Come From Behind *wink wink*

[Matt]

Oh No You Di'int!
{W}{W}
Enchantment
Whenever a player has more life than any other player, more permanents than any other player, more cards in hand than any other player, and more cards in his or her library than any other player, that player loses the game.

The idea is that you punish someone for being so utterly dominant. More hand, board, life, and library? If you can't at least let your opponent be winning on SOME measure of the game, you deserve to lose. This is very white.

Flavor could be the dregs in the street rising up to tear down the royalty.

I like how this is tempting to use offensively, as it rewards you for playing otherwise terribly card-disadvantageous cards. Also: imagine the multiplayer politicking!

[Matt]

Current wording:

Three Condemnations
{W}{W}
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, if a player has at least 3 life more than any other player, at least 3 more permanents than any other player, and at least 3 more cards in hand than any other player, that player loses the game.

[Bram]

I'm a bit worried that this will lead to stalling since people would constantlycount (and demand to recount) libraries. Other than that, I like it.

[Jacob Orlove]

That library part is pretty bad, because usually you're winning when you have *fewer* cards in the library (ie you've drawn more cards).

[silvernail]

ya this just means you make yourself risk losing to win, it wont function as the balancing effect your wanting. now if you reset values to some base value and then allow it to compare say during a players upkeep such that they dont lose for drawing a card on their turn or somethign stupid like that. but ya this card has issues...

[Matt]

ya this just means you make yourself risk losing to win, it wont function as the balancing effect your wanting. now if you reset values to some base value and then allow it to compare say during a players upkeep such that they dont lose for drawing a card on their turn or somethign stupid like that. but ya this card has issues...

What are you even saying? I can't read that.

I'll cut the library part.

[Das_Boot]

This card seems, well, wrong, especially in Legacy.  Fetch, Enlightened Tutor.  Land, ritual or any two pieces of acceleration, win.  Belcher wins with all of the card's conditions in place, and this costs 4 instead of seven, and furthermore allows you to play with land.

This card would be more fair IMO if it triggered at the beginning of your upkeep or something, or cost 3WW.

[Jacob Orlove]

This card seems, well, wrong, especially in Legacy.  Fetch, Enlightened Tutor.  Land, ritual or any two pieces of acceleration, win.  Belcher wins with all of the card's conditions in place, and this costs 4 instead of seven, and furthermore allows you to play with land.

This card would be more fair IMO if it triggered at the beginning of your upkeep or something, or cost 3WW.

Belcher wins with fewer permanents out than the opponent?

[Bram]

I think this is fine now that the lib part is gone. It's not like anyone's ever gonna use this outside casual. It's just too risky a strategy.

[Jacob Orlove]

This should probably be a beginning of upkeep trigger, just in case.

[Das_Boot]

Belcher could win with less permanents, but it usually just wins too fast. for an opponent to play anything.  Let me just revise what I am saying.  There is an existing deck that pays more mana for a card with less restrictions. This also dodges Pithing Needle and Null Rod and is overall far less susceptible to hate that plagues Belcher.  In addition, it could support Force if it wanted to.  I think that all of this means it warrants increasing the mana cost or giving decks an untap to mana burn or find a disenchant or something.  I think even sless powerful, it will still be a good Johnny card that I think would have real potential.

[Matt]

Changed to upkeep effect. Or should it be "at the beginning of your upkeep, if a player..."?

I could increase the cost if I have to, but I'd like to keep it at 3WW or less, because it could spawn a funky block deck.

This card seems more dangerous than I thought it would be. I hadn't thought of people just going "Ritual, burn for 3" - you've lost a card in hand, and some life, and not increased the board in any way, so that's like half the requirements right there. This would also be strong with those {W}-clands from Fallen Empires and Mercadian Masques and Invasion, to accelerate it out faster.

[Jacob Orlove]

I like beginning of your upkeep, because it gives them a chance to manaburn.

[Bram]

I doubt it's really that strong. I mean, it's not like we don't have ample ways of getting rid of enchantments. Using this card can basically be done in two ways:

1. You ruin your board position, life total, hand size (to keep the element of surprise) and then bring out this card at the last possible time. This is a bad strategy, since by ruining the aforementioned in the first place, you reduce your chances of finding, succesfully playing and protecting this card. Also, it now checks at a specific point during your turn, so that sorta definitively rules out this strategy.

2. Bring this out (possibly in some smarty pants way like Rector) and *then* start meeting the requirements. You lose board position and life to gain, well, nothing (certainly not cards, since you'll likely also need to decrease your hand size), leaving yourself in a rotten spot, and then your opponent responds to, say, your final discard by blowing up this enchantment. What are you gonna do about it? Most likely not a lot, since you lack the resources.

I'm not saying it's totally useless, but this is not going to be a Johnny card.

[Matt]

Changed to your upkeep.

Bram, this is still pretty ridiculous in type one. I know, normally we just say "type one can deal with it" but this is a one-card combo. Land, Lotus, this card means your opponent is stuck on 2 permanents or less until they can out-manaburn you, which is stupid. Combining it with lands like Ruins of Trokair in pre-rotation extended would also lead to stupid turn three kills.

What's more, is how badly this penalizes your opponent for doing you damage that won't kill you the same turn. I'm thinking of making it "at least 3 cards in hand more" and "at least 5 life more" and so on to lessen the abuse.

P.S. A deck built around this card would also be more than happy to mulligan to find this signature card!

[jro]

This card is all about the opponent having more resources than you.  What about adding an effect about the opponent having more cards in their graveyard (one of the best resources in Vintage)?  In fact, why not replace the library test (the biggest PITA of the current tests) with a much-easier-to-handle graveyard test?  It would probably be too hard to consistently make such a test work at a competitive level, but I think you're shooting more for flavor than power.

[Bram]

Hmm. You guys made some good points. I guess I failed the vapor ops test on this one

[Matt]

I already got rid of the library test. Make sure you're commenting on the current wording!

I don't like a graveyard test, because more cards in the graveyard is supposed to mean you're losing. See Oath of Ghouls.

[Matt]

New update, fixed to not be a one-card combo. Now it will still penalize players for winning by too much, and you can still play around with this with cards such as Hunted Dragon, but it won't be ending games on turn two. Do you think I can reduce the cost to {W}{W}?

[Ephraim]

That feels like a lot of numbers to keep track of. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're arbitrary, but this is liable to be a really difficult card to wrap one's mind around. Not that complicated cards are strictly off-limits, but I forsee people having to re-read this card constantly, just to remind themselves how to play around it. Even if it was more powerful before, I liked the first version better, just because it was easier to grasp. If the effect weren't so potent as "that player loses," it would be less important, but I don't like the idea that people are going to get confused and/or misremember exactly the way this card works and as a result stumble into a game loss.

[Matt]

Alright, so what if it's just one number - "three"?

[Ephraim]

Alright, so what if it's just one number - "three"?

That would be better. You should name it "Three Condemnations" or "Three Convictions."

[Matt]

Sounds excellent. 24 hour clock.

[asmoranomardicodais]

I REALLY dislike this card. It's hard to win a game, but its quite easy to lose on purpose. This card I think just warps the enviroment around it too much. It's an easy addition to legacy landstill any day, and landstill doesn't have to even be losing on purpose for it to come in handy. I think it would be far, FAR better as a balance variant, like so...

Three Condemnations
2WW
Enchantment
During your upkeep, if you have three less life, three less creatures, and three less cards in hand than all opponents, sacrifice Three Condemnations. If you do, target player loses four life, sacrifices four creatures, and discards four cards from their hand.

That way, although it will swing the game, its not just a "YOU LOSE!" card, which is boring. I feel really strongly that this card should do something other than win the game for you.

[Matt]

I don't really see it as that big a problem. It's easy to satisfy the life condition, but the permanent one is harder. The handsize one is doable with Standstill forcing the opponent to draw. The permanent one is harder when you're Wrathing and Disking about. I'm going to increase the cost on this to 3WW, and I wouldn't be averse to making it 4WW but I don't want to make it a Balance thing, because then it's just a crappy Equipoise. And what's more, I want this to be useful in multiplayer.

[49 Cents]

This card is really good. It isn't that hard to get all the requirements for it. I think 4 mana is way to low..

[Upinthe]

This card definitely needs to go up to 4WW. Kaervek's Spite = Win...!

You could also use like Squandered Resources or that Skirge that discards cards for B  to satify two of the conditions easily by burning yourself...

[Matt]

Upped to six mana, which is high, but mostly that pushes it into multiplayer - which is where I really wanted it anyway.

[Matt]

Twenty-four hour clock.

[Matt]

Okay so it was more like a eight thousand hour clock...

Closed and added.