Meh, I like it, but I feel like 5 to potentially only kill 2 creatures is bad against tokens and Rally decks. On the other hand if they have no creatures to sacrifice and no cards in hand, doing 10 damage to them is pretty sweet.
It seems ok for limited. There are too many options on how your opponents pay for this though in my mind even with doing it twice. Paying 5 mana to have someone drop 10 life in commander isnt very good.
Overall its a weak card. I hope there is no cycle but fear it to be so.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Meh, I like it, but I feel like 5 to potentially only kill 2 creatures is bad against tokens and Rally decks. On the other hand if they have no creatures to sacrifice and no cards in hand, doing 10 damage to them is pretty sweet.
And if they have no cards in their hands and only 1 creature on the battlefield they will / can lose a creature and 5 life for 5 mana which I think is nice
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
It's 10 life when they're at 20 with a strong board and it's two Eldrazi Spawn tokens when they're at 10. Opening a Remorseless Punishment is like finding a used condom in your pack of OGW. It's trash in Commander too where life and crappy tokens are easily had. I'm not even anti-punisher cards, I'm all about Vexing Devil and have been known to enjoy a Browbeat or two.
This is a fifteen-cent bulk rare that will show up in Ebay repacks and those stupid bulk rare boxes at tournaments where you put any 2 rares in to take any one of your choice out.
These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
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If you can fire this off against a control deck, it's amazing. They are unlikely to have creatures or more than one planeswalker out, so for 3BB, you can make them sac a planeswalker and lose 5 life/discard two cards.
It's 10 life when they're at 20 with a strong board and it's two Eldrazi Spawn tokens when they're at 10. Opening a Remorseless Punishment is like finding a used condom in your pack of OGW. It's trash in Commander too where life and crappy tokens are easily had. I'm not even anti-punisher cards, I'm all about Vexing Devil and have been known to enjoy a Browbeat or two.
This is a fifteen-cent bulk rare that will show up in Ebay repacks and those stupid bulk rare boxes at tournaments where you put any 2 rares in to take any one of your choice out.
I have to agree with this. I generally like punisher type cards, as they allow you to have cards that are generally very efficient (Or potentially busted in effect if used right, such as with Browbeat, where you *probably* are drawing 3 for 3 in red, no less) at the cost of giving the opponent some decisions.
The issue with this one is that the only mode which is really that efficient is the loss of life, and that's only really the case if it doubles up. None of the possible combinations are really worth 5 mana at sorcery speed.
1. Double Mind Rot isn't that amazing at 5 mana.
2. Double Diabolic Edict isn't that great at 5 mana (Where actual sweepers are present).
3. Mind Rot + Edict is extremely inefficient at 5 mana.
4. Mind Rot + Losing 5 life isn't efficient at 5 mana.
5. Edict + Losing five life is really, really bad at 5 mana.
6. Losing 10 life, while certainly efficient, also may not matter much in the grand scheme.
In order for you to get this to do almost anything you want, ever, you need to attack the opponent's hand, life total and boardstate to force difficult decisions. And even then, I don't think it's particularly efficient enough in any of its effects at 5 mana to really matter. If it were 4 mana, I would be a bit more interested. The fact that they get the least-bad of 3 options (Instead of 2, which is the usual) means that it should have been pushed a lot more than it is. Punisher effects get weaker the more options the opponent is given, and the more divergent they are. I highly doubt at 4 mana it would be at all problematic, or format warping in any format. It would be a nifty card.
thememan: While you are correct in the sense that 'discard 4' for 5 is perhaps not playable, most cards outside of monoblack (meaning not Mind Sludge) will get you at best 'discard 3' for 5, so that mode is at least more efficient than the standard effect at that cost.
If you can fire this off against a control deck, it's amazing. They are unlikely to have creatures or more than one planeswalker out, so for 3BB, you can make them sac a planeswalker and lose 5 life/discard two cards.
If you can fire this off against a control deck, it's amazing. They are unlikely to have creatures or more than one planeswalker out, so for 3BB, you can make them sac a planeswalker and lose 5 life/discard two cards.
"If" being highly unlikely.
Just wait for them to tap out for a sweeper. It's pretty easy to fill up the board with threats early on for Abzan aggro or Jeskai (with Mantis Riders). Either they pay a lot of life or a lot of cards. Both options are very unpalatable to control.
If you can fire this off against a control deck, it's amazing. They are unlikely to have creatures or more than one planeswalker out, so for 3BB, you can make them sac a planeswalker and lose 5 life/discard two cards.
"If" being highly unlikely.
Just wait for them to tap out for a sweeper. It's pretty easy to fill up the board with threats early on for Abzan aggro or Jeskai (with Mantis Riders). Either they pay a lot of life or a lot of cards. Both options are very unpalatable to control.
So your master plan is to spend your turn 5 after a control deck spent their turn 4 or 5 killing all your creatures to make them lose 5 life and pitch the worst card in their hand?
Sounds fine to me, I don't mind going into your turn 6 with all my mana untapped and you having no board presence.
Plus, with control decks running some combination of Jace, Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise, discard isn't even 100% upside for you.
While the flavor text is cool, the card is terrible. Why does Wizards even make punisher cards? They are unintuitive and lead to poor gameplay, which is stuff that Wizards has said they don't want to encourage.
What's bad is people reflexively repeating this. Remember a little pro tournament staple called Desecration Demon, or that red one that also saw serious play (sorry can't remember name) in burn decks?
Some punisher cards are good. Some are bad. Like everything else in MTG.
I don't think this card is great, but it stimulates interesting gameplay decisions, which is what punisher cards are good at.
Uncharted Realms
Modern Affinity
Soul Sisters
Izzet Delver of Secrets
Mono Green Stompy
Modern Red Burn
Gruul Dragons
Mono Black Aggro
EDH Decks:
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
Omnath, Locus of Mana
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
Tiny Leaders:
Vorel of the Hull Clade
Overall its a weak card. I hope there is no cycle but fear it to be so.
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And if they have no cards in their hands and only 1 creature on the battlefield they will / can lose a creature and 5 life for 5 mana which I think is nice
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UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
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Reflector Mage is very cool-
too bad it can't target any nonland permanent!
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
This is a fifteen-cent bulk rare that will show up in Ebay repacks and those stupid bulk rare boxes at tournaments where you put any 2 rares in to take any one of your choice out.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
I have to agree with this. I generally like punisher type cards, as they allow you to have cards that are generally very efficient (Or potentially busted in effect if used right, such as with Browbeat, where you *probably* are drawing 3 for 3 in red, no less) at the cost of giving the opponent some decisions.
The issue with this one is that the only mode which is really that efficient is the loss of life, and that's only really the case if it doubles up. None of the possible combinations are really worth 5 mana at sorcery speed.
1. Double Mind Rot isn't that amazing at 5 mana.
2. Double Diabolic Edict isn't that great at 5 mana (Where actual sweepers are present).
3. Mind Rot + Edict is extremely inefficient at 5 mana.
4. Mind Rot + Losing 5 life isn't efficient at 5 mana.
5. Edict + Losing five life is really, really bad at 5 mana.
6. Losing 10 life, while certainly efficient, also may not matter much in the grand scheme.
In order for you to get this to do almost anything you want, ever, you need to attack the opponent's hand, life total and boardstate to force difficult decisions. And even then, I don't think it's particularly efficient enough in any of its effects at 5 mana to really matter. If it were 4 mana, I would be a bit more interested. The fact that they get the least-bad of 3 options (Instead of 2, which is the usual) means that it should have been pushed a lot more than it is. Punisher effects get weaker the more options the opponent is given, and the more divergent they are. I highly doubt at 4 mana it would be at all problematic, or format warping in any format. It would be a nifty card.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
"If" being highly unlikely.
Just wait for them to tap out for a sweeper. It's pretty easy to fill up the board with threats early on for Abzan aggro or Jeskai (with Mantis Riders). Either they pay a lot of life or a lot of cards. Both options are very unpalatable to control.
So your master plan is to spend your turn 5 after a control deck spent their turn 4 or 5 killing all your creatures to make them lose 5 life and pitch the worst card in their hand?
Sounds fine to me, I don't mind going into your turn 6 with all my mana untapped and you having no board presence.
Plus, with control decks running some combination of Jace, Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise, discard isn't even 100% upside for you.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
What's bad is people reflexively repeating this. Remember a little pro tournament staple called Desecration Demon, or that red one that also saw serious play (sorry can't remember name) in burn decks?
Some punisher cards are good. Some are bad. Like everything else in MTG.
I don't think this card is great, but it stimulates interesting gameplay decisions, which is what punisher cards are good at.