That's actually not a bad idea. They'd still be a bit stronger on the draw than on the play, and the cost-reduction would in total happen a bit more.
That said, I might have to pick a different effect for the red one, since getting your first land colorlessed in addition to another spell, when you're already behind might be a bit too punishing.
1) cards are not supposed to be auto-includes in every deck. Not even in Commander. I know Sol Ring isn't banned there, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't print it if it didn't already exist.
2) If you want this to be like Jeweled Lotus, you need to actually include the restriction. As is, it'd need to be emergency-banned in both legacy and vintage.
the idea here is that these are quite powerful as a 1drop, but only castable on the draw without it being spelled out explicitly.
Persistent Alarm WW
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Costs W less to cast during your first turn
Enchanted creature has "at the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent creates a 1/1 white soldier token"
A token each turn is quite powerful even as a 2drop (Bitterblossom), but having to keep your opponent's creature alive is also quite a restriction on your attacking and blocking decisions, so I assume this being a 1drop occasionally should be fine.
Excessive Taxation UU
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Costs U less to cast during your first turn.
Enchanted creature has "noncreature spells you cast cost 1 more"
Since this kind of taxing doesn't usually appear even on 2drops, I made it tax noncreature spells while sitting on a creature, on top of you having to keep that creature alive. Pretty sure it disrupts prowess decks quite well, though.
Merciless Persecution BB
Sorcery
Costs B less to cast during your first turn.
Destroy target creature with mana value 2 or less and all other creatures with the same name it's controller controls. Its controller reveals their hand and discards all cards with the same name.
basically Legion's End without exile, for double black, but occasionally a 1drop
Careless Devastation RR
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant nonbasic Land
Costs R less to cast during your first turn.
Enchanted land loses all land types and abilities and has "T: add C"
I guess this is the second one that's quite a bit on the powerful end, and for roughly the same reason as the blue one: it's also mana denial.
Favorite Prey GG
Sorcery
Costs G less to cast during your first turn.
Each opponent of target nonland permanent's controller creates a 3/3 green beast token.
And here's the reason why the white one doesn't work properly in multiplayer: I found no other way to make this only work on the draw and didn't want it to be the only one to be worded that way.
would you care to elaborate on what's the point of the dragon? If it were a 10/10, I'd see a combo kill with Phthisis (assuming you can handle one hit), but as is, I don't get it.
Thrash loyalties looked rather weak to me too, until I figured out that it's permanent control. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to spell out "gain control of ... permanently" or something like that. I know it's redundant and Wizards doesn't do it, but this card, being red and adding haste, begs to be misinterpreted.
That's a genius idea! C to cast, then colored to activate, that should feel sufficiently connected to not look like clutter. The changed mana cost should also prevent tutoring from Saga (hadn't even considered that). Still super strong in aggressive artifact decks without the text to prevent that, as they typically have a mix of both colored and colorless mana, but at least there is a chance they don't have both by turn 2.
Lunar Ring C
Legendary Artifact 1, T: add CC. Use only colored mana to pay the activation cost of this ability.
You're certainly right that a cantrip that creates an eldrazi spawn would be too powerful, but i think that's something about free spells that doesn't necessarily generalize to tapped lands. The way I think of it is, for the cost of being colorless, you get to keep your first mana across turns.
By the way, Khalni Garden was in deed the inspiration here. Basically, I downgraded the land to produce colorless, while I upgraded the token to sac for mana. It absolutely is more powerful than Garden, but I don't remember that one seeing much play anywhere.
It certainly is powerful, and you may be right in your conclusion that it is too powerful. If you are, I still don't think it should have Rupture Spire ETB exactly, but a similar one may not be wrong eg when enters you may pay 1 to get the token.
Lunar Ring is most certainly too powerful, yes. But it's difficult to make a balanced version that still costs one. Maybe I'll come up with an idea.
I'm pretty sure the front side is too powerful. Overrun is not a weak card, and this is already a higher power level on average (first strike makes it such that gang-blocking is very unlikely to kill your creatures, making this a one-sided board wipe if you fail to kill immediately). You probably won't be using random powerful creatures with this either, but prefer those with higher toughness, effectively making the buff even greater. I'd knock it down to +0/+2 and then it should be fine. Powerful, considering that this is a dual land unlike the zendikar rising ones, but fine.
by "fixed" I meant, it wouldn't have to be banned/restricted in every format. your comparison to moxes is weird though, given that they are more powerful than sol ring (they're in every vintage deck, sometimes even the off color ones, Sol Ring isn't). Or do you mean Mox Amber/Mox Opal? In that case, one of them is modern legal, so at least it'd be not too far off from the goal (still too powerful for modern perhaps, I don't know)
Yes, probably too powerful for modern. I considered colored decks, and heavily colorless decks like tron, but affinity/ravager escaped my mind. They have plenty colored mana, that is only needed for few cards (eg scales and monitor), making the restriction and filtering a non-issue. I guess that could be fixed by adding something like "you can't cast more than one spell this turn" to the effect though. This also fixes the remainder of the chaining problem. It is getting wordy though.
Lunar Ring 1
Artifact 1, T: add CC. You can't cast more than one spell this turn. Use only colored mana to pay the activation cost of this ability.
and another small fix:
Lunar Wastes
Land
Enters tapped
When enters, create a 0/1 colorless eldrazi spawn token with "sacrifice ~: add C"
T: add C
spelled out the spawn (I assumed everyone here knew what they did, but didn't consider just how similar the name is to scion (which would clearly be too powerful here). Also, name changed, because the eldrazi basic is Wastes, while Wasteland has nothing to do with this.
Lunar Ring 1
Artifact 1, T: add CC. You can't cast more than one spell this turn. Use only colored mana to pay the activation cost of this ability.
Basically, it adds only one mana, can't be chained on turn one (unless you already have extra mana), and filters towards colorless (with an extra rider to make it a bit more difficult to use in decks that like colorless anyway). It's probably still quite powerful (certainly too powerful for standard, given that it doesn't consistently have a 1drop mana dork even in green). edit: added text to prevent it from being "free" extra mana in ravager decks
Plus an extra "sol land":
Lunar WastelandWastes
Land
Enters tapped
When enters, create a colorless 0/1 eldrazi spawn token with "sacrifice ~: add C
T: add C
now, I know Emrakul is Imprisoned in the Moon, not on the moon, but I still felt like a spawn token is appropriate for a one-off sol land. (in total you don't gain any extra mana either, since it's tapped)
thanks for the response. I'll trust your judgement on costing, since I'm not too great at that when it comes to the details.
As for the blue one (it's name was supposed to be lethargy by the way, the word just had escaped my mind) I kind of agree on the flying, especially since it is a flavor fail too. However I don't want it to be the only one without a keyword (other than flash, and I really don't want to take that away from the white one). So, maybe skulk? that should be substantially weaker than flying at least (if necessary the toughness can be 1, so more creatures can profitably block.
Lethargy 1UU
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (2/1)
Flash, Skulk
When enters, return target spell with mana value 3 or less to its owner's hand.
Evoke - reveal three blue cards from your hand.
The reason why the black one has deathtouch is that I didn't want it to have the same keyword as Grief. That was a last minute edit (before posting) that I didn't really think through past reducing toughness to one. However, since the blue one no longer has flying, maybe that could be more appropriate (power definitely remains 1 here, otherwise it would be way too strong with flying)
Cruelty 1BB
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (1/1)
Flying
When enters, each opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker.
Evoke - sacrifice a black creature.
For the green one I was out of ideas for a better cost. I still don't have any good ideas (the updated design is still inelegant, being the only one that has to spell out separately that you still need to be in the correct color). I don't really like the new cost being either in the way of its effect, or irrelevant after the effect a lot of the time too.
Ferocity 1GG
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (3/2)
Trample
When enters, put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature you control. It fights up to one target creature you don't control.
Evoke - put two +1/+1 counters on a creature an opponent controls. You may pay this cost only if you control a forest
Compared to the existing incarnations, these should be smaller (ie with smaller effects), but also have lower evoke costs (except the red one during early turns). I decided to give all of them triple color mana costs, but I might change my mind on that.
Safety WWW
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (1/3)
Vigilance, Flash
When enters, exile another target creature until ~ leaves
Evoke - Tap two untapped white creatures you control
can be a fragile kill-spell, or save your own creatures from a targeted kill-spell / their own evoke death trigger. But you don't get rid of more than one creature by blinking this. Probably still quite powerful though.
Lazyness UUU
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (2/2)
Flash, Flying
When enters, return target spell with mana value 3 or less to its owner's hand.
Evoke - reveal three blue cards from your hand.
doesn't cost you an extra card, so it doesn't cost the opponent a card either. you still trade a card to waste the opponent's mana though, so I decided to put a limit on that.
Cruelty BBB
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (1/1)
Deathtouch
When enters, each opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker.
Evoke - sacrifice a black creature.
I'm aware "each player sacrifices a creature" usually costs mana, but here you can't cast it without having the creature, so I guess it's ok. Originally it was a 1/3, but then I figured, 1/1 deathtoucher with edict should be strong enough at 3 mana.
Insanity RRR
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (3/1)
First Strike
When enters, put a waste counter on target nonbasic land. It loses all land types and abilities and gains "T: add colorless"
Evoke - Sacrifice a Mountain
Probably the most abusable of the bunch by aggressively flickering it, but then you're sacrificing a land in the early game. I'm not sure either how much losing the color from two lands would realistically screw the opponent (I don't actually play fetchland formats, for price reasons), so I'm entirely not sure on the power level of this.
Ferocity GGG
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (3/2)
Trample
When enters, put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature you control. It fights up to one target creature you don't control.
Evoke - Remove two counters from among green permanents you control
Admittedly a bit of a weird design with removing counters and putting them back, but I didn't come up with anything better. I'm kinda fine with this removing -1/-1 counters by the way--after all, I'm not aware of a competitive creature that enters with them (except Kitchen Finks by coming back from persist).
The problem with your version, as with every version here, is that it doesn't work as written. Your enforcer's wording suggests it effectively increases toughness by 3, but the creature is dead by the time the damage gets redistributed.
Maybe it really should be a version of Boros Reckoner with a cap on damage output though, as splitting the toughness between two places is a bit weird.
@lookinhgupanddown: Fury not hitting the face also means you can't blink it turn one for full value (otherwise it'd kill on turn 3 by itself). For fair applications you're right that flash would be more powerful. But I think it's powerful enough as is.
I guess they really wanna get rid of graveyard decks. an unblockable 3/2 two-drop might actually see a little play without any further abilities.
I usually like strong cards, but I really think this should have been a little bit weaker. I mean, as long as your black deck plays creatures, the question is really more like "do you play 4 of this?", not "do you play this?", unless graveyard decks disappear completely (and even then it's powerful).
That said, I might have to pick a different effect for the red one, since getting your first land colorlessed in addition to another spell, when you're already behind might be a bit too punishing.
2) If you want this to be like Jeweled Lotus, you need to actually include the restriction. As is, it'd need to be emergency-banned in both legacy and vintage.
Persistent Alarm WW
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Costs W less to cast during your first turn
Enchanted creature has "at the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent creates a 1/1 white soldier token"
A token each turn is quite powerful even as a 2drop (Bitterblossom), but having to keep your opponent's creature alive is also quite a restriction on your attacking and blocking decisions, so I assume this being a 1drop occasionally should be fine.
Excessive Taxation UU
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Costs U less to cast during your first turn.
Enchanted creature has "noncreature spells you cast cost 1 more"
Since this kind of taxing doesn't usually appear even on 2drops, I made it tax noncreature spells while sitting on a creature, on top of you having to keep that creature alive. Pretty sure it disrupts prowess decks quite well, though.
Merciless Persecution BB
Sorcery
Costs B less to cast during your first turn.
Destroy target creature with mana value 2 or less and all other creatures with the same name it's controller controls. Its controller reveals their hand and discards all cards with the same name.
basically Legion's End without exile, for double black, but occasionally a 1drop
Careless Devastation RR
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant nonbasic Land
Costs R less to cast during your first turn.
Enchanted land loses all land types and abilities and has "T: add C"
I guess this is the second one that's quite a bit on the powerful end, and for roughly the same reason as the blue one: it's also mana denial.
Favorite Prey GG
Sorcery
Costs G less to cast during your first turn.
Each opponent of target nonland permanent's controller creates a 3/3 green beast token.
And here's the reason why the white one doesn't work properly in multiplayer: I found no other way to make this only work on the draw and didn't want it to be the only one to be worded that way.
Thrash loyalties looked rather weak to me too, until I figured out that it's permanent control. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to spell out "gain control of ... permanently" or something like that. I know it's redundant and Wizards doesn't do it, but this card, being red and adding haste, begs to be misinterpreted.
Lunar Ring C
Legendary Artifact
1, T: add CC. Use only colored mana to pay the activation cost of this ability.
By the way, Khalni Garden was in deed the inspiration here. Basically, I downgraded the land to produce colorless, while I upgraded the token to sac for mana. It absolutely is more powerful than Garden, but I don't remember that one seeing much play anywhere.
It certainly is powerful, and you may be right in your conclusion that it is too powerful. If you are, I still don't think it should have Rupture Spire ETB exactly, but a similar one may not be wrong eg when enters you may pay 1 to get the token.
Lunar Ring is most certainly too powerful, yes. But it's difficult to make a balanced version that still costs one. Maybe I'll come up with an idea.
I do like the idea though.
Yes, probably too powerful for modern. I considered colored decks, and heavily colorless decks like tron, but affinity/ravager escaped my mind. They have plenty colored mana, that is only needed for few cards (eg scales and monitor), making the restriction and filtering a non-issue. I guess that could be fixed by adding something like "you can't cast more than one spell this turn" to the effect though. This also fixes the remainder of the chaining problem. It is getting wordy though.
Lunar Ring 1
Artifact
1, T: add CC. You can't cast more than one spell this turn. Use only colored mana to pay the activation cost of this ability.
and another small fix:
Lunar Wastes
Land
Enters tapped
When enters, create a 0/1 colorless eldrazi spawn token with "sacrifice ~: add C"
T: add C
spelled out the spawn (I assumed everyone here knew what they did, but didn't consider just how similar the name is to scion (which would clearly be too powerful here). Also, name changed, because the eldrazi basic is Wastes, while Wasteland has nothing to do with this.
Artifact
1, T: add CC. You can't cast more than one spell this turn. Use only colored mana to pay the activation cost of this ability.
Basically, it adds only one mana, can't be chained
on turn one (unless you already have extra mana), and filters towards colorless (with an extra rider to make it a bit more difficult to use in decks that like colorless anyway). It's probably still quite powerful (certainly too powerful for standard, given that it doesn't consistently have a 1drop mana dork even in green). edit: added text to prevent it from being "free" extra mana in ravager decksPlus an extra "sol land":
Lunar
WastelandWastesLand
Enters tapped
When enters, create a colorless 0/1 eldrazi spawn token with "sacrifice ~: add C
T: add C
now, I know Emrakul is Imprisoned in the Moon, not on the moon, but I still felt like a spawn token is appropriate for a one-off sol land. (in total you don't gain any extra mana either, since it's tapped)
Any thoughts on these?
As for the blue one (it's name was supposed to be lethargy by the way, the word just had escaped my mind) I kind of agree on the flying, especially since it is a flavor fail too. However I don't want it to be the only one without a keyword (other than flash, and I really don't want to take that away from the white one). So, maybe skulk? that should be substantially weaker than flying at least (if necessary the toughness can be 1, so more creatures can profitably block.
Lethargy 1UU
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (2/1)
Flash, Skulk
When enters, return target spell with mana value 3 or less to its owner's hand.
Evoke - reveal three blue cards from your hand.
The reason why the black one has deathtouch is that I didn't want it to have the same keyword as Grief. That was a last minute edit (before posting) that I didn't really think through past reducing toughness to one. However, since the blue one no longer has flying, maybe that could be more appropriate (power definitely remains 1 here, otherwise it would be way too strong with flying)
Cruelty 1BB
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (1/1)
Flying
When enters, each opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker.
Evoke - sacrifice a black creature.
For the green one I was out of ideas for a better cost. I still don't have any good ideas (the updated design is still inelegant, being the only one that has to spell out separately that you still need to be in the correct color). I don't really like the new cost being either in the way of its effect, or irrelevant after the effect a lot of the time too.
Ferocity 1GG
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (3/2)
Trample
When enters, put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature you control. It fights up to one target creature you don't control.
Evoke - put two +1/+1 counters on a creature an opponent controls. You may pay this cost only if you control a forest
Safety WWW
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (1/3)
Vigilance, Flash
When enters, exile another target creature until ~ leaves
Evoke - Tap two untapped white creatures you control
can be a fragile kill-spell, or save your own creatures from a targeted kill-spell / their own evoke death trigger. But you don't get rid of more than one creature by blinking this. Probably still quite powerful though.
Lazyness UUU
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (2/2)
Flash, Flying
When enters, return target spell with mana value 3 or less to its owner's hand.
Evoke - reveal three blue cards from your hand.
doesn't cost you an extra card, so it doesn't cost the opponent a card either. you still trade a card to waste the opponent's mana though, so I decided to put a limit on that.
Cruelty BBB
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (1/1)
Deathtouch
When enters, each opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker.
Evoke - sacrifice a black creature.
I'm aware "each player sacrifices a creature" usually costs mana, but here you can't cast it without having the creature, so I guess it's ok. Originally it was a 1/3, but then I figured, 1/1 deathtoucher with edict should be strong enough at 3 mana.
Insanity RRR
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (3/1)
First Strike
When enters, put a waste counter on target nonbasic land. It loses all land types and abilities and gains "T: add colorless"
Evoke - Sacrifice a Mountain
Probably the most abusable of the bunch by aggressively flickering it, but then you're sacrificing a land in the early game. I'm not sure either how much losing the color from two lands would realistically screw the opponent (I don't actually play fetchland formats, for price reasons), so I'm entirely not sure on the power level of this.
Ferocity GGG
Creature - Elemental Incarnation (3/2)
Trample
When enters, put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature you control. It fights up to one target creature you don't control.
Evoke - Remove two counters from among green permanents you control
Admittedly a bit of a weird design with removing counters and putting them back, but I didn't come up with anything better. I'm kinda fine with this removing -1/-1 counters by the way--after all, I'm not aware of a competitive creature that enters with them (except Kitchen Finks by coming back from persist).
Maybe it really should be a version of Boros Reckoner with a cap on damage output though, as splitting the toughness between two places is a bit weird.
you can't chump block with the tokens. They're tapped
I usually like strong cards, but I really think this should have been a little bit weaker. I mean, as long as your black deck plays creatures, the question is really more like "do you play 4 of this?", not "do you play this?", unless graveyard decks disappear completely (and even then it's powerful).