Folks, there comes a time in a writer's career when he realizes that he’s not happy with the way things are going—come to think of it, that happens to everyone; but nevertheless, the same course of action must be taken: Change.

I have really enjoyed this article series; the feedback, the challenge of putting my work out there to be championed or flamed, and most of all I enjoyed the fact that I managed to get away with doing it for so long. But the truth is that as I develop and change so do my tastes and preferences of subject material. To this end I feel I can no longer continue this article series.

Now, having got the heavy stuff out of the way; before I let this article thread vanish into the shadows of the net I’m going to take her out for one last ride—the ride of the ages.

And in truth, that phrase encapsulates what I intend to do with this article. I’m going to develop not one, not two, but three cards for you each based upon a mechanic we know but with each one being set in a different section of Magic’s timeline. Confused? Well what it boils down to is that you’re going to get a card based upon an old mechanic, a Lorwyn/Morningtide mechanic and a future mechanic thanks to the glimpses Future Sight gave us.

The Past

The benefit and indeed problem with creating a card with an old mechanic is that there are so many to choose from; so in the sense of being fair I decided to create a sort of know-out tournament whereby decks utilizing the different mechanics would duke it out to reign as supreme above all contenders until only one survived….

Then I thought "Fudge It!" and decided to settle on Kicker!

Now simply putting the phrase "Kicker" into the gatherer on Wizard’s site produces 74 cards that feature the mechanic. So it’s been used to cover a lot—and I do mean a lot—of ground both ability- and flavor-wise. It even made an appearance in Time Spiral and Future Sight meaning that R&D is long from exhausting this mechanic.

And when you consider the simplicity of it, you begin to see why. Rather than giving you two options and either choosing from one or paying for both as entwine does; kicker allows you to play one spell and add an extra effect for an additional mana outlay—what could be simpler?

In addition, as mentioned before, the range of effects covered is simply amazing: Card draw, enhancing another mechanic on the card, +1/+1 counters, creature destruction; the list goes on. But one thing that is true of the mechanic is that it stayed exclusively to creatures, instants and sorceries; why the narrow-minded view R&D?

Considering the beauty of the design and the ease at which it can be balanced I can’t really see why kicker did not make it to enchantments, artifacts or even lands. Added effects for extra mana is not something that is wholly exclusive to creatures, instants and sorceries; just look at Glacial Plating and Chalice of the Void to see where I’m coming from.

So here’s what I’m going to do; I’m going to put kicker on a Land! This is for several reasons: Firstly because I like lands—it’s a problem, but one I can live with. Secondly, it’s so far beyond what R&D usually does with their own design that it feels fresh to me, and finally; simply because I can!

Design

Now designing a land is small potatoes, as long as you keep to the relative theme of "Tap: Add {Something} to your mana pool" and that "Something" is either a single colorless mana, one color of mana, or any color with a drawback. And when you consider that kicker could be seen as a form of drawback if you balanced it right, you start to see the design form by itself.

So let’s start off with the basic parts—what I want it to do and how I want to achieve that goal. Well the line of thought I’m following right now is I want a land that can be used as is but is pretty basic in form, or which you can "kick" in order to make it a more worth-while investment.

Well the most basic of abilities when it comes to lands is rather simple:

“Tap: Add 1 to your mana pool.”

It’s basic, it’s balanced and it offers no frills but still serves a purpose—exactly what we need. But we then need to ask, what would be the best option for making this land useful to the largest number of people?

The simple answer is to make it produce multiple colors of mana ala City of Brass. So when we code this down into the kicker format, the two-part ability looks something like this:

Kicker {COST} (You may pay an additional {COST} when you play this.)’
+
If the kicker cost was paid, {CARDNAME} gains “Tap: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.”

So what we now need to do is decide upon our kicker cost, which means establishing just how much it costs to gain one mana of any color. To do this, our best option is to look at cards such as Archaeological Dig, Forbidden Orchard and Grand Coliseum.

Archaeological Dig requires you to sacrifice the land in order to net the mana of any color, which essentially boils down to “Sacrifice a land: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool” when you balance out the pros and cons of it actually appearing on a land and that it is only a one-shot ability. Now when you consider abilities that involve "sacrifice a permanent: effect" such as Diabolic Intent and compare it to its closest and most complete cousin Diabolic Tutor, you soon realize that sacrificing a permanent roughly translates to two mana. But this is only one piece of proof; we’ll need more to silence the YWNs of the world….

Forbidden Orchard grants your opponent a 1/1 colorless token creature whenever you get your mana, which is comparable to Militia's Pride. The problem here is that Pride gives you a White token creature for one White mana, but in truth, a long standing rule in MTG has always been that to do something in colorless costs more. And it seems only logical that a 1/1 colorless token creature would set you back two colorless mana. Need more proof? Alright then; since it’s you and it’s our last dance together.

Grand Coliseum inflicts a point of damage upon you whenever it's tapped for that mana of any color you so desperately want, and when we look around for another example of one damage to a target we come across Scorching Spear. Now the issue here is that the land handles one target and the spell handles two targets. But in truth these balance out because of the fact that one is a one-shot wonder and the other is a long-standing benefit to you, so we can roughly translate the cost of one point of damage to you at a single piece of Red mana (though I admit I’m stretching it here). Going back to our earlier comment "It costs more if done colorlessly" we can suggest that one Red mana translates to two colorless mana.

So what it all boils down to is that to gain one piece of mana under any color costs two colorless, and this theory is further supported by Celestial Prism and Gemstone Array. But this cost indicates a single occurrence; what we’re handling here is the chance to have that ability at any time—does this affect the cost at all?

The short answer is no, but I can tell this won’t satisfy you. Okay; see the thing with kicker is that short of pulling the card in question back to your hand and recasting it, you will only ever have one shot at actually activating the kicker. What this means is that although the cost is to get the ability for the duration of the land's life, you only have one shot at it and that boils down to the same principle in the long run.

Finished Article

ARTIST: http://elsareth.deviantart.com/

To add extra character to the card, I have created it in the older frame to enforce the idea that this card could have been possible in the earlier days of MTG had R&D been willing to roll with the flow just a little bit further.

The Present

In the current standard (On 3/17/08), there are 1688 cards in the format's card pool—possibly the highest number of cards to date. Even open to the T2 scene. Topping that off with the fact that this included the Time Spiral block and all its past, present and future mechanics means that I have a long list of mechanics open to me yet again for this card. But to keep from touching on the past too much and to avoid difficulty later when choosing a mechanic for the future card, I will be choosing a mechanic from the Lorwyn block.

This leaves me 466 cards to choose from, and only the following mechanics:

•  Hideaway
•  Reinforce
•  Changeling
•  Clash
•  Kinship
•  Champion
•  Evoke
•  Prowl

Now I should start by saying that I felt R&D rocked the boat a lot with this set and more than a few people indicated that MTG was experiencing the "Power Creep" effect, myself included. Secondly, I really don’t like the feel of most of these mechanics; they either feel like a rehash of a printed ability or something they threw in to satisfy the poker players and younger adults out there.

However the champion effect has my interest peaked; it has nuances of the Penumbra creatures with more than a nod towards Wormfang Drake. The ability is stylish, usable and abusable without seriously breaking the format or the game—a good piece of design in an otherwise poor effort by R&D in my opinion.

Design

Now due to the flavor and workings of the mechanic it is understandable why R&D have kept this mechanic to creatures only, and in truth I’m not going to mess with a good thing this early in its lifetime. Instead, I’m going to stamp my own design onto the actual creature in question as Lorwyn was pretty linear in its choices due to its concept.

With that in mind, the first point of call is to decide what creature to frame this new beast upon and for this I’m going to go with a creature that I have really developed a fascination for recently: Minotaur.

Now with 22 printed creatures and a representative in Core Editions Six, Eight, Nine and Ten; Minotaurs have been a steady part of MTG culture for quite some time now, but have always played around in the background as a minor role and that I feel is a shame and waste of a great creature archtype.

Having read many a fantasy novel in my time, I have always pictured Minotaurs as self-interested yet noble warriors prone to traveling the human realms in search of their "Horn-Hood" or "Bulldom" if you will. Massive in stature and with an ability to cause chaos, panic and mayhem, they seem ideal for the BR Warrior genre of the game, which for the time being only consists of a Warrior—poor form R&D, poor form indeed.

So having settled on the basic details of the creature such as color(s), type and class, I can now begin the difficult bit: Calculating how much the champion mechanic costs or affects the card.

You see, in truth champion is actually sort of a drawback or an alternate cost dependent upon how you spin it. On the one hand you gain an incredible creature for very little mana comparatively, but on the other you don’t actually get an extra creature but simply trade up which doesn’t always work in your favor, especially when it comes to board control and card advantage (for more information on this, read Amadeus’s "The Apprentice Magician" series).

Well, let us start with Changeling Berserker as it’s a fairly simple creature in design. Starting with the stats of 5/3 and a cost of 3R we can already tell that champion is reducing the cost of the card even without counting the abilities. How can we tell this? Because Frost Ogre, a vanilla creature of the same stats is 5/3 at a CMC of five mana compared to the Berserker's CMC of four. Then when you throw in haste which costs an additional Red mana and changeling—which we can argue back and forth about for hours but I hope you’ll take my word for it and accept it costs one colorless mana—you come to grand total of three mana on a division of two colorless mana and one colored mana.

This time, let’s look at Lightning Crafter—another Red creature—only this time it allows you to champion one of two creature types; does this affect the outcome? We’ll start by looking at a body of 3/3 for a CMC of four mana which when we compare to a vanilla creature of the same stats such as Hill Giant or Barbarian Horde proves that the stats and converted mana cost are of a balanced level. So now we move to the added ability, which when we compare to the current standard today of Rift Bolt suggests that being able to champion one of two creature types only allows an ability of three CMC.

So the question becomes, do I want to make the fact that this guy will be a Warrior matter? The only answer I can give to such a question is "OMFG Yeah!" simply because it adds flavor and depth to an otherwise uneventful creature.

So what this now leaves us with is that we’re building a BR Minotaur Warrior whose stats and converted mana cost will balance out, which champions either Minotaurs or Warriors and has an added effect or skill that has a CMC of three mana—simple when you consider it, but so flavorsome at the same time.

Now a quick scout down the list of Warriors reveals a few characteristics of the class: Firstly that they are hard-hitters, and if not then their power is usually higher then their toughness; and secondly that they are happy to appear in any color other then Blue—which is handy seeing as we’re working on a BR model.

Now the model for most colors is one colorless and one colored mana will get you a basic body of 1/1 with an additional point in each stat for each colorless you add. Going back to our earlier examples of how it costs more in colorless and reversing the logic we can all agree that a cost of BR starts us on a body of 2/2—this is also supported by Ghostflame Sliver, though we’ll discount the added ability as our card is packed with enough flavor as is. Now when we look at the existing Minotaurs, a majority of them are sporting 3/3 bodies and this seems like suitable grounds for us to follow which means a total mana cost of 1BR.

Now for the added ability I simply want to use an existing ability but one which fits the colors and the flavor of the card. After a bit of searching I came across Keldon Twilight, and I must say, it’s exactly what this card needs. In every book I have read about Minotaurs, fighting is second only to breathing and breeding to them; the idea of not doing it seems alien and distinctly weak to them, so it stands to reasons that a Minotaur would press the issue of combat.

The Finished Article

ARTIST: http://craigbrasco.blogspot.com/

When I searched Deviant Art for a Minotaur picture it told me I could "Go Whistle Dixzy"—first time for everything, I suppose. This piece, however, does a great deal of justice to the brutal yet majestic features of these proud and noble beasts.

The Future

Future Sight allows us to glimpse at what R&D has in store for the game, and for the most part it is creative reuse of existing mechanics, which although is a tad lazy could actually work to their advantage as well as that of the older players who want to integrate the new cards into their existing collection easily.

However, R&D did give us a few shiny new mechanics to drool over until they actually appear in a later set, and they are:

• Aura Swap
• Gravestorm
• Fateseal
• Delve

Now these I must confess have me watering at the mouth; all my combo senses are tingling and the Control player within is screaming for these cards to hit the scene very soon. But I need to choose one mechanic to work on and so I’m going to follow the old safe-hand method and choose myself: Fateseal.

Design

For our last ability we have two cards created by Wizards; both are mono-Blue and both twin the ability fateseal with another effect or event to achieve a result to calculate our cost on. This seems like a very cramped set of conditions to work in; time to flex those creative muscles and create some more room!

This time I want to take the mechanic outside of its normal use. At the moment, fateseal is used as a stalling tactic to stop your opponent from getting what he wants. I want to flip the situation and use it to help you get what you want!

Thing is, this leaves me little room to work in again, but at least they're new and creative grounds. What we must consider is that fateseal affects an opponent’s library, not yours. So we must then ask what Blue can do with that to get us something we want.

Bribery is the poster child of the “I want yours” cards—it’s mean-spirited, it takes what it wants without asking and tackles the issue Blue decks suffer from every now and then; a lack of decent creatures.

But I don’t simply want to wedge fateseal onto Bribery and package it as a new card; I want to make a card based upon fateseal itself but give it the Bribery twist (sounds vaguely alcoholic doesn’t it?).

Let’s dissect Spin into Myth; math is easier in instants and sorceries than it is in creatures, trust me on that one. When we consider that Myth costs 4U, and that Time Ebb, which does the same thing without fateseal, costs 2U, we reach the result that fateseal 2 is equal to two colorless mana.

Okay guys, to cover the bases we’ll do the creature math too—best to be thorough for the benefit of all. When we follow the normal math for creature bodies, using the average value of p/t + color mod, we arrive at a cost of three. Then when you consider that this card grants fateseal to other cards of its own specific type, we can see that this would be a freebie (at a stretch). This then leaves us a remainder of one colorless mana and fateseal 1, which tallies against the math for Spin into Myth; each point of fateseal costs one colorless mana.

So if we want to make a card around fateseal, what would be a respectable number to work with? At this point, I reach into my mind for the first card that looks at or reveals cards from the top of the library and straight away I think of Commune with Nature. That card suggest that a value of five cards is not a bad place to start, so for now we’ll build the card based upon a value of fateseal 5.

Now we need to tie Bribery or an ability much like it into our card. The best way to do this is to make the ability rely upon the top card only, rather than allowing the player to search the entire library. A reduction in targets as drastic as that could conceivably cost 2U in this instance, since it deals with creature cards in Blue; something well outside of Blue’s normal realm of control. So our new version of the Bribery ability would be:

"Reveal the top card of target opponent’s library. If it is a creature card, put it into play under your control. Then that player shuffles his or her library."

Now that’s a nice way to tie the two abilities together; fateseal to filter the top of the deck with a chance of providing you with a free creature from their deck. But when we consider that our new Bribery ability still costs 1U and that fateseal 5 will cost five colorless, we arrive at a total value of 6U which would make our card rather unwieldy in my opinion for most Blue decks. To this end we must consider a reduction either in the power of the fateseal ability or add an additional drawback to the card; again the voices argued and decided upon reducing Fateseal to a value of three.

The Finished Article

Big respect to Saberrodriguez over at Deviantart.com for drawing this amazing artwork piece; it gives the card the nice splashy edge that it needs to offset the vast mass of text involved.

Sounding Off

Alright guys; this is it—the last in the series is over. I’d like to apologize to those fans that will miss the series and I welcome anyone who believes they can do as good as if not better job then me to take up the series. I only hope that as viewing members you will follow me over to my other series and more spontaneous articles. And for those of you, who really need a fix of the Luther Style Card, you can always drop by my public thread in the forum and see cards that I design either on a whim or as part of one of many a long-standing set project.

Comments and feedback are always appreciated and anything you say will be taken on board and appreciated regardless of your experience or standpoint on the article—feedback is feedback, good or bad.

For the last time in this Article Series,

This is Luthervamplord, Signing Off

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
How to Win with Milling: A Guide to a Slow Painful Death
Memories of an Old Magic Player 10: The Outsiders Journal #3.
The Apprentice Magician, Part Three.
Class-Wars Deckbuilding Contest Results!
Tribal Coffee: The Smaller Tribes.
[Mini-Article] Controlling the Game: Without Blue.
Raiding the Dollar Bins: Return of the Vault Ninja.
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
More Evil Than Evil.
Memories of a Jarhead.