Designed as mana-fixing tools for an Alara set. The flavor is similar to that of the borderpost cycle, in which you can start to see the surrounding shards converge on the horizons.
Mechanically, this may be a bend, as usually only green can allow lands to tap for other colors (or black, sometimes), but I feel like as a cycle, it's fine. I feel the role it fills is a bit more important and not quite detrimental to the color pie enough to call it a break.
In limited, these auras act kind of like better cycling lands. In the early game, you can combine them with a land drop to get something that is effectively an etb tapped dual land. In the late game, you can 'cycle' it by playing it on a random land letting you draw a card. I expect them to play well and be top tier commons in the set. Because of these enchantments, people will be playing fewer lands though, I'd expect 16 to be the norm and 15 to be quite common.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
In limited, these auras act kind of like better cycling lands. In the early game, you can combine them with a land drop to get something that is effectively an etb tapped dual land. In the late game, you can 'cycle' it by playing it on a random land letting you draw a card. I expect them to play well and be top tier commons in the set. Because of these enchantments, people will be playing fewer lands though, I'd expect 16 to be the norm and 15 to be quite common.
I'm not sure why you think players would play fewer lands due to these enchantments. They don't accelerate mana at all, they just add colors to it. Elaborate?
I'm not sure why you think players would play fewer lands due to these enchantments. They don't accelerate mana at all, they just add colors to it. Elaborate?
In deckbuilding terms, cantrips should usually be evaluated as being between 1/3 and 1/2 of a land. The idea is that cantrips are going to draw a land a significant portion of the time reducing the effective number of needed lands in your deck. If you were to say, run 4 horizons in a typical 17 land midrange-aggro limited deck, you will find yourself flooding a bit too much. You'd usually be better off running 15-16 lands and relying on your cantrips to draw you into the lands you need.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
In deckbuilding terms, cantrips should usually be evaluated as being between 1/3 and 1/2 of a land. The idea is that cantrips are going to draw a land a significant portion of the time reducing the effective number of needed lands in your deck. If you were to say, run 4 horizons in a typical 17 land midrange-aggro limited deck, you will find yourself flooding a bit too much. You'd usually be better off running 15-16 lands and relying on your cantrips to draw you into the lands you need.
I'm not sure about the color pie validity. Green and blue definitely work with this, and black at least "Swampfixes", but I'm not sure about red or white getting to colorfix like this, especially on a permanent basis in red's case.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
This should be limited to green, not all colors. Red, black, and blue sometimes do some form of it, but only to produce their respective color, or more of an existing color.
Entomed Hydra got it right.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Yes, the convention is that mana fixing is generally either done with green, or it's done via artifacts and lands. However, any time you're talking about a 5/10-card mana fixing cycle, conventions are secondary to what the set needs vis a vis mana fixing.
I don't see a problem with these, in a vacuum. My only criticisms would be that:
They don't feel right for an Alara set, assuming that by "Alara set" you mean a 3-color set (as these are 2-color fixers).
Since there is the novelty of these being Auras rather than the usual artifact mana-fixers, I would think these might find a better home in a Theros set or other enchantment matters set, where the novelty can also be meaningful.
Why aren't these artifacts? (Other than them putting other cantrip 1 drop artifacts to shame)?
It strikes me that Signets worked. Make something like signets. Shard Signets at 2 to play and 2 to activate for 3 mana would be fine, and maybe even constructed playable.
Why aren't these artifacts? (Other than them putting other cantrip 1 drop artifacts to shame)?
It strikes me that Signets worked. Make something like signets. Shard Signets at 2 to play and 2 to activate for 3 mana would be fine, and maybe even constructed playable.
What's your problem with enchantments? A cycle of mana-fixing enchantments isn't allowed to exist? All mana fixing cycles MUST be lands or artifacts? Why?
This might be okay in a heavy multicolor set. If you wanted to limit it a bit, you could make, for example, the (W/U) "Enchant basic Plains or Island" so that it can't interact with nonbasic lands. That also simplifies the gameplay choices since you wouldn't be able to create any individual lands that can tap for more than three colors.
Why aren't these artifacts? (Other than them putting other cantrip 1 drop artifacts to shame)?
It strikes me that Signets worked. Make something like signets. Shard Signets at 2 to play and 2 to activate for 3 mana would be fine, and maybe even constructed playable.
What's your problem with enchantments? A cycle of mana-fixing enchantments isn't allowed to exist? All mana fixing cycles MUST be lands or artifacts? Why?
While I can't speak for entombedhydra, I'll remind you that lands and artifacts are typically colorless. Designing a cycle of colored permanents comes with a lot of color pie baggage that colorless permanents do not have. While mana rocks and duals exist independently of the color pie, land auras that affect the type of mana produced are solidly in green and blue. It's not a permanent type issue so much as a color issue.
While I can't speak for entombedhydra, I'll remind you that lands and artifacts are typically colorless. Designing a cycle of colored permanents comes with a lot of color pie baggage that colorless permanents do not have. While mana rocks and duals exist independently of the color pie, land auras that affect the type of mana produced are solidly in green and blue. It's not a permanent type issue so much as a color issue.
Okay, but doesn't the very nature of artifacts and lands being colorless imply that any color can have access to the same effects they do? Any color deck can run any colorless artifact or land, so why are these enchantments any different?
I know that these enchantments specifically modify existing lands rather than adding new mana sources, but I fail to see even how that breaks any color pie rule. Heck, Chromatic Lantern exists and any color can play that.
Mechanically, this may be a bend, as usually only green can allow lands to tap for other colors (or black, sometimes), but I feel like as a cycle, it's fine. I feel the role it fills is a bit more important and not quite detrimental to the color pie enough to call it a break.
I agree that the violation doesn't matter. Five card cycles sometimes violate color pie anyway, and these enchantments are just mana fixing, something every color (pair) is supposed to have access to.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
I dig this cycle. I would love having a bunch of cantrip auras for an Enchantress/Kor Skyfisher deck. If you really want to make them less powerful, you could make the draw a sac effect like Unbridled Growth.
And as for an artifact version, I've tossed around ideas in my head like this:
Azorius Chalice1 Artifact (C) 1, T: Add W or U to your mana pool. WU, T, Sacrifice Azorius Chalice: Draw a card.
They don't feel right for an Alara set, assuming that by "Alara set" you mean a 3-color set (as these are 2-color fixers).
These feel to me almost like direct descendants to the borberposts with regard to being colored Alaran manafixers. Alara in its block has gone through three distnct stages and supported a strong two-color theme for the "areas where two shards overlap". So this seems fine unless the theme is specifically set-1-type Alara.
[quote from="Watchwolf »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/community-forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/776877-horizon-enchantments?comment=15"]I'll remind you that lands and artifacts are typically colorless.
I once again remind of the borberposts which are from Alara. Both because they are colored artifacts and because they show that a cycle of colored cards can be mana fixers even if an individual member of the cycle by itself would look out of place.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Okay, but doesn't the very nature of artifacts and lands being colorless imply that any color can have access to the same effects they do? Any color deck can run any colorless artifact or land, so why are these enchantments any different?
I know that these enchantments specifically modify existing lands rather than adding new mana sources, but I fail to see even how that breaks any color pie rule. Heck, Chromatic Lantern exists and any color can play that.
No. Artifacts and lands are allowed access to almost anything specific colors can do, but at greater cost or less efficiency. Red can burn stuff and artifacts can burn stuff, but blue cannot burn stuff.
Chromatic Lantern's effect is something green can get for 1G. Blue it's hard to say as it's allowed to grant basic land types, but so far hasn't been allowed to do so with the same efficiency as green, while red might have temporary land type changing in its color pie, but black only grants Swamp and white isn't supposed to grant land types at all.
I once again remind of the borberposts which are from Alara. Both because they are colored artifacts and because they show that a cycle of colored cards can be mana fixers even if an individual member of the cycle by itself would look out of place.
Note that the Borderposts have an alternate cost that allows them to be played by any color. They were multicolor artifacts because they had to keep to the "all gold" theme, but were given the alternaste cost so they could function more like traditional mana rocks and dual lands.
The only way these Auras don't break color pie is if you include an alternate cost that allows any color to play them, in which case you might as well make them Aura versions of Borderposts.
My recommendation would be to make these lands instead, perhaps improved versions of the Panoramas from Shards of Alara?
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
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Enchantment - Aura
Enchant land
When ~ enters the battlefield, draw a card.
Enchanted land has "T: Add W or U to your mana pool."
Bleak Horizon (U/B)
Grim Horizon (B/R)
Blazing Horizon (R/G)
Bright Horizon (G/W)
Designed as mana-fixing tools for an Alara set. The flavor is similar to that of the borderpost cycle, in which you can start to see the surrounding shards converge on the horizons.
Mechanically, this may be a bend, as usually only green can allow lands to tap for other colors (or black, sometimes), but I feel like as a cycle, it's fine. I feel the role it fills is a bit more important and not quite detrimental to the color pie enough to call it a break.
Anyway, thoughts?
- Manite
In deckbuilding terms, cantrips should usually be evaluated as being between 1/3 and 1/2 of a land. The idea is that cantrips are going to draw a land a significant portion of the time reducing the effective number of needed lands in your deck. If you were to say, run 4 horizons in a typical 17 land midrange-aggro limited deck, you will find yourself flooding a bit too much. You'd usually be better off running 15-16 lands and relying on your cantrips to draw you into the lands you need.
- Manite
Horizonest G
Enchant Land
Cantrip
Enchanted land has "T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool."
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Abundant Growth. What of it though? How is that a problem?
- Manite
Entomed Hydra got it right.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Yes, the convention is that mana fixing is generally either done with green, or it's done via artifacts and lands. However, any time you're talking about a 5/10-card mana fixing cycle, conventions are secondary to what the set needs vis a vis mana fixing.
I don't see a problem with these, in a vacuum. My only criticisms would be that:
Custom Card / Set Reviewer
When reviewing custom cards / sets, I look for (a) flavour, (b) function, and (c) cohesiveness, generally through a risk focus.
It strikes me that Signets worked. Make something like signets. Shard Signets at 2 to play and 2 to activate for 3 mana would be fine, and maybe even constructed playable.
While I can't speak for entombedhydra, I'll remind you that lands and artifacts are typically colorless. Designing a cycle of colored permanents comes with a lot of color pie baggage that colorless permanents do not have. While mana rocks and duals exist independently of the color pie, land auras that affect the type of mana produced are solidly in green and blue. It's not a permanent type issue so much as a color issue.
I know that these enchantments specifically modify existing lands rather than adding new mana sources, but I fail to see even how that breaks any color pie rule. Heck, Chromatic Lantern exists and any color can play that.
I agree that the violation doesn't matter. Five card cycles sometimes violate color pie anyway, and these enchantments are just mana fixing, something every color (pair) is supposed to have access to.
- Manite
And as for an artifact version, I've tossed around ideas in my head like this:
Azorius Chalice 1
Artifact (C)
1, T: Add W or U to your mana pool.
WU, T, Sacrifice Azorius Chalice: Draw a card.
Make the sac ability cost less if you want.
These feel to me almost like direct descendants to the borberposts with regard to being colored Alaran manafixers. Alara in its block has gone through three distnct stages and supported a strong two-color theme for the "areas where two shards overlap". So this seems fine unless the theme is specifically set-1-type Alara.
So I think there is even less problem.
I once again remind of the borberposts which are from Alara. Both because they are colored artifacts and because they show that a cycle of colored cards can be mana fixers even if an individual member of the cycle by itself would look out of place.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
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Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
No. Artifacts and lands are allowed access to almost anything specific colors can do, but at greater cost or less efficiency. Red can burn stuff and artifacts can burn stuff, but blue cannot burn stuff.
Chromatic Lantern's effect is something green can get for 1G. Blue it's hard to say as it's allowed to grant basic land types, but so far hasn't been allowed to do so with the same efficiency as green, while red might have temporary land type changing in its color pie, but black only grants Swamp and white isn't supposed to grant land types at all.
Note that the Borderposts have an alternate cost that allows them to be played by any color. They were multicolor artifacts because they had to keep to the "all gold" theme, but were given the alternaste cost so they could function more like traditional mana rocks and dual lands.
The only way these Auras don't break color pie is if you include an alternate cost that allows any color to play them, in which case you might as well make them Aura versions of Borderposts.
My recommendation would be to make these lands instead, perhaps improved versions of the Panoramas from Shards of Alara?
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.