Depraved Augury

[Ephraim]

In a previous thread, I came up with the following card. It's interesting in that it has the potential to retrieve as many as six cards to your hand at once. (On the other hand, it can also deal you 18 damage in one blow.) Obviously, neither of those possibilities is going to occur extremely often. What probably will happen is that somebody will use this in conjunction with scry to grab to additional cards or as a way of tutoring for a single card in the top six.

Depraved Augury (was Hematomancy)
{B}
Sorcery

Name any number of cards. Reveal the top six cards of your library. If a named card is revealed this way, put it into your hand. Remove all other cards revealed this way from the game. For each named card not revealed this way, you lose three life.

However, it was quickly revealed to me that this card bears a lot of similrity to a card already undergoing playtesting for inclusion in TMD I. I would like to so something with this card, but it needs some modifications before it would be sufficiently dissimilar to Soul Search. The other possibility is that I submit this card as-is for consideration in TMD II or in case Soul Search turns out to be too powerful.

Soul Search

Sorcery
Name a card. Reveal the top ten cards of your library. Put all cards with the chosen name into your hand and remove the rest from the game.
You lose life equal to the number of cards put in your hand in this way.

[Ephraim]

Current Wording:

Depraved Augury
{B}{B}
Sorcery

Each opponent names a nonland card. For each opponent, reveal five cards from the top of your library. For each copy of a named card revealed this way, you lose four life. For each opponent, chose one card revealed this way and put it into your hand. Put all other cards revealed this way into your graveyard. (You may choose cards not named by an opponent.)

[Ephraim]

I've come up with something else that's interesting to do with this card. How is this ability:

Depraved Augury
{B}
Sorcery

Each opponent names a nonland card. Reveal the top seven cards of your library. For each copy of a named card revealed this way, you lose four life. Choose one card revealed this way and put it into your hand. Remove all other cards revealed this way from the game.

[Jacob Orlove]

I had to read that twice, but now I like it. If you just skim the card, though, it makes it look like you can only choose one of the cards they name. Is there some way to make the wording not give that impression?

[Ephraim]

I could put reminder text on it. Something like (You may choose a card that was not named by an opponent.)

I'm also wondering about the power level of this card. I've made it {B}, because it's a very black effect, but this card is really bad. As a tutor, it's not even in the same ball park as something like Spoils of the Vault, which is barely playable. At the very least, would it be appropriate to let it fill your graveyard, rather than dump the remaining cards out of the game?

[Jacob Orlove]

Instant threshold is probably fine.

Another option would be to let your opponents chosoe 3 of the 7 cards for you to keep. That number should be enough to make this worthwhile, while the BB mana cost and threat of massive life loss should keep this balanced.

[Ephraim]

I just had an idea. Would it be inappropriate to make this card intentionally scalable for multiplayer games?

Something like this:

Current Wording:

Depraved Augury
{B}
Sorcery

Each opponent names a nonland card. For each opponent, reveal five cards from the top of your library. For each copy of a named card revealed this way, you lose four life. For each opponent, chose one card revealed this way and put it into your hand. Put all other cards revealed this way into your graveyard. (You may choose cards not named by an opponent.)

There are two problems I see with this text. One, it's long. Two, I'm not sure if "For each opponent, reveal five cards from the top of your library" works. It might just reveal the same five cards for each opponent.

[Ephraim]

Changes made. 48 Hour Clock

[Jacob Orlove]

I don't like how long and complicated this is.

[Ephraim]

I don't really like that either. For comparison, I'm including the text for Spoils of the Vault, which is about as long as a card's rule text should be.

Each opponent names a nonland card. For each opponent, reveal five cards from the top of your library. For each copy of a named card revealed this way, you lose four life. For each opponent, chose one card revealed this way and put it into your hand. Put all other cards revealed this way into your graveyard. (You may choose cards not named by an opponent.)

Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal the named card, then put that card into your hand. Remove all other cards revealed this way from the game, and you lose 1 life for each of the removed cards.

Indeed, mine is longer by several lines (as it would appear on a card.)  I'll think about what can be done with this, keeping in mind the card length restriction.

[Laurie Cheers]

Each opponent names a nonland card. You reveal the top five times X cards of your library, where X is the number of opponents. Put X of those cards into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
Lose four life for each card you reveal this way with the same name as a named card.

I think the concept is a little clumsy. Maybe it could be treated as a cross between Storm and Radiate?

Target opponent names a nonland card. Reveal the top 5 cards of your library, then put one of them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard. You lose 4 life for each card revealed this way that has the chosen name.
When you play ~, put a copy of it onto the stack for each other opponent it could target. Each copy targets a different opponent.

[Ephraim]

The following idea is probably still too long, but it's getting shorter and still preserves the idea of the opponent having some effect on the outcome of the card. This may not be the final iteration, but it's getting closer to a workable incarnation of this card.

You and an opponent each name a nonland card. Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a named card. If you named that card, put that card into your hand and put all other cards revealed this way in your graveyard. If an opponent named that card, remove all cards revealed this way from the game and you lose six life.

[Jacob Orlove]

That's pretty awesome.

[Laurie Cheers]

Ooh, that's quite interesting.
I don't think it's too strong, even if you take off the last sentence. Compare:

Each player names a card. Reveal cards from your library until you reveal one of the named cards. Put that card into your hand and remove all other cards revealed this way from the game.

Basically, you name the card you want, and your opponent names something useless (maybe swamps), and you get to keep whichever one comes up first. It's a weaker version of Demonic Consultation.

[Ephraim]

That just doesn't work, Laurie. You will almost certainly get a land (what your opponent named) or just the card you were looking for, since your opponent also has incentive to name a card he or she knows for certain you're not using.

The one thing I'm worried about with my wording is what would happen if both players named the same card.

[Jacob Orlove]

Just specify that their card has to be different. They'll choose second anyway.

[Matt]

I liked it a lot better when there wasn't that extraneous life loss hanging on.

[Ephraim]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, Matt. I don't think any of the incarnations of this card so far have not had a life-loss associated with them.