Daily Card Redesign #8: Feldon's Cane

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

I didn't know anything about Feldon before working on this card. And after reading this MTG Salvation wiki page on Feldon, he quickly became a beloved character of mine.

Since this cane is SUPPOSED to be Feldon's Cane, making this into any other kind of cane/staff/rod seemed inappropriate. It's a pretty unique-looking cane. So, like with Empress Galina, its name and flavor will remain intact.

The effect that this cane has probably relates to his archaeological pursuits, but perhaps there's some relation to his quest to revive his dead lover. Then again, Feldon was never able to revive her permanently, so it wouldn't be right for Feldon's Cane to have the ability to do so.

My instinct was to turn this effect into something that brings back artifacts or searches for artifacts. This would be more about what Feldon did. But then I noticed something.

The Golgothian Sylex was an important artifact that Feldon also managed to recover. Take a look:

Feldon's Cane, one of the two important artifacts that Feldon archaeology-ed up, seemingly was designed with returning any sort of card from the graveyard because it was mindful of the fact that not just artifacts are destroyed by the Golgothian Sylex - any kind of permanent could be destroyed.

Ah. We got our direction. Feldon's treasured goods interact with each other. We need to come up with a design that isn't the original rules text yet still interacts with the Golgothian Sylex!

Currently, the interaction happens sequentially - from the activation of the Golgothian Sylex putting permanents into the graveyard to the returning of them (just yours) to the library from the activation of Feldon's Cane. What if it was the other way around?

First thing I thought of was doing an effect that protected your permanents and brought them back from the graveyard. But that would cause a game-crushing loop with the Golgothian Sylex.

The next thing I thought of was screwing over your opponents' Antiquities permanents. But how can you ensure they have permanents like that? Initially, I was going to go for an effect like that Hunted cycle from the original Ravnica block. You give them Antiquities tokens! ...But then I remembered that Golgothian Sylex only affects nontoken permanents. Also, it would suck to have yet another card that calls out Antiquities.

Blast. Hmm. Well, Feldon's Cane just offsets the drawback of destroying your own Antiquities permanents. Perhaps we can ENCOURAGE you to have a ton of Antiquities permanents by the rules text of Feldon's Cane. We want to DESTROY MANY THINGS!

...O.K., tricky part. Millstone exists in this set, too. You don't want Feldon's Cane to interact with Antiquities cards that are already in the graveyard. Otherwise, the Millstone can become an unintended accomplice in your master plan! Nay, we want to destroy a bunch at once.

Something like: "Whenever a permanent you control is put into a graveyard this turn, ..." or "Whenever a permanent you control would be put into a graveyard this turn, ... instead." But we have to be careful about what we do with these permanents for the second part since we don't want to return the Golgothian Sylex and keep re-using it.

Hmm... Feldon was an archaeologist. Archaeologists find things from under the land. What if, whenever a land is destroyed, you uncover something? Aha! So, the later in the game you obliterate your stuff, the more reward you get! Since this is a two-card synergy, you could be rewarded liberally, as in the number of lands destroyed this turn equals that many cards drawn. And, by itself, it's kinda unimpressive. Which is just fine, since we want to design "safely."

But I don't want it to be useless on its own. It's Feldon's Cane, after all. It could at least DO something and not simply be reactionary.

O.K., here we go!

I tried to stay true to the messy old wording from back in the days of Antiquities. A "Mono Artifact" is one that taps to use its activated abilities. So, really, that isn't simply a cost of "1" right there.

I used the wording of Golgothian Sylex "discarded from play" to stay true to the old version of what we would call "destroyed." I followed Ashnod's Transmogrant for how to template sacrificing the artifact as part of the cost. Then I copied Strip Mine for how to word destroying land.

I made sure to cost this card enough so that it is a strictly worse card to the then-normal cost of destroying land at 3 mana. So I costed it at 4 mana. Then this effect of drawing a card from this land destruction is a boon, so it costs another mana. I added 1 mana more for activating it just like with Golgothian Sylex to both parallel it and to add a buffer of mana for power-level safety. You do have the potential to draw multiple cards if you have dedicated land destruction. And, of course, if you're doing the two-card "Feldon's Stuff" combo.

Whew.