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.
Lightning Bolt has been considered the strongest removal spell in Modern since the beginning of the format. However, it is starting to seem like it isn't a particularly strong removal spell anymore. Out of the 15 decks in Modern that currently have a metagame share of at least 2 percent on MTGO, there are only 7 decks in which at least half of the creatures die to Bolt (Burn, Affinity, Bant Eldrazi, Merfolk, Storm, Abzan Company, and Jund). Bolt kills none of the creatures in BGx Death's Shadow, it kills nothing permanently in Dredge except for Narcomoeba, it kills only Noble Hierarch, Scavenging Ooze, and spirit tokens against Abzan, it kills only Snapcaster Mage against blue Death's Shadow decks, it only kills Walking Ballista and Matter Reshaper against Eldrazi Tron, it only kills Wurmcoil Engine tokens against WG Tron, it does nothing against Titanshift, and it does nothing against Ad Nauseum. In addition, the decks with at least 2% of the meta that Bolt is mostly just a Lava Spike against currently make up 37.57% of the metagame, while the decks that Bolt is strong against make up only 24.64% of the meta. Finally, Lightning Bolt is only the 5th-most played card in Modern and is less played that both Path to Exile and Fatal Push. So, is Lighting Bolt still the top removal spell in Modern, and if it is not, what does that mean for the format?
There is a fallacy in the classification of Lightning Bolt. Bolt is not removal. It is burn, an incredibly efficient direct damage spell to lower your opponent life total, that sometimes acts as removal. That is the proper way to look at bolt, not as the assumption that it is removal first, and then sometimes burn.
I guess that it is still decent removal. I don't get why they think that Lightning Strike is too powerful though.
Agreed. Exiling helps a little but the days of looping raptor and protector are long gone so exiling is of little value right now. If they really wanted to bring red back, just reprint lightning strike. Maybe they'll reprint forked bolt. That would be a good compliment to this card.
One thing to keep in mind tho. What plane are we about to go to. Kaledesh. Who is the only PW from that plane. Chandra. What does Chandra do....I expect red will gets lots of good burn in 3 months. Until then, red will continue to languish with blue as the worst colors.
The problem with this theory is that kaladesh is an artificers'plane. Chandra was the only pyromancer there and they feared her for it. We will just have to wait and see I guess.
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.
There is a fallacy in the classification of Lightning Bolt. Bolt is not removal. It is burn, an incredibly efficient direct damage spell to lower your opponent life total, that sometimes acts as removal. That is the proper way to look at bolt, not as the assumption that it is removal first, and then sometimes burn.
Straight power.
The problem with this theory is that kaladesh is an artificers'plane. Chandra was the only pyromancer there and they feared her for it. We will just have to wait and see I guess.