mana, mana everywhere...

[Matt]

Name
<cost>
World Enchantment
If a player would lose life to mana burn, all players lose that much life instead.

It's obvious what it does. But how oculd it see print? Just how expensive should this be? I'm thinking very, as once it's in play you have an uncounterable, unending stream of burn (provided you have the life to spare!)

[Matt]

Current wording:

Name
<cost>
World Enchantment
If a player would lose life to mana burn, all players lose that much life instead.

[49 Cents]

Guess it would cost alot, because it's basically a kill card. It seems red but I think it would be to strong for red because they have burn and stuff.. I could see this around 5/6 mana.

[dandan]

Nice but uncool. That strikes me as being rather Red. On the other hand, sharing Green would do it this way

Name
<cost>
World Enchantment
If a player would lose life to mana burn, instead all players gain that much mana

(not sure if that is OK rules-wise but I think the intent is clear)

[Liam-K]

Life.dec already wins with test of endurance on colour so making it cost 5 isn't too unreasonable.  If this is red, it goes in stupid burn decks to stop you from stalling out... not sure I like that idea.

[Norm4eva]

This is a hard card to cost.  The concerns about burn.dec using this to ensure they don't poop out is valid.  I think it should be Green, and in fact if you look at the card's function, it's basically a Hurricane for players only.  There's not a whole lot of enchantments that mention mana that aren't Green besides.  Provides an interesting kill for Elfball.dec as well
I think a good preliminary CC is 3GG.

[Ephraim]

It needs to cost more than Pestillence, which can serve as a benchmark card for this. Pestillence deals damage to creatures, but also goes away if no creatures are left in play. Pestilence doesn't let other people put mana into it, but I doubt that other people suffering mana burn is going to be a common source of damage from the proposed spell. All in all, then, I think this is better than Pestillence. Because of the functional similarity to Pestillence in that regard, this could be black. Alternately, because this is about people suffering equally, this could be white. I think it's a knee-jerk reaction to suggest that this be red (damage) or green (mana.)

[dandan]

Lets play Limited, you with this at 3GG and me with Pestilence. I remember that Urza's Saga (? not sure which set) prerelease. I won every game that I got Pestilence out apart from one where they managed to destroy it, I lost all other games (both I and my deck sucked) but still had a winning record and should have made top 8 but my opponent went back on his word (back then you could 'resign' and we both needed a win to top 8 but were low on time so we went for a coin toss, I won and the tosser refused to lose - the judge ruled that it was allowed although the winner would get a warning [therefore he said that it was allowed]).

My point is that this is a lot weaker than Pestilence but IF it went to Green or White would give 'DD' to colours that shouldn't have that. If it goes Green I prefer to give everyone mana, which may or may not end up hurting them, than cause life loss (not a very Green or White thing).

[JAG]

@dandan: this has nothing to do with the card in question, but the fact that you both went for a coin toss to determine the match result screams "Cheating" to me.  The rules explicitly state that players may not use a random method to determine a match result.  I'm pretty sure this has been the case for a very long time.  Now, I'm sure you didn't deliberately cheat (you had a winning record and you said yourself you were bad, so you probably thought your deck was good), but this is certainly a case where the judge should have said "before you flip that coin, you should know that doing so is Cheating."

-JM

[dandan]

At the time, I'm fairly sure that it was not against the rules, we even called a judge to ask. The judge said that the winner would get a warning, effectively a slap on the wrist, as it was obviously questionable. In my opinion, I felt it was justified because my opponent was one of those players who took forever to make decisions and his slow play meant that we didn't have enough time to finish a third game. His deck was full of bombs but mine wasn't terrible but he made a number of questionable plays so I fancied my chances.
In any case, if I agree something with someone, I expect them to keep their word. As I mentioned the judge had already ruled on the legality of the coin flip (obviously in Limited, losing a game is as easy as making a bad blocking decision) and so it was legal at that time and in that place. Cheating is breaking the rules, which I feel was not the case as we explained what we wanted to do to the judge, a procedure I'm fairly sure Mike Long does not follow.

My main point is that Pestilence is much much stronger than this in Limited.

I really really like the idea of this putting mana into everyone's mana pool and therefore being Green. It makes far more sense than merely everyone losing life because one person has excess mana. (it is rather 'Vineyard' but obviously the times when it is used are more tactical)

Locked because this idea sucks. -Matt