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.

So if you are playing a black/white deck, you throw the number of swamps and plains that you want, and it’s random which pops up. This simulates the original randomness of Magic while still making sure you get get a land, although it may not be what you want.

So when you channel an artifact, whichever color is on top is what you get. This way, artifacts are not overpowered.

There are two downsides:
1. You lose the “land must match one of the colors on the card” flavor.

2. More luck is introduced - you could draw five Swamps in a row in your Green/Black deck and not be able to play your green cards. Of course, you could channel multiple times in one turn in an effort to dig up the right land.

The next question becomes: Can I use Search for Tomorrow to fish that extra Forest I need out of the land deck?

Getting any land (Idea #1) would make artifacts a bit more powerful than I think they should be. They are already easier to play in this environment and adding in the ability to get any color mana you need seems a bit overreaching.

Number 8 also has some issues in that it allows this channel mechanic to be tampered with by an opponent (changing the target) and I sort of feel that channel land should not use the stack and be more like morph.

I like Number 4 best out of all of these but again if you have no colored spells in your deck your out of luck.

Yeah, that’s right, I made a tangent in my own comment

Right now a few basic possibilities come to mind for channeling artifacts, I might as well make a little list. Note I’m simply throwing these out there, brainstorming fashion, without regard to their merit:

1: Channel an artifact to add a land type of your choice.

2: Channel an artifact to add a land type of target opponent’s choice (from your pool(s) if you’re using custom land pools as described above).

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).

4: Channel an artifact to add a land type corresponding to a type you control.

5: Channel an artifact to add a land type corresponding to a type you control. If you control no basic lands, choose a type.

6: Channel an artifact to add a land type corresponding to your land pool which has the most cards remaining of all your land pools.

7: Channel an artifact to add a land type corresponding to a type target opponent controls.

8: Channel an artifact to add a land type corresponding to the type of target land (a simpler way of stating something similar to several of the above)

Yeah, though I feel this variant is designed to get off with only “minor” changes to rules and deckbuilding, it does change play quite a bit.

Since Mirrodin I haven’t played with more than a couple of artifacts in any of my decks (though I know Mike is itching to perfect his Shadowmoor/Eventide Scarecrow deck), but I still like the idea of artifact decks and would like them to work here too.

Example: Artifact + 2 Life = Any Basic Land. It would work, though again it would make artifact decks pretty terrible and it would break your rules quite a bit.

The truth is, the only kind of deck channeling does not work with is Artifact decks. Since channeling does change the face of Magic quite a bit, I don’t know if the elimination of Artifact decks is really that big of a deal.

Just me though. Amusingly, I am a big fan of artifacts.

“Each land pool consists of a single type of basic land, plus non-basic land cards of the same type (non-basic Swamps go in your Swamp pool).”

The problem with this is that most black mana producing lands are not swamps. In recent years some have been but a lot of them still are not.

I’m still in search of an answer. Feel free to comment if you have an idea for a solution!

Thanks again for your feedback on this, it’s just as useful to see the potential drawbacks and limitations as it is the potential benefits in trying a venture such as saying “goodbye” to Magic’s lands.

I understand your opinions on this and I guess I will just bow out of this discussion. I simply do not agree with you on this topic. If for some reason the whole community started playing Magic this way, I would simply stop playing Magic. It’s a neat way to play as a variant but it does not suit my play stile as a game I would play often.

I have these opinions based on having played my variant which is similar to this and having played other games that use “mana” methods similar to this. I don’t enjoy the static progression and find that it detracts from the over all excitement (for me) of the game.

The gray area is this: what about channeling a colorless spell, like an artifact?

Technically speaking the rule as written prevents this, but that’s not really what I intended; I would like artifacts to be viable for land trades similar to other spells.

So I encourage you to pitch in your suggestion(s) and we’ll see if we can come up with a good way to channel artifacts into land that’s balanced and elegant. Suggest away!

Retrace still works, it’s just the surprise factor that might take a bit of a hit. Yet I’d say that since a spell you’re retracing is already in your graveyard, surprise is not a huge deal at that point anyway.

And I like that Mike found a way to bring the land bluff back into Channeling Land