Decree of Fiends

[SpencerForHire]

Decree of Fiends

Sorcery

Lose X life.

Cascade (When you play this spell, remove cards from the top of your library from the game until you remove
a nonland card that costs less.  You may play it without paying its mana cost.  Put the removed cards on the
bottom in a random order.)

Only fools perceive tutelage from demons as the worst to come.

The engineering of this card assumes X can manipulate the number being cascaded for.


Current Version - As of August 18th, 2009:

Decree of Fiends

Sorcery

X can't be 0.
Lose X life.
Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card with converted mana cost equal to X. You may play that card without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom of your library in a random order.  

Only fools perceive tutelage from demons as the worst to come.

[zeus-online]

Pay   Cascade into Hybergenesis/Ancestral visions/Lotus bloom/SomeOtherNastySuspendCard...do very mean things?

[jro]

The fundamental tension that this card tries to create is backwards.  Cascade as a mechanic gets worse when the spell costs more.  Why would I would I ever want to pay, say, 9 mana for X?  So I can lose more life and have less control over what I hit on my Cascade, including the possibility of hitting this?  On the other hand, I could pay 0 mana for X, lose zero life, and know that I was going to hit Hypergenesis or Ancestral Visions or whatever other broken 0-mana spell I'd like.  Even paying B for a Black Lotus or a Mox seems really good.

A scalable version of this spell might be possible using Breakthrough as a model.  Something like (ignoring exact numbers for the moment):
Decree of Fiends
XB
Lose 20-X life.
Cascade

Although maybe a more fitting version would be something like Demonic Consultation:
Decree of Fiends
XB
Set aside the top X cards of your library.  Exile your library.  Put the set aside cards on top of your library in a random order.
Cascade

Both of those assume that the point of this card is to be able to Cascade into zero mana spells.  If that's not a strict requirement, then this is a lot more elegant, but just isn't very good:
Decree of Fiends
XB
Your life total becomes X.
Cascade

[SpencerForHire]

I'm using logic that recently was used on Trinisphere in the design of this card: "Sometimes we have to accept that a card we want to make may be silly in Vintage but is correct to print for Magic as a whole. Trinisphere is one of those cards."  

In terms of things like the cards with suspend that cost nothing, those are particularly interesting situations but it seems like you could have some issues with clumsiness in your deck if you had to tinker up those affects.

Yes you could grab moxen and the like, but in most any format besides Vintage it probably isn't amazing to dig for zero.  I also really don't like the 20-X because it prevents it from being where I want it to be which is a card that makes you think long and hard: when I look at this I think of a non vintage situation in which you go "do I want to lose less life and dig just a little bit for xyz" do I want to pay much more and find a big bomb.  I think due to being unable to manipulate without half the deck being based around it, and not being able to cheat casting costs that this isn't particularly ridiculous.  

Even in a vintage situation at best paying zero gives you 4 Dark Rituals (grabbing Lotus).  Yes that is strong for storm but then again storm has warped and created a lot of design situations.


I had a backup though if the Black Lotus argument did come up, make the casting cost .  It isn't what I want in this card (what I want is aggressively costed) but it fixes these issues for the most part.

[zeus-online]

I'm pretty sure it would suck in vintage, i'm alot more concerned about extended and maybe legacy.

[SpencerForHire]

Then what's the major concern, grabbing LED is decent but not game breaking.  Especially spending 4 slots on it.  The suspend cards were an oversight on my part but even then the worst mentioned thus far is the Eureka suspend (hypergenesis?) and we already have natural order decks playing the same game.

[zeus-online]

Except that natural order is a turn 3 play...maybe turn 2 with a good hand.
While this is turn 1.

There's a huge difference between    and  .

You could also get Ancestral visions...thus having a black sorcery speed ancestral. Or lotus bloom and get a lotus for .

I think increasing the cost to  would be better.

[SpencerForHire]

Changed to prevent stupid plays.

Anything else to suggest?

[Darkenslight]

What about this card design?

Decree of Fiends 
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast Decree of Fiends, pay X life, where X is the number of cards in your graveyard.

Cascade

Whilst I like the card designed already, ithe above card would be interesting in the late game.

[SpencerForHire]

Your design does not allow for a manipulation of the cascade cost which was the logic behind my entire card.  The loss of life was their to ensure an additional penalty, albeit a small one.

At a static cost of 3 there really doesn't feel like much of a need to produce an additional cost; it would almost seem to be streamlined for a fast deck versus a long game deck.

[Matt]

I don't see when you would ever NOT make X=0. If you pay 5 mana to cascade into a 4cc (or less!) effect (and lose life on top of it), that's crap. This spell is always going to be overpaying for the effect of whatever you cascade into, so the only way to make up for that is if this is run in a deck where it can consistently tutor up a specific spell.

It sounds like what you were trying for was a card that could be used early to get an early drop, and used late to get a bigger drop. But that's not what cascade does - when you play it for X=4 lategame, you're likely as not to wind up paying six mana and four life for a 2cc card!

I think what you want is:

Decree of Fiends

Sorcery
Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card with converted mana cost equal to X. You may play that card without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom of your library in a random order.

[SpencerForHire]

This is an interesting way to make the card but we could just as easily run into the situation where it's just as abused as my original version.  It still grabs Ancestral Vision (etc) for and we find it stronger than my version because if you know your deck well enough (and you should) you could hypothetically grab specific cards every time depending on how your curve your deck.

[Anusien]

I think the goal of the card has to be to punish players for choosing small Xs, not benefit them.  I like something that causes you to lose less life on large X, not more.

[Matt]

you could hypothetically grab specific cards every time depending on how your curve your deck.

I think maybe you don't realize that in practice, that's all your version will ever do, too, for the reasons listed above. Your card gets almost strictly worse the more mana you put into it, because you lose more life and have less chance of turning up what you're looking for.

[SpencerForHire]

Fair enough.  I think my logic was that by making it cascade instead of an EXACT cost, we would produce a situation in which the tutor would have some randomness to it in constructed (like grabbing a brainstorm instead of a Noble Hierarch instead of a Tarmogoyf if priced at two.  But if you don't think there is a balance issue the way you wrote it... Would you say it would be fair at , , or ?

[Matt]

You could always run with the, "X can't be zero" technology. If you do, is probably fine.

[SpencerForHire]

That seems fair to me.  This would bring it very close to what I wanted while fixing the biggest issue which was creating a card that would inevitably warp a format.

Edit: Updated in the original post.

[Darkenslight]

I'd recommend moving the 'Can't be 0' clause to the beginning to avoid confusion of someone playing it for just 

[Anusien]

What about at XBBB and it Cascaded?  Makes it much simpler.  Then it's not better than the existing CMC=3 Cascade spells, and you can allow X=0.

I'd still like to see it get better for you at higher mana costs to offset the randomness, not worse.

[SpencerForHire]

If this is the case, like Matt and some people were mentioning we're never going to see X get payed (or very rarely).  

I'm fairly happy with the current incarnation if people think it isn't too powerful (which cascade was going to offset).

[Matt]

It could be something like XBB, cascade, and gain X life. That version might conceivably, sometimes, perhaps, see play for X != 0.

Not sure how you're supposed to justify black getting a lifegain spell, though.

[Anusien]

As a pure lifegain spell, could it be white?  What's the flavor on Cascade anyway?

[SpencerForHire]

The ability to dig through ones deck in either a controlled or uncontrolled manner has more often been black.  When I view this card, I really think of cards like Plunge Into Darkness, Spoils of the Vault, and Demonic Consultation.  Instead of naming and gambling with the various penalties we just find that this card is more "loose" about what it can dig for but has less of a drawback.  I rather like the non cascade form of the card now after reviewing it as it allows for a typically stronger card that isn't using an older sets' mechanic: something I was uncomfortable about from the start...

I've leaned towards altering old mechanics in each of the other cards in this "cycle" that I'm making.  The Sphinx plays with something like affinity but the affect gets stronger instead of the casting cost lessening.  Similarly the imprint ability on the red card isn't really imprint as we know it but a guideline or restriction for the tutoring affect.

[Anusien]

Fair.  Was trying to open up options for the white card in the cycle, which is probably the hardest one.

[SpencerForHire]

The white one has been very tough for design so I'll have to brainstorm on that one a bit longer.  I am quite content with this however; we could probably throw the 24 hour clock at this one.