Vanity

[asi]

A new idea ("new" meaning stolen from Yawgmoth's Bargain):

Vanity

Enchantment
You can't gain life.
, pay one life:  Draw a card.
"Not a good bargain, if you ask me..."
-Baki, Goblin fool

Baki is a character I use on several other cards I designed, so don't wonder to find him here (yes, I know that Baki is also a wizard. Names repeat, okay?)

It was originally a 4BBBB Bargain with the second ability, but drawing cards is too broken to not cost mana, I think.




for flavour reasons:

Vanity

Enchantment
You can't gain life.
Whenever you draw a card, lose 1 life.
: Draw a card.
"Not a good bargain, if you ask me..."
-Baki, Goblin fool

[Slack]

Having the ability to gain life back and draw yet more cards is not what made Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain good.  If both of those cards had that extra clause of not being able to gain life people would still play them and they would still be broken.  So, I guess the ultimate question here is the cost to draw a card enough.  I'm tempted to say this is fairly well balanced given its prohibitive casting cost (Greed was 3B).  I think maybe the mana in the activation cost should be black.  While it's not like other colors are going to sneak this into play it's probably not a bad idea.

[asi]

Having the ability to gain life back and draw yet more cards is not what made Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain good.

Sure, the ability to draw cards without paying mana was broken, it allowed the decks that played them to gain such a massive advantage in just one turn that they were likely able to kill their opponents, either by a combo or by pure card advantage. The life-clause isn't there to make it less broken; it could easily be dropped, but I liked the flavour in combination with the name, so I added it.

It could have a black activation, but as you said, it already costs triple-B. The way it is worded now allows it to be put into play via Show and Tell, for example, and then abused in a not-so-black deck, and I like that (otherwise, it would be a really bad card, I think.).

[parallax]

I don't see the flavor of this card. What does Vanity have to do with drawing cards? Also, why print a new version of Greed? This card isn't different enough to be interesting.

[asi]

Differences to Greed:

-more black in the casting cost, less black in the activation; Vanity only requires you to have three black mana when you cast it (Ritual, Show and Tell, Academy Rector and similiar cards can bring it on-line without requiring much black mana). Greed can't be used three times off a Grim Monolith, while this can.
- It requires one life, not two; this makes it twice as good as the uber-bad Greed and makes it feel a little bit like Bargain
-It has the "you can't gain life" clause, which is mostly for flavour reasons (I'll explain later). This means that once it hits the board, it will become hard to gain any life to draw additional cards. Also, it makes Swords to Plowshares a drawback-less removal for your opponent (not important, but nice, I think).

"Vanity" on this card means the same as caducity, transitoriness or fugacity. It's referring to Vanitas (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas ), meaning that everything has to die and rot away sometime. This card will make you die sooner or later if you try to abuse it (of course, that flavour would be better if it had "skip your draw step", but that makes it too bad in my opinion), so I thought it would be a fitting name.

[parallax]

Change it to:

You can't gain life.
Whenever you draw a card, lose 1 life.
: Draw a card.

It's more elegant and expresses the Vanitas feel better.

[chrissss]

I liek the card a lot.

paying life AND mana for cards is very balanced. not paying mana is the broken part of necro and bargain.

the flavour has a lot of humour, it even made me smile.

[asi]

Change it to:

You can't gain life.
Whenever you draw a card, lose 1 life.
: Draw a card.

It's more elegant and expresses the Vanitas feel better.

That's one wonderful idea. Truly elegant, thank you!

I liek the card a lot.

paying life AND mana for cards is very balanced. not paying mana is the broken part of necro and bargain.

the flavour has a lot of humour, it even made me smile.

I thought so too. Thanks for the supporting feedback.

[asi]

24 h clock.

[asi]

Again 24h.

[Matt]

I don't know if I like the name, it immediately made me think I was going to be seeing an incarnation. I do like the card, though, and the flavor text isn't too bad (I usually hate "funny" flavor texts so that's high praise).

[Darkenslight]

Would the name 'Dark Contract' be of use here?

[andrewpate]

There is certainly a history of "dark contracts" being related to card drawing.  Consider Yawgmoth's Bargain, Contract from Below, Oath of Lim-Dul, Infernal Contract, etc.  I think that Dark Contract is a fine name.  Certainly much better than "Vanity," which sounds, as Matt pointed out, more like something that would include the phrase "If Vanity is in your graveyard and you control a Swamp..." than a fixed Greed.

[asi]

I didn't think of it sounding like an incarnation until Matt pointed it out. I still love the name, and I don't think I've got enough reason to change it to something 08/15, like "Dark Contract of evil "Draw cards for life OMG !!!111!!". I even made a picture [i.e. googled for it]  with a "Vanitas"-image, and I think magic artists could do something similiar with a "classic" feeling to it.

http://img62.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vanityvm4.jpg is where the pic is. I could certainly change the name, but the existence of incarnations doesn't really convince me.

[parallax]

It seems like Incarnations have ruined a lot of good names for cards. C'mon guys, that was one cycle from like three or four years ago. Not every card named after an abstract concept needs to work from the graveyard.

[Darkenslight]

Having seen the picture, I'd think that something like 'Collection of Avarice' would be a decent, if not a particularly good name.