Chris Taylor
Contributor
I mean, like if you're happy with the art, make sure they're good and edited etc
Its more of a commitment right?
Its more of a commitment right?
General Custom Cards: The Lab
- Thread starter anotak
- Start date
True. I'm open to any critiques. Art, card quality, names, whatever.
@Onderzeeboot should be happy to see several Kirk Quilaquil arts in there, per his suggestion.
Perfect. Definitely going for strong but not crazy. No raw duals, at least. It also seems like you can push lands a bit in draft because they cost a pick and no one is going to run 20 of them in their Modern deck.
I tried to use BASIC Swamp as a condition to limit greed. If you want to run all nonbasics, they're gonna be nerfed somehow. The trilands are either hurting you or creating double nonblack mana, which is so much less useful here. Hoping that mix of things is discouraging enough that 2-3 color decks stays the norm.
No raw duals is a goal of my own. Back when I had ABUR duals, people would splash them off a fetch because there was no drawback. They were actually detrimental to the format's goals sometimes.
Maybe I should double check these to make sure they aren't too free of a splash. I made them worse than real duals, but that may not be enough. EDIT: Added 1 life payment to the Swamp/basicX fetches so it wasn't totally free to fetch. Rest have some sort of anti-greed built in.
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I think they are mostly worse than ABUR duals but some of them are up there. The tri-lands are absolutely amazing! They are better Swamps because they have no downsides and give acces to two extra colors at the cost of 1 life. Like a Pain land but with the colorless mana being traded for a colored mana.
The 10 fetch lands doesn’t cost life to fetch which means they are always better than Basics and often better than ABUR duals because they thin the deck at no cost. Why run 8 Swamps when you can run 4 Swamps and 4 Swamp-fetchers that can also gives acces to a Basic Mountain?
The Cursed cycle is the Tainted cycle but with upsides of being able to tap for black. There is never a good reason to not run these over Basic swamps.
Extinction Zone is also a fetch land that always finds a Swamp. Always include this above your Basic lands.
I would probably run the triple lands over ABUR duals. I would probably run the cost-free Fetch lands above fetch lands.
The 10 fetch lands doesn’t cost life to fetch which means they are always better than Basics and often better than ABUR duals because they thin the deck at no cost. Why run 8 Swamps when you can run 4 Swamps and 4 Swamp-fetchers that can also gives acces to a Basic Mountain?
The Cursed cycle is the Tainted cycle but with upsides of being able to tap for black. There is never a good reason to not run these over Basic swamps.
Extinction Zone is also a fetch land that always finds a Swamp. Always include this above your Basic lands.
I would probably run the triple lands over ABUR duals. I would probably run the cost-free Fetch lands above fetch lands.
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Yeah, life needed to be added to the fetches.
Extinction Zone is pretty pushed, but it's only one card, so I'm alright with that.
Cursed forces you to have a basic in play, so you can't be excessively greedy. Maybe I'll make it require two basics so it's best suited for a 2-2.5 color deck. I want to avoid splash city.
The tri-signets are really good, but I definitely feel like having two nonblack mana is so much less useful in this format than any other that it should be ok. I'll think about removing the Swamp type from them and give them T: Add B instead. Or change the second ability to "B, T: Add XY."
I think that costing a pick should balance these out a little, too, as long as they aren't insanely pushed. A really good land will cost an earlier pick. I'm definitely considering some slight nerfs now, though.
Extinction Zone is pretty pushed, but it's only one card, so I'm alright with that.
Cursed forces you to have a basic in play, so you can't be excessively greedy. Maybe I'll make it require two basics so it's best suited for a 2-2.5 color deck. I want to avoid splash city.
The tri-signets are really good, but I definitely feel like having two nonblack mana is so much less useful in this format than any other that it should be ok. I'll think about removing the Swamp type from them and give them T: Add B instead. Or change the second ability to "B, T: Add XY."
I think that costing a pick should balance these out a little, too, as long as they aren't insanely pushed. A really good land will cost an earlier pick. I'm definitely considering some slight nerfs now, though.
No no, sorry Brad. I did not mean you should change the cards. I might not have explained myself proper.
In a contained environment like your cube, anything goes. Really. The lands can be powerful and it can work wonders in your cube. The only thing is we cannot release them into the world because that would break several formats. But we can have them in your cube as is.
I have cubes with custom lands that were strictly upgrades to Basics. I made a cycle of 5 Basic lands that scry 1 on ETB. It was pretty cool for a few years.
In a contained environment like your cube, anything goes. Really. The lands can be powerful and it can work wonders in your cube. The only thing is we cannot release them into the world because that would break several formats. But we can have them in your cube as is.
I have cubes with custom lands that were strictly upgrades to Basics. I made a cycle of 5 Basic lands that scry 1 on ETB. It was pretty cool for a few years.
Oh, for sure can't send them into the world. But I'm looking at them and there are a few I'd always splash if it happened to come late to me in the pack, and I don't like that. I'm going to mess with those ones.
EDIT:
Tri-pains are now
T: Add C.
T, Pay 1 life: Add B, X, or Y.
Tri-signets are now Triomes, but with Cycling 1B.
Cursed require two basic Swamps, but they're still pretty free to splash if you're passed one late.
EDIT EDIT: What if Curseds were:
Cursed Thing
Land - Swamp
Whenever ~ becomes tapped, it deals 1 damage to you unless you control two or more basic Swamps.
T: Add (color2).
EDIT:
Tri-pains are now
T: Add C.
T, Pay 1 life: Add B, X, or Y.
Tri-signets are now Triomes, but with Cycling 1B.
Cursed require two basic Swamps, but they're still pretty free to splash if you're passed one late.
EDIT EDIT: What if Curseds were:
Cursed Thing
Land - Swamp
Whenever ~ becomes tapped, it deals 1 damage to you unless you control two or more basic Swamps.
T: Add (color2).
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of course i’m gonna say A
Functionally, would go with A since B is strictly worse than Mana Confluence and the other lands you've presented are potentially a higher level of fixing.
Aesthetically, I like the clean, single-line of text with B. Addition of flavor text would improve A if aesthetics matter.
Aesthetically, I like the clean, single-line of text with B. Addition of flavor text would improve A if aesthetics matter.
Meaningful choices are indeed tasty, but I personally lean towards having the player decide between life and colorless mana instead of life or losing access to the land completely. Probably depends on how colored-mana intensive the cards are in the environment to determine how much of a drawback only having access to colorless mana on select lands would be. It's definitely less punishing, and my preference it probably skewed towards reducing feel-bads regardless of its risk-reward level.
This is why I ever considered B. I can't tell how good it is.
It's either 1.5 painlands or .6 Confluences.
This is very true.
I feel like making up flavor text has a high potential to be cringe. I'm not opposed to adding some, but it seems risky.
This is going to make me go with A. Being stuck on B and 1-2 other lands could be game-ending damage and that's really unfun.
I vote A
I like when there are choices and both A and B checks that box. A does it better though because it also has choices during the game play and not only “Should I pick this land?” and “Should I include this land in my deck?”
I also like it when lands don’t turn off completely like fetch lands and Temple of the False God. B would turn off when you are at 1 life total.
I like when there are choices and both A and B checks that box. A does it better though because it also has choices during the game play and not only “Should I pick this land?” and “Should I include this land in my deck?”
I also like it when lands don’t turn off completely like fetch lands and Temple of the False God. B would turn off when you are at 1 life total.
Yeah. It's definitely not the strongest thing ever printed, but I still think it's pretty good, ya? The basic land types help and I don't want it to be free to toss into a deck, so I don't think I can remove the world "basic."This cycle is pretty low power
~ ENTERS TAPPED UNLESS YOU CONTROL A BASIC SWAMP.
Compare it to the new cycle from Midnight Hunt.
The window for which it could be better is on turn 2, only.
I think it's cleaner to just go with A. A is already quite strong.If you go with B, just add a sac outlet to provide use later in the game. MTG already has a 2 color variant of this that proves itself to be quite good:
I'm running into a situation now where I want to custom a shitload of things lol. I really want to stick to fixing, as WotC isn't really concerned with a format like mine, but it's tempting to do more.
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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I like the text "Add 
or maybe 
instead." Very poetic
or maybe instead." Very poetic i think you are going in the right direction here, better lands make for better games! if you’re concerned about getting too wild, i would recommend sticking to effects that have been printed on a utility land in the past. for instance, your desolate darkhouse could be the Rakdos utility land from OG ravnica instead of “colorshifted lighthouse.”
but if you’ve embraced the custom chaos then go hog wild! make those manabases work!
but if you’ve embraced the custom chaos then go hog wild! make those manabases work!