Trinity Lotus Artifact , Sacrifice Trinity Lotus: Add three mana in any combination of colors to your mana pool. This mana can only be used to cast spells with a converted mana cost 3. Sacrifice all but three permanents you control. Once you know its secret, it will drive you to madness to taste it, or to be able to forget it.
Here's an idea I was tinkering with for a new lotus.
The main criteria I had was for it to produce three mana in any combination of colors. There were a few other drawbacks that I had considered for the card. "Lands you control don't untap during your next untap step." // "You can't untap more than three permanents during your next untap step." // "Your life total becomes one-third of its current total, divided by three, rounded up." However, I went with the Sacrifice drawback in the end, as it's effectively the hardest to easily counter-act, through something like Children of Korlis. The additional drawback is intended to help further the balance of power, in events where a player might be able to drop two of them, and then drop two 3 mana cardsat thestart ofthe game.
I feel that as the design stands, it's considerably balanced at the start of the game against hard removal (Unsummon, Force Spike, Pongify, Beast Within, Path to Exile, Tariff, Terror, Innocent Blood—just to give examples). Outside this crucial factor, there's always the potential to use the Restricted List tactically, so that the card begins in the Standard Format as a Restricted card, to suite the balance of power. That is what the Restricted List is there for in my opinion. And I do believe that the Restricted List could be used far more tactically and intelligibly then it's traditionally put to use for. A Restricted assignment could also enable the card's design to take a more full-factor form (without the mana cost restriction—and a different drawback in its place). As a Restricted designation would effectively solve the major balance issue where a player is able to drop more than one of them at the start of the game, majorly bypassing the Sacrifice drawback, to then drop something heavily evasive with Shroud or Hexproof (the most foul-proof play).
That's fine. I would like to further point out though that benevolence has no place in black or red. You would definitely need to include white here for that. It's thought that black does hold some neutral ground, in being symbolic of the dead/spirits of the afterlife. However, even then it takes a melancholy overtone, (such as representing spirits stuck in limbo), and otherwise, it has a purely evil standing (representing malicious or evil serving spirits).
The middle ability still wants to be summarized as, "Whenever damage is dealt to a creature, its controller gains that much life."
Nothing currently changes mana symbols in anything. So, as it is now, this card does literally nothing (and doesn't even really make sense anyway since you can't add 0).
Even if you then create the card you mentioned in your second post, the wording is confusing. The way it is worded is that you can change all mana symbols on the card to another except in activation costs. Unless you are changing a colored mana symbol to another. Then, the way it is worded, you *can* change it in activation costs. I am not sure if this is what you want since it could also be read as "you can't change colored mana symbols at all".
It's called an exceptions clause, and literally doesn't matter in the context you're suggesting. The context is intended to specifically set the boundary that, "colorless mana symbols in activation costs can't be changed this way". Which it does effectively, and even reads better than if it were composed like that.
Then, you mentioned that "it cannot exceed 3" which doesn't make sense. Mana Symbols do not have numbers, not even colorless mana symbols. A colorless mana symbol is C. You might be thinking of *generic* mana in costs which is shown as 3 but this is not a mana symbol so you can't change something to 3. Even if you could, there would never be a reason to change it to anything other than 0 (for your own) or 3 (for someone else's) in regards to activation costs or 3 in the case of the Mox above where you are trying to produce mana.
C'mon man, colorless mana symbols are numbers. It's kind of self-explanatory what it means when it says that the colorless mana symbol cannot exceed 3.
I would think to do this as, "Change the text of target spell or permanent by replacing all instances of one mana symbol, except in activation costs, unless it's colored, with another. If a colorless mana symbol is chosen as the replacement, it cannot exceed 3."
I would further question if it would be best to just spell it all out entirely. "Change the text of target spell or permanent by replacing all instances of one mana symbol with another. Mana symbols in activation costs can't be changed this way unless they're colored mana symbols. If a colorless mana symbol is chosen as the replacement, it cannot exceed 3."
Papyrus Mox Artifact : Add to your mana pool. "It is the divine manifestation of all is to be—the power of all your hopes, and dreams, and fantasies—locked away on the other side of the veil, so close, yet so far beyond the pale."
I think this is really intuitive! It give something very neat to red, which naturally makes some people very uncomfortable, given how deprived the color usually is. However, I think it fits brilliantly within all confines of card, its color, and style. It does some really dynamic in a unique way, which to me is like a throwback to the old days, and how they would implement quirky surprises like this.
One thing that is kind of strange, even for me, is how naturally one seems to find the priceless treasure. Albeit, at one time, the treasure was very common-place.
You could have done this as a legendary, and it would gained a neat dynamic of one knocking off the next to suss the Lotus (with how the legendary rule works now). It even becomes a little more self-reliant then, without the need of wasting other precious resources of yours, that are best reserved and directed against your opponent and their resources in defense.
You actually don't, because the the operating function doesn't involve actually attacking. It's a tap and direct damage effect.
Of course you do. It's a triggered ability. That means it needs to state when it triggers.
Oh, I see what you mean. I just got tripped up from PTCG composure again.
Ideally, the sequence timing would be the same, just composed as,
"At the beginning of your next combat phase..." in MTG
Which in PTCG, is ideally the same as, "During your next combat phase..."
"Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may have it phase out. If you do, it doesn't phase in during your next untap step. During your next combat phase, equipped creature phases in tapped, and deals damage equal to double its power to target creature or planeswalker."
"Whenever ~ attacks, you may have it phase out instead...."
This doesn't work. "Whenever" denotes a triggered ability, and "instead" denotes a replacement effect. They are mutually exclusive.
Normally, the proper wording would be to replace "Whenever" with "If". However, since attacking with a creature is a turn-based action that involves following a sequence of smaller actions, the turn-based action cannot itself be a replaced event of a replacement effect.
"During your next combat phase, ..."
This isn't specific enough. You need to specify which step of the combat phase you're referring to.
You actually don't, because the the operating function doesn't involve actually attacking. It's a tap and direct damage effect.
//
As for the placement of "instead", I am aware of this, but I added the term "instead" for context of clarity, suite the "If you do," in the next conditions clause. I caught it initially, but since my most recent work has been with PTCG, the sentence structure confused me for a moment, and I felt the need to add "instead".
"Whenever ~ attacks, you may have it phase out. If you do..."
Would be more attuned, to traditional wording composure for this function in MTG.
Or just phase it out. That achieves everything this wants to do extremely elegantly.
...okay, I feel very old now.
Phases out would be far superior, and far more attributive to the flavor of the design (in that they are boots).
You would just have to say, as void_nothing mentioned, compose the effect with something like,
"Whenever ~ attacks, you may have it phase out instead. If you do, it doesn't phase in during your next untap step. During your next combat phase, ~ phases in tapped, and deals damage equal to double its power to target creature, player, or planeswalker."
Would like to supplement on this that it makes the creature unblockable, and warrants some higher costs or restrictions possibly, to preserve aspects of challenge and balance that are essential to the fairness and fun of the game. Might just need to say, "target creature or planeswalker".
"Whenever damage is dealt to a creature, its controller gains that much life.
At the beginning of your combat phase, you may gain control of target creature with power less than ~'s power until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn.
If another creature would die, return it to its owner's hand instead."
Here's another brush up. The final ability is a bit over-the-top. Although it seems polite to recycle their creatures, the ability is open-source as it's written, and prevents all creatures from being destroyed. This is a hard-lock that takes away from interactivity in an unintuitive way. It removes the aspect of challenge (of creature removal), with way too many other benefactors alongside it. The balance of power is thrown way off here. You might want to consider concentrating that operating function to only creatures that would be destroyed by Zarina. Currently, Wrath of God becomes Evacuation.
"Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may exile it and all cards you control that are attached to it. All counters remain on those cards while they change zones. At the beginning of your next combat phase, return equipped creature and all cards attached to it to the battlefield tapped. It deals damage equal to twice its power to target creature, player, or planeswalker."
Here's a brush up for the wording. Didn't change the functionality at all, just fixed the wording composure.
Note that the functionality here has to be all one ability, because the second effect is an extension from the first.
Doublemint Fun Land — Forest/Island
As ~ enters the battlefield, if you control 5 or more lands, it produces an additional mana of any type it was tapped to produce, when tapped for mana.
'Not sure if just Island...Just Forest...Or Both.'
I'm not sure what you mean by "Forest/Island" but anything that's materially better than the Alpha dual lands is broken.
Just wanted to add that—this was another design that I presented in an open-source form.
I didn't initially think to make them dual lands, but forward-slashed the sub-type, as I wasn't quite sure if this would be a Forest or an Island. Additionally, as the current version is open to interpretation, it could easily be finalized to do something along the lines of which it can effectively become a dual land mid-game.
Doublemint Fun Land ‒ Forest
As ~ enters the battlefield, if you control 5 or more lands, it becomes an Island in addition to its types when it enters the battlefield, and produces an additional mana of any type it can produce when tapped for mana.
I kind of prefer the singular type design, but the dual one would obviously be more popular with the masses.
The way I've composed the effect, with "As this enters the battlefield", the card would count the number of lands you control while it's on the stack (before it comes into play) to decide if it inherits the mana ramp bonus or not.
Lands don't use the stack.
You know what I mean—the lands are counted as it enters the battlefield—in the same style as permanents with like-effects "while they're on the stack".
A creature's toughness being at 0 or less doesn't cause that creature to be destroyed.
Right, the context of "destroy" was used in the sense of a general term and summary. I should have explained this maybe?
To summarize my entire intention further, I believe that it's important to the flavor and functionality of the Celestial lands, that they are immune to being "destroyed" easily from neutral ground. However, that they are NOT immune to other effects, which hold the power to destroy them/put them into the graveyard/remove them from the game, in events where they gain a new Super-type, and the dynamics of their character changes. I hope that makes sense.
Doublemint Fun Land — Forest/Island
As ~ enters the battlefield, if you control 5 or more lands, it produces an additional mana of any type it was tapped to produce, when tapped for mana.
'Not sure if just Island...Just Forest...Or Both.'
I had to read this four times to figure out what it was supposed to do: "If you control five or more other lands, this land enters the battlefield with a charge counter on it. As long as this land has a charge counter on it, whenever you tap it for mana, add an additional one mana of any type it produced."
I'm not sure what you mean by "Forest/Island" but anything that's materially better than the Alpha dual lands is broken. Even with one subtype, a drawbackless "better than basic" land with a basic subtype and a variant on the Temple of the False God ability but for colored mana is highly suspect in terms of power level. Temple is not very good (outside of Commander, the format it consistently gets printed for); as a whole cycle, however, that's a worrisome amount of free ramp.
As the others have said there's zero reason to make celestial have indestructible's rules. Just make indestructible lands, if you really want! If people want to make jank combos with land animation, great. It's part of the fun.
"If you control three or more Islands, and any player controls exactly the same number of Islands that you do, at anytime during your turn that you could play an Instant, you may exchange control of this permanent for any permanent that player controls" - This text is a mess in terms of templating and effect (to start with it's static but by any sane logic should be activated). It doesn't do anything except in bizarrely specific situations and then will presumably lead to... a game of hot potato? Why? What's the point?
The way I've composed the effect, with "As this enters the battlefield", the card would count the number of lands you control while it's on the stack (before it comes into play), to decide if it inherits the mana ramp bonus or not. I personally feel that it's unnecessary to change the functionality here, and also that it would be tacky to use the whole "charge" counter gig. Although it opens up some interactivity, I believe it does so in an unintuitively, in a way that detracts from the flavor and functionality here.
First of all, it's essential to the flavor of the card to do it this way. As these are lands whom one will only see the special properties of, once/after they possess a specific fundamental development of some kind.
Secondly, it's essential to the functionality to do it this way. As by opening up that interactivity with the charge counter, it effectively makes the card more open to cheap exploits. This will detract from the aspect of challenge implemented here, which intends to provide a central basis for the fun of the game. The hard-coded functionality here also intends to provide boundaries and restrictions, that must be entirely locked-off from exploit, for balance of the game (by preventing the aspects of challenge/boundaries/restrictions from being too cheaply bi-passed or hot-fixed).
I totally forgot about Temple of the False God, and didn't reference it at all here in the making of this. I do think that card has great potential, it's just that people don't conventionally know how to tap into it. With the basic land-type here, there's also a significant extension on the adaptability of these cards. As it opens up interactivity in a light way, that doesn't get too excessive given the effect can't be abused early in the game, via cards like Fetch Lands.
//
Regarding the Celestial ruling. It's NOT actually indestructible.
Celestial Lands are only immune to "destroy" effects, so that if it becomes a creature, it can still be destroyed by lethal damage, or by power/toughnessmoddingeffects. I did explain this. It's also intended to provide functional boundaries and restrictions, so that Land Destruction effects can't be used with the "exchange" effect too exploitively.
On that note, the Celestial errata might also want to include "Can't be sacrificed". The exchange dynamic is still a little too malleable to Land Transmutationeffects, which does bother me a bit. But otherwise, if you exchange for a card for the Stargate, the Celestial restrictions put you a turn or two behind, so that you can't make a simple double-play on it immediately.
If you're not entirely understanding the applications here, you might want to print some out and play test them with your friends to get a feel for it. It should essentially provide some neat game-state tricks, and also, force players to mobilize and distribute their lands more tactically.
Artifact
Once you know its secret, it will drive you to madness to taste it, or to be able to forget it.
Here's an idea I was tinkering with for a new lotus.
The main criteria I had was for it to produce three mana in any combination of colors. There were a few other drawbacks that I had considered for the card. "Lands you control don't untap during your next untap step." // "You can't untap more than three permanents during your next untap step." // "Your life total becomes one-third of its current total, divided by three, rounded up." However, I went with the Sacrifice drawback in the end, as it's effectively the hardest to easily counter-act, through something like Children of Korlis. The additional drawback is intended to help further the balance of power, in events where a player might be able to drop two of them, and then drop two 3 mana cards at the start of the game.
I feel that as the design stands, it's considerably balanced at the start of the game against hard removal (Unsummon, Force Spike, Pongify, Beast Within, Path to Exile, Tariff, Terror, Innocent Blood—just to give examples). Outside this crucial factor, there's always the potential to use the Restricted List tactically, so that the card begins in the Standard Format as a Restricted card, to suite the balance of power. That is what the Restricted List is there for in my opinion. And I do believe that the Restricted List could be used far more tactically and intelligibly then it's traditionally put to use for. A Restricted assignment could also enable the card's design to take a more full-factor form (without the mana cost restriction—and a different drawback in its place). As a Restricted designation would effectively solve the major balance issue where a player is able to drop more than one of them at the start of the game, majorly bypassing the Sacrifice drawback, to then drop something heavily evasive with Shroud or Hexproof (the most foul-proof play).
The middle ability still wants to be summarized as, "Whenever damage is dealt to a creature, its controller gains that much life."
On that note, even as it is (without the mana symbol hack), it would have its place in Frogmite, Affinity for Artifacts deck.
It's called an exceptions clause, and literally doesn't matter in the context you're suggesting. The context is intended to specifically set the boundary that, "colorless mana symbols in activation costs can't be changed this way". Which it does effectively, and even reads better than if it were composed like that.
C'mon man, colorless mana symbols are numbers. It's kind of self-explanatory what it means when it says that the colorless mana symbol cannot exceed 3.
I would further question if it would be best to just spell it all out entirely. "Change the text of target spell or permanent by replacing all instances of one mana symbol with another. Mana symbols in activation costs can't be changed this way unless they're colored mana symbols. If a colorless mana symbol is chosen as the replacement, it cannot exceed 3."
Artifact
"It is the divine manifestation of all is to be—the power of all your hopes, and dreams, and fantasies—locked away on the other side of the veil, so close, yet so far beyond the pale."
It essentially works by means of a Magical Hack effect, such as Alter Reality, Sleight of Mind, Crystal Spray, Whim of Volrath, that changes the text of target spell or permanent, by replacing all instances of one mana symbol with another.
One thing that is kind of strange, even for me, is how naturally one seems to find the priceless treasure. Albeit, at one time, the treasure was very common-place.
You could have done this as a legendary, and it would gained a neat dynamic of one knocking off the next to suss the Lotus (with how the legendary rule works now). It even becomes a little more self-reliant then, without the need of wasting other precious resources of yours, that are best reserved and directed against your opponent and their resources in defense.
Oh, I see what you mean. I just got tripped up from PTCG composure again.
Ideally, the sequence timing would be the same, just composed as,
"At the beginning of your next combat phase..." in MTG
Which in PTCG, is ideally the same as, "During your next combat phase..."
"Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may have it phase out. If you do, it doesn't phase in during your next untap step. During your next combat phase, equipped creature phases in tapped, and deals damage equal to double its power to target creature or planeswalker."
You actually don't, because the the operating function doesn't involve actually attacking. It's a tap and direct damage effect.
//
As for the placement of "instead", I am aware of this, but I added the term "instead" for context of clarity, suite the "If you do," in the next conditions clause. I caught it initially, but since my most recent work has been with PTCG, the sentence structure confused me for a moment, and I felt the need to add "instead".
"Whenever ~ attacks, you may have it phase out. If you do..."
Would be more attuned, to traditional wording composure for this function in MTG.
Phases out would be far superior, and far more attributive to the flavor of the design (in that they are boots).
You would just have to say, as void_nothing mentioned, compose the effect with something like,
"Whenever ~ attacks, you may have it phase out instead. If you do, it doesn't phase in during your next untap step. During your next combat phase, ~ phases in tapped, and deals damage equal to double its power to target creature, player, or planeswalker."
Would like to supplement on this that it makes the creature unblockable, and warrants some higher costs or restrictions possibly, to preserve aspects of challenge and balance that are essential to the fairness and fun of the game. Might just need to say, "target creature or planeswalker".
At the beginning of your combat phase, you may gain control of target creature with power less than ~'s power until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn.
If another creature would die, return it to its owner's hand instead."
Here's another brush up. The final ability is a bit over-the-top. Although it seems polite to recycle their creatures, the ability is open-source as it's written, and prevents all creatures from being destroyed. This is a hard-lock that takes away from interactivity in an unintuitive way. It removes the aspect of challenge (of creature removal), with way too many other benefactors alongside it. The balance of power is thrown way off here. You might want to consider concentrating that operating function to only creatures that would be destroyed by Zarina. Currently, Wrath of God becomes Evacuation.
"Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may exile it and all cards you control that are attached to it. All counters remain on those cards while they change zones. At the beginning of your next combat phase, return equipped creature and all cards attached to it to the battlefield tapped. It deals damage equal to twice its power to target creature, player, or planeswalker."
Here's a brush up for the wording. Didn't change the functionality at all, just fixed the wording composure.
Note that the functionality here has to be all one ability, because the second effect is an extension from the first.
Just wanted to add that—this was another design that I presented in an open-source form.
I didn't initially think to make them dual lands, but forward-slashed the sub-type, as I wasn't quite sure if this would be a Forest or an Island. Additionally, as the current version is open to interpretation, it could easily be finalized to do something along the lines of which it can effectively become a dual land mid-game.
Doublemint Fun
Land ‒ Forest
As ~ enters the battlefield, if you control 5 or more lands, it becomes an Island in addition to its types when it enters the battlefield, and produces an additional mana of any type it can produce when tapped for mana.
I kind of prefer the singular type design, but the dual one would obviously be more popular with the masses.
You know what I mean—the lands are counted as it enters the battlefield—in the same style as permanents with like-effects "while they're on the stack".
Right, the context of "destroy" was used in the sense of a general term and summary. I should have explained this maybe?
To summarize my entire intention further, I believe that it's important to the flavor and functionality of the Celestial lands, that they are immune to being "destroyed" easily from neutral ground. However, that they are NOT immune to other effects, which hold the power to destroy them/put them into the graveyard/remove them from the game, in events where they gain a new Super-type, and the dynamics of their character changes. I hope that makes sense.
The way I've composed the effect, with "As this enters the battlefield", the card would count the number of lands you control while it's on the stack (before it comes into play), to decide if it inherits the mana ramp bonus or not. I personally feel that it's unnecessary to change the functionality here, and also that it would be tacky to use the whole "charge" counter gig. Although it opens up some interactivity, I believe it does so in an unintuitively, in a way that detracts from the flavor and functionality here.
First of all, it's essential to the flavor of the card to do it this way. As these are lands whom one will only see the special properties of, once/after they possess a specific fundamental development of some kind.
Secondly, it's essential to the functionality to do it this way. As by opening up that interactivity with the charge counter, it effectively makes the card more open to cheap exploits. This will detract from the aspect of challenge implemented here, which intends to provide a central basis for the fun of the game. The hard-coded functionality here also intends to provide boundaries and restrictions, that must be entirely locked-off from exploit, for balance of the game (by preventing the aspects of challenge/boundaries/restrictions from being too cheaply bi-passed or hot-fixed).
I totally forgot about Temple of the False God, and didn't reference it at all here in the making of this. I do think that card has great potential, it's just that people don't conventionally know how to tap into it. With the basic land-type here, there's also a significant extension on the adaptability of these cards. As it opens up interactivity in a light way, that doesn't get too excessive given the effect can't be abused early in the game, via cards like Fetch Lands.
//
Regarding the Celestial ruling. It's NOT actually indestructible.
Celestial Lands are only immune to "destroy" effects, so that if it becomes a creature, it can still be destroyed by lethal damage, or by power/toughness modding effects. I did explain this. It's also intended to provide functional boundaries and restrictions, so that Land Destruction effects can't be used with the "exchange" effect too exploitively.
On that note, the Celestial errata might also want to include "Can't be sacrificed". The exchange dynamic is still a little too malleable to Land Transmutation effects, which does bother me a bit. But otherwise, if you exchange for a card for the Stargate, the Celestial restrictions put you a turn or two behind, so that you can't make a simple double-play on it immediately.
If you're not entirely understanding the applications here, you might want to print some out and play test them with your friends to get a feel for it. It should essentially provide some neat game-state tricks, and also, force players to mobilize and distribute their lands more tactically.