I have yet to see a situation, playing with my group, where repeated channeling of spells would be worthwhile to try and find a specific land, but I wouldn’t be surprised if such examples existed.

Also when it comes to cards like Oona, I wrote another post detailing how we chose to handle that. Somehwat similar to your method, with a 2:5 ratio being closer to what we typically played before channeling.

Thanks for the feedback Kos, I’m glad you’re enjoying casual Magic again with Channeling Land!

*Whenever you can play a sorcery, you may play the channeling land ability:
Remove a non-land card in your hand from the game: Add the top card of your land deck to your hand.

In order to discourage the procedure of a player discarding card after card until he finds his “holy grail” non-basic land, we added the following rule:
The channeling ability can be played only once each turn, with the exception of each player’s first turn, during which it can be played any number of times.

Finally, in order to avoid the overpowering of cards like Oona (not to mention Mind Funeral, which pretty much wins the game) we also added the following rule:

For the purposes of effects that include randomly drawing cards from your opponent’s or your own library and when those effects depend on whether a spell or a land card is drawn, roll a die before each single card draw: on a 1-2, draw a card from the land deck; on a 3-6, draw a card from the regular deck.

This roughly represents the 1:3 land to spell ratio that a normal deck would have.

- only M10, 2x comon, 1x uncommon, and 3 rares – separated into 5 piles by color

- each color has it’s own land pool

- we roll a die to determine who gets the first color (or passes) and then roll a die to determine the first color being played

And now that we’ve finally found a good way to play lands, only drawing from our land pool when channeling as necessary.

At 9 health, or lower, one can draw from the multi-color / artifact pile instead of their own library, at a cost of 1 health. At the end of the game, those cards are shuffled back into “the pile” and we start anew.

This got us around: building decks, calculating land/spell ratios, and figuring out who gets what big bad card from “the pile” and why. We enjoy the game for the game. The cards are good fun to collect… but we wanted random enjoyment and a change in strategy from game to game.

So far, so good.

I’m not sure channeling a spell for multiple lands would work for my play style, as it changes the game from its original design further than I’d wish. Probably “breaks” a few more cards and abilities (retrace has been mentioned) than I’d prefer.

In the variant I describe in the post, the “reward” for channeling multicolor spells is just the ability to select a land from among more than one land pool.

However giving multiple lands in exchange for a colored spell sounds like it could be a boon to multicolor decks, and even granting two lands for spells with a single color seems like going for a bit more laid back variant, players have to sacrifice fewer spells (and make fewer difficult decisions) in order to play what they keep. If that’s what works for you and your group, I say go for it.

Also, you mentioned a pile of rares… have you considered going through those cards with an eye toward building a Big Deck?

So an artifact is always 1 draw per the rule because there are no colors in its casting cost.

“Quest for the Gravelord” (casting cost is B) would be 2 draws (1 per the rule + 1 for B).

“Steel Leaf Paladin” (casting cost 4GW) would be 3 draws (1 per the rule + 1 for G + 1 for W).

“Reaper King” would be 6 draws!

This idea would mean fewer sacrifices and would reward the player for sacrificing a potentially interesting multi-colored card.

I’m curious your opinion on this idea.

I’ve got a massive deck of rare artifacts and rare multi-color cards which are available to be drawn after certain events happen within a game. Makes it interesting having all sorts of big, bad vampires and dragons fighting it out… or at least staring each other down!

And for the record, I’ve convinced the peeps I play with to start with 7 spells and abandon the 6 + 1 basic land as I’d mentioned in my earlier post.

Thanks again for a great resource like this.

I too find that I play fewer lands this way, with some decks I may not need more than four – which allows me to play a few more spells; other decks use seven, maybe eight, but almost never more. Those dead late-game turns where you do nothing but draw and play your 13th land are certainly a thing of the past.

Thanks for the comment Bill!

This, by far, is the best discussion going with regard to the topic. With that said, my game consists of the following: a library of spells (55+ cards) and a land pool. The land pool consists of 18 basics (only playing single color) and 9 non-basics which make that color and do something else, and usually come in tapped. Each player begins with 6 spells and 1 basic land (which allows red to cast the annoying 1 red-mana-cost haste critters on its first turn).

Any spell can be converted into a draw from the land pool, regardless of casting cost… the card itself is payment for delving into the land pool. And as you suggested this conversion and draw is at sorcery speed and timing during a players main phases.

So if you’ve got artifacts and want to spend/convert them in this way, they also count as 1 draw from the land pool. Cards used in this way are removed from the game.

Interestingly enough, we’ve found that one can usually play a game with about 7-8 lands and only having to sacrifice that many spells makes it enjoyable and strategic, especially in the beginning.

Thanks for everyone’s comments thusfar and if anyone sees where my gameplay might be an issue, please let me know. Thx in advance.

That sounds like another reasonable way to approach the land screw problem. I think the thing that would give me pause is getting land free without giving up a card in your hand, as I enjoy the economic conflict, if you will, of managing your resources (cards) and having to choose how best to use them, when to trade them for land.

There’s also the balance to consider, which might be tilted by gaining a free land each turn. Perhaps with some cards and situations more than others.

Still I’m game for house rules, let us know how it works out!

If you’re talking about a more obscure ability which flips cards from the top of your library and does something based on the card’s type, that’s another story. Oona was an example of one such card for us, and required its own house rule.

Thanks for the comment Ravious, it’s good to hear from someone else who’s playing this variant!

Channeling land also ruins certain cards that need to draw lands to operate as well.

Also, given the multi-coloring that is such a huge part of Shadowmoor/Eventide, getting her ability to “land” (heh) successfully is already too easy (dare I say over powered).

I really believe they should have raised the cost of her ability or made her tap to use it (or both). Even not removing the cards from the game, instead placing them on the botton of the library, would be a little help.

Co-Op Magic on the other hand… interesting but I’m not sure how to make it work and be interesting without turning into two people playing on a team against a gold fish.

That, or I suppose, I could work up some kind of co-operative based MTG variant of my own… Time will tell.

To this end, I’m thinking about going with #3: Channel an artifact to add a land type chosen at random (from your pool(s) if you’re using custom land pools as described above).

This would allow first-turn artifact channeling, and should work fine for all-artifact decks. Decks which mix artifacts and colored spells can still channel artifacts for a land, simply with less precision (unless you’re playing mono-color and a land pool), which feels like the right level of power for a colorless spell being channeled.

This form of Magic would actually stick closer to actual Magic play but would remove the problems of land glut and land screw just the same.