Pointed Discussion

using this card as a mana cycle for my unearth deck. good card if you are lacking mana.

The artwork on this thing is atrocious!

Nice view @_@ 2/5

I actually really like the artwork for this card. The boneyard of the dregscape with hell's thunder clouds and purple heat lightning turning the air pink, pretty awesome in my eyes, embodies grixis pretty well if you ask me.

Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #40, 11/21/10

The way my boss, Bill Rose, sketched out the Shards of Alara block initially, his thinking was almost all centered on the booster draft format. “I want you to play three colors after the first set, five after the second, and two after the third.” That was a tall, tall order to attempt to fill for any block, let alone a multicolored one, and one of the biggest challenges was going to present itself during the development of the first set: How do you make a suite of limited mana fixing that lends itself to three-color decks but not five-color?

We always knew we wanted the triple lands at uncommon. We had the Obelisks at common for most of development, although they were better than they are now. On top of that, the dev team added these Panoramas.

I’ve heard complaints that the mana fixing in triple-Shards draft wasn’t good enough in general, although I can’t tell if that’s a truth or just noise. I hear all kinds of complaints about every format we make, limited or otherwise, and it’s a skill to be able to separate actual actionable feedback from random grumbling. Two years later, I’m honestly not sure where on that continuum the Shards mana-fixing lies. If it was a real problem, I’d like to know. Remember, you weren’t supposed to play five colors, so cards like Terramorphic Expanse were no-no’s.

Moving on... If there were ever cards that made me want to reevaluate how we handle coloration on three-colored cards, it was these. Two-colored “gold” cards and lands that produce two colors each have visual elements that clearly indicate their associations--gradiated pinlines, text boxes, or frames. Once things go to three colors, however, we don’t try to message specific colors. All three-colored gold cards have the same frame, as do all three-colored lands. But I felt players would confuse these--they all have similar names and no mana symbols anywhere on them. How were you to know at a glance what three kinds of lands a specific Panorama could fetch?

The creative team assured me that not only would each one have art that strongly hinted at a specific shard, but that the names of the shards would be so well-known and universally adopted that there would be no need to further visually message what three colors the land was associated with. They were right. We all know what “Grixis” is and what three colors go with it. Shame on me for doubting.

The Panoramas originally fetched up nonbasic lands (with the basic types), but some cards in Zendikar made us change that. No, it wasn’t the fetchlands--they weren’t added in until way later. It was the common cycle that included Teetering Peaks, as they had basic types initially. Being able to fetch up +2/+0 (among other effects) at instant speed was way too good, so we changed the Panoramas. Further testing revealed that there were more ways than Panoramas to get Teetering Peaks into play, so we eventually gave up on having basic types on those, and then put the fetchlands in. Of course, by then the Panoramas were long out the door.

I like the purple/pink colouring because it sits nicely between blue and red, and is also an alternate colour for black, which is the key colour for Grixis.

You have to pay mana to activate this land's fetch, along with the sacrifice? Ugh. Might as well as Terramorphic Expanse or something like that.

I loved the Panorama cycle in spite of how bad they are mechanically. It just seemed really awesome to me to make "the sky" a basic land pseudo-type. The art and flavor text hit it out of the park, and I really tried to make them workin play. They came so VERY close to being perfect cards IMO, but I'm not sure what would have put them over the top, as none of the obvious fixes are quite right.

The artwork is very Grixis. Personally I absolutely hated the visual look of the Grixis shard, but it certainly achieved its aim of looking visually distinct. Flipping through a Shards booster I could easily see "Yuck, that card has nasty art. It must be Grixis!"

I think the fixing level of the Panoramas was fine. The Obelisks are obviously atrocious, but the Panoramas are fine. It'd be fine if they didn't have the "basic" restriction, as Aaron effectively admits, but oh well.

Anyone who complained about the lack of fixing in shards do not know how to draft. If there was a problem, it is that fixing was too abundant, consequently obelisks are rarely playable, and cross-shard decks were still fairly viable. But all in all, the fixing design is quite elegant, with uncommon trilands being top picks, panaromas as high picks, and obelisks being important filler that you can always run if you don't have better options, or if your deck really wants the accel. Grixis obelisk was particularly good because it made it far easier to cast cruel ultimatum, one of the premier first picks in the format.

This whole cycle I feel should have been able to sacrifice withoout having to pay the . I would take Terramorphic Expanse over these any day. 2.5*
P.S. Doesn't it seem strange that these have colorless frames even though the fetchland cycle from Zendikar have colored frames?

How can you even compare this with Terramorphic Expanse? Early game you can tutor up whatever land you need for 1 and late game you have a land draw that doesn't come into play tapped and is a dead draw. In EDH (Commander) these lands work great. I just don't understand the meta in here sometimes ...

This card has one too many drawbacks. If it dropped the comes into play tapped or the activation cost, it would be quite reasonable.

The Panorama was a bad cycle, but I can't hate them, because it was a cool idea. Amusingly, the only reason they were so bad was because of the testing going on in Zendikar. Damn you Zendikar!

I would not want to stand there.

Then again, I don't know if I'd want to be within three dimensions of Grixis, so I guess that's that.