I was just thinking that adding a little extra rules text to a dual land would allow it to bypass the stipulations of the reserved list and make it "legal" for printing. I think making a dual land legendary and adding the ability "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control seven or more legendary lands, you win the game" would not only deal with the reserved list restriction, but also make the card more interesting. I suspect the requirement for 7 legendary lands during your upkeep is about right, but if the "win the game" feature of such cards is too good, I could always go up to requiring 10 legendary lands (like Maze's End) to win.
So would a cycle of such dual lands be too good? I think it would depend on the format.
- It would be fine in draft - probably about a 7th pick.
- It would be unnecessary in current Standard, which right now is basically perfect in my opinion; right now we have checklands, shocklands, guildgates, and Evolving Wilds, and currently you can build a great deck with as little as 1 or as many as 3 colors without worrying much about color-screw.
- It would be overpowered in Modern, because with fetchlands you can find these and get them untapped without having to pay 2 life, as you would with a shockland. If fetchlands didn't exist, however, then these cards would be fine.
- It would be perfect for Legacy, drastically reducing the financial burden of this format. Unless you are crazy enough to try to exploit the "you win the game" feature of these cards, these cards are technically worse than the original dual lands... but with fetchlands, it won't matter much.
- It would be great for Commander, but imagine the wrath a player would invoke when everyone else at the table realizes their plans for victory! They would be worth trying with cards such as Splendid Reclamation and The Mending of Dominaria.
Taking all this into account, I suppose the best way to get such cards into circulation while preventing them from getting into formats in which they don't belong would be to include them in a special set such as Conspiracy or Commander.
Included is a sample card, which is like Tropical Island:
Rapa Nui
Legendary Land - Island Forest
[T]: Add U or G.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control at least 7 legendary lands, you win the game.
One of the issues with no-drawback multimana lands is the demand for them would be MASSIVE beceause they’d be auto-includes in virtually every multicolored deck. Adding a cool effect to them would be zonkers.
Making the original dual lands stronger is a strange path to making them reprintable, technically it works as they are no longer functional copies. However, the lands without the win the game ability would be considered too strong for most formats. Simple easy mana fixing is very powerful that is why so many dual lands enter tapped unless some criteria is met. With the goal of replicating the original dual lands being afraid of "too strong for constructed formats" is already a miss because the original duals are too strong for most constructed formats. The only format I could see these being not overpowered would be Legacy, though they could be strong enough to actually be played for their wincon as long as the number is something easier to achieve than Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.
If you actually want lands that would be in Modern then they have to be equal to or less than the Shocklands. A rather unique clause for entering untapped is the most reasonable answer, though such an answer is hard to find. Being legendary is a fairly insignificant draw back because these lands are being fetched so even running 1 copy you are essentially running 8+ copies so you will easily draw them every game.
I was just thinking that adding a little extra rules text to a dual land would allow it to bypass the stipulations of the reserved list and make it "legal" for printing. I think making a dual land legendary and adding the ability "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control seven or more legendary lands, you win the game" would not only deal with the reserved list restriction, but also make the card more interesting. I suspect the requirement for 7 legendary lands during your upkeep is about right, but if the "win the game" feature of such cards is too good, I could always go up to requiring 10 legendary lands (like Maze's End) to win.
So would a cycle of such dual lands be too good? I think it would depend on the format.
- It would be fine in draft - probably about a 7th pick.
- It would be unnecessary in current Standard, which right now is basically perfect in my opinion; right now we have checklands, shocklands, guildgates, and Evolving Wilds, and currently you can build a great deck with as little as 1 or as many as 3 colors without worrying much about color-screw.
- It would be overpowered in Modern, because with fetchlands you can find these and get them untapped without having to pay 2 life, as you would with a shockland. If fetchlands didn't exist, however, then these cards would be fine.
- It would be perfect for Legacy, drastically reducing the financial burden of this format. Unless you are crazy enough to try to exploit the "you win the game" feature of these cards, these cards are technically worse than the original dual lands... but with fetchlands, it won't matter much.
- It would be great for Commander, but imagine the wrath a player would invoke when everyone else at the table realizes their plans for victory! They would be worth trying with cards such as Splendid Reclamation and The Mending of Dominaria.
Taking all this into account, I suppose the best way to get such cards into circulation while preventing them from getting into formats in which they don't belong would be to include them in a special set such as Conspiracy or Commander.
Included is a sample card, which is like Tropical Island:
Rapa Nui
Legendary Land - Island Forest
[T]: Add U or G.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control at least 7 legendary lands, you win the game.
One of the issues with no-drawback multimana lands is the demand for them would be MASSIVE beceause they’d be auto-includes in virtually every multicolored deck. Adding a cool effect to them would be zonkers.
If you actually want lands that would be in Modern then they have to be equal to or less than the Shocklands. A rather unique clause for entering untapped is the most reasonable answer, though such an answer is hard to find. Being legendary is a fairly insignificant draw back because these lands are being fetched so even running 1 copy you are essentially running 8+ copies so you will easily draw them every game.