MTG Salvation

This card is inspired by the greatest martial art film ever: Kung Fury.

I'm curious if folks this is appropriate, both with regards to the character Kung Fury and with regards to game balance?

Kung Fury
Legendary Creature - Human Cop 7/2
Triple strike (This creature deals first-strike, regular, and last-strike combat damage.)
T: Kung Fury deals 2 damage to any target.
When Kung Fury dies, you may yell, “You’re breaking the law!” If you do, return Kung Fury to the battlefield tapped.

Or perhaps the best solution is to just print something simpler, like this:

World's Edge
Land (C)
[T]: Add 1.
[2],[T], Discard a land card: Draw a card.

With an activation cost of [2],[T], this card might not be good enough, though. Any thoughts on decreasing the activation cost to [1],[T]?

Thunderstruck
Sorcery -- 3RR
Deal 3 damage to any target. A target damaged by Thunderstruck can’t attack, block, activate abilities, or cast spells this turn.
Mountainbound (Exile this card from your hand: You may play a Mountain card you own from outside the game. It enters the battlefield tapped. Use this ability only if you could play a land.)

Power up your creatures with squats! Just like in real life.

Mana Scales helps you dig out of mana screw, but unlike my prior fiasco of Primordial Lands, doesn't allow you to totally skimp on lands in your deck.

The lands help alleviate mana flood. But they should never feel unfair, because spending a whole turn or a significant chunk of one putting out a generic 2/2 for 3 tends not to win games. But at least it gives you something to do.

Necull is a respectable card, but certainly too weak for Modern. Give him the ability of:
T, exile X target lands in an opponent's graveyard: Create X 1/1 black Vampire creature tokens with lifelink or create X 1/1 red Goblin creature tokens with haste.

Tromatons activate!

I present here a set of house rules that drastically reduce mana-screw and mana-flood. I’ve tried a few other fixes in the past, but I admit they felt like duds. But these rules are the best house rules I’ve devised to date. They work great for Limited formats and Standard. I haven't tried them in Modern or Legacy. My house rules are presented first, followed by my rationale and thought process in creating these rules.

This opening post has been edited to incorporate a few suggestions made to me in some of the responses below.

I hope readers will ask themselves the following questions:
1. Am I willing to play a few games with these rules to see if I like them?
2. If WotC implemented these rules into tournament play, would I approve or disapprove?
3. If I these rules are awful, can I think of a better set of house rules that I want to share?

House Rules – Draw Step Options:

During your draw step, select one of three options. If you don’t specify one of these options, you are presumed to have selected Option #1. These options collectively replace rule 504.1 in the Comprehensive Rules at http://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/MagicCompRules 20170925.pdf.

Option #1: Simply draw a card (exactly as in rule 504.1).

Option #2 (when you need more mana): During your draw step, immediately before you draw, scry 1 twice. Then you may reveal the card you draw for your draw step. If you didn’t reveal a land card, immediately put the card you drew on the bottom of your library. Use this option only if you have at least 7 cards in your library. This procedure is a turn-based action that doesn’t use the stack.

Option #3 (when you need more spells): During your draw step, immediately before you draw, discard a land card to scry 1. Then draw a card. This procedure is a turn-based action that doesn’t use the stack.

Valid concerns:
1. Will Option #2 make decks based on Urzatron, Cloudposts, or other specialized lands overpowered?
2. Will Option #2 make cards like Sylvan Library, Mirri's Guile, and Sensei's Divining Top overpowered?
3. Will Option #3 make cards that benefit off discarding lands in the graveyard overpowered? (Dakmor Salvage, Crucible of Worlds, Gitrog Monster, etc.)
4. Will Option #3 make spells with the Miracle mechanic overpowered?

Goals of my House Rules:

1. Although these rules ought to drastically ameliorate mana-screw and mana-flood, the goal isn’t to make including the proper number and distribution of lands irrelevant to deckbuilding. Selecting the proper quantity and distribution of mana sources should still be crucial to deck optimization.

2. Although it would also be nice to prevent overt color-screw from occurring, it is critical that players are prevented from too easily accessing all colors of mana without consequence, otherwise 5-color decks will be the norm. There needs to remain incentive to not play too many colors for the sake of dependably and efficiently acquiring the appropriate colors of mana.

3. Under standard rules, a typical deck containing 40% lands will on average be able play lands on their first 4-5 turns, but thereafter playing lands will become intermittent unless many extra cards are being drawn. It’s important that these rules don’t allow players to reliably hit land drops on turns 6-8, otherwise the rules would favor decks relying on high-cost spells.

Rationale for this Proposal:

1. It’s not fun when a player mulligans because they don’t draw enough lands (typically 0, 1, or 2) or draw too many lands (typically 5, 6, or 7).

2. It’s not fun when a player needs to draw a third or (rarely) fourth land, but they don’t. This often makes defeat inevitable.

3. It’s also not fun when a player draws too many lands. This also often makes defeat inevitable.

4. It is my opinion that Magic already has enough variance without overt mana screw, overt mana flood, and overt color screw. There is enough
excitement and variety simply by drawing spell cards at random.

5. A more-skilled player will do a better job of including the correct number and assortment of lands and mana-smoothing effects in their deck than a less-skilled player, and thereby succumb to mana problems less frequently than their less-skilled opponent. Nevertheless, even the more-skilled player can’t escape the random nature of mana, and the more random a game is, the greater the chances are that the less-skilled player will win due to chance.

6. Luck is the main reason that the highest-ranking Magic players had a rating of around 2300 (way back when the ELO rating system was used instead of Planeswalker Points), whereas in Chess the best players have a rating of around 2800; that 500-point discrepancy is due to luck, because Chess is a game with no luck. Yet luck is good because it adds variance and excitement to the game. But when luck dictates that any player, irrespective of skill, will intermittently be deprived of gameplay options and be doomed to defeat, it is indeed counter to the principle that games should be fun. I predict that if lands were always drawn “smoothly”, then the top-rated Magic players would have attained a rating around 2400-2500.

7. Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, has stated that, in hindsight after creating Magic and moving on to creating another trading card game, “I wanted no land – I didn’t like that Magic had about 40% boring resource cards in the deck.” (source: https://vtesone.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/vtes-history-richard-garfield-interview/)

8. WotC has created other games I have enjoyed that also used mana systems, but in these games mana wasn’t unevenly distributed to players. One game was Hecatomb, in which spells could alternatively be played in effect as lands. Another game was Dreamblade that gave players a random but equal amount of mana on each turn. The creation of these games leads me to presume that they realize that random mana issues are a flaw in Magic’s otherwise amazing design.

9. Unfortunately, very few of the overt mana screw/mana flood alleviating cards have been strong enough for inclusion in constructed decks. Examples of mana screw/mana flood alleviating cards have been buyback cards from Tempest block, cycling lands from Urza block, Spellshapers from Masques block, cycling lands from Onslaught, landcycling spells from Scourge and Conflux, and Retrace cards from Eventide.

10. In major Magic tournaments, a player typically needs to go 5-1-1 or better (like the time I got 9th at States going 5-1-1) to qualify for the top 8. Hence, random bad mana can be the crippling.

11. Why is it that planeswalkers (as cards) can always cast a “spell” (by activating a planeswalker ability) on every single turn, yet players sometimes can’t do anything during their turn due to mana problems? Why do planeswalkers, get the privilege of essentially flawless mana? Is WotC trying to suggest that chumps like Jace and Gideon are more competent than the planeswalkers represented by us, the players of the game?

For these lands to be common, they should read:

{Name of the card} comes into play tapped.
{T}: Add {} to your mana pool.
Exile this card from your hand, (...). Use this ability only if you control a {name of the card}.

At this point, I would prefer Legendary lands with a Grandeur mechanic, no ETB tapped.

I have used MSE in the past and currently have it on my computer. I don't usually want to put in the extra few minutes of art on a random idea but let's finish the cycle and see what I can pull up. Will put the one extra one into the OP so the full cycle can be visible.

Also, the sacrifice effect was intended to be a state-based effect (so you can't throw this down as your sixth land and tap it for mana before it pops). A bit odd but I can't really think of any other wording that would let it function as intended.

Wasn't made for any real project. Just an idea of how wizards might make a cycle of rare mono-color lands that serve a uniform, utilitarian purpose (rather than using utility lands like Emeria). Was admittedly inspired by by Benzo's thread on Ethereal lands and wanted to see if I could come up with a design that accomplishes a similar end.