It was mostly meant to trip you up if you tried to run multiples of it. But now that I think about it, there isn't really a drawback if you only have one, so every deck would end up playing one of these. Not sure what to do about that.
That's not inherently a problem. It's an ABUR dual land, but weaker in several ways:
1) No basic land types
2) Even if you only have one, having to tap it first (or even if you don't) means you can't keep the color flexibility around to benefit you later in the turn.
3) As you mentioned, if you have more than 1, you get screwed over.
Is that enough of a weakness to be printable? I dunno, but it seems probably pretty close. The drawback listed above as #2 can actually be fairly significant.
If you wanted to make it weaker, you could do something like "Activate this ability only if you haven't tapped a land for colored mana this turn" on each of the abilities instead.
They aren't strictly better than basics. That's the problem. ABU lands are strictly better than basic lands. His aren't. Therefore his cards aren't comparable in power level to ABU duals, which is kind of the goal in this exercise.
This is just a misunderstanding of the term "strictly better"
It is very possible to have all of the following be true at the same time:
1) ABUR duals strictly better than basic lands.
1) These cards better than ABUR duals.
2) These cards NOT strictly better than basic lands.
All that it requires is something that in MOST cases is better than a basic land, but not every situation, and in the situations where it is, it is significantly more better than than the dual is better...
I would go izzet UR with this. (splashing blue, more so than equal split)
1) Better card draw than the above, and artifact tutoring (which can work for stuffy and also things like lightning greaves), such as 2x fabricate
2) You could put in cards with BOUNCE, which would protect the doll from both targeted and non-targeted stuff (mixing it with things like greaves is good though, because stuffy doll is expensive to recast if you don't have to)
3) With all your spells, being able to potentially copy them might be worth an izzet guildmage or similar, as a nice bonus
No lands are to be strictly better than basic lands.
I'm afraid I don't see how any of the most recent suggestions are strictly better than basic lands. All of these have had some sort of drawback to the dual (1 life, tapped, painland, etc.) and fetchlands have drawbacks as well that can make them worse than basic lands sometimes: being required to have certain other cards in your library, for one. Also speed if the fetched land comes in tapped, and in some of these examples, you have to pay mana to activate it.
All of these things make them not strictly better, so the design paradigm is not violated.
If your goal is to open up a format to the masses, then your cards shouldn't be rare or mythic or uncommon or common. They should probably be printed in a special package by themselves, to make sure there are plenty of them, but also because they aren't supposed to be part of standard, so why would you give them rarities and everything as if to make them fit into a new set? You wouldn't even want them in the same box, because it would be confusing (just like they didn't mix modern masters into standard boxes)
I would print them in number similar to most commons, or larger numbers, if that's your goal, but an official, classic "rarity" seems sort of a moot point. The actual thing you'd print on them would probably be "special" rarity, or whatever.
Hexproof is much stronger than these cards' protection from wasteland.
1) It is protection at zero cost, whereas this usually would force you to commit to a more constrained color space in exchange for the protection
2) It is repeated protection, whereas this is one time. Or at least limited times. (not much difference for wasteland, nobody's gonna waste two to hit you. But very relevant for something like winter orb + icy manipulator).
3) Speaking of which, hexproof protects you from stuff other than LD.
On the other hand, hexproof is LESS powerful insofar as not allowing you to get a free shuffle that can be abused, or thinning your deck, etc.
So worth thinking about, but not just a more elegant way of doing the same thing. Actually quite different things
I think you do. Banning duals will make a bunch of decks not work as intended, and invalidate many people's whole collections etc. (since a lot of people only invest in ONE legacy deck), which will majorly piss off a lot of folks and may even backfire in terms of total participation in legacy format, if more people quit due to not being able to afford a different strategy than there are people joining due to new cheap lands.
Replacing one dual with an effectively equivalent dual, though, doesn't mess with the meta virtually at all except purely for price. Which is most desirable.
it won't make those formats more affordable if those lands come out of the game at $20 to $40 each since everybody will want full sets of them. especially when you put them at mythic, their prices will rise even faster and higher.
Why 20-40 dollars? It could instead be any price they want. If they printed enough of them, they could go for $0.20, it all depends on volume.
And yes people will run those and duals at the same time, but:
1) You could potentially just ban the old duals for tournament play after the new ones are released (in much larger numbers and reprintably, thus lower cost despite the same demand)
2) Even if you don't, 8 good-as duals vs. 4 is less of a relative advantage than 4 duals vs. 0. Playing field is still tilted, but less than before, making more types of (cheaper) decks feasibly competitive, that were on the fence previously.
I have to add that seeking to print a card on the power level of the most overpowered land cycle in the history of Magic is a quest that's deeply misguided in the first place. Doing so with the intent of bolstering a format that has a hilariously degenerate standard for power level doesn't help that at all.
Uh it's not supposed to "FIX" the power level of vintage/legacy. It's supposed to simply allow more people to afford to play vintage/legacy, at a status-quo level. I don't see anything misguided about that. It's important for WOTC to eventually address this issue, because if legacy dies, then a lot of people who play (legacy + standard + modern), etc. leave the game and they sell fewer new boxes.
Of course it's possible to have a 100% unwinnable game. Simply not drawing any lands (or land replacements like mox, etc.), even with all your mulligans and/or first many turns, is a simple example, while your opponent has a turn 4-5 wincon and got appropriate lands/cards.
That particular situation is exceedingly unlikely, but still likely enough to happen measurably often, even with optimally constructed mana curves and mana bases. Even if it's on the order of 1 in every 10,000 games or whatever, there are probably a lot more than 10,000 games of magic played every day.....
You could use Steely Resolve, but that and the Monument are redundant together.
Indestructible and shroud are very different things. Also, the monument is 150% more expensive. Yes I know it gives you flying etc. but in terms of a curve, I'd definitely mix them.
Druid's deliverance is indeed pretty good.
So I'd say ditch the excess really expensive stuff and fix your curve a bit with some of those:
-2 eldrazi
-1 coat of arms
-2 overrun
-1 cultivate (since you're reducing most of the wobbly topheavy mana in this plan, you don't need as much ramp)
+2 steely resolve
+2 parallel lives (good but you don't actually have THAT many token cards, dunno about 4x)
+2 druid's deliverance
oh and
-3 forest
+3 swarmyard - replaces some of the eldrazi protection
-2 more cultivate
+1 thran dynamo - IMO more effective midgame ramp than cultivate by far for a 1-of
+1 adaptive automaton - replaces some of the +1 shenanigans while also being a squirrel
Steely resolve - all your squirrels get shroud for 1G
And it is mentioned above, but you really should consider swarmyard x2-3, mainly to regenerate squirrel mobs, but otherwise it still essentially gives you either a mana or a squirrel token every turn, since one usually would die almost every turn anyway.
Actually, to replace reserved list cards, how about:
__________
____
________
________
________ (The name/text of any reserved list card written in the above blanks
is recognized as a valid MTG card by WOTC for tournament or casual play)
Strictly equal in power to original dual lands in every nuance and every way!
And magic marker handwriting from random nerds is not collectible at all, so no violation of letter or spirit of the RL
Dodging removal is also a problem, but even if it weren't, simply having the phrase "This ship becomes a creature" completely ruins any appropriate ship flavor you've built up with the rest of the card.
That's not inherently a problem. It's an ABUR dual land, but weaker in several ways:
1) No basic land types
2) Even if you only have one, having to tap it first (or even if you don't) means you can't keep the color flexibility around to benefit you later in the turn.
3) As you mentioned, if you have more than 1, you get screwed over.
Is that enough of a weakness to be printable? I dunno, but it seems probably pretty close. The drawback listed above as #2 can actually be fairly significant.
If you wanted to make it weaker, you could do something like "Activate this ability only if you haven't tapped a land for colored mana this turn" on each of the abilities instead.
This is just a misunderstanding of the term "strictly better"
It is very possible to have all of the following be true at the same time:
1) ABUR duals strictly better than basic lands.
1) These cards better than ABUR duals.
2) These cards NOT strictly better than basic lands.
All that it requires is something that in MOST cases is better than a basic land, but not every situation, and in the situations where it is, it is significantly more better than than the dual is better...
1) Better card draw than the above, and artifact tutoring (which can work for stuffy and also things like lightning greaves), such as 2x fabricate
2) You could put in cards with BOUNCE, which would protect the doll from both targeted and non-targeted stuff (mixing it with things like greaves is good though, because stuffy doll is expensive to recast if you don't have to)
3) With all your spells, being able to potentially copy them might be worth an izzet guildmage or similar, as a nice bonus
I'm afraid I don't see how any of the most recent suggestions are strictly better than basic lands. All of these have had some sort of drawback to the dual (1 life, tapped, painland, etc.) and fetchlands have drawbacks as well that can make them worse than basic lands sometimes: being required to have certain other cards in your library, for one. Also speed if the fetched land comes in tapped, and in some of these examples, you have to pay mana to activate it.
All of these things make them not strictly better, so the design paradigm is not violated.
I would print them in number similar to most commons, or larger numbers, if that's your goal, but an official, classic "rarity" seems sort of a moot point. The actual thing you'd print on them would probably be "special" rarity, or whatever.
1) It is protection at zero cost, whereas this usually would force you to commit to a more constrained color space in exchange for the protection
2) It is repeated protection, whereas this is one time. Or at least limited times. (not much difference for wasteland, nobody's gonna waste two to hit you. But very relevant for something like winter orb + icy manipulator).
3) Speaking of which, hexproof protects you from stuff other than LD.
On the other hand, hexproof is LESS powerful insofar as not allowing you to get a free shuffle that can be abused, or thinning your deck, etc.
So worth thinking about, but not just a more elegant way of doing the same thing. Actually quite different things
I think you do. Banning duals will make a bunch of decks not work as intended, and invalidate many people's whole collections etc. (since a lot of people only invest in ONE legacy deck), which will majorly piss off a lot of folks and may even backfire in terms of total participation in legacy format, if more people quit due to not being able to afford a different strategy than there are people joining due to new cheap lands.
Replacing one dual with an effectively equivalent dual, though, doesn't mess with the meta virtually at all except purely for price. Which is most desirable.
Why 20-40 dollars? It could instead be any price they want. If they printed enough of them, they could go for $0.20, it all depends on volume.
And yes people will run those and duals at the same time, but:
1) You could potentially just ban the old duals for tournament play after the new ones are released (in much larger numbers and reprintably, thus lower cost despite the same demand)
2) Even if you don't, 8 good-as duals vs. 4 is less of a relative advantage than 4 duals vs. 0. Playing field is still tilted, but less than before, making more types of (cheaper) decks feasibly competitive, that were on the fence previously.
Uh it's not supposed to "FIX" the power level of vintage/legacy. It's supposed to simply allow more people to afford to play vintage/legacy, at a status-quo level. I don't see anything misguided about that. It's important for WOTC to eventually address this issue, because if legacy dies, then a lot of people who play (legacy + standard + modern), etc. leave the game and they sell fewer new boxes.
Of course it's possible to have a 100% unwinnable game. Simply not drawing any lands (or land replacements like mox, etc.), even with all your mulligans and/or first many turns, is a simple example, while your opponent has a turn 4-5 wincon and got appropriate lands/cards.
That particular situation is exceedingly unlikely, but still likely enough to happen measurably often, even with optimally constructed mana curves and mana bases. Even if it's on the order of 1 in every 10,000 games or whatever, there are probably a lot more than 10,000 games of magic played every day.....
Indestructible and shroud are very different things. Also, the monument is 150% more expensive. Yes I know it gives you flying etc. but in terms of a curve, I'd definitely mix them.
Druid's deliverance is indeed pretty good.
So I'd say ditch the excess really expensive stuff and fix your curve a bit with some of those:
-2 eldrazi
-1 coat of arms
-2 overrun
-1 cultivate (since you're reducing most of the wobbly topheavy mana in this plan, you don't need as much ramp)
+2 steely resolve
+2 parallel lives (good but you don't actually have THAT many token cards, dunno about 4x)
+2 druid's deliverance
oh and
-3 forest
+3 swarmyard - replaces some of the eldrazi protection
-2 more cultivate
+1 thran dynamo - IMO more effective midgame ramp than cultivate by far for a 1-of
+1 adaptive automaton - replaces some of the +1 shenanigans while also being a squirrel
And it is mentioned above, but you really should consider swarmyard x2-3, mainly to regenerate squirrel mobs, but otherwise it still essentially gives you either a mana or a squirrel token every turn, since one usually would die almost every turn anyway.
__________
____
________
________
________
(The name/text of any reserved list card written in the above blanks
is recognized as a valid MTG card by WOTC for tournament or casual play)
Strictly equal in power to original dual lands in every nuance and every way!
And magic marker handwriting from random nerds is not collectible at all, so no violation of letter or spirit of the RL