Nexus of Immolation -
Creature - Elemental
~ enters the battlefield with X immolation counters on it.
Whenever a permanent enters the battlefield under an opponent's control, move an immolation counter from ~ onto that permanent. That permanent gains "At the beginning of your end step, this permanent deals 1 damage to you for each immolation counter on it."
, discard a red card: Proliferate
0/3

gonna start grading now!

grades are done but I'm gonna wait until tomorrow to post them in case there's any extra entries.

Wow, the cards were that bad?

Al-Ahmar, Blazing Corona —
Legendary Creature — Djinn (R)
You may pay rather than to cast spells and activate abilities. If you do, X is equal to the number of in the mana costs of permanents you control and cards in your graveyard.
, , Discard your hand: Draw X cards.
4/4

balance concern: literally every card that makes powerstone tokens makes them tapped. this doesn't. I assume that's not intentional, but I can only really grade the card that was actually submitted. anyway! I like the idea of it. maybe a little cheap for the amount of ramp it can do, even if the stones were tapped: best comparison I can find is open the way which is hard-capped. but making a bunch of powerstones and giving you a big, juicy activated ability to spend them on is fun, and I like using the Eldrazi flavor to get around making it an artifact so you can't chain these together. I think if the stones were tapped and this cost it'd be just right.
3/5

is there a meaningful difference between this and "as ~ enters the battlefield, exile any number of creature cards from your graveyard"? why use the cost at all if the only thing the does is let you delve it back down? beyond that it's an interesting card, although possibly a bit scary. being an 0/1 is a real downside compared to necrotic ooze, but in exchange it comes down a turn earlier and gets all abilities, not just activated ones, which gives it a much greater chance of just, like, winning the game when it resolves. in fact, I can't find any precedent for borrowing non-activated abilities like this, and I think there's good reason. (not least of which is the rules issue of gaining static abilities in layer 6 that then try to modify things that were already set in earlier layers, like type or color.) assuming this were the more traditional activated abilities wording, though, or even the more radical activated and triggered abilities one, I think it's probably safe enough. I still don't think it makes much sense for the round, though.
2/5

cute, although I think I'd prefer if it just went the myr superion route so if you do put in the work to cast it, you at least get a good deal. although I suppose that's maybe a little too strong with rituals, since they can rinse the landedness off any mana used to cast them. still, feels like it's playing a very similar game to superion except that it pretty quickly winds up not even being all that cheap: by turn 4, this is a 6/6 for 6, which is pretty underwhelming even if you don't have to work for it. that could probably be fixed by tweaking numbers, though: it's the same basic design if it's, say, an 8/8, so I don't want to hold those stats against you too much. 6/6 is just a little conservative for my tastes here. I could see it getting printed in the right format, although you have it marked as uncommon and that seems very unlikely to me. (I'm not grading on rarity, though, since I didn't ask for it.)
3/5

so... is this within the spirit of the criteria? you pay some amount of mana and at least wind up with the option to have a single creature that big, which is the exact thing I was trying to avoid. then again, you can also spread it out if you want, and the use of double-X reduces the decision space nicely. a little awkward that you probably wind up exiling the card itself and getting tokens: I don't know how intuitive that is as a result, and it could cause some headaches for new players. I do like that it's complex enough that I can't just be like "why not make it a sorcery that just makes tokens" 'cause it really benefits from a sample body, without being so complex that it gets annoying to manage.
3/5

reminiscent of the new offspring mechanic, and I have to wonder if they'd just use that sort of formatting instead of X. unless the idea is that you'd expect to see a bunch of cards with different Progeny numbers, but coming with even just one extra 2/2 is already strong so I doubt that. setting the keyword question aside, though, I do think it's a really fun card. 6/4 first strike for 4 is very mythic, but quad- is hard to do so sure. and casting clause is really fun with it.
4/5

ooh, interesting. triple- is a big ask but the payoff is pretty huge. even at X=1 this is a really tempting card, like night of souls' betrayal but only hitting your opponent's stuff. (in exchange for being much easier to remove) I think most games you'll run it out on 4, but as a fan of control, the idea of drawing this when I've got 7 mana available is really exciting. and the flavor text is fun, too.
5/5

I like how this is basically on-curve at X=0 and X=1, and then from there you can dump extra mana into it if you happen to have some but it's not super necessary. swapping counters opens up some interesting interactions without just being a straightforward positive every time. (this part isn't relevant to grading, but you have it marked as a rare and I wonder if it could come down to uncommon? feels like the right power level.) at one point in Jo's old signposts contest I made a faction whose thing was X spells, and these sorts of semi-superfluous X costs were a central part of making it work 'cause you don't have to worry about everything scaling indefinitely, so it's fun to see that idea back.
4/5

this is so cool. basically anywhere on the curve this is interesting without being oppressive. my instinct was to say maybe nonland, but honestly I don't even think you need to: it's slow and expensive enough that a full vindicate isn't really a problem. I like that it's also a viable body at X=0, and if you do that you can play another one later and immediately snipe the target with your first one. overall a great and thoughtful design.
5/5

I was gonna ask why bother returning them but then I realized this was a Torment Nightmares reference, and that's cute. typically those gave your things back directly, but this sort of ramps up the damage and makes it feel more personal to Chainer. a 7/5 for 2 is strong, but the drawback is very real. it's almost a shame this can't discard things, to fit in with the whole Madness theme of the set it's referencing, but I don't really know how to make that work.
4/5

that feels pretty narrow. not necessarily in a bad way, and in a format like, say, Ravnica with whatever the Simic mechanic is, maybe there's enough counters running around to be worth it, but honestly I think if you're going that route, just make it cost and remove any number of counters so it's at least efficient when its ability is useful. it's a nice flavor, and the base body is plenty usable on its own, I just think it needs a specific format to work anyway so might as well make it work better in that format.
3/5

I'm torn. as you say, this is definitely kinda against the spirit of the criteria, but also not fully and I think it still works. the point of the endless one ability is you just chunk down a big dude, but the Maro ability requires a lot more nuance than that. especially since the hand size limit means it can't get that big without extra help. and the flavor's really good. I think this clears the bar pretty well. it's definitely reminiscent of some other cards, like hydroid krasis and aeon chronicler, but different enough to have a spot as well.
4/5

aw. cute. little baby locus. I like how it's technically fine to just run this out on turn 1, since you'll definitely have other creature mana sources to start accumulating later. (although you'll probably have a better turn 1 play in practice.) have they ever done this sort of source-specific mana preservation before? all I can find is color-specific, like the original omnath, locus of mana. no reason it wouldn't work, though, and I think it presents some interesting deckbuilding opportunities. the card on its own is kind of a jacked-up pentad prism, but it plays interestingly with other creature sources.
5/5

should this be nonland permanent? pretty sure it should. otherwise it just attaches to lands immediately and is basically impossible to get rid of. which I guess isn't that strong, it's basically curse of the pierced heart with a blocker attached until you get enough to proliferate (or if you wait until you can pay a larger X, but then it's more expensive and also harder to stick them all on lands.) but still I think it's less interesting. also kind of a shame that you need it to have a body that can just be cast for 'cause an 0/3 isn't really that inspiring. this feels like a weird mix of not doing enough and also doing too much and I think that probably means it does about the right amount and just isn't that flashy about it.
3/5

I really want to like this, but it's kinda the one-two punch of a) being that YMtC thing where the card does an explicitly different thing than it says it does, and b) not really fitting with the spirit of the criteria because of it. like, this isn't really an X spell in any useful way, because you have no incentive to cast if for more than its base cost. setting a non-zero value for X is just wasting mana. the Xs look like they're a cost, but they're actually just markers for the card's other ability. it also feels weird that it counts the number of s instead of the number of cards with an in their mana cost: that feels like a much more natural thing to count. I think this would feel a lot more coherent if the activated ability was an etb ability instead that actually used the X in the cost. maybe reveal the top X cards, put a card with X in its cost into your hand?
2/5

ok I think that's long enough. this one has a pretty clear winner to me: Useless! congrats, nominating now, new round soon.

Thanks! My card originally discarded things, for the madness and threshold synergy, and it didn't bother returning anything, but it felt like there was potentially too much synergy. It's more strictly a drawback this way.

You are correct on all accounts. I forgot about the enters the battlefield tapped clause. Would have included it for sure.

Being able to transfer to lands is actually intentional, like-wise with how you can't choose to transfer the immolation counters or not. The idea is that the opponent has an option to prevent immolation counters from being transferred to their lands by baiting out with creatures etc. Its presence is meant to signify a race and a way for rdw to round up a game.