It actually does give you extra mana if you control more than one of these crossroads. Possibly okay in a singleton big-deck format like commander, but something to look at if played in other formats. One quick step towards maybe balancing and at least simplifying interactions could be to make it only trigger from your own lands. Punishing your opponents for playing sub-optimal lands seems unnecessary and teammates in formats with shared turns can give you extra mana.
R'Kadi - First, art needs credit. Learn to use google reverse image search if you are posting card renders. Just a few minutes: https://daverapoza.carbonmade.com/projects/5313374
- You can use the +2 ability and the +1 ability, or +1 ability three times, then stop using it and have no problem as long as your opponents have no cards that can somehow add loyalty to your planeswalker. Any version of this idea needs to take that into account. For example, maybe something wordy like:
At the beginning of your end step, if you didn't activate a loyalty ability of R'Kadi this turn and/or R'Kadi has 5 or more loyalty, exile R'Kadi and he deals 10 damage to you.
The other abilities still need some balancing though.
Istvan - Uncle Istvan only prevents damage from creatures, so I would either make this only prevent damage from creatures or name this something else that is not a reference to Uncle Istvan.
- The effects of the two 0 abilities are a little boring. The interesting part is other players being able to use one of its abilities. Maybe just iterate on that idea with a planeswalker that lets anyone use its abilities. A good ability to go with that on a black planeswalker would be partially negative abilities like "You draw a card and you lose 1 life" to hurt any player that does decide to use it.
Ignov the Fickle 1BB ... 2BB? Legendary Planeswalker - Ignov (M)
Each player may activate a loyalty ability of Ignov the Fickle during their turn. /+1\: You discard a card and you gain 1 life.
[0]: You draw a card and you lose 1 life.
\-1/: Each player sacrifices an artifact, creature, or land.
[2]
Hard to wrap my mind around a planeswalker like this. It seems good, but not sure how strong it would actually be. Part Braids, Cabal Minion, part Phyrexian Arena. Your opponents can draw cards from it, or try to kill it in two turns hoping you don't discard a card to restock him.
Aenni - Feels like she is doing too much of the same thing. It is like the boring Chandra cards that have all straight damage abilities. Land, mana, more lands.
So, what's Najeela's reason? She just that popular with Warriors?
Warriors are in all colors in Battlebond. Najeela is a bit like General Tazri in that regard.
The weirdness might also be in part because black is the color that most often rewards using its own resources (lots of Swamps, lots of black mana, etc).
- At the beginning of your end step, if ~ didn't deal damage this turn, return it to its owner's hand.
There is a lot of complexity in the other abilities, and this is the easiest place where something could be simplified. Outside of use of cards like Prey Upon, the most likely decision for triggering or not triggering is just attacking with it.
- At the beginning of your end step, if ~ didn't attack this turn, return it to its owner's hand.
But maybe you don't need any complicated decisions.
- At the beginning of your end step, you may return ~ to its owner's hand.
- At the beginning of your end step, return ~ to its owner's hand.
... or just remove that self-bounce completely. Flash and the kill trigger is probably an interesting enough design.
If we are discussing how systems of government align with the Magic color wheel:
- Black-red is the color pair for anarchy and self interest.
- Green-white is the color pair for community and working together.
I think Meteor Crater and Corrupted Grafstone are worded that way because you have to choose both the permanent/card and the color. If the first choice is already limited, then it doesn't need to be as wordy. Based on Chrome Mox, it should be okay to say "Add one mana of any of that creature's colors to your mana pool."
This might be okay in a heavy multicolor set. If you wanted to limit it a bit, you could make, for example, the (W/U) "Enchant basic Plains or Island" so that it can't interact with nonbasic lands. That also simplifies the gameplay choices since you wouldn't be able to create any individual lands that can tap for more than three colors.
Less brutal than Rishadan Port. More brutal than an Unstable Frontier variant that could target any land. It stops color fixing and nonmana abilities for a turn, but they still have access to the same amount of mana.
Viashino Cutthroat - The drawback looks a bit too shortsighted even for red, unless this is in a set with a lot of enter triggers or you are getting this out with something like Ornithopter that you can immediate replay for free and then it might be too good.
Ghost of the Naya - As a rare, this could probably either come down one mana or go up to 3/1 or 3/2.
Boneyard Protector - Aesthetically, the reinforce number should match its power and toughness. Either 1/1 with reinforce 1 or 2/2 with reinforce 2. Recursive two +1/+1 counters is probably a bit too good for 2B anyway.
- Wither seems unecessary for the design, and is actually out of place because it is mixing +1/+1 counter and -1/-1 counter mechanics with one card. The interaction between wither and the recursion ability is also bordering on too good.
We already had kicker in the set at this point, so we played around with [lands] that allowed you to [pay] mana when they entered the battlefield to play spell effects. Here's an example of an early card:
Deadly Bog
Land - Swamp
CARDNAME enters the battlefield tapped.
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may pay 3B. If you do, destroy target non-black creature.
T: Add B to your mana pool
Deadly Bog was a black kill spell that doubled as a Swamp. (During early design, all the nonbasic lands that produced a color were lands of the appropriate type; this was changed during development due to power concerns) Pretty cool, huh? One small problem with it. While a more experienced player might see it for what it was—a black kill spell with the side effect of getting you out of mana screw—the less experienced players just saw it as a land. As such, when they put land in their deck they counted it as a land. We would then watch playtest after playtest where they would be mana-screwed and not play Deadly Bog. Why? Because they didn't want to waste it. Playing it as only a Swamp that enters tapped seemed like a waste.
Here is a valuable design tip. It doesn't matter how you meant for something to be used. It is how it is used that matters. The card as presented was causing unfun games as players were unconsciously mana-screwing themselves. And to be fair, the issue went beyond skill level. Even when I had Deadly Bog in my hand, played in my deck counting it as mostly a spell so that I was not mana screwed by it, I still felt bad when I had to play it as just a tapped Swamp. Yes, the intellectual side of me found it silly as the land ability was merely a bonus added to the kill spell, but the emotional side of me felt bad doing it. The card created a bad feeling.
Valuable design tip #2: Things that force your players to do something in the game that makes them feel bad are mistakes. This isn't to say you can't have tension or occasionally force your players to make tough decisions, but if the spell routinely causes ill will when they have to play it in a certain way, it is a mistake to print. Our job is to entertain the players and help them have fun. Purposely creating ill will does not advance either agenda.
We liked the lands though, so we decided what we would do was reduce them to just two cycles, one with effects costing one mana (at common) and the other with effects costing two mana (at uncommon). During the tail end of design, Bill Rose suggested that we try a cycle with zero-mana costs, lands that simply had an effect when they entered the battlefield. We changed the common cycle to the free version and the uncommon cycle was then reduced to one mana effects.
During development, it was decided that even the one mana effects at uncommon were causing moments of frustration, so we just left the free common cycle.
He also dismisses using face-down cards to represent lands in that article, but that is not really a problem for a custom set as long as it is not being played along side Onslaught and Tarkir blocks.
I recall MaRo writing they tried to use a mechanic with extra costs on lands in the first Zendikar block. It apparently didn't play well because people kept mana screwing themselves while they held those lands in hand waiting for other lands to be able to pay the enter cost. Those cards were eventually remade into the Teetering Peaks cycle.
If you need big spell effects on lands, maybe sacrificing or removing counters or something else might be better.
- You can use the +2 ability and the +1 ability, or +1 ability three times, then stop using it and have no problem as long as your opponents have no cards that can somehow add loyalty to your planeswalker. Any version of this idea needs to take that into account. For example, maybe something wordy like:
At the beginning of your end step, if you didn't activate a loyalty ability of R'Kadi this turn and/or R'Kadi has 5 or more loyalty, exile R'Kadi and he deals 10 damage to you.
The other abilities still need some balancing though.
Istvan - Uncle Istvan only prevents damage from creatures, so I would either make this only prevent damage from creatures or name this something else that is not a reference to Uncle Istvan.
- The effects of the two 0 abilities are a little boring. The interesting part is other players being able to use one of its abilities. Maybe just iterate on that idea with a planeswalker that lets anyone use its abilities. A good ability to go with that on a black planeswalker would be partially negative abilities like "You draw a card and you lose 1 life" to hurt any player that does decide to use it.
Ignov the Fickle 1BB ... 2BB?
Legendary Planeswalker - Ignov (M)
Each player may activate a loyalty ability of Ignov the Fickle during their turn.
/+1\: You discard a card and you gain 1 life.
[0]: You draw a card and you lose 1 life.
\-1/: Each player sacrifices an artifact, creature, or land.
[2]
Hard to wrap my mind around a planeswalker like this. It seems good, but not sure how strong it would actually be. Part Braids, Cabal Minion, part Phyrexian Arena. Your opponents can draw cards from it, or try to kill it in two turns hoping you don't discard a card to restock him.
Aenni - Feels like she is doing too much of the same thing. It is like the boring Chandra cards that have all straight damage abilities. Land, mana, more lands.
{mana}, T, Exile CARDNAME: Exile target nonbasic land.
Avoids Crucible of Worlds on both sides.
Point at CARDNAME: [effect.]
Warriors are in all colors in Battlebond. Najeela is a bit like General Tazri in that regard.
The weirdness might also be in part because black is the color that most often rewards using its own resources (lots of Swamps, lots of black mana, etc).
There is a lot of complexity in the other abilities, and this is the easiest place where something could be simplified. Outside of use of cards like Prey Upon, the most likely decision for triggering or not triggering is just attacking with it.
- At the beginning of your end step, if ~ didn't attack this turn, return it to its owner's hand.
But maybe you don't need any complicated decisions.
- At the beginning of your end step, you may return ~ to its owner's hand.
- At the beginning of your end step, return ~ to its owner's hand.
... or just remove that self-bounce completely. Flash and the kill trigger is probably an interesting enough design.
Is that "or" supposed to be "and"?
- Black-red is the color pair for anarchy and self interest.
- Green-white is the color pair for community and working together.
Ghost of the Naya - As a rare, this could probably either come down one mana or go up to 3/1 or 3/2.
Boneyard Protector - Aesthetically, the reinforce number should match its power and toughness. Either 1/1 with reinforce 1 or 2/2 with reinforce 2. Recursive two +1/+1 counters is probably a bit too good for 2B anyway.
- Wither seems unecessary for the design, and is actually out of place because it is mixing +1/+1 counter and -1/-1 counter mechanics with one card. The interaction between wither and the recursion ability is also bordering on too good.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/achieving-zendikar-part-iii-2009-09-18
He also dismisses using face-down cards to represent lands in that article, but that is not really a problem for a custom set as long as it is not being played along side Onslaught and Tarkir blocks.
If you need big spell effects on lands, maybe sacrificing or removing counters or something else might be better.