Snow-covered basic lands

[oito]

I wanted to ask if it's possible to implement the snow-covered basic lands, as many cards from the Ice Age cycle require such lands?

[gmzombie]

i believe they were coded into the main lands IIRC and they should work with such cards. maybe garg can confirm this

[stassy]

Yes, any basic land is considered as snow land as well.

[oito]

Hmmm... so... for example, Thermokarst basically means "Destroy target land. Gain 1 life if it was a snow land or basic land.", etc? Or that simply means that the "snow mana" symbol is just modified to mean "mana from a basic land"?

(Just trying to understand...)

EDIT: if you go through these cards http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3Asnow you'll notice that changing instances of "snow-covered lands"/"snow lands" to "snow lands and basic lands" kind of changes their play value. Example: Avalanche

[stassy]

It was done that way because when snow system was implemented we were under the 2k rule and devs had no choice but to make it like that to preserve slot if they wanted to make snow based cards.

Now that this limit is no more, I guess that snow land and others land that were discarded from patch can make their come back.

[oito]

It was done that way because when snow system was implemented we were under the 2k rule and devs had no choice but to make it like that to preserve slot if they wanted to make snow based cards.

Now that this limit is no more, I guess that snow land and others land that were discarded from patch can make their come back.

Wow, I confirm: Thermokarst does grant you 1 life when you destroy any basic land and Icequake does damage the opponent when you destroy any basic land. Although this is a minor issue, it does change some card's power so, yeah... now that the 2k limit is over, I think it would make sense to (eventually) implement normal and snow-covered basic lands separately...

Thanks for your help

[Gargaroz]

Yup, now I could add snow-covered basic lands too, but the "snow mana" remain a problem : there's no way to produce "special" mana in Manalink, unless the one from Mishra's Workshop. When I coded Coldsnap, I added a workaround for this, but it's not the best solution.

[oito]

Yup, now I could add snow-covered basic lands too, but the "snow mana" remain a problem : there's no way to produce "special" mana in Manalink, unless the one from Mishra's Workshop. When I coded Coldsnap, I added a workaround for this, but it's not the best solution.

Hmmm.. yeah, that sucks. I've noticed, for instance in Grand Architect, the generated mana works like Mishra's Workshop mana (which is not exactly what it's supposed to do). Still... I understand how hard it is to code around some engine limitations and unknowns.

I guess a compromise could be:

1) Code basic snow-covered lands as basic lands but with a special "tag" (which should also occur for non-basic snow lands and mana-generating snow permanents, like Coldsteel Heart);

2) Triggered and activated abilities which require you/opponent to have snow-covered lands would check to see if any of the lands you/opponent have in play has said "tag";

3) Activated abilities which require snow mana accept any mana instead, but also check for permanents on your side with the "snow tag" and fizzle if said condition isn't met.

So, basically, it works around the lack of "special mana" by accepting normal mana but requiring "snow" type permanents in order to trigger. Don't know how feasible and easy it is to code this, and I can only imagine how many more important things you have to prioritize over this, but I'll just leave the idea, in case you feel like trying to re-implement it, one day.

Cheers

[0rion79]

Since we are talking here... do you remember any card that granted any true benefit from the use of snow-covered lands? I usually remember that, in the Ice Age block, there was a tendency to disincentivate players to use such lands, that was quite pointless.

[oito]

Since we are talking here... do you remember any card that granted any true benefit from the use of snow-covered lands? I usually remember that, in the Ice Age block, there was a tendency to disincentivate players to use such lands, that was quite pointless.

Well.. in Coldsnap (if you consider it Ice Age block), any card that requires snow mana, I guess. Cards like Rimefeather Owl, for example.

In the original Ice Age block, yeah, like you said: there seemed to be mostly anti-snow cards than pro-snow cards. Still, you can find some cards that benefit you (more) if you have snow-covered lands (or that only work if you have snow-covered lands): Balduvian Conjurer, Blizzard, Drift of the Dead, Gangrenous Zombies, Gargantuan Gorilla, Glacial Crevasses, Goblin Ski Patrol lol, Karplusan Giant, Snow Devil, Snowblind, Snowfall, Storm Elemental, Sunstone, Whiteout, Winter's Chill, Winter's Night (maybe ), Withering Wisps, Woolly Mammoths

[stassy]

Goblin Ski Patrol

Wow didn't know beside gobby engineers that such cards existed outside Unglued and so series

[0rion79]

Better than nothing, but imho not worthy spending too much efforts on this kind of lands. Up to you...

[oito]

Goblin Ski Patrol

Wow didn't know beside gobby engineers that such cards existed outside Unglued and so series

eheh they often printed pretty crappy cards back then (remember, this was the time when Homelands was published). Still, my favourite goblin from Ice Age would have to be Goblin Snowman

Better than nothing, but imho not worthy spending too much efforts on this kind of lands. Up to you...

I generally agree: like I said above, this is quite minor and non-prioritary. On the other hand, I think it might be feasible to implement it (even if in approximate form), if nothing else, just to be as true as possible to the official rules.

Nonetheless, you'll notice that Coldsnap does have a few more interesting cards that take advantage of snow lands: Balduvian Frostwaker, Cover of Winter, Glacial Plating, Heidar, Rimewind Master, Into the North, Mouth of Ronom, Rimefeather Owl, Rimewind Cryomancer, Rimewind Taskmage, Scrying Sheets, among others. Also, with the current rules (snow lands == basic lands), you can make a killer land destruction deck using Avalanche (if it ever gets implemented ) with Wastelands and Dwarven Miner but it's a bit like cheating.

But, yeah... I agree... it's not priority at all, it just would be nice if it gets implemented, eventually

[0rion79]

Snow lands are basic lands, so Dwarven Miner & co wouldn't work! Anyway, thanks: some of those cards are nice

[oito]

Snow lands are basic lands, so Dwarven Miner & co wouldn't work! Anyway, thanks: some of those cards are nice

I meant that you could use Dwarven Miner (or Wasteland) to destroy all nonbasic lands and use Avalanche to destroy basic lands (it works if Avalanche is implemented using current Manalink rules: every basic land also counts as snow land), annoying the opponent in the process

It wasn't meant as a serious example, but just to point out that making all basic lands count as snow lands does introduce some unexpected changes in some cards (like I pointed out a few posts above for Thermokarst and Icequake).

One very obvious effect is that Scrying Sheets becomes a very nice card, without any drawback: you can fish out basic lands from the top of your deck and there's no disadvantage, because everyone is already using snow-covered lands whenever they use basic lands anyway.

Also, a card like Cold Snap becomes _very_ different: you can build a whole deck around it, that just uses nonbasic lands, since most decks do use basic lands and while start getting damaged quickly. Add some way of bouncing Cold Snap to your hand once in a while (to reset the cumulative upkeep) and you're set (also, use Aura of Silence. You don't want the opponent dropping a Blood Moon ).