So, I'm working on that Mesomerican/Atlazan custom set right now and I'm wondering if this would be interesting to play with:
Treasure Chest0
Artifact (C)
Sacrifice Treasure Chest: Flip three coins. Create a colorless artifact token named Gold for each flip you win. It has "Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool." Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
Also this free Krark's Thumb because there'll be a lot of flipping coins:
Lucky Coin0
Legendary Artifact (R)
If you would flip a coin, instead flip two coins and ignore one.
I'm not really a good card evaluator, but that seems incredibly broken. 0-cost Artifacts are usually pretty impactful in some form, but 0-cost mana producers? Eh, I Dunno. I mean, with both in board, you have a pretty solid chance to turn 1 Black Lotus without the burst mana restriction. I can already see the Disciple of the Vault combo in my head.
Note that this article was written before miracle was introduced, and during cascade. It talks about making randomness more acceptable... but in the end both miracle and cascade brought about a lot of unhappy players. Oh, sure, the spikes loved their brokeness, but fun they aren't. Cascade is now known as one of the biggest mistakes in MTG, while miracle is still pissing off players in eternal.
Treasure chest is a 3-fer in design mistakes. One, it's randomness that the opponent doesn't really have a say over (barring corner cases like a pithing needle). Two, it's a something-for-nothing card (like I said, better than a lotus petal). Three, it uses an icon of randomness (ie coin flip).
tl;dr -- sure, there will be interest in playing them, outweighed by loathing.
Players DON'T like randomness Some people do, like Mark Rosewater. However, even Mark Rosewater acknowledges that randomness doesn't do sell well.
Well, good thing I'm not trying to sell it then.
Originally this card was just flip one coin and produce a token if you win, but a random Lotus Petal felt boring, if not because people would be opening empty chests too often and there would be no reason to play the card. I imagine most people who don't like randomness don't like it for that reason. Most of the time it just doesn't work in any way that could justify its inclusion in a deck, so I'm trying to figure out how to make those cards more attractive.
And on the subject of Miracles, the problem definitely isn't the mechanic in itself, but Terminus and its unreasonably low miracle cost. Cascade had the exact same problem, with cards like Bloodbraid Elf making the mechanic too powerful. But as we were discussing in this thread, nobody really complains about Demonic Dread. It's actually funny how MaRo mentions both cards in the article you posted but appears to be oblivious as to how different those cards are.
Going back to Treasure Chest though, if we're talking about comboing it with Lucky Coin and whatever else there's available to win the game, then yes, the effect is broken in a vacuum. But it's still two cards to produce three mana and that combo will fail completely sooner or later, making it less reliable than anything involving Lotus Petal. I'm thinking it's far less powerful than it seems, if not notably inferior to other combo pieces you have in Eternal formats. I'd rather have the usual Rituals in my hand when playing Storm or Reanimator, for example, than this, because then I know that the only way it can possibly fail is if the opponent FoWs me.
Lucky coin and Thumb are the same card just 0 cc both are legendary ... not sure it needed to be cheaper but free? maybe 1?
You might notice from my other threads that I'm addicted to making free stuff.
But yeah, it could cost 1. Or simply cost 2 and be a functional reprint. It just feels weird having to channel mana to cast something so insignificant such as a coin.
Lucky coin and Thumb are the same card just 0 cc both are legendary ... not sure it needed to be cheaper but free? maybe 1?
You might notice from my other threads that I'm addicted to making free stuff.
But yeah, it could cost 1. Or simply cost 2 and be a functional reprint. It just feels weird having to channel mana to cast something so insignificant such as a coin.
If it makes you feel better, it is a magical coin that (in flavor terms) is powerful enough to be legendary.
I like the flavor of Treasure Chest a lot, but I do think there are some issues with this execution. As Mondu said, this compares favorably to Lotus Petal (the Chest makes about 1.5 mana on average). Perhaps more importantly, I don't think mana ramping combines well with randomness- it's just not something I'd want to leave to chance. I think I'd prefer to see a Vigean Intuition type of effect here, maybe even one that just looks for noncreature artifacts.
If it makes you feel better, it is a magical coin that (in flavor terms) is powerful enough to be legendary.
I like the flavor of Treasure Chest a lot, but I do think there are some issues with this execution. As Mondu said, this compares favorably to Lotus Petal (the Chest makes about 1.5 mana on average). Perhaps more importantly, I don't think mana ramping combines well with randomness- it's just not something I'd want to leave to chance. I think I'd prefer to see a Vigean Intuition type of effect here, maybe even one that just looks for noncreature artifacts.
Yes, as I was saying, the randomness is what makes the combo unreliable for decks in constructed formats. But I should have mentioned before that the card is intended for draft, reason why it's a common.
Vigean Intuition is a good idea actually. The point of this card is to make all players feel like they're in a Treasure Hunt and that kind of effect conveys the theme well. Although, to be honest, I really wanted to use Gold tokens with it for the flavor.
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Treasure Chest 0
Artifact (C)
Sacrifice Treasure Chest: Flip three coins. Create a colorless artifact token named Gold for each flip you win. It has "Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool." Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
Also this free Krark's Thumb because there'll be a lot of flipping coins:
Lucky Coin 0
Legendary Artifact (R)
If you would flip a coin, instead flip two coins and ignore one.
Thumb already exists. Lucky coin's "let's make it 0cc and legendary" is lazy design.
Players DON'T like randomness Some people do, like Mark Rosewater. However, even Mark Rosewater acknowledges that randomness doesn't do sell well.
Here's an article on it:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/kind-acts-randomness-2009-12-14
Note that this article was written before miracle was introduced, and during cascade. It talks about making randomness more acceptable... but in the end both miracle and cascade brought about a lot of unhappy players. Oh, sure, the spikes loved their brokeness, but fun they aren't. Cascade is now known as one of the biggest mistakes in MTG, while miracle is still pissing off players in eternal.
https://mtgcolorpie.com/2011/10/31/the-5-scariest-design-mistakes-in-magic-history/
Treasure chest is a 3-fer in design mistakes. One, it's randomness that the opponent doesn't really have a say over (barring corner cases like a pithing needle). Two, it's a something-for-nothing card (like I said, better than a lotus petal). Three, it uses an icon of randomness (ie coin flip).
tl;dr -- sure, there will be interest in playing them, outweighed by loathing.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Well, good thing I'm not trying to sell it then.
Originally this card was just flip one coin and produce a token if you win, but a random Lotus Petal felt boring, if not because people would be opening empty chests too often and there would be no reason to play the card. I imagine most people who don't like randomness don't like it for that reason. Most of the time it just doesn't work in any way that could justify its inclusion in a deck, so I'm trying to figure out how to make those cards more attractive.
And on the subject of Miracles, the problem definitely isn't the mechanic in itself, but Terminus and its unreasonably low miracle cost. Cascade had the exact same problem, with cards like Bloodbraid Elf making the mechanic too powerful. But as we were discussing in this thread, nobody really complains about Demonic Dread. It's actually funny how MaRo mentions both cards in the article you posted but appears to be oblivious as to how different those cards are.
Going back to Treasure Chest though, if we're talking about comboing it with Lucky Coin and whatever else there's available to win the game, then yes, the effect is broken in a vacuum. But it's still two cards to produce three mana and that combo will fail completely sooner or later, making it less reliable than anything involving Lotus Petal. I'm thinking it's far less powerful than it seems, if not notably inferior to other combo pieces you have in Eternal formats. I'd rather have the usual Rituals in my hand when playing Storm or Reanimator, for example, than this, because then I know that the only way it can possibly fail is if the opponent FoWs me.
You might notice from my other threads that I'm addicted to making free stuff.
But yeah, it could cost 1. Or simply cost 2 and be a functional reprint. It just feels weird having to channel mana to cast something so insignificant such as a coin.
If it makes you feel better, it is a magical coin that (in flavor terms) is powerful enough to be legendary.
I like the flavor of Treasure Chest a lot, but I do think there are some issues with this execution. As Mondu said, this compares favorably to Lotus Petal (the Chest makes about 1.5 mana on average). Perhaps more importantly, I don't think mana ramping combines well with randomness- it's just not something I'd want to leave to chance. I think I'd prefer to see a Vigean Intuition type of effect here, maybe even one that just looks for noncreature artifacts.
Yes, as I was saying, the randomness is what makes the combo unreliable for decks in constructed formats. But I should have mentioned before that the card is intended for draft, reason why it's a common.
Vigean Intuition is a good idea actually. The point of this card is to make all players feel like they're in a Treasure Hunt and that kind of effect conveys the theme well. Although, to be honest, I really wanted to use Gold tokens with it for the flavor.