RCotD #104

Random Card of the Day #104:

Overlaid Terrain - 2GG
Enchantment
As Overlaid Terrain enters the battlefield, sacrifice all lands you control.
Lands you control have "{T}: Add two mana of any one color to your mana pool.

Initial Thoughts:

At first I read this card and I starting thinking about it's potential. It effectively doubles all your lands. But then doing the math, the returns are only marginal. If you play this turn four, and never miss a land drop, you break even on turn seven, because you sacrifice your lands when it enters. 6 lands entered with 4 sacrificed, leaves you with two left, which is actually a net loss. At 7 lands with 4 sacrificed, you are still behind as you have 6 available mana, when you would have had 7 lands. You break even at 8 lands placed, so it's only worth it if you place 9 lands or more. Nine lands. Sheesh.

Obviously this number goes up and down, based on non-land sources of mana, or how many lands you have when you place this, if you have 5 lands sacrificed, you need to play 11 lands or 6 additional lands to make-up the loss.

However, if this gets Naturalized, you just Armageddon'd yourself. Which could basically spell the end for you as you just got 5-for-1'd. Or worse.

So, in the end, super excited about the wording of it, but the math of placing lands just outweighs its benefit most of the time. The good news is, its a triggered ability, so if you wanted to Stifle your own ability or even Time Stop it before it resolves it could actually be pretty good.

It's difficult to call how good this card is. The combo doesn't flat out win games, so it's just nifty, and for a two card combo for infinite mana, it has a pretty big drawback if it's countered. Would be a 1/5 if you couldn't Stifle it, but I guess it's a 2/5. There are lots of other better two-card infinite-mana combos out there.