Brains Over Brawn

[Tash]

Brains Over Brawn
2{u}{u}{u}
Instant

Draw X Cards, Where X Is Your Opponent's Life Total Minus Your Life Total.

What You Have Gained In Strength You Have Lost In Power.

***

Was thinking about this as a sorcery, and the Triple U in the casting cost mandates its use in heavy blue decks.

Any thoughts?

[Ephraim]

I think that this is going to end up having to cost more. If you compare it to Balance of Power, which allows you to draw cards equal to the difference in size between your hand and your opponent's hand, you may see why. Balance of Power will almost never draw you more than seven cards and will often draw significantly fewer. Your suggested card, however, stands a good chance of picking up that many cards on a regular basis -- especially if you use something like Plunge into Darkness or (fates forefend) Necropotence to drop your life total quickly.

Also, the wording of Balance of Power is:
If target opponent has more cards in hand than you, draw cards equal to the difference.

Your card should probably read:
If target opponent has more life than you, draw cards equal to the difference.
It should probably also cost {U}. It's hard to cost this effect because it isn't especially blue to use life differences as the basis for drawing cards.

[Matt]

Maybe this just shouldn't be blue? Make it white, or blue/white.

[Ephraim]

Now that I think about it, this is vaguely similar to another card in the master list:

Hope Amid Suffering
{W}{W}
Sorcery
If an opponent has at least three more life than you, you may draw two cards. If an opponent has at least seven more life than you, you may draw four cards instead.

That card looks for fixed life differences and yields fixed card advantage. It's also a sorcery -- if you want this to be an instant, it's going to raise the cost significantly. Looking at the ratios of life difference to card drawing, though, it would probably be easy to get away with another card like this:

Brains over Brawn
{W}{U}
Instant
If an opponent has more life than you, draw cards equal to half the difference, rounded down.

Up to a difference of eight life, this yields similar card advantage to Hope Amid Suffering, with a little more granularity. For life differences greater than eight life, this yields significantly more card advantage. If you were to make this a sorcery, you could probably cost it at {W}{U}.

[Matt]

This is going to make control mirrors weird, what with mana burn and all.