Each player has a "buried deck" that can contain any number of buried cards. Buried cards are denoted by a special card back. At the start of each game, a player's buried deck is shuffled and becomes their "digsite". Players may look at and play the top card of their digsite. If a buried card would be put into a library, it's put on the bottom of its owner's digsite instead.
Each buried card contains at least one "waste mana" in its mana cost. This is a cost that can be paid with any mana produced by a permanent with the "waste" supertype, which would be eratta'd unto Wastes. So all this essentially gives your Wastes the ability to cast spells. Using more buried cards means more ammo for your Wastes, but less consistency and vice-versa.
High GravityW
Instant ( can be paid with one mana produced by a waste permanent.)
Tap target creature.
Recovered Texts1U
Sorcery
Draw a card.
Hot SaltR
Instant
~ deals 1 damage to target creature or player that was dealt damage this turn.
Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Would the constructed rules for this mechanic be the same as contraptions? That is, 15 card minimum with 1 copy maximum, to prevent abuse? Also, for limited purposes, would wastes be outside of packs and in land stations (or equivalents) for such a draft format? Actual wastes were scant enough in Oath limited that players usually had to bank hard on getting other colorless sources to pay :symc:. Making it even more restrictive makes me doubt that regular pack distribution would be enough.
Is there any reason NOT to play digsite cards? I mean, they don't occupy deck space, nor sideboard space.
I mean, look at recovered text. On it's own, a 2cc+1waste draw a card sorcery is crap. But there's no drawback to it being in your digsite. If you're playing at least one waste, there's no reason not to play 4 of these. There is no "less consistency" because it doesn't interfere or slow down with what your deck is doing. Same goes true with high gravity and hot salt.
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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
That's a fairly insignificant draw back. You aren't requiring them to run X wastes so they get them by turn Y, like when splashing a color. You are simply rewarding them for running any number of wastes and unless you are a three color deck adding a single waste to your deck won't hurt you. There is no tension in the choice to run a single waste to turn on these cards if they have any value and unless they are abnormally powerful there would be little chance that you would want so many waste that you would actually damage your mana base as long as you stay at two colors.
Imagine this card
Recovered Text Land
Land t: Add C 1Ut: draw a card. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery. You can only activate this ability once.
What blue decks would not run this land? A single waste if better than this land with four recovered text in your digsite. The downside to this mechsnic comes when thete are many worthwhile cards to play and you want more waste to ensure access and you run multiple types of cards so the benefit is more random.
Library of Wastes
Land -- Waste T: add C to your mana pool. 1U,T: draw a card. Use this ability only 4 times a game and only as a sorcery.
How playable do you think is that? Do you think playing this card is a drawback if you're playing blue?
You know. I think that may be what "rethinking the costs" may be about.
For example, would you play this:
Library of Wastes
Land - Waste T: Produce C. U,T, Tap another untapped Waste you control: Draw a card. Activate this ability only N* times a game and only as a sorcery.
*) N might not be four as BlazingRagnarok points out.
Probably. But now you have to start thinking about your mana, because this is effectively two colors. And all it would take is recosting the card from to .
If the effect reads "You may have activated up to seven other effects before this this game" though the card reads far less reliable as well. The issue here are the lack of thought put into buuilding the digsite.
Here is the one issue with the digsite: Every single card in the digsite is essentially a cantrip - replacing itself with the next card in the digsite and in addition the first one is free card advantage. The effective cantrip can be adressed by effective costing - the free first card is kinda problematic.
An alternative way to use this is to use "As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a Waste." on certain effects rather than simple "waste mana". That way you get closer to Blasted Landscape.
Another way might be to use the alternate backside and actually put a text on it like: " : Turn the top card of your library face-up." and change the rule so you can only play the top card. Then some of them could be actual cantrips by turning the next card face-up while others won't and you have to pay the cost to "dig it up" again. A benefit of this would be that the actual mana costs printed on the face-site would look more acceptable to the players only just introduced to the mechanic (since they don't have to account for the "invisible" cantrip when evalluating cost vs. effect).
Alternatively card-back ccould have "Whenever a waste land enters the battlefield under your control, you may turn the top card of your digsite face-up." though that come with its own issues.
I personally like "Whenever a waste land enters the battlefield under your control, you may entomb the top site of the digsite there. You may look at and cast the entombed cards." and have cards like
Ancient Knowledge *
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast this spell, tap the land it is entombed on.
Draw a card.
Cursed Tomb *
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice the land it is entombed on.
Create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token with menace.
*) Note: Here I'm not using to represent "waste mana", but to show that I'm not certain whether/how much generic mana should be added to the cost.
As mentioned earlier I'm thematically a great fan of actually sacrificing/discarding the wastes you are stripping of their hidden treasures.
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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]
One of the aims is to create naturally self-limiting deck construction for the digsite so it doesn't end up requiring too many additional rules. Requiring too many additional rules is the biggest challenge, in my opinion, when trying to create a mechanic like this. I said that having more cards in your digsite has the upside of providing you with more "ammo", but that's only an upside if you can actually reliable burn through all of them. Now this poses a problem if I just increase the mana costs on the cards, because that would make it even harder to burn through them all. That leaves two other options: additional costs and cast conditions.
A simple, wide-reaching solution would be to make most cards have "As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card." So now it's not free cards, it's just spellshaping. I could even make it "discard a waste card" to push the power up a little and bolster the waste theme. I could also throw out the whole idea of waste mana if I do that, because this makes you use Wastes in a different way. They are now colorless lands that also act as spells. I actually don't even need to print it on the cards now that I think; I just need to tweak the rules a bit:
You may look at the top card of your digsite and you may cast the top card of your digsite by discarding a card named Wastes in addition to its other costs.
This is also good because it means they don't carry that additional cost around wherever they go, so digsite cards aren't a bad Regrowth target and stuff.
Edit: Now the question is, how much more should digsite variants of cards cost than their normal counterparts with the "discard a card named Wastes" version? A card fulfilling the role of both a spell and a land is said to be quite powerful afterall, but the nature of the digsite sets some restrictions on that power.
Switching it to discarding a waste rather than just having one significantly changes the opportunity cost of the various cards in your digsite. Though it still has the problem of the first and second, maybe more, have a very low cost. However you have also massively reduced the power level as they are no longer 'free' cards. The old auto include Recovered Text isn't even a Blasted Landscape which I don't think has ever been considered too strong. It now being a pseudo Retrace you can see what was done with those types of cards. You can have a wider range and slightly cheaper costs because you are requiring a specific land rather than any land.
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Each buried card contains at least one "waste mana" in its mana cost. This is a cost that can be paid with any mana produced by a permanent with the "waste" supertype, which would be eratta'd unto Wastes. So all this essentially gives your Wastes the ability to cast spells. Using more buried cards means more ammo for your Wastes, but less consistency and vice-versa.
High Gravity W
Instant
( can be paid with one mana produced by a waste permanent.)
Tap target creature.
Recovered Texts 1U
Sorcery
Draw a card.
Hot Salt R
Instant
~ deals 1 damage to target creature or player that was dealt damage this turn.
Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
I mean, look at recovered text. On it's own, a 2cc+1waste draw a card sorcery is crap. But there's no drawback to it being in your digsite. If you're playing at least one waste, there's no reason not to play 4 of these. There is no "less consistency" because it doesn't interfere or slow down with what your deck is doing. Same goes true with high gravity and hot salt.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Imagine this card
What blue decks would not run this land? A single waste if better than this land with four recovered text in your digsite. The downside to this mechsnic comes when thete are many worthwhile cards to play and you want more waste to ensure access and you run multiple types of cards so the benefit is more random.
Ok, let me rephrase.
What do you think of this card.
Library of Wastes
Land -- Waste
T: add C to your mana pool.
1U,T: draw a card. Use this ability only 4 times a game and only as a sorcery.
How playable do you think is that? Do you think playing this card is a drawback if you're playing blue?
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
You know. I think that may be what "rethinking the costs" may be about.
For example, would you play this:
Land - Waste
T: Produce C.
U,T, Tap another untapped Waste you control: Draw a card. Activate this ability only N* times a game and only as a sorcery.
*) N might not be four as BlazingRagnarok points out.
Probably. But now you have to start thinking about your mana, because this is effectively two colors. And all it would take is recosting the card from to .
If the effect reads "You may have activated up to seven other effects before this this game" though the card reads far less reliable as well. The issue here are the lack of thought put into buuilding the digsite.
Here is the one issue with the digsite: Every single card in the digsite is essentially a cantrip - replacing itself with the next card in the digsite and in addition the first one is free card advantage. The effective cantrip can be adressed by effective costing - the free first card is kinda problematic.
An alternative way to use this is to use "As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a Waste." on certain effects rather than simple "waste mana". That way you get closer to Blasted Landscape.
Another way might be to use the alternate backside and actually put a text on it like: " : Turn the top card of your library face-up." and change the rule so you can only play the top card. Then some of them could be actual cantrips by turning the next card face-up while others won't and you have to pay the cost to "dig it up" again. A benefit of this would be that the actual mana costs printed on the face-site would look more acceptable to the players only just introduced to the mechanic (since they don't have to account for the "invisible" cantrip when evalluating cost vs. effect).
Alternatively card-back ccould have "Whenever a waste land enters the battlefield under your control, you may turn the top card of your digsite face-up." though that come with its own issues.
I personally like "Whenever a waste land enters the battlefield under your control, you may entomb the top site of the digsite there. You may look at and cast the entombed cards." and have cards like
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast this spell, tap the land it is entombed on.
Draw a card.
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice the land it is entombed on.
Create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token with menace.
*) Note: Here I'm not using to represent "waste mana", but to show that I'm not certain whether/how much generic mana should be added to the cost.
As mentioned earlier I'm thematically a great fan of actually sacrificing/discarding the wastes you are stripping of their hidden treasures.
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."
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A simple, wide-reaching solution would be to make most cards have "As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card." So now it's not free cards, it's just spellshaping. I could even make it "discard a waste card" to push the power up a little and bolster the waste theme. I could also throw out the whole idea of waste mana if I do that, because this makes you use Wastes in a different way. They are now colorless lands that also act as spells. I actually don't even need to print it on the cards now that I think; I just need to tweak the rules a bit:
You may look at the top card of your digsite and you may cast the top card of your digsite by discarding a card named Wastes in addition to its other costs.
This is also good because it means they don't carry that additional cost around wherever they go, so digsite cards aren't a bad Regrowth target and stuff.
Edit: Now the question is, how much more should digsite variants of cards cost than their normal counterparts with the "discard a card named Wastes" version? A card fulfilling the role of both a spell and a land is said to be quite powerful afterall, but the nature of the digsite sets some restrictions on that power.