General Custom Cards: The Lab

What do you guys think about 3 color boltlands?

Boltland
Land - Swamp X Y
(T: Add B, X, or Y.)
ETB tapped unless you pay 3 life.

Add a color, add a life. Any issues there?
 
Yeah, 4 starts getting to be way too much if you want them to come into play untapped the majority of the time. Fetching these is a full quarter of your life. Now if you wanted them to be balanced, I think 4 life is fine. Aesthetically, 3 looks nice and is probably close enough, but I feel like these will really open the floodgates on multicolor soup decks if only because it'll open the door to a lot of incidental splashes. Compare them to how the Triomes see eternal play without ever coming into play untapped, and . . . yeah.
 
What if the basic land types were removed? Makes it a lot less appealing as a splash enabler while supporting those 3c decks.
EDIT:
Forsaken Valley.pngForsaken Valley1.pngForsaken Valley2.png
The other 3c cycle is
NAME
Land
T: Add C.
T, Pay 1 life: Add B, X, or Y.
 
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What's the goal here? Do you want to empower aggro decks, control decks, midrange decks, none of the above? Or do you just want more fixing? I like the swamp + painland approach myself (number 3 of the cards) due to it emphasizing black mana for your particular cube, but if you just want thematic fixing then they're pretty interchangeable. Without knowing this it's pretty hard to make recommendations based on differences this small tbh.
 
I want more untapped fixing, basically. Having this 3x cycle be SIX tapped lands feels like a lot. Nearly half of my custom mana base is tapped if these were to stay as pseudo tricycle lands, like they were.

I kind of feel like the second one is the most balanced. Control can play it tapped, aggro can pay the somewhat high cost, and midrange can decide based on the matchup. I'm worried aggro nearly invalidates the third land and that the first one is too splashable.
 
Sounds good to me given those goals!

You could also make it a little asymmetrical, with things like the following.


NAME
Land
T: Add B
T, pay 1 life: Add X
T, pay 2 life: Add Y


This would make fixing easier and enable some splashing but not too much, which I think fits with your goals. Plus, I like the idea of fixing lands that go late in the draft, which I think this would. The biggest downside I can think of is that because it's asymmetrical this would take up 12 slots, not 6, and it's also harder to mentally shortcut these.

Ome important caveat is that I feel like I've seen this design before, though I can't remember where--maybe even from you?--so I can't take credit for the idea.
 
Just wanted to post the six remaining custom cards in my cube:

1639130010412.png1639130022439.png1639130032459.png1639130047010.png1639130059419.png1639130077578.png

1. Should we update Cylix of Creation using Blood tokens? Or maybe cut it because it now either gets too texty or isn't completed with all the tokens?
2. Maybe I should create these again using Chris' Card Conjurer..
3. Maybe I should improve the flavor text on Realm of Serra. (By the way, before Wizards released their Yavimaya land, I also had the green land in my cube as a custom card. I also used Yavimaya as location. I was very, very happy when Modern Horizons 2 came out. Now all we need are the remaining three, looool)
4. Maybe the wording on Yacup should get updated. We used to use "Then shuffle" after a dot but now Wizards have changed their wording into almost exactly like ours, we should probably steal theirs with the ", then shuffle."
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Interesting. Yaqup seems super strong.
Man good lord if that was legal in constructed :p
Welcome to the idea plant tier

Card Conjurer gets you higher res images, and pretty frames if you want them, but otherwise it's the same as MSE. You also can't save locally, so if you do want to edit any of these you'd need to recreate it from scratch (I think they let you save like, 6 cards to site memory)

So, people have actually asked me about completing the urborg cycle like you've done here, but I told them that it doesn't make sense for WotC to finish it: they've already done the colors that count basics

There's a myriad of black cards and a few green ones that count these, but like
Red has spitting earth? They don't even make those much anymore. I think Jaws of Stone is the most recent printing of that effect

Blue and white have like, what a card each?

Are these in your cube for fixing? Kinda like half a filter land that works infinitely?
 
Interesting. Yaqup seems super strong.
Man good lord if that was legal in constructed :p
It's super interesting to play with. Especially during drafting and deck construction. Everyone who has played with it has become a fan except for our favorite @VincePendrell :p

Welcome to the idea plant tier
Sorry, I don't understand this. Care to explain to me?

So, people have actually asked me about completing the urborg cycle like you've done here, but I told them that it doesn't make sense for WotC to finish it: they've already done the colors that count basics
I agree. When we created our cycle of Urborgs, we still only had only the black one and had to wait 6 years before we got the green one. Back then it made sense to 'complete' the cycle. Now that we have both, I also don't see Wizards print a red, white and blue one. They just don't make much sense. But maybe they'll do it anyways because "This will sell"

Are these in your cube for fixing? Kinda like half a filter land that works infinitely?
I believe everyone who can stomach custom cards should run this cycle. It's sooo cube for a cube. Yes it helps the player filter their mana base at almost no cost but sometimes it also helps the opponent's mana base, which is a magical thing. Every time it happens, it is a fun conversation topic and a moment for the memory book. It doesn't feel unfair and it happens rarely. But it creates better games for both players. More stability.

Ups, I forgot that I also have this one in cube:

1639338725655.png

I thought about it because it is also one of those cards that helps both players. The owner really want this in their deck. But the opponent also gets a better and more stable game. And it's a flavor home run in my opinion. I didn't design the card.
 
Idea plant is "the card in my cube that would ruin legacy"
IDK if Yaqup would RUIN eternal formats but it's probably dangerous

Oh, I never heard that before. Always good to learn new terms.

People still don’t know if they should include 1, 2 or 3 planeswalkers in a deck running Yaqup and no other tutor spells. My guess is 2 is optimal but I still don’t know. But what if you have a tutor spell?

I guess it would be broken in eternal formats where you can include 4 copies of Yaqup.
 
Interesting. Yaqup seems super strong.
Man good lord if that was legal in constructed :p
Welcome to the idea plant tier

Card Conjurer gets you higher res images, and pretty frames if you want them, but otherwise it's the same as MSE. You also can't save locally, so if you do want to edit any of these you'd need to recreate it from scratch (I think they let you save like, 6 cards to site memory)

So, people have actually asked me about completing the urborg cycle like you've done here, but I told them that it doesn't make sense for WotC to finish it: they've already done the colors that count basics

There's a myriad of black cards and a few green ones that count these, but like
Red has spitting earth? They don't even make those much anymore. I think Jaws of Stone is the most recent printing of that effect

Blue and white have like, what a card each?

Are these in your cube for fixing? Kinda like half a filter land that works infinitely?
Ey!

Forgive my noobiness, you mentioned Card Conjurer higher res images, if wanted to print custom cards designed on this site, would they be similar quality or close to real cards?

dear regards,

Michiel
 
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