So I'm trying to find the best way to design Desert cards for my custom magic set. The world is essentially a harsh wasteland (think Dune but less harsh) and deserts will play a large mechanical role in the set. I'm trying to find out how to rework deserts for deckbuilding and drafts. My ideas so far:
Idea 1: Basic Land - Desert Plains
- essentially add the Desert tag to basic lands, making them similar to snow Lands but having a subtype instead of a supertype. Instead of tapping for W or 1, it will tap for W or C. You would draft for these in limited much like Snow Lands.
Idea 2: Basic Land - Desert, named "Desert"
- This is what I would ideally like just because it makes deckbuilding interesting, as this will essentially function like a Wastes and only produce colorless mana. However, there is already a card just named Desert, and so that would be confusing. (Although I don't really care because it's a custom set). Also this would make deckbuilding interesting because you'd have to dedicate your mana to partially colorless to make use of the Desert mechanics; you would want that C because it would almost function as a color of its own.
There will be other nonbasic Desert cards, probably a cycle of common duals similar to the ones in Kaldheim or something, as well as some uncommons and rares.
As an example rare from my set, I'll go ahead and show you Greater Dunewurm. As it so happens to be, Wurms will get a lot of love in this set, with a verticle cycle of Wurms and the return of the Wurm token! This card is just showing you what/how/why Deserts will matter.
Greater Dunewurm4GG
Creature - Wurm (Rare)
Trample
Greater Dunewurm gets +1/+1 for each Desert you control and each Desert card in your graveyard. CC, sacrifice a Desert: return Greater Dunewurm from your graveyard to your hand.
1/1
The challenge with deserts is it's basically snow without the potential for snow mana. (Sand mana?)
I'm not a huge fan of specifically colorless costs personally, but that's just me. That said, having Basic Land Plains Desert add the "tap add C" is going to look messy. I think "Desert Plains" as just tapping for W is fine, basic might be a push though.
Some of this is going to depend on the flavor of your world too, though, because that lense is going to affect your usage more than anything.
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Idea 1: Basic Land - Desert Plains
- essentially add the Desert tag to basic lands, making them similar to snow Lands but having a subtype instead of a supertype. Instead of tapping for W or 1, it will tap for W or C. You would draft for these in limited much like Snow Lands.
Idea 2: Basic Land - Desert, named "Desert"
- This is what I would ideally like just because it makes deckbuilding interesting, as this will essentially function like a Wastes and only produce colorless mana. However, there is already a card just named Desert, and so that would be confusing. (Although I don't really care because it's a custom set). Also this would make deckbuilding interesting because you'd have to dedicate your mana to partially colorless to make use of the Desert mechanics; you would want that C because it would almost function as a color of its own.
There will be other nonbasic Desert cards, probably a cycle of common duals similar to the ones in Kaldheim or something, as well as some uncommons and rares.
As an example rare from my set, I'll go ahead and show you Greater Dunewurm. As it so happens to be, Wurms will get a lot of love in this set, with a verticle cycle of Wurms and the return of the Wurm token! This card is just showing you what/how/why Deserts will matter.
Greater Dunewurm 4GG
Creature - Wurm (Rare)
Trample
Greater Dunewurm gets +1/+1 for each Desert you control and each Desert card in your graveyard.
CC, sacrifice a Desert: return Greater Dunewurm from your graveyard to your hand.
1/1
Dunes of Zairo
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Innistrad - The Darkest Night
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I'm not a huge fan of specifically colorless costs personally, but that's just me. That said, having Basic Land Plains Desert add the "tap add C" is going to look messy. I think "Desert Plains" as just tapping for W is fine, basic might be a push though.
Some of this is going to depend on the flavor of your world too, though, because that lense is going to affect your usage more than anything.