Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation have been really grinding my gears of late. For one, printing desert (although a bit inelegant, rules-wise), would have been a flavor and function boon. Given the move to making 1-drops 1/2s of late, this wouldn't have been too oppressive for standard.
But they decided to make desert a sub-type. Fine. Now Hour of Devastation has several cycles of "deserts matter" cards, but they're clunky and inelegant and, perhaps worst of all, all utter garbage. So, I thought I'd talk about how to do Deserts right.
For this, I'm going to talk about designing for the 2 set block (1 large, 1 small). Wizards is abandoning this, it seems, because they can't get set design teams to work together, as the 2nd set seems to go off in their own direction and absolutely ignore mechanics from the first (Fabricate! WTF? Embalm! The horror!), but this is an internal problem that did not affect classic blocks - Odyssey, Onslaught, Mirrodin, Kamigawa (you laugh, but powered down or not, it was solid).
Set 1 (IE, we've decided to subtype "desert", also we have cycling. Assumption: desert is off the table.)
Lands:
R:
[by assumption] Bicyling lands.
Desert Gate
Land - Desert Gate (R)
~ enters the battlefield tapped. T: Add C to your mana pool.
Pay 1 life, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Reason: Desert city of brass, with the gate subtype thrown in for flavor and function reasons.
U: Desert/type "Dual" cycle X5: Name
Land - Desert + [basic land type] (U) (t: Add [type] to your mana pool.)
~ enters the battlefield tapped. T: Add C to your mana pool.
Cycling - C
Reason: Tapping for C is mechanically relevant, so this is fetchable now. Yeah, it CIPT, which is a problem for older formats, explaining why it's only (U). Cycling for C is new, and often difficult to get, and pushes a C-subtheme, that will be built on by deserts-matter cards in the next set.
Irrigated Desert
Land - Desert (U) T: Add C to your mana pool.
Whenever you discard a card, you may put a flood counter on Irrigated Desert. (Cycling involves discarding a card.) T, remove X flood counters from ~: Add X colorless mana to your mana pool.
Reason: This is your standard "storage land", but interacts with cycling very interestingly.
C: Cradle of the Accursed -> "3, T, Sacrifice ~: Exile target card from a graveyard. If a creature card was exiled in this way, create a 2/2 black zombie creature token."
Reason: Flavor aside, this serves as a (costly) foil to two of the main mechanics in the set - Aftermath and Embalm. At 3 mana and the cost of a land, though, it's fair.
Set 2:
R: Desert Fetchlands Cycle x 5: Name
Land
Pay 1 life, T, Sacrifice ~: Search your library for a desert or [basic land type] and put it onto the battlefield.
Okay, so now we're talking. Fetchlands that can interact with the bicycle lands and the desertcycle lands and the other deserts. Suddenly 6-color desert is a slow, clunky, thing.
U:
Desert Market
Land - Desert (U) T: Add C to your mana pool. T, Sacrifice a creature: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Interacts favorably with black's sacrifice-theme, serves as more limited color fixing - albeit bad fixing - and, in many ways, is deserts-matter filler.
Moving Desert
Land - Desert (U) T: Add C to your mana pool. 3C: ~ becomes a X/X elemental creature until end of turn, where X equals the number of deserts you control and in your graveyard.
Reason: This is more or less a "bad" manland, but is worded to work with the "sacrificial" deserts. Encourages all-desert mana-bases.
In the all-desert mana-base, it can get quite big. Still, in limited, you're happy with this even as a 3/3 or so.
C: Rolling Desert
Land - Desert (C) T: Add C to your mana pool.
Cycling 2
Name 1C
Creature - relevant non-humanoid creature type, shaman. (U) 1C: Target creature gains [on color keyword] until end of turn.
2/1
Misc: Desert Reclamation1G
Sorcery
Choose 1 -
Sacrifice a desert. If you do, search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield tapped. shuffle.
Return a desert card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Entwine 1G (because entwine is an interesting and fun mechanic)
Desert PeddlerR
Creature - Jackal Wizard (C)
Whenever a desert is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may draw a card, then discard a card.
1/2
Sand Elemental6
Creature - Elemental (C)
Sand Elemental costs 2 less to play for each desert card in your graveyard.
4/4
I'm very disappointed that there are no camels with "desertwalk" or "protection from deserts" like what the original Camel tried to do, if only for amazing flavor reasons.
I also like colorless-specific costs on cards, and I'm sad that they pigeon-holed it as something that pretty much only Kozilek and his brood did. It works very nicely as a sixth 'color' of magic since it A: represents artifice and 'lifelessness' and therefore neatly fits between blue and black, across from green (like they'd wanted purple to do) and B: has existing card support (unlike purple). If they were to start Magic from scratch, I firmly believe that colorless would be its own fully-fledged 'color' with non-eldrazi instants, sorceries, and enchantments.
Other than that, deserts and deserts-matter cards are more or less intended to be throwaway cards that add flavor to drafts and inspire a couple of awful casual decks. I'm sad so many neat concepts get wasted on cards which are intended never to matter outside of limited, but at the same time there's a decent reason for it in terms of staying accessible to new players (which random keyword and type includes like 'Entwine' and 'Gate' not seen elsewhere in the set tend to alienate, as seen in Time Spiral block) and avoiding power creep by the need for every card to be 'good'.
Irrigated Desert
Land - Desert (U) T: Add C to your mana pool.
Whenever you discard a card, you may put a flood counter on Irrigated Desert. (Cycling involves discarding a card.) T, remove X flood counters from ~: Add X colorless mana to your mana pool.
Reason: This is your standard "storage land", but interacts with cycling very interestingly.
Misc: Desert Reclamation1G
Sorcery
Choose 1 -
Sacrifice a desert. If you do, search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield tapped. shuffle.
Return a desert card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Entwine 1G (because entwine is an interesting and fun mechanic)
Desert PeddlerR
Creature - Jackal Wizard (C)
Whenever a desert is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may draw a card, then discard a card.
1/2
Sand Elemental6
Creature - Elemental (C)
Sand Elemental costs 2 less to play for each desert card in your graveyard.
4/4
(more later)
I do think this is a neat thought exercise. Just a quick critique on some of the cards you designed here.
While its debatable that fetch lands are are too powerful for standard, and that your bad man lands has the potential to be reduced in constructed, the items I have quoted here are the ones I have the most issue with.
Irrigated desert: whole I understand your attempt for synergistic card design, this card is way too powerful. For example here is a possible line that could occur. Turn 1 tapped r/g dual, turn two, noose constrictor with irrigated desert, turn three, play mountain, discard 3 cards to constrictor, pay 5 mana get a glory bringer/reality smasher on turn three, swing 9-10 on turn 3.
Desert reclamation, I'd be ok if this was G sacrifice a desert, search your library for a basic land card and put on the battlefield tapped with aftermath 1G return target desert or basic from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Desert pedlar is a little off color, should be discard then draw, red typically rummages now a days vs looting.
The last one could be okay, but with the amount of discard and cycling around these sets I'm afraid that it would be too much like affinity, by just accruing value by just playing magic. Just my two cents.
Well these are certainly more pushed and much more likely to become part of a top-tier standard archetype. I like the idea of the desert fetches, as they wouldn't be quite as degenerate in standard with dual-type lands as real fetches were.
The problem I see is that they would be heavily played, making standard generally more expensive, adding a lot of time to games just due to repeated shuffling, making cards like Harsh Mentor and Hostile Desert much more expensive, and pushing most decks into 3-color territory, although that last part is mostly true anyway.
The rest of these cards are pretty cool, although I'm not sure about bringing back the Kozilek mechanic.
Also, a desertwalking Camel would be a flavor home-run.
Re: "or discard" - I'd be okay with the whole block removing this clause. But fair point. Still, it's wheel of fortune we need to worry about, not one with nothing.
And there's nothing wrong with affinity for something difficult to do. Look at affinity for basic lands, or the Kaladesh affinity creature...
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But they decided to make desert a sub-type. Fine. Now Hour of Devastation has several cycles of "deserts matter" cards, but they're clunky and inelegant and, perhaps worst of all, all utter garbage. So, I thought I'd talk about how to do Deserts right.
For this, I'm going to talk about designing for the 2 set block (1 large, 1 small). Wizards is abandoning this, it seems, because they can't get set design teams to work together, as the 2nd set seems to go off in their own direction and absolutely ignore mechanics from the first (Fabricate! WTF? Embalm! The horror!), but this is an internal problem that did not affect classic blocks - Odyssey, Onslaught, Mirrodin, Kamigawa (you laugh, but powered down or not, it was solid).
Set 1 (IE, we've decided to subtype "desert", also we have cycling. Assumption: desert is off the table.)
Lands:
R:
[by assumption] Bicyling lands.
Desert Gate
Land - Desert Gate (R)
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add C to your mana pool.
Pay 1 life, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Reason: Desert city of brass, with the gate subtype thrown in for flavor and function reasons.
U:
Desert/type "Dual" cycle X5:
Name
Land - Desert + [basic land type] (U)
(t: Add [type] to your mana pool.)
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add C to your mana pool.
Cycling - C
Reason: Tapping for C is mechanically relevant, so this is fetchable now. Yeah, it CIPT, which is a problem for older formats, explaining why it's only (U). Cycling for C is new, and often difficult to get, and pushes a C-subtheme, that will be built on by deserts-matter cards in the next set.
Grasping Dunes (clunky, but fine I guess)
Irrigated Desert
Land - Desert (U)
T: Add C to your mana pool.
Whenever you discard a card, you may put a flood counter on Irrigated Desert. (Cycling involves discarding a card.)
T, remove X flood counters from ~: Add X colorless mana to your mana pool.
Reason: This is your standard "storage land", but interacts with cycling very interestingly.
C:
Cradle of the Accursed -> "3, T, Sacrifice ~: Exile target card from a graveyard. If a creature card was exiled in this way, create a 2/2 black zombie creature token."
Reason: Flavor aside, this serves as a (costly) foil to two of the main mechanics in the set - Aftermath and Embalm. At 3 mana and the cost of a land, though, it's fair.
Set 2:
R:
Desert Fetchlands Cycle x 5:
Name
Land
Pay 1 life, T, Sacrifice ~: Search your library for a desert or [basic land type] and put it onto the battlefield.
Okay, so now we're talking. Fetchlands that can interact with the bicycle lands and the desertcycle lands and the other deserts. Suddenly 6-color desert is a slow, clunky, thing.
U:
Desert Market
Land - Desert (U)
T: Add C to your mana pool.
T, Sacrifice a creature: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Interacts favorably with black's sacrifice-theme, serves as more limited color fixing - albeit bad fixing - and, in many ways, is deserts-matter filler.
Moving Desert
Land - Desert (U)
T: Add C to your mana pool.
3C: ~ becomes a X/X elemental creature until end of turn, where X equals the number of deserts you control and in your graveyard.
Reason: This is more or less a "bad" manland, but is worded to work with the "sacrificial" deserts. Encourages all-desert mana-bases.
In the all-desert mana-base, it can get quite big. Still, in limited, you're happy with this even as a 3/3 or so.
C:
Rolling Desert
Land - Desert (C)
T: Add C to your mana pool.
Cycling 2
Slightly better Blasted Landscape variant.
Deserts matter cards:
C-activation cycle:
Name 1C
Creature - relevant non-humanoid creature type, shaman. (U)
1C: Target creature gains [on color keyword] until end of turn.
2/1
Misc:
Desert Reclamation 1G
Sorcery
Choose 1 -
Sacrifice a desert. If you do, search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield tapped. shuffle.
Return a desert card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Entwine 1G (because entwine is an interesting and fun mechanic)
Desert Peddler R
Creature - Jackal Wizard (C)
Whenever a desert is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may draw a card, then discard a card.
1/2
Sand Elemental 6
Creature - Elemental (C)
Sand Elemental costs 2 less to play for each desert card in your graveyard.
4/4
(more later)
I also like colorless-specific costs on cards, and I'm sad that they pigeon-holed it as something that pretty much only Kozilek and his brood did. It works very nicely as a sixth 'color' of magic since it A: represents artifice and 'lifelessness' and therefore neatly fits between blue and black, across from green (like they'd wanted purple to do) and B: has existing card support (unlike purple). If they were to start Magic from scratch, I firmly believe that colorless would be its own fully-fledged 'color' with non-eldrazi instants, sorceries, and enchantments.
Other than that, deserts and deserts-matter cards are more or less intended to be throwaway cards that add flavor to drafts and inspire a couple of awful casual decks. I'm sad so many neat concepts get wasted on cards which are intended never to matter outside of limited, but at the same time there's a decent reason for it in terms of staying accessible to new players (which random keyword and type includes like 'Entwine' and 'Gate' not seen elsewhere in the set tend to alienate, as seen in Time Spiral block) and avoiding power creep by the need for every card to be 'good'.
- Rabid Wombat
I do think this is a neat thought exercise. Just a quick critique on some of the cards you designed here.
While its debatable that fetch lands are are too powerful for standard, and that your bad man lands has the potential to be reduced in constructed, the items I have quoted here are the ones I have the most issue with.
Irrigated desert: whole I understand your attempt for synergistic card design, this card is way too powerful. For example here is a possible line that could occur. Turn 1 tapped r/g dual, turn two, noose constrictor with irrigated desert, turn three, play mountain, discard 3 cards to constrictor, pay 5 mana get a glory bringer/reality smasher on turn three, swing 9-10 on turn 3.
Desert reclamation, I'd be ok if this was G sacrifice a desert, search your library for a basic land card and put on the battlefield tapped with aftermath 1G return target desert or basic from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Desert pedlar is a little off color, should be discard then draw, red typically rummages now a days vs looting.
The last one could be okay, but with the amount of discard and cycling around these sets I'm afraid that it would be too much like affinity, by just accruing value by just playing magic. Just my two cents.
The problem I see is that they would be heavily played, making standard generally more expensive, adding a lot of time to games just due to repeated shuffling, making cards like Harsh Mentor and Hostile Desert much more expensive, and pushing most decks into 3-color territory, although that last part is mostly true anyway.
The rest of these cards are pretty cool, although I'm not sure about bringing back the Kozilek mechanic.
Also, a desertwalking Camel would be a flavor home-run.
And there's nothing wrong with affinity for something difficult to do. Look at affinity for basic lands, or the Kaladesh affinity creature...