First - congrats on getting this up and running! It's not perfect, but it's a start.

I can't remember if this was destroyed but the great Forum Fire of Twenty-Thirteen, so I figured I'd post it for effectively the first time.

Something that Magic has never done, but always feels like it wants to do, is have gold and money. There are many cards (like Greed) that depict money, or cards (like Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer) that depict the use of money, but nothing that "is" money. Usually the closest the get are allusions to life or card-draw... which is weird, because you not all spells spend life or spend cards through discarding, but almost you always are spending mana.

I think there’s room for such an effect. Players should be able to either spend gold instead of mana, or spend gold in addition to mana. Previous attempts have run into problems, because the gold has always been treated as mana of any color. What if gold shared colour identity just like mana? Then you could have white gold, black gold, green gold, phyrexian gold, snow gold, etc. The main benefit of this kind of system is that it prevents gold from twisting each color’s identity.

All colours would have access to gold, but I think some will be more inclined than others:

White – Uses some gold, but either distributes it or the effects evenly. Very likely to tax all players’ gold.
Blue – Very likely to use gold. Blue would care about the movement and tracking of gold. Most likely to change gold’s colour, or change things into gold.
Black – Very likely to use gold. Black would want to hoard gold, spending it only when absolutely necessary. Will also steal gold if given the chance.
Red – Not very likely to use gold. Red sees gold as something to burn rather than spend, or punish others for collecting too much of something that should only ever be temporary. If Red does get gold, it should be used right away.
Green – Not very likely to use gold, as it is an artificial construct of civilization. However, if it does use gold, it will make it available to everyone.

Here’s a few card-designs that use gold:

Goblin Larsonist
Creature – Goblin Rogue {C}
Whenever Goblin Larsonist deals combat damage to a player, that player loses a gold counter. If they do, deal 1 damage to target creature or player.
1/1

Trading Post
Artifact {C}
,: You gain 1 gold of any colour.

Paradise Infusion
Sorcery {U}
Draw cards equal to the amount of gold spent to cast Paradise Infusion.

Ruthless Debtor
Creature – Zombie Advisor {C}
At the beginning of your upkeep, take a gold counter from each opponent.
2/3

Elvish Prospector
Creature – Elf Rogue {R}
: Each player gains 1 gold counter of any colour.
1/1

Do you remember when I tried this in planar pirates? :3

I'm not familiar. Was it effectively the same mechanic?

We honestly never decided. I just really wanted it to have players getting gold counters or coins or something.

Having too many types of gold would get confusing. Why not just have gold only be used as colorless mana?

Also, both Goblins and Dragons tend to enjoy stealing gold. I think it would be interesting to have red be a color that cares about how much gold you have, in order to discourage you from using it.

The word "gold" is problematic, seeing as it's already slang for multicolor. And having differing colors of gold is kind of an oxymoron. Coin?

Red totally steals gold and punishes you for hoarding it!

Admittedly, I worried about having too many kinds of gold, for the same reason that Wizards worries about having too many types of counters in the same set. I can see problems where a player makes blue gold, and converts it into black and white gold, and then loses track of which pile is which. I included "snow" in there, simply because it's an example of how gold could be tailored to have all the characteristics of regular mana. I would strongly object to including snow gold unless, though technically a card that gave a creature the ability to tap for gold would produce snow gold if the creature being tapped were a snow creature.

However, such a set would have a solution! The set I imagined this going into would not have any other kinds of counters OTHER than gold counters, and also has very few types of creature tokens. As such, you could either replace multiple token-spots with Gold Token cards of their appropriate colour, have Gold Token cards appear in every pack like the double-face cards having their card-tracker in every pack, or have Gold Token cards be able to be cut or ripped up into multiple colours (multiple counters out of the same card). Avoiding too heavy a multi-color set (most decks being 2-color, and only some as 3-color) for Limited purposes, so long as players have their two colors of tokens, simply placing counters on top of the single appropriately-colored counter suffices, and would be a natural action for players to take in "counting" their gold.



I totally understand your point of view on this, but seeing as how "gold" is already slang for "money, wealth, power to buy" in modern culture, I believe the concept of gold as purchasing power is more strongly resonant than "gold, oh you mean like a multicolored card?" concept of gold. Even still, a gold card frame doesn't have any meaning in the game, but exists solely for the purposes of grabbing the attention of the players. If anything, gold cards have a sense of "oooh, that must be valuable, because it's golden", rather than "does that produce gold?"