this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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Magic: The Gathering
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Unfortunately the way it's worded they can just keep sacrificing the first Waste token they get. You'd either wanna specify nontoken or make it like "choose a land that player controls"
Not very Burnin' Sherman as it is currently writen.
It'd have to say "non-token", since they are the ones creating the token they'd control it (I think you control anything on your battlefield regardless but not 100% on that).
I am unsure how token ownership works... but I don't think that is good either as that removes the ability of sacrificing a land you've stolen.
You could just as easily choose a land they control.
The full phrasing would be "whenever a soldier deals damage to an opponent, choose a land that player controls. That player sacrifices the chosen land. If they do [...]" with the rest of the text being the same as the original.
Or, at that point, we might drop the sacrifice, and make it "Whenever a soldier deals damage to an opponent, you may destroy target land that player controls. If you do, they may create a token land (the rest of the token details here)"
So Non-token leaves them the choice, but no choosing the created Wastes.
My first phrasing gives you the choice, a more powerful ability, for sure, you could target non-basic lands, or weak colors in their current manabase, etc, all the usual perks.
My second phrasing gives you the same power, but lets effects like Indestructible or Warding apply as normal, letting the opponent protect lands. More reasonable, I feel.
Yeah, I like the second one better. Allowing interaction and protection seems like a good idea, and makes the card less of a feels bad.
That being said, I think a more thematic effect would be something along the lines of a "Blood Moon" like effect. "Target lands loses all land types and abilities, and gains the ability '{T}: Add {C}". Though this offers less interaction and is a massive feel bad for decks that rely on a land for a combo since it would still be in the field just unusable.
Blood moon style would be cool.
Mechanically, it's the same thing, really, but yeah, thematics.
Create a "wastes" ability counter like flying counters and finality counters. The counter has a rules-based ability that says the card its on is a land (without the 'in addition to other types' line) and taps for colorless mana, and loses all abilities.
Then the ability can be messed with, via cards that mess with counters and blinking/return to hand effects, but none of those are that easy to do to a land, which is fine for a 6-mana creature I feel.
I can't think of a single instance where a token gets created under another player's control that doesn't directly instruct that player to create the token.
Iirc years ago the owner and controller could be different. The controller would be the player under whose control it entered and the owner would be whoever controlled the effect that created the token. I don't remember when they changed that but I do remember that being how it used to work.
Thanks for this! I assumed this would be the case, but you do get rule oddities in magic, especially in weird cases like this. I can't think of an instance of that either, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one somewhere.