War of Attrition

[stolen]

CURRENT WORDING

War of Attrition
Enchantment
{W}{W}
Skip your draw step and your combat phase.
If you have no cards in hand, sacrifice War of Attrition
At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent sacrifices a creature.


War of Attrition
Enchantment
2WWW
During your draw step, you may chose not to draw a card.  If you do, target opponent may not draw a card during his or her next draw step.
During your untap step, you may chose not to untap any lands.  If you do, target opponent may not untap any lands during his or her untap step.
Creatures you control may not attack.


The first two abilities both have me a bit worried.  The first obviously moreso, since you ca lock down the game completely by preventing your opponent from ever drawing (sans via a draw spell or ability).  The second one can function just like a Winter Orb*, but, against a blue deck, you might be able to keep them tapped down and the untap yourself and cast something uncounterable except by a pitch counter/Daze.

The creatures not attacking is there so that you cannot gain board position and then plop this down and win with creatures.  Cursed Scroll, Millstone, and Pingers can all still finish the game, but I don't think such a combo would be broken (your opponent's creatures can still attack).  I am a bit concerned about some setups, like have a win condition out, then WoG then this.

This has no way to sacrifice itself, so once it's down, it stays.  I just realized that this could also just be used to stall a game out until assuming your opponent has the smaller deck, although even that requires plenty of setup.  I'm really running this on the premise that any combo that would make this an automatic win would take so much trouble to set up that you might as well just win another way.

In conclusion, I really like the idea, but this may just not be a plausable card.  It's messy, it's cluttered, and it has two hugely abusable effects.  I don't want to cut one of the abilities because it would change the flavour entirely (not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, and this could easily be made into an entirely different card).  Alternately, both abilities could be mandatory (so Winter Orb* on top of no one ever draws.)

Thoughts?

*Originally this said "untap no more than one land" but I changed it for flavor reasons, which is probably worse.  Meh.  I'll see where this goes.

[Aeneas]

While White and its enchantments have extensive capabilities to set the rules of the game, I believe stifling your opponent's draw is out of its turf.

[Zelc]

How about making it symmetrical?
During any player's untap step, that player may choose to skip all of his/her draws for his/her turn.  If that player does, until his or her next turn, all players skip all draws.
During any player's untap step, that player may choose not to untap any lands. If that player does, until that player's next untap step, no player may untap any lands.

[Jacob Orlove]

How about making it symmetrical?
During any player's untap step, that player may choose to skip all of his/her draws for his/her turn.  If that player does, until his or her next turn, all players skip all draws.
During any player's untap step, that player may choose not to untap any lands. If that player does, until that player's next untap step, no player may untap any lands.

That would basically just force people to keep skipping, since they won't get their chance anyway.

[Ephraim]

I think that this card is trying to do too much at once. For starters, it is important to note that [card]Attrition[/card] is already the name of a card. Furthermore, that card is black. That's fitting, since the notion of armies slowly dwindling to nothing seems black, at first glance. However, I think that the flavour of attrition is actually very white (as you've noted), since engaging in a war of attrition is the result of a far-reaching strategic decision. Now, the card I am going to suggest is probably going to seem black in flavour at first (since the mechanics I'm forced to use are often associated with black), but I think the overall flavour of the card is extremely white. The principle of attrition is that you wait out a situation that is bad for both you and for your enemy, knowing that you will still be alive when he runs out of resources. If it were just a set of symmetrical losses, it would simply be like "Attrition" (Or more accurately, [card]Pillar Tombs of Aku[/card]. Note that no other card requires one's opponents to sacrifice creatures every turn.) In this case, you sacrifice advancement to put pressure on your opponent's resources. Note that if you "run out" of resources (in this case, cards in hand) before your opponent runs out of creatures, you can no longer carry on a war of attrition. On the other hand, this gives you a means of getting rid of the enchantment when you no longer have a use for it.

War of Attrition

Enchantment

You can't draw cards.
Creatures you control can't attack.
If you have no cards in hand, sacrifice War of Attrition
At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent sacrifices a creature.

[MrZuccinniHead]

that's pretty solid.

[combo_dude]

A couple of things:

1) It would need to be "if you would draw a card, skip that draw instead".

2) How is this better than [card]Call to the Grave[/card]? Call is simpler, in (probably) the right colour, and it doesn't have any massive drawbacks.

[Ephraim]

Unless you are playing something with few or no creatures, Call to the Grave locks you into playing a zombie deck. This only locks you into playng white. Furthermore, you don't have any control over when the enchantment goes away. With this, as long as you don't play it when you can't cast all of the cards in your hand, you control when it leaves play. The fact that this spell puts you in control of the board indefinitely is what makes it require the stiff drawback (which is arguably less severe than "You must play with zombies.")

I'm glad you brought up Call to the Grave, though. I'd forgotten about it when I did my search for similar cards (I searched for cards containing the words "sacrifices a creature"). I would, however, place it in the same class as Pillar Tombs of Aku -- a pseudo-symmetrical creature killer with a strong mechanical tie to black. The card that I have proposed is definitely not symmetrical and its penalty is reminiscent of Solitary Confinement's. (While this may seem MUCH worse than Solitary Confinement, also note that Solitary Confinement requires specific actionon your part -- casting spells to draw more cards -- in order to stick around indefinitely. This only requires you to wait until your opponent's creatures are gone. Thus, the penalty needs to be somewhat more severe.)

[stolen]

Now, the card I am going to suggest is probably going to seem black in flavour at first (since the mechanics I'm forced to use are often associated with black), but I think the overall flavour of the card is extremely white.

Black and White bleed so much into each other that a different flavour spin can put the same ability in either color--why I really like putting both colors together in decks (not that I ever do because I can't figure out a good B/W deck to play...something with Desolation Angel would be fun).

I rather like your suggestion, mainly because it contains an elegance and simplicity that I tried for and failed to attain.  The only thing I might change though...does this really still need to cost five mana?  It locks up the board, but you lose your entire hand while your opponent can not only keep drawing but keep playing land.  As soon as this gets sacrificed, the opponent can just plop his hand down, and you'll be defenseless.  Also, the opponent can still attack with the creatures before they're sacrificed.

I dunno...I'll think on it.

[Nefarias]

I think that one of the keys of this card is its elegance. Changing "You can't draw cards" to "If you would draw a card, skip that draw instead," while needed in the rules, woudl seriously hurt that aspect of the card. Do you think "Skip your draw step" is a big enough drawback (with the no attacking, of course)?

I'd also like to point out that you can lock yourself out with this. While you would obviously wait until you have the capability to cast all cards in your hand, Sphere of Resistance or Wasteland or whatever could mess with that.

Finally, if you could edit your original post to add a working edition, that'd be helpful.

[Ephraim]

In fact, just outright saying "Skip your draw step and your combat phase." would be a very concise way of stating this card's drawback." I don't think there'd be anything wrong with a deck that kept this in play while drawing a lot of cards and setting up for a kill. Even at that, perhaps {W}{W}{W} is  still excessive. Even with:

War of Attrition
{W}{W}
Enchantment

Skip your draw step and your combat phase.
If you have no cards in hand, sacrifice War of Attrition
At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent sacrifices a creature.

I think this is still reasonable.

[Ephraim]

Don't forget about this card, Stolen. In case you couldn't tell, I really like it.

[stolen]

I'm still not sure exactly what I want to do with this.  For now, I've just changed it to your suggestion, Ephraim.

The theme is resource denial, and I want that to do more than just creatures.  I want either draws/hand or lands to also be affected.  I won't try touching draws again, so what about, "At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent sacrifices a creature or land"?  That does give a well-creatured opponent the option of sacrificing lands instead and keeping the combat pressure on, but against an opponent with few creatures, allows for the eventual draining of essentially all the opponent's resources.  I'd call that fair, because playing the card means you lose all your draws and can't attack, and you can't get rid of it until you have no hand (so if you have a spell you can't cast, you're stuck with it forever--that's kinda yucky.  With the land sacrifice, this can create draws, but without that it could be too easy to be stuck with it, allowing the opponent to win with critical mass, possibly making the card too narrow.  That's another reason that I want to include the land denial--otherwise staying out too long will put the opponent at an advantage, who can let all of his/her creatures die and then cast a whole bunch at once with the mass of lands/creatures drawn, and if the enchantment is sacrificed before that happens, your opponent still has a big hand and lots of lands, and you have nothing.  Maybe allow the enchantment to be sacrificed at any time?  Anyway, if I go with the creatures and lands, it can have a clause that says, "if a player controls no creatures or lands, that player loses the game," which makes it wordy but means every game will end eventually.)

[stolen]

Found another old card of mine that I'd like to see concluded.

[combo_dude]

This still feels Black to me - even with the drawbacks, it's an interesting card, but still seems weak and in the wrong colour. Still, if nobody else agrees with me, then by all means close this.