Soul Grant - Another attempt at a black drawer

[graedus]

Soul Grant
1BB
Sorcery
If you have exactly one card in hand, you may reveal your hand rather than pay Soul Grant's mana cost.
Search your library for any three black cards and reveal them. An opponent chooses one. Remove that card from the game and put the rest into your hand. You lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost. Then shuffle your library.

Rarity=Rare

*Edit: card format*

Just to take a reference point, compared to Intuition this card is inferior because: has double colored requirement for the same converted mana cost, searches only for black cards (this means NO ARTIFACTS), life loss is involved (around 2 life, depends), it is a sorcery instead of an instant, and removes from the game instead of discarding. It is superior since it gets two cards instead of one and can be played for free on an empty hand. I think this balances off the card.

Comments or Suggestions?

[Alfred]

Who is Grant?

[Jebus]

What is your intention on the alternate cost?  I'm a little confused on that.

[Ephraim]

1. Use the format suggested by the rules posted at the top of the Card Creation Forum.

2. This has some minor template issues. I'm pretty sure that the card leaves your hand upon announcement and then you pay associated costs, so this would probably need to be:

If you have no cards in your hand, you may play ~this~ without payint its mana cost.
Search your library for any three black cards and reveal them. An opponent chooses one. Remove that card from the game and lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost. Put the other two cards into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

3. As far as the card itself goes, I think it's a little too strong. Intuition is a pretty good card and I think that (especially for an off-colour card), this is better.

 Cards like Necropotence demonstrate that paying life to get cards into your hand is not a significant drawback. With this, for three mana (or zero, if this is the last card in your hand!) you get to tutor for two cards. Granted, you don't get the best of the three cards you dig up, but in a deck that is likely to have at least three very good cards, this is hardly ever going to hurt you. Although they have to be black, mono-black is a reasonably strong archetype (although maybe not in Type 1). At the very least, you need to remove the clause that makes this card playable for free. You might also reasonably have this card only let you dig up two cards, one of which you keep and one of which you ditch (oppponent's choice), losing life equal to the C.M.C. of either card. That would be fair at .

[graedus]

@Alfred:

Grant, as in "Land Grant", a gift or permission.


@Ephraim & Jebus:

The one card requirement in the alternate casting cost is intentional. You must have exactly one card besides Soul Grant to play it for its alternate mana cost. This one card issue acts like a little annoyance, it won't work on an empty hand, if for example the hand has been discarded for other effects (LED comes into mind) or by the opponent.

@Ephraim:

If this card would search only for two other cards, it would be bad search, even compared to Diabolic or Rhystic Tutor. The search slots in Type I are already too crowded to add something like that.

While creating this card I had obviously Type I mono-b in mind, this site, after all, is dedicated to this format. Current Extended is not dominated by mono-b, neither is Type II, thus this ends up in discussing its utility for Type I. The card is powerful but not too powerful as to challenge other card drawers, and it is certainly not BLUE.

Perhaps it could be fair to add that all the cards searched would be different. I'm not sure if the wording would go "different cards" or "cards that do not share the same name".

[Jacob Orlove]

Current Extended is not dominated by mono-b, neither is Type II

But with a 3 mana tutor that lets you get not one, but TWO copies of the card you want, I'm sure mono-b, or heavy black decks would come back.

[walkingdude]

also the cmc life loss is not a good draw back (for a tutor) because powerful X spells have low Cmc when not on the stack. Death cloud for example.