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During theme weeks, I like to hit up each of the general article categories during the week, including fictional cards. Luthervamplord had this great “If I Worked at R&D” all set up for this week, but something happened to him and he wasn’t able to finish it. Don't worry, though. You'll be seeing it in all of it's glory sometime after Land Week. Lacking an article for the fictional card category for this week, I felt this was a great opportunity to revisit some of the Celixia cards and even a card not yet released for the next set in the Celixia block: Powershift. I’ll go through some of the fictional land cards I released in Celixia as well as talk about a new innovative land card from Powershift. Celixia has three cycles of lands along with other non-cycle lands. Within these cycles I tried to provide dual land variants, legendary lands that tied in with the chaos (shuffling) theme of the set and, of course, basic lands. I must admit some of these cards are rather powerful for lands, but I can't be the only judge. Below you will find all of the non-basic land cards from Celixia for you to review and judge for yourself. So: What do you get when you cross Charms, dual lands and Ghost Town?
There are several important things within this cycle of land cards:
Not coming into play tapped is a huge deal. The uncommon dual land variants from Eighth Edition all came into play tapped. While they were used during their time, they still hampered the tempo of many decks. As soon as other dual land variants came into being, the comes-into-play-tapped lands were made obsolete. You can even look at WotC’s latest version of a dual land as presented to us in the Ravnica Block. You have to pay 2 life to make the card come into play untapped; otherwise it comes into play tapped. There’s always a cost to a land card with dual-mana capabilities. And thus, every positive attribute has to come with a balancing effect. I wanted the dual land variants of Celixia to be unrestricting to tempo and yet reach the dual land status. That’s where the modal part came into play. For example, in the case of Ana-tur Shore, you can choose one of two colors when the land comes into play. Need black? Choose black. Need blue? Choose blue. Whatever mana you need at the time you play it, this card will provide it for you. The bad side is that you are stuck with that color for the rest of the game. Well, not totally. You see, with these dual land variants, you can return the land to your hand at sorcery speed for two colorless mana. What this ability doesn’t do is dodge land destruction. What it does do is reset the card. Say mid-game you need another blue mana desperately. Just bounce your Ana-tur shore (currently set to black) and replay it assuming you haven’t used your land drop yet. Set it to blue and now you’re golden. Overall, I think the dual variants I designed are balanced, but perhaps edging towards a little too powerful at the same time. At least for uncommon. Bouncing lands can be dangerous. So can comes-into-play-untapped lands. Despite this, I have to admit that during testing and the tournament that we held after the release, they didn’t seem too overwhelming. What they were great at was smoothing out mana bases. What do you think?
The legendary lands designed for Celixia were quite a challenge. At the time of designing and re-designing them, the Kamigawa Block legendary lands were all powerful with a tap for a mana of the appropriate color and an extra ability. I wanted to do this for the Legendary Lands of Celixia too, but at the same time I had to include the chaos mechanic in them. For theme reasons, of course. To better explain this chaos mechanic I’m referring to, let me use an analogy. A spellshaper in normal Magic: the Gathering will tap and discard a card for an effect. In Celixia, these lands are like spellshapers except you have to reveal a card in your hand of the appropriate color and shuffle it back into your library to then get an effect. I call it chaos-shaping. Between the five lands, here are the five abilities:
Black obviously has the best of the abilities with an opponent losing two life per chaos-shaping. However, each card has its use. While you wouldn't normally see these abilities on a land, I think they are appropriate considering the color intensive cost of the effect. Remember that you have to reveal a color card associated with the ability’s color AND you have to pay colored mana to activate the ability. Seems balanced, right? It’s a shame I don’t have the records from the design discussions of these cards anymore. Each of these land abilities was revised about six times before making it to final.
Abandoned Realm was a common land that taps for colorless or tapped with two mana to sacrifice and draw a card. When designing this card I always wondered why Wizards of the Coast never printed a card similar to this. However, after playing with the set I realized why. It's kind of ridiculous. This card gives every color card advantage and also provides good use during the mid to late game when another card draw could make it game. If I could re-design the card I would either make the card come into play tapped or up the activation of the second ability. Oh, and it would definitely be uncommon. Of course, maybe I'm wrong about what I just set. They did put cycling on lands, didn't they? And many of them were common. Perhaps Abandoned Realm was designed correctly afterall. Ephemeral Oasis, a rare land card, was originally designed by EinsteinMonkey and put into the set at some point during the various Celixia Card Creation contests I used to have. In my opinion, this card's ability (which is like Regrowth) shouldn't be on a land. It's too insane. Even more insane if the card isn't legendary. And Ephemeral Oasis isn't legendary... I do remember urging the rest of the Celixia design team to not includes this card, but it made it’s way into the set anyway. At least I like the art I found for it. I reprinted Quicksand in Celixia for some variety in the lands. That and there were quite a few good weenie creatures in the set and I needed an answer for each of the colors. Quicksand provided that. If only I hadn't mistakenly made Vin so powerful... Ruins of Xiosis is one of my favorite cards from the set design wise. It comes into play tapped and can tap for a colorless mana. But the beauty is that it untaps at the beginning of each player's upkeep. Control players love this card. Fast effects like Ambush like the ability too. The fact that it adds colorless can hurt some multicolored decks, but in a monochromatic deck, it's a beautiful thing. The last of the miscellaneous cards is Spiralhaven. This card was my variant on City of Brass. Every block has to have one. Onslaught had Grand Coliseum, Kamigawa had Forbidden Orchard. Celixia had Spiralhaven. Mind you, it's a terrible card, but it was another way to tap for any color without taking damage. But who knows, maybe there will be some crazy Soldevi Digger - Browse variants in the Celixia block to make use out of this card.
It’s been quite some time since Celixia was first “released”. I use quotations around the term mainly because the set was never really released. It was published on the site and at some point dubbed as official. But in reality, it’s still just a fictional set of cards. But that doesn’t stop me from making more sets or writing on it, now does it? So you probably wondering at this point what has happened to the next sets? I have always had plans to continue the Celixia block and I even picked out names for both sets to follow. As mentioned earlier, the next set will be called Powershift. While I can’t really tell you too much about the set (as we are still finishing up the design of it) there is one card I would like to show you. It’s not final but it should give you a nice glimpse of what is to come.
While this card doesn’t tie into anything else going on in the set, it sure is cool to behold. Never miss a land drop ever again for the small price to pay of 3 life? Per turn... Of course, never dropping another land from your hand for the rest of the game can be painful too. But any green mage knows there's all sorts of instants and sorceries in normal Magic to get around not being able to PLAY lands from your hand. I must gloat about the art I found for the card. I keep a database of art from the internet on my harddrive and this is one that I've had there for a while. I know the art was by pixelWAISE but I can't find where it originally came from (else I would link to it). Anyway, the art shows a beautiful and yet ominous tower in the foreground and several of the same tower in the background. Mind you, in a tense sky too. The art fits very well to the mechanics of the card, don't you think? With each Doppeltower you have in play, you have another opportunity to make another land. If you think about it, you can have a small army of lands on your side very quickly. To prove this, look at the following scenario:
Eight lands on turn four - that’s amazing!!! Of course, negative one life isn’t so hot. Nor is getting pinged for one every time you tap the land. I’m sure you can find ways around both of those problems. And who knows, maybe there will be a card in Powershift that prevents all damage to you from lands you control. Note that this scenario assumes you never tapped the lands for mana... Back to the State of the Block, I would anticipate the full Powershift set to be complete and ready for viewing sometime in 2007. There is still a lot of art that needs to be done (about 90% of it). There’s also other help needed. If you are interested in helping testing the cards, illustrating the cards or offering any sort of help, drop me an email or PM in the forum. Well, that concludes this episode of Celixia Files. I can’t say I provided any insight that was earth shattering to the world of fictional Magic: the Gathering cards, but it’s always fun to look at cards designed by other people. Or, at least I think so. If you have any questions about the set, comments about cards shown in this article or whatever, let me know in the forum! May you too make a set worthy of something… (In my case, a set worthy of writing an article about.) John Streetz
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