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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 3:19PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jun 22, 2011
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Alright, so me and some buddies of mine are toying around with constructing a set of our own, and we were thinking of some cool new mechanics and keywords we could put in. My idea was something called Excavate, and it would only be used on creatures. It would go something like this: Excavate 2: Tap [creature]. Search your library for two basic land cards and put them on the battlefield tapped. [Creature] doesn't untap during your next untap step. Originally I had it work so that the lands came in untapped, and the lands didn't have to be basic lands, but I decided that it was all too much so I scaled it back a bit. The numbers that go along with Excavate would be consistent with the lands you would get to put onto the battlefield, so Excavate 1 = 1 land, Excavate 2 = 2 lands, and so on and so forth. It would obviously go great with landfall cards like Grazing Gladehart  and gives a solid mana base for larger spells at the expense of leaving yourself wide open for attack to begin. So what do you guys think?
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 3:36PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Mar 11, 2008
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Excavate sounds more like something to do with bringing either lands or artifacts (or both) back from the graveyard. At least to me it does. I also think that losing a blocker for a turn or two does not equate to    .
Rules Advisor as of 8-26-09 Joined the crowd and got an Avatar from zammm's Avatar Workshop on 5-6-2012 Currently Working on:
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Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.I am both selfish and instinctive. I value growth and community, as long as they favour my own objectives; I enjoy nature, and I particularly enjoy watching parts of nature die. At best, I am resilient and tenacious; at worst, I'm uncontrollable and destructive.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 3:40PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Sep 27, 2006
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Yeah... this sounds like an ability which would either be overpowered if put in cards of all types of mana costs... or so limited (because the cost of the ability is high enough to cut down a significant portion of cards which could have the ability) that it doesn't really need to be keyworded.
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Sometimes I imagine what Cisnero's life must be like. I imagine cargo pants - every pocket stuffed with coins. I imagine him (I almost said "him or her" but then I decided his gender with through the randomization of a small metal disk) - I imagine him, shopping, purchasing food, choosing which spot to park in, all through this meticulous flipping process. I imagine him asking a girl out, taking her to have a drink or whatever and then asking if she wants to play this fun game. When she responds "Sure." he removes a single quarter from one of his jingling pockets. Then proceeds to flip it repeatedly while she calls it - until she is able to make up an excuse to leave. Will he respond to this post? Only if the Chaotic Gods of Copper and Nickel deem it so. Someday many years from now, in the Dystopian future world, I'll ride my Billy Idol Unicycle past a bedraggled slumbub - He'll be clad in armor made all of the (now worthless) coins of yesterdecade. He'll grin a shiny grin at me as he flips another coin - and I'll know who it was. How could I not?
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 3:50PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jun 22, 2011
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I totally agree with both of you guys. In terms of it being too powerful, I was thinking that there could be a bunch of creatures with Haste to take advantage of a player while their creatures are tapped? I'm open to other ways of accomplishing this aswell, obviously there has to be some way to keep this in check. Possibly some spells to keep these creatures tapped EVEN longer? Something like: Target creature you don't control. If that creature wouldn't untap, it doesn't untap for an extra turn.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 3:57PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Sep 30, 2010
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I think balancing this is very hard. I don't think you need the number behind it, you almost never want to have it find more than one land. It's also basically only a Green mechanic. Giving it other costs such as mana to activate and making it sorcery speed are suggestions for balancing it.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 4:19PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jun 22, 2011
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Lobster, I had actually forgot to mention that I wanted it to be sorcery speed, thank you for reminding me. Ive toyed with having to pay mana to use the ability, maybe thats the best way to make it work. 1 mana per land grabbed? I really like that there are different degrees of the mechanic though, it makes it a bit more interesting than just having a multitude of creatures with different stats grabbing the one land.
It is mostly a green mechanic. I'll always be a green player at heart, my first deck was a trample threshhold deck and I loved it. I can see it being used in other colors aswell though, probably black.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 4:27PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Sep 30, 2010
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If you need to put two (or even three!) excavates on the same thing, it needs to be rare or mythic, and then you can just pull something like this: Asrab, Sage of the Soil Legendary Creature - Elf Druid (MR) : Excavate (to excavate, search your library for a basic land, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library). , : Excavate, then excavate. , : Excavate, then excavate, then excavate. ~'s power and toughness are equal to the number of basic forests you control. */*
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 4:30PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Oct 12, 2010
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Clever deduction Watson! Maybe you can explain why Supergirl is trying to kill me.
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[c]Lightning Bolt[/c] = Lightning Bolt 
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 4:31PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Feb 16, 2007
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I think the biggest problem it has (apart from being very hard to balance) is that it doesn't really play any differently on different creatures. A 1/1 flyer with Exalted fills a completely different role compared to a 3/3 Trampler with Exalted. A creature with Persist can have all kinds of cool ETB or combat abilities. Same with almost any mechanic you find on creatures; adding things like Deathtouch or Flying can completely change the way the mechanic gets used.
But a creature with Excavate is always going to be activating its ability in the same way, regardless of whether it's an otherwise-vanilla 1/1, a 2/3 with a cool combat skill, or a hulking 5/5 brute. Which means that there aren't many variations of the ability that will still feel unique and useful.
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9 months ago ::
Oct 03, 2012 - 4:59PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jun 22, 2011
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All great feedback, I really appreciate all of it. When I came up with Excavate it was more of a mechanic that I thought could be used to combo with other cards, as well as being alright on their own. A combo with landfall or a creature with soulbond, ex. Galvanic Alchemist  . @Fallingman, I totally get where your coming from, it does just sort of sit there and do the same thing without really being used by different kinds of creatures for different things. However, that was kind of what I was going for, and thats where the landfall and such would come into the picture. I was just wondering what you guys thought if it, it's my first time out of the gate in terms of trying to come up with mechanics/keywords, and I thought I would share it and see what the feedback was like.
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