETBs tapped and has ,: Lands you control are every basic land type in addition to their other types until end of turn.
April 9, 2020 11:06 p.m.
This card is insane. Urborg is card with multiple printings and helps out your opponents and it's a $20 card. This thing would probably end up around $50-$60 if it was in a standard set. Every 4 or 5 color deck would consider this an auto include. I think maybe making it so you cant use it for mana itself would help balance it
April 10, 2020 7:33 a.m.
Any multicolor deck will play these. This effect is too good on a land, and violates the color pie by making an exclusively green effect available to any deck. Cascading Cataracts is the closest thing we will get to this.
April 10, 2020 7:58 a.m.
nimrod1111 says... #11
I would have it give the effect to other lands you control, making it a landrop that doesn't produce mana for itself making it too slow for most decks in most formats, something along these lines:
Zirconia, the Prismatic Palace
Legendary land
: other lands you control are every basic land type this turn.
With this restriction I don't believe it even needs to enter the battlefield tapped, personally I wouldn't play a card like that in any decks with less than 4 colors
If you are really bothered about it breaking the color pie you could make the effect cost instead making this only viable in decks using green.
April 10, 2020 9:12 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #12
Funkydiscogod, the still does not capture the idea that I had for this card.
Boza, why is that effect specifically green? I do not see how that effect should be limited to one color.
April 10, 2020 3:11 p.m.
Besides the dryad and prismatic omen and Nylea's Presence, which are green, is there any other card with that effect outside of green? Plus, green cards and artifacts are the only ones which modify lands to use any color - Abundant Growth, Market Festival,etc.
Green is the only color able to modify the colors of mana lands produce.
April 10, 2020 4:57 p.m.
Funkydiscogod notice how al the blue and colorless cards are actually "select a basic land type" compared to dryad's "this is all basic land types". Giving you a slight fix is something blue could do in the past, it has been moved to colorless artifacts most, ie Arcum's Astrolabe recently, since using a color to fix your colors does not make much sense.
April 11, 2020 5:58 a.m.
PIayswithFlRE says... #15
While it would be nice to have this effect on a land, it may need to be balanced to reflect that lands are harder to destroy/remove than other permanent types that have the effect.
So, maybe something like
"when {this land} enters play, lands that you control have all basic land types in addition to their other types until end of turn"
Or
"Cumulative upkeep
Lands that you control have all basic land types in addition to their other types."
April 11, 2020 7:32 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #16
PlaysWithFire, Funkydiscogod, the idea of an upkeep cost is also an excellent way to prevent the card from becoming too powerful, so I like that idea.
April 11, 2020 10:58 p.m.
PIayswithFlRE says... #17
I should apologize to PlaysWithFire; I'm PIayswithFlRE; the L in plays is a capital i and the i in FIRE is a lowercase L.
Glad you like it. Cumulative upkeep felt about right. The turn it enters, you get the versatility and no drawback. Turn after that, it pays for itself. But, from then on you have to make some serious quality vs quantity evaluations for your mana.
April 12, 2020 9:15 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #18
PlaysWithFire, I believe that any card that has cumulative upkeep should reward a player after it is sacrificed, based upon how many times the upkeep cost had been paid, so what would be a reasonable reward for this land?
April 12, 2020 2:08 p.m.
PIayswithFlRE says... #19
I think that's not generally how cumulative upkeep has been used in the past, though; it's generally that the card is overpowered for its initial cost and so the cumulative upkeep makes up for it later (quick search turns up the something like 5% of the cumulative upkeep cards have a payoff when it's sacrificed).
If you wanted something appropriate for when it's sacrificed, I guess it would either be a burst of mana (either or one of any color for each age counter) that you'd need to have an instant ready for, since it would be produced in your upkeep, or, maybe one treasure for each age counter, but that might make the card a bit wordy.
Also, to be clear, I meant to say that the person commenting on this thread is me, the misspelled piasywithFLRE and not the correctly spelled PlayswithFire
April 13, 2020 10:55 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #20
PIayswithFlRE, I am terribly sorry, as I did not notice that; how did you choose that user name?
April 13, 2020 11:21 a.m.
PIayswithFlRE says... #21
No problem. I've been playswithfire (the correct spelling whenever possible) ever since I picked the username, which was inspired by a friend introducing fire poi to a group I was in in college.
When I came here, the correct spelling was taken, but, since everything is in a sans-serif font, capital i and lower case L look the same, so I just adjusted the capitalization to make it work (not thinking about confusing people who try to tag me).
April 13, 2020 11:58 a.m.
I'd like to throw in Joiner Adept in tribute to the whole: Green is the one who fixes your mana on a large scale with the full palette.
I really don't think this effect should be on a land card. Drawback or no drawback, fixing on a large scale is not something every color can do. Many colors (mostly in the older days) have ways to funnel mana into their own colors; Bog Initiate, Farrelite Priest, Manaforge Cinder. Blue have had a lot of ways to change their (or others') lands into a different land type all together, like on Realmwright, but not the full palette.
abby315 says... #2
I'm not a great judge of power, but I'd play it! I don't think it's broken, however, it would likely make whatever Standard it's in very 4 and 5 color focused, so the set it's in would be designed to make that fun (and not just "play all the best value cards" e.g. BFZ standard). I don't think it's too powerful for Modern or other formats.
Alternatively, you could make it enter untapped, tap for colorless, and have "Basic lands you control have every basic land type." That would make it harder to run straight 5-color goodstuff, while still supporting "greedy" manabases.
April 9, 2020 7:07 p.m.