I’ve been having some fun playing on MTG Arena and Radiant Fountain has given me an idea for a new card design.

Land
“When land enters the battlefield, draw 1 card”
“Tap to add one colorless mana to your mana pool”

I don’t think it’s too powerful as is, even for Standard. With the power creep a lot of standard legal cards just automatically replace themselves as it is. If it is too powerful you could just add “enters the battlefield tapped”. In either case I don’t think the card would warp any format but it would be a decent card.

Really makes the zuran orb/crucible combo (or any fastbond shell) have a great tool.

Zhalfirin Void

this card is to radiant fountain as ancestral recall is to healing salve. if it was in standard, it would be the best card in standard, like mutavault was but so much more so. there will be a sizable number of times when someone plays a library of alexandria in vintage and it is a worse card than this is, (conditionally)drawing a card and making no mana before being wasted. existing lands that draw a card typically sacrifice themselves to do so or have a heavy activation cost. getting the card up front is absurd.

Yeah, to be realistic this card would have to have the same text as Lotus Vale or Scorched Ruins, having to sacrifice 1 land, etb tapped, and then it might be a okay. Might.

This card gets better the slower the format. So I largely agree with @BlindTherapy that this land would be busted in Standard (among other places).

In Vintage? Eh. The opportunity cost early game is very high, where loss of access to colored mana is effectively setting you back a turn. The land's power level peaks around T3-T5, where you already have a mana base established and the card you draw is essentially free. A redraw when you topdeck the land in the grindy endgame is pretty nice too. I'm sure many decks would try to make room for a few of these by trimming colored mana sources, or off-color moxen, but there are real tradeoffs to doing so.

On a scale of busted Vintage lands, from 0=Sorrow's Path to 10=Bazaar of Baghdad, I think this one's about a 7 or 8, around the power level of Mystic Sanctuary.

Oh, a fantasy card thread. Haven't had one of those in a while.

@blindtherapy

I think it would be a staple in every standard deck just because they already play so many lands. The opportunity cost of a colorless mana source is pretty low. (Which is why we see Radiant Fountain in Control decks) So it probably would have to enter the battlefield tapped or have some kind of negative side effect.

Against a fast aggro deck, Radiant Fountain is probably more effective for getting you to the late game in order to cast your powerful spells. Drawing a card instead wouldn’t have the benefit of being immediately relevant.

In Vintage I think it would be good but it doesn’t immediately slot into Xerox or P.O. It doesn’t sacrifice itself so you can’t loop it with Crucible. Graveyard decks would wish it was “discard, draw” or vice versa.

And yeah Fantasy card thread. Thanks for the responses!

Besides the fact that this would never see print without both the legendary tag as well as comes into play tapped, it would still be Broken, Broken, Broken in every format.

Any format with a ramp strategy that is viable (fastbond, Exploration, Growth Spiral) would abuse the hell out of this. If it was common it would ruin pauper. Even not as a common this would be played with the Karoo lands in formats like EDH for pure value.

In Vintage Dredge would now have a land other than bazaar that could Dredge without costing any mana. Fastbond would basically have a cantrip mox. Shops would have a land that would never be a dead top deck with no downside. There are a number of loops that this creates like the aforementioned crucible Zuran orb fastbond.

For context, we have not even had a land that let's you loot or rummage with out a tap and mana cost just because of how powerful that is. A bunch of the lands that can draw you cards in the modern age have conditions and cost like 4 mana.

We would sooner get a new land with an artifact type than this.

Cards that are +Mana and +Cards are always broken. Not that hard to see how this would be a broken effect. Its good without even playing a combo, but there are about 100 different cards that can be used to combo with this thing.

You could make it come into play tapped, make you discard a card, or make you sac a land. Any of those, or a similar drawback, would be within the realms of fair enough to be printed.

I like it. I think with modern card design it would be a common Island and part of cycle where all the other ones are much worse.

@chubbyrain1

White gains 1 life.
Red deals 1 damage.
Green gives +1/+1.
Black gives 1 extra mana for a turn.
Blue draws a card.

Fair by Magic game designers typical standards for balance.

Also make the blue one a mythic rare to ensure lots of packs sold.

I dunno, those red and black lands are awful close to actually being good.

Maybe make the red one give haste to a creature, and the black one exiles a card from a graveyard.

This thread reminds me of a discussion I used to have with friends of mine on how they can fix the dual land reserve list problem. Everyone always says just print the snow duals but they are obviously different enough that not only would it not solve the true duals being on the reserve list but it also would enable all the decks out there to have 8 true duals instead of 4.

The best we came up with is you have to come up with Dual lands that had an ability that was both and up and down side so that not ever deck would want them but some would prefer them over the real duals. It couldn't just be up or downside because then you get lands that are strictly better or worse. The problem we always hit was what abilities could you possibly put on a dual land that comes into play untapped that would not be abusable?

Both players lose a life? Aggro decks would love that with fetches.
Both players Draw and discard? Dredge, Delve, Reanimate.
Both players exile the top card of their deck? Answer to top deck tutors, Mill.

There was no ability set we could come up with for the life of us that balanced it out. The triomes are the closest WOTC has come to it so far since they are not strictly better or worse, but since they are practically worse in most situations it did not quite get there.

@protoaddict quadromes - still enter tapped, add 4 colors. That'd make them better than triomes, but still not always better than duals.

@thewhitedragon69 said in Radiant Fountain:

@protoaddict quadromes - still enter tapped, add 4 colors. That'd make them better than triomes, but still not always better than duals.

I am entirely unsure if that is true or not. I mean the issue is not actually the dual lands, but the existence of the fetches, because the fetches are the primary reason we care about the land type other than Gush. Period. The fetches were a mistake, not sure if that genie can ever be put back in the bottle.

Remove the fetches from the equation and the ways you could print new duals in a variety of ways opens up in a huge manner.