Legacy mana bases seem too easily solved for most decks. More meaningful decisions seems like a good thing.Originally Posted by H
Complete agreement. Having to make actual choices and trade-offs is what prevents us from all running the same deck.
I welcome our new Pain-Lands-Are-Tri-Lands overlords.
I'm hoping it's more that it was at odds with the story then it was confusing...... because it's not that confusing to have a card that is 1UC that requires 1 Generic Mana, 1 Blue Mana, and 1 Colorless Mana...
How is that anymore complicated then the fundimental understanding of the game...
I'm going to take this as... as long as {C} is reserved exclusively for Eldrazi we won't get cards with combined color and colorless costs...
There's no way it was that confusing because they have colorless kicker costs for on color cards that already basically explore this dynamic.
And yes - I have the feeling the C is an Eldrazi only thing, and we won't see it again unless it is a one off card for a commander set or three blocks down the line when its Emrakul vs. Phyrexia
Nah, you guys are pessimistic. Now that they've defined the symbol, I bet we see <> just as often as we see Hybrid mana, if not more often. It is not thematically linked to any plane in particular and it gives them a finer gradient to make casting costs larger or smaller.
The gradient issue is CRITICAL to them in design because there are some effects that seem to be very broken at one cost, but unplayable at another. Consider counter-magic. Wizards considers Mana Leak to be broken at 1U. Is it still broken at <>U? That kind of thing. More Shades of Grey are good when it comes to fine-tuning a set.
That's exactly what I'm thinking. I expect to see it every 2 or 3 blocks, plus maybe some special cases.
I'm not sure MARO agrees with you on the bolded part.
Call me pessimistic, I'm just going by what info we get from MARO... which seems to imply that we should be prepared to be disapointed.
In legacy, splashing for C is harder than splashing for a color. There are no fetchable duals that give C, and while it's true that land that give C are in general better with other abilities, they also rarely ALSO give colored mana if ever. There are only a few, like the painlands, the filterlands (which still require colored mana), tendo's ice bridge... then what? The no-untap lands sucks ass i would never consider running those. The tainted lands are cute but still require you to have other lands to work properly. The talismans are pretty good cards which give both colorless and color, but they're artifact which not every deck would like to run and are only in allied colors too. The new land that give one of any color as it ETB then give only C is also pretty good i think, it's a slightly worse Tendo.
As of now, the only way C work is as a splash in a monocolor deck, or as main color with a splash. Which i think is great for the diversity of mana bases and decks since current mana bases are so liberal that you can easily play 4-color decks consistently. Hell, if it weren't for non-basic hate, you'd never have consistency problems in those decks with fetches essentially being choose 2 colors when it ETB with no drawbacks.
The other thing to think about regarding just how "mixed" C mana should or should not be with a lot of lands, spells, and so on is that C mana does have a couple of interactions that are different or absent, which colored mana does have.
Unlike other types of mana the quality of "colorless" is not additive. A spell costed at CG is not colorless and Green; it's Green. If there were an 'Elemental Blast' for colorless spells, it wuld whiff on a CU spell whereas REB would work. (i guess they could make Devoid evergreen but that sounds stupid af)
That's one example but basically the idea of mixing a lot of C and non-C mana symbols just undermines the whole concept of colorless mana and its qualities and effects on objects. If C doesn't exist as a means to subvert being colored, then it really is a total waste of time.
I don't know about you suckers but my Lands deck has 16 colourless mana sources.
I, for one, welcome our colourless overlords.
♀
Don't forget Riftstone.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
He might not see it that way today, but take the long view.
"Urborg Volcano" is thematically linked to Dominara.
"Hallowed Fountain" is not thematically linked to Ravnica.
Does it mean they print <> without it being on Eldrazi? Nope; see the shocklands, above. But it does mean they certainly can when it makes sense to do so. Remember, they have to think of 1/3 again as many gimmicks each year now, with the new set rotation.
It could be used as a balancing factor.
For example would Top still be too powerful if it costed C? What if it's activated ability also cost C? Would Goyf be played as much if it costed CG instead of 1G?
C could be used as making mono-colored spells harder to cast without making them multicolored (as that doesn't work, since multicolored in legacy is just as easy to cast) or more expensive.
Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ!
Which are we? We shall see!
Isn't colorless magic what Ugin's specialty is? I don't see the reason why <> being a colorless restriction has to de facto be tied to Eldrazi. Could just as easily have Ugin romp around with the avengers on their next exciting adventure and have some colorless spells available.
Warning : a rant on colorless mana identity, how to justify C outside of this set, some card examples that mix coloured and C mana, and key aspect of a C card in my humblest possible opinion.
Honestly i don't think colorless mana should be linked to eldrazi flavor only. It could be linked in general to "otherworldy" flavor, where some spells are colored but also have kind of special attributes that link them to colorless mana. We've used colorless mana for 25 years and no one ever told us it was special. Now that it is in mana costs, i don't see it at particularly controversial if it was treated as just another way to cost things with a more refined approach. Like GC is harder to cast than GG, GX or 1G. It can also express a sort of purity of color of the spell without having to cost like GGGG. Ugin in lore use colorless magic but it has not been defined by C in cards so i'm not sure it counts.
I think Theros with their Nyx theme would have worked perfectly for C +colored costs spells instead of a vague "enchantment theme", to indicate their otherwordly nature, and with its fixation on the "purity" of mana (devotion). Theros scrylands would've been actually good if they gave C too. Also, Shadows over Innistrad with its "corrupted by Emrakul" theme in the next expansion could also give us some mixed colored-C cards, with emrakul slowly seeping in the world of innistrad represented by said cards. I imagine Emrakul's theme could be to hate on colored spells, maybe self-color as to represent madness of self-hating after being touched by Emrakul's presence. It also differentiate it nicely from Kozilek (effects based on colorless costs), and Ulamog (exiling things and using exile as a resource)
This is a card we could see in SoI imho:
Tormented Geist
Creature - Spirit
Flying, protection from white spells
2/2
Spirits and otheworldy creatures would be touched first by the influence of Emrakul , but some sentient evil creatures could volountarily search for its influence as a mean to gain power over worldy magic or simple curiosity mixed with arrogance, like vampires:
Mind-Torn Vampire
Creature - Vampire
Intimidate.
Colored spells that target this creature costmore to play.
4/3
Artifacts and spell could easily be made researching Eldrazi magic by blue mages and artificers in general, like:
Search Beyond
Sorcery
Exile the top three cards of your library, then choose a exiled card you own and add it to your hand.
Eldritch Tome
Artifact
, T: exile target card from a graveyard.
Power that you can't comprehend.
As of now, i think those are the key identities of Colorless mana:
- usage of exile as a resource and exiling things both in play, hand or library. Exiling graves hasn't showed until now iirc and i like it as a sorta defining characteristic
- creation of drone/scions
- hate on colored things (emrakul, all is dust, Ugin)/affinity for non-colored things (kozilek and a tons of other cards) , or just hard to target with spells in general (reality smasher)
Less common but still seen:
- card draw (Sea-Gate ruins, both Kozileks, EndBringer) and creature P/T manipulation (Eldrazi Mimic, spatial contortion) or destruction based on P/T (warping wail)
- cheating cards into play (this was literally only on matter reshaper and it had more of a flavor of exchanging "forms").
Finally an idea for lands to fix this mana if it ever were to be a theme in a future set.
Desolated Chapel (cycle of Desolated X)
Land
T: add C to your mana pool
T: add W or B to your mana pool. Use this ability only if you control 3 or less permanents.
Yeah those are essentially tri-lands. It's a bit harder to desing C-colored lands since they'd be so close to actual basic lands in term of power level already. I definitely don't want those to be fetchable, fetches are already way too good in every format. Also as a final point, Wastes were printed with a-generically-as-possible name for a reason, we're gonna see them again.
Hey! I do think it's a great idea, I am just way more pessimistic than you on whether Wizards will follow through on it.
It isn't so much that :c: is special mana, but it's special to be a :c: spell or permanent imho.
It's never about the mana with :c:, getting hung about generating colorless mana is a total side issue. The deal with colorless objects is that they can't also be colored, they can only be one or the other.
I know that :c:is harder to generate than
It is, in my opinion, less about the fact that :c:
I'm on the RUGb version so there's no place for Riftstone.
♀
Yeah i guess having C costs on colored permanents would make little sense because said permanents are COLORED in the first place. Differently from other colors you don't can't have a permanent that is both colorless and colored, unlike said, a permanent that's both red and black. In that way, a colored permanent with a colorless mana requirement would make little sense. However, when you consider that there are colored mana cards that are colorless (we just came out of a set full of them) then you could say that you can easily find a flavor justification for colorless mana cards that are colored. You just can't have both at the same time, but you can have a colored card with devoid or simply a colored card with colorless mana costs too.It isn't so much that :c: is special mana, but it's special to be a :c: spell or permanent imho.
It's never about the mana with :c:, getting hung about generating colorless mana is a total side issue. The deal with colorless objects is that they can't also be colored, they can only be one or the other.
I know that :c:
It is, in my opinion, less about the fact that :c:
They just have to be "justified" flavorfully in different ways.
Honestly, artifacts having colours strike me as a worse flavor offender than colorless mana simbol appearing on coloured cards, for a variety of reasons, mostly because artifacts were defined at birth by being outside color but definitely worse than in-color effects (rod of ruin vs prodigal sorcerer in alpha), while the colorless mana simbol was already born as something that also use other colors of mana (even if on technically colorless cards). I honestly find your point of view compelling, however for the good mechanical implications that this simbol could have on the game , moving us aside from 3-colored everything decks, decreasing the power of duals/fetches etc... i think it'd just be too much of a wasted opportunity to stop ourselves for some flavor implications after colored artifact enchantments and enchantment creatures - god. Think of it in this way, if you had colorless mana introduced in Theros as a way to define otherworldy creature/spells from the Nyx instead of simply making them enchantments, wouldn't you have agreed it was a perfect flavor justification for the colorless simbol? You wouldn't have thought "but wait this is COLORLESS on a colored card" but just, "this is colorless instead of generic which could ALSO be colorless but it's more strict".
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