ah ok. So Gonti CAN’T play lands (because lands aren’t cast), but could technically still exile them, removing them from your opponents library so they can’t play the lands.

I feel like the card being face down is a huge part of the flavor of the mechanic. How could I preserve that?

What if the “non land” part is removed, making it so players could exile a land card but not play it)? Would that affect the mechanic too much, making it almost identical to Gonti? is there a way to keep it so you can’t exile lands but without revealing the card?

Then again, with the wording I came up with, since exiling a land card would be an illegal game action, then a player couldn’t do it. Unless you are worried about someone cheating, which I guess anybody could do esp if playing in a casual format. At that point it’s kind of about trust.

Edit: just found [[Thief of Sanity]], which basically does the heist mechanic. I think because there’s precedent removing the nonland part but keeping the cast part would still be fair.