Okay, some context first. This ability will appear in my custom set, tentatively named Kingmaker (for those of you familiar with the Pathfinder Adventure Path series, this set is loosely based on the events of the Adventure Path of the same name, from my experience). The set has strong "lands matter" and "basic land types matter" themes. Now I didn't want to just go an use Landfall. I love Landfall, but I wanted to do my own thing. So... I came up with Explore, or rather with two different explores (again, name may change), and each of them works the same on the surface, but each poses different design challenges.
Explore as an Ability Word
Explore as an ability word would read as: Explore -- [trigger], reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, [effect].
Used in this manner explore is fairly simple. It ties together all of the cards in the set that have you reveal the top card of your library and give you a nice little boost if the revealed card is a land. Its simple and effective. I do have one problem with it - since ability words themselves don't have any actual rules attached, cards cannot directly reference them, as in "Whenever you explore [effect]" - which really does have a nice ring to it. Also, I feel as though ability words have far less design space, and can easily become stale, even within a single set. The upside is that this is the easy route.
Example Card: Expeditionary Knights2W Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike Explore -- When ~ enters the battlefield, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
2/2
Explore as a Keyword Action
Explore as a Keyword Action would read: (To explore, look at the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, you may reveal it.)
In this version explore is an action. Cards will tell you when to explore, and will once again give a benefit if you reveal a land card when exploring. This version allows for cards to reference when you explore as in "Whenever you explore, [effect]". Plus, I feel as though the flavor of exploration fits better when written as a verb in a sentence rather than a lonely word, all by itself. Using it as a verb is far more evocative. Now the difficulty I'm having with this version is that as an action word, I feel performing the action will probably naturally occur more often, and that leads to the issue of the land remaining on top of the library, allowing multiple successful explorations from a single land (or, if you don't have a land on top, you can't successfully explore at all). Therefore I feel as though the card should move somehow. Putting the card on the bottom seems counter-intuitive, especially if you reveal a land. After all, you just explored that land, now you can't use it? Drawing the card makes the exploring a stronger cantrip, wherever it appears, which could easily create balance issues. The other option would be only drawing the card if it's a land, which kinda makes them a bit "all or nothing". Great cards when you reveal a land, but incredibly underwhelming when you don't because of how over costed they'd have to be to balance it out.
Example Card (base version): Expeditionary Knights2W Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
When ~ enters the battlefield, explore. If you reveal a land card this way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~. (To explore, look at the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, you may reveal it.)
2/2
Example Card (drawing the card): Expeditionary Knights2W Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
When ~ enters the battlefield, explore. If you reveal a land card this way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~. (To explore, reveal the top card of your library, then put it into your hand.)
2/2
Example Card (drawing ONLY if you reveal a land): Expeditionary Knights2W Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
When ~ enters the battlefield, explore. If you reveal a land card this way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~. (To explore, reveal the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, put it into your hand.)
2/2
So what do you guys think? Ability Word for its simplicity? Keyword Action for its design space? If you think Keyword Action is the way to go, what should happen with the card on top of the library? Is the whole thing just a bad idea (and if so, why)?
I think the abilaty sounds very luck based either way.
Perhaps combine it with a lot of cards that scry. Or Scry 1, then explore. Certanly build in something that suports it and does not make it into lotto cards.
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I have dyslexia, no I am not going to spell check for you, yes you have to live with the horrors of it.
Also, scrying is very powerfull. So combining it with scrying would just make explore the 'add on mechanic' and scrying being the real payoff.
Perhaps combine it with a negative thing of the explore does not function, although this will make it more of a gamle element. But it would encuredge people to just use the scry mechanic. Of course, people could end up drafting only the scry mecanics.
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I have dyslexia, no I am not going to spell check for you, yes you have to live with the horrors of it.
We played around with this very ability with this very name, and variations on it, in the early development of mechanics for the Pyrulea set in the custom set forum, with the exact same design goal: create a mechanic of "land matters" that isn't landfall. We ended up agreeing that the issue with the mechanic in the form you present it is that, in the absence of scrying and similar effects, the mechanic only has about a little more than a 1/3 chance to trigger in most decks. The mechanic is utterly dependent on scrying and cycling to be reliable. Otherwise it is a pretty big crapshoot.
Both the keyword and ability word version you present have this problem. We tried to get around this problem by increasing the amount of cards from the top of your library it search for or by building some form of deck cycling into the mechanic, changing it to something like "reveal the top X cards of your library. If it's a land card..." and "reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card...(effect)...then (put the rest into graveyard, or put the rest on bottom of library, or some variation like that)", but both those brought up their own issues. They at least were more dependable to actually trigger though.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Then Explore cards do various things based on what card you reveal while exploring a land.
Frontier Ranger1W
Creature - Human Soldier
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, put a +1/+1 counter on ~ if you revealed a creature card.
1/1
Private Mod Note
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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.
I definitely like that better, because it isn't a one-shot effect based on luck. Since it triggers whenever you play a land, it has a lot less variably. Making the effect relative to what type of card you reveal does reintroduce an element of luck into it though, or will require some scrying or deck filtering to optimize. But it's definitely a more dependable mechanic and opens the possibility of building around it, like with cards like your example in a deck that's dominated by creatures anyway, it's more like close to a 2/3 chance, and it isn't a one-shot chance. I guess I am not fond of chance playing into things at all, ideally. But this is better.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Then Explore cards do various things based on what card you reveal while exploring a land.
Frontier Ranger1W
Creature - Human Soldier
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, put a +1/+1 counter on ~ if you revealed a creature card.
1/1
At first glace, I liked it. But then I realized that this is basically just a not as good landfall. Because it's still based on a land entering the battlefield under your control. So really it could easily be written as:
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If the revealed card was a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
I originally had a mechanic called "Landhold" that was basically Metalcraft, but instead of three artifacts, you needed three lands of a specific basic type (Plainshold, Islandhold, ect). I really liked the mechanic, but it was pointed out to me by a friend that it is much more uninteractive than metalcraft because there are plenty of ways to get rid of artifacts to "turn off" your opponent's metalcraft, but there are far less ways to deal with lands, and most of the ways to deal with lands are considered pretty "unfun". So this was an attempt at a different mechanic that cared about lands.
Perhaps something like landfall that cares more about the type of land entering the battlefield? Or is that generally pointless? For example:
Frontier Guide1W
Creature - Human Scout Plainsfall - Whenever a Plains enters the battlefield under your control ~ gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
1/1
I'm not sure if this could potentially allow a power level similar to the original landfall (perhaps even slightly more pushed, like in the example), or if land type is controllable enough in a limited environment that it makes no different anyways.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Then Explore cards do various things based on what card you reveal while exploring a land.
Frontier Ranger1W
Creature - Human Soldier
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, put a +1/+1 counter on ~ if you revealed a creature card.
1/1
At first glace, I liked it. But then I realized that this is basically just a not as good landfall. Because it's still based on a land entering the battlefield under your control. So really it could easily be written as:
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If the revealed card was a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
It's a more focused Landfall, one that generally wants to go on creatures for flavor reasons. To me it makes more sense to explore a land that's actually on the battlefield, as opposed to one that's about to be. You can play multiple Explore creatures which then trigger off a single land; say you have a cycle of creatures that allow you to draw a card if the revealed card is of a specific subtype. The more of those creatures you play, the better the chances you'll get to draw the top card of your library, possibly several cards.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Fair enough. Still kinda feels like more hoops to jump through for the same effect. It seems to make it unnecessarily complicated.
However, my friend and I did come up with another idea:
Explore (To explore, put an exploration counter on target land you control without an exploration counter on it.)
From there, cards can care about exploration counters, how many exploration counters you have, when you explore, ect. I am somewhat concerned about parasitism, but I think if I work it kinda how energy counters work, then I should be alright. Thoughts?
I like the new Explore because it's much more open, and eliminates any element of luck/chance. The exploration counter can potentially do a wide range of things.
Fair enough. Still kinda feels like more hoops to jump through for the same effect. It seems to make it unnecessarily complicated.
However, my friend and I did come up with another idea:
Explore (To explore, put an exploration counter on target land you control without an exploration counter on it.)
From there, cards can care about exploration counters, how many exploration counters you have, when you explore, ect. I am somewhat concerned about parasitism, but I think if I work it kinda how energy counters work, then I should be alright. Thoughts?
Counters on lands is something R&D is very hesitant to do, as lands tend to make up 50% or more of permanents on the field, and players like to stack same or similar lands together to make handling mana bases easier. Awaken turned the land into a creature, so you'd generally move it in front of your other lands. Let me suggest a cycle:
Sword SeekerW
Creature - Human Soldier
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal an Equipment card, you may put that card into your hand.
1/1
Scroll Collector2U
Creature - Human Wizard
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal an instant or sorcery card, you may put that card into your hand.
1/3
Grave Robber1B
Creature - Human Rogue
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, you may put the top card of your library into your graveyard. If you do, return a creature card at random from your graveyard to your hand.
2/1
Treasure Hunter2R
Creature - Human Warrior
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal a nonland card, you may exile it. You may cast that card this turn.
2/2
Beast Tracker1G
Creature - Human Scout
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal a creature card, you may put that card into your hand.
2/2
You can also combine this with stuff like creating Gold tokens, granting +1/+1 counters, lifegain, damage, etc.
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.
- I hate revealing the top card of my library (and we know wotc considers it a mistake to push the effect like in Courser of Kruphix, which turned games into a deterministic mess, with players having too much information.)
- I hate knowing in advance that my next turn is going to be a wasted draw (if I'm screwed or I want to draw power.)
- I hate playing a card with a mechanic that is a coin flip, and if I lose the flip I get a bad card. (And this flip is actually 60% chance to lose!)
Solution to all three: make the exploration scry 1. Players feel like scry 1 was an upside even if they leave the card on top. And you don't need to reveal the card or be locked into drawing it next turn.
Goblin Scout2R
Creature - Goblin Scout
When this creature enters the battlefield, explore. If you discover, put a +1/+1 counter on this. (To explore, look at the top card of your library and put it on the top or bottom of your library. Reveal that card as a land to discover.)
3/1
See my problem with that version is scrying - say its not the card type you need to get the effect, but its a card that you need otherwise (like a removal spell or something), so want to keep the card but waste the effect. At least you get the choice here, I suppose.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it's a nonland card, you may cast it.)
You could then give Explore creatures abilities that care about casting spells while exploring, like "Whenever ~ explores, if you cast a card revealed that way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~." You can also compliment them with a mechanic that lets you cast cards from the top of your library for an alternate (and usually cheaper) cost.
Discovery -cost- (You may cast this spell for its discovery cost whenever you reveal it from the top of your library.)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it's a nonland card, you may cast it.)
There's too much going here. Not only is this quite a specific effect for something with as many design components as it has, but this is repeatable on board card advantage.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it's a nonland card, you may cast it.)
There's too much going here. Not only is this quite a specific effect for something with as many design components as it has, but this is repeatable on board card advantage.
Card advantage that you have to pay extra mana for. Since JuanCu stated they hate revealing the top card of their library, it could always be changed to "look at the top card of your library", since the hidden information doesn't interfere with the ability to cast it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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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Explore as an Ability Word
Explore as an ability word would read as: Explore -- [trigger], reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, [effect].
Used in this manner explore is fairly simple. It ties together all of the cards in the set that have you reveal the top card of your library and give you a nice little boost if the revealed card is a land. Its simple and effective. I do have one problem with it - since ability words themselves don't have any actual rules attached, cards cannot directly reference them, as in "Whenever you explore [effect]" - which really does have a nice ring to it. Also, I feel as though ability words have far less design space, and can easily become stale, even within a single set. The upside is that this is the easy route.
Example Card:
Expeditionary Knights 2W
Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
Explore -- When ~ enters the battlefield, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
2/2
Explore as a Keyword Action
Explore as a Keyword Action would read: (To explore, look at the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, you may reveal it.)
In this version explore is an action. Cards will tell you when to explore, and will once again give a benefit if you reveal a land card when exploring. This version allows for cards to reference when you explore as in "Whenever you explore, [effect]". Plus, I feel as though the flavor of exploration fits better when written as a verb in a sentence rather than a lonely word, all by itself. Using it as a verb is far more evocative. Now the difficulty I'm having with this version is that as an action word, I feel performing the action will probably naturally occur more often, and that leads to the issue of the land remaining on top of the library, allowing multiple successful explorations from a single land (or, if you don't have a land on top, you can't successfully explore at all). Therefore I feel as though the card should move somehow. Putting the card on the bottom seems counter-intuitive, especially if you reveal a land. After all, you just explored that land, now you can't use it? Drawing the card makes the exploring a stronger cantrip, wherever it appears, which could easily create balance issues. The other option would be only drawing the card if it's a land, which kinda makes them a bit "all or nothing". Great cards when you reveal a land, but incredibly underwhelming when you don't because of how over costed they'd have to be to balance it out.
Example Card (base version):
Expeditionary Knights 2W
Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
When ~ enters the battlefield, explore. If you reveal a land card this way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~. (To explore, look at the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, you may reveal it.)
2/2
Example Card (drawing the card):
Expeditionary Knights 2W
Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
When ~ enters the battlefield, explore. If you reveal a land card this way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~. (To explore, reveal the top card of your library, then put it into your hand.)
2/2
Example Card (drawing ONLY if you reveal a land):
Expeditionary Knights 2W
Creature - Human Knight Scout
First Strike
When ~ enters the battlefield, explore. If you reveal a land card this way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~. (To explore, reveal the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, put it into your hand.)
2/2
So what do you guys think? Ability Word for its simplicity? Keyword Action for its design space? If you think Keyword Action is the way to go, what should happen with the card on top of the library? Is the whole thing just a bad idea (and if so, why)?
UBR- Scourge of Nephalia -RBU | WBR- From Above and Below -RBW | CRC- Dark Arts and Artifice -CRC | BBB- Fear and Revulsion -BBB
BUB- A New Era in Unlife -BUB | (G/W)(G/W)(G/W)- Honor and Horn -(G/W)(G/W)(G/W) | URW- Still the Mind and Quiet the Heart -WRU
Perhaps combine it with a lot of cards that scry. Or Scry 1, then explore. Certanly build in something that suports it and does not make it into lotto cards.
UBR- Scourge of Nephalia -RBU | WBR- From Above and Below -RBW | CRC- Dark Arts and Artifice -CRC | BBB- Fear and Revulsion -BBB
BUB- A New Era in Unlife -BUB | (G/W)(G/W)(G/W)- Honor and Horn -(G/W)(G/W)(G/W) | URW- Still the Mind and Quiet the Heart -WRU
Perhaps combine it with a negative thing of the explore does not function, although this will make it more of a gamle element. But it would encuredge people to just use the scry mechanic. Of course, people could end up drafting only the scry mecanics.
Both the keyword and ability word version you present have this problem. We tried to get around this problem by increasing the amount of cards from the top of your library it search for or by building some form of deck cycling into the mechanic, changing it to something like "reveal the top X cards of your library. If it's a land card..." and "reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card...(effect)...then (put the rest into graveyard, or put the rest on bottom of library, or some variation like that)", but both those brought up their own issues. They at least were more dependable to actually trigger though.
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Then Explore cards do various things based on what card you reveal while exploring a land.
Frontier Ranger 1W
Creature - Human Soldier
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, put a +1/+1 counter on ~ if you revealed a creature card.
1/1
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.
At first glace, I liked it. But then I realized that this is basically just a not as good landfall. Because it's still based on a land entering the battlefield under your control. So really it could easily be written as:
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If the revealed card was a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
I originally had a mechanic called "Landhold" that was basically Metalcraft, but instead of three artifacts, you needed three lands of a specific basic type (Plainshold, Islandhold, ect). I really liked the mechanic, but it was pointed out to me by a friend that it is much more uninteractive than metalcraft because there are plenty of ways to get rid of artifacts to "turn off" your opponent's metalcraft, but there are far less ways to deal with lands, and most of the ways to deal with lands are considered pretty "unfun". So this was an attempt at a different mechanic that cared about lands.
Perhaps something like landfall that cares more about the type of land entering the battlefield? Or is that generally pointless? For example:
Frontier Guide 1W
Creature - Human Scout
Plainsfall - Whenever a Plains enters the battlefield under your control ~ gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
1/1
I'm not sure if this could potentially allow a power level similar to the original landfall (perhaps even slightly more pushed, like in the example), or if land type is controllable enough in a limited environment that it makes no different anyways.
UBR- Scourge of Nephalia -RBU | WBR- From Above and Below -RBW | CRC- Dark Arts and Artifice -CRC | BBB- Fear and Revulsion -BBB
BUB- A New Era in Unlife -BUB | (G/W)(G/W)(G/W)- Honor and Horn -(G/W)(G/W)(G/W) | URW- Still the Mind and Quiet the Heart -WRU
It's a more focused Landfall, one that generally wants to go on creatures for flavor reasons. To me it makes more sense to explore a land that's actually on the battlefield, as opposed to one that's about to be. You can play multiple Explore creatures which then trigger off a single land; say you have a cycle of creatures that allow you to draw a card if the revealed card is of a specific subtype. The more of those creatures you play, the better the chances you'll get to draw the top card of your library, possibly several cards.
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.
However, my friend and I did come up with another idea:
Explore (To explore, put an exploration counter on target land you control without an exploration counter on it.)
From there, cards can care about exploration counters, how many exploration counters you have, when you explore, ect. I am somewhat concerned about parasitism, but I think if I work it kinda how energy counters work, then I should be alright. Thoughts?
UBR- Scourge of Nephalia -RBU | WBR- From Above and Below -RBW | CRC- Dark Arts and Artifice -CRC | BBB- Fear and Revulsion -BBB
BUB- A New Era in Unlife -BUB | (G/W)(G/W)(G/W)- Honor and Horn -(G/W)(G/W)(G/W) | URW- Still the Mind and Quiet the Heart -WRU
Counters on lands is something R&D is very hesitant to do, as lands tend to make up 50% or more of permanents on the field, and players like to stack same or similar lands together to make handling mana bases easier. Awaken turned the land into a creature, so you'd generally move it in front of your other lands. Let me suggest a cycle:
Sword Seeker W
Creature - Human Soldier
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal an Equipment card, you may put that card into your hand.
1/1
Scroll Collector 2U
Creature - Human Wizard
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal an instant or sorcery card, you may put that card into your hand.
1/3
Grave Robber 1B
Creature - Human Rogue
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, you may put the top card of your library into your graveyard. If you do, return a creature card at random from your graveyard to your hand.
2/1
Treasure Hunter 2R
Creature - Human Warrior
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal a nonland card, you may exile it. You may cast that card this turn.
2/2
Beast Tracker 1G
Creature - Human Scout
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library.)
Whenever ~ explores a land, if you reveal a creature card, you may put that card into your hand.
2/2
You can also combine this with stuff like creating Gold tokens, granting +1/+1 counters, lifegain, damage, etc.
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.
- I hate knowing in advance that my next turn is going to be a wasted draw (if I'm screwed or I want to draw power.)
- I hate playing a card with a mechanic that is a coin flip, and if I lose the flip I get a bad card. (And this flip is actually 60% chance to lose!)
Solution to all three: make the exploration scry 1. Players feel like scry 1 was an upside even if they leave the card on top. And you don't need to reveal the card or be locked into drawing it next turn.
Goblin Scout 2R
Creature - Goblin Scout
When this creature enters the battlefield, explore. If you discover, put a +1/+1 counter on this. (To explore, look at the top card of your library and put it on the top or bottom of your library. Reveal that card as a land to discover.)
3/1
UBR- Scourge of Nephalia -RBU | WBR- From Above and Below -RBW | CRC- Dark Arts and Artifice -CRC | BBB- Fear and Revulsion -BBB
BUB- A New Era in Unlife -BUB | (G/W)(G/W)(G/W)- Honor and Horn -(G/W)(G/W)(G/W) | URW- Still the Mind and Quiet the Heart -WRU
Explore (Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it's a nonland card, you may cast it.)
You could then give Explore creatures abilities that care about casting spells while exploring, like "Whenever ~ explores, if you cast a card revealed that way, put a +1/+1 counter on ~." You can also compliment them with a mechanic that lets you cast cards from the top of your library for an alternate (and usually cheaper) cost.
Discovery -cost- (You may cast this spell for its discovery cost whenever you reveal it from the top of your library.)
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.
There's too much going here. Not only is this quite a specific effect for something with as many design components as it has, but this is repeatable on board card advantage.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Card advantage that you have to pay extra mana for. Since JuanCu stated they hate revealing the top card of their library, it could always be changed to "look at the top card of your library", since the hidden information doesn't interfere with the ability to cast it.
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.