Withering Library

[SpencerForHire]

Withering Library

Enchantment
As an additional cost for Withering Library, pay any amount of life.  Withering Library comes into play with that many <flavor> counters on it.
During your upkeep, remove a <flavor> counter from Withering Library and draw a card.  If you cannot, sacrifice Withering Library and discard your hand.

I want a constant draw engine for black that doesn't take forever to get rolling.  Phyrexian Arena is godawful slow in my book and I want a nice black enchantment that shows blacks corrupting knowledge to gain it faster.

Current Wording:

Withering Library
{B}
Enchantment
As Withering Library comes into play, pay any amount of life and Withering Library comes into play with that many <flavor> counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a <flavor>counter from this;  if you do, draw a card,  if you don't, sacrifice Withering Library.
When Withering Library leaves play discard your hand.

[nataz]

can you remove more then one counter a turn the way this is worded?

[SpencerForHire]

No the ability is currently triggered.
You could if it said:
Remove a counter: Draw a card, play this ability only during your upkeep.

[Sanity_XIV]

This card seems sufficiently balanced in comparison with Phyrexian Arena.

[Bram]

I disagree.

The drawback is insignificant in that a. it can be abused (welders, will, even dredge) and b. it can be negated (sacrificed to your own or your opponent's Smokestack or easily disenchanted / bounced).

More often than not, this will simply be a Phyrexian Arena that not only requires a much less heavy color commitment, but also comes out a full two turns earlier. And not oly that, but if you use Resource Point Theory (obsolete except for cards that create card advantage), this card will pay itself back (including the mana investment and all) a full turn sooner than Arena, too.

Also: the life is less important in early game as it is later on (since it only becomes an issue when going from 1 to 0), so an early, full investment can be considered better than one payed 'in terms'. I realise this is offset by the fact that you may not reap the full rewards of paying, say, 10 life if is killed before your 11th upkeep, and I realise that Arena is not played a lot (and in my opinion, underplayed...) but this should cost at least 1B.

[Jacob Orlove]

This needs a minimum of double black in its casting cost.

[Sanity_XIV]

Hmm. I seem to have convinced myself that if it left play, it discarded your hand too. Perhaps that could be an acceptable added drawback, or would that make it too useless? (That if it left play/went to graveyard you would discard your hand)

[SpencerForHire]

Withering Library

Enchantment
As an additional cost for Withering Library, pay any amount of life.  Withering Library comes into play with that many <flavor> counters on it.
During your upkeep, remove a <flavor> counter from Withering Library and draw a card.  If you cannot, sacrifice Withering Library.
When Withering Library leaves play remove your hand from the game.


This new version would totally remove welder abuse and would prevent cute little tricks.

[LizardCZ]

The wording should be (changes in bold):

Withering Library

As ~this~ comes into play, pay any amount of life and ~this~ comes into play with that many <flavor> counters on it. You don't lose life if they just counter the card. Prevent memory issues.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a <flavor> counter from ~this~ and draw a card. If you can't, sacrifice ~this~. Things triggers at the beginning, not during.
When ~this~ leaves play, remove your hand from the game.


I really like this card, it's more powerful than Phyrexian Arena; and have some little nice tricks with Donate xD

[Anusien]

At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a counter from this.  If you do, draw a card.  If you don't, sacrifice this.
The current versions have you drawing even if there are no counters, and then you might have to discard your hand, and that's just messy, and still potentially nasty because it feeds your graveyard by an extra card.

[SpencerForHire]

How about now?

[Jacob Orlove]

There's no need to RFG the cards. Discarding is fine.

One mana is still insanely too cheap, though.

Also, don't use "~this~" if you have an actual card name. Use the full name of the card there instead.

[SpencerForHire]

Fair enough.  I was also thinking that possibly when you discard/remove the cards in your hand you could lose 1 life for each lost in that way.  That could offset the cost of one.

[The Atog Lord]

Without this costing one, there's not much point. Arena costs three and Bob costs two. Trying to make it fair at one is an interesting challenge.

[Jacob Orlove]

Even in Vintage, this card would be broken. Stax could easily sneak it in on the same turn as another lock component, pay 3 to 6 life, and have a Welder and Crucible ready if they end up discarding anything.

In Legacy, I'm sure Burn would love to spend a little life to get double cards for long enough to put the opponent at 0. The life loss wouldn't even matter in the goblins matchup, because you could afford to throw burn at the goblins. Goblins would also love this card--it's hard to dislike that many extra cards, especially with vial to dump out goblins for free.

In the slower formats, the utility of this card is pretty obvious.

Basically, at one mana and with the life payment up front, this is way too strong. The easy fix is to increase the casting cost to a more reasonable level. Tacking on some kind of unrelated disadvantage is awkward, clunky, and unnecessary.

[The Atog Lord]

I agree, Jacob. The card needs to be watered down just a bit. It does do quite a few good things. But an interesting challenge would be to keep it flavorful and clean, without making it cost more than one mana.

One option would be to replace the draw with a draw-then-discard, not unlike Anvil for one.

Another idea is to make the card, in addition to everything else, Underworld Dreams you. The card would essentially cost you two life for every draw you get off it, plus one life for every other draw you take. At the same time, you have Dredge which lets you replace draws -- meaning that this card would become very interesting in a deck intenting to replace its draw step.

So, just throwing those out there as ideas. It may well be the case that one mana is just too good for a card like this. Sylvan Library is pretty good at two mana.

[SpencerForHire]

So then let's have a vote:
These are the costs lower than Arena.


{B}


OR
{B}
And have X be the life paid.

[Bram]

The X thing is silly. I vote for BB, which prevents the goblin abuse Jacob mentioned.

[Liam-K]

What about something like:

Withering Library
B
When Withering Library comes into play, pay X life.  Withering library comes into play with X flavor counters.
During your upkeep, remove a flavor counter from Withering Library.  If you cannot, discard your hand, then draw X cards, where X is equal to the amount of life payed.  Then sacrafice withering library.

The templating is probably wrong, and it will also probably need a cap on how much life you can spend (maybe 5?).  It's kinda cool in that the more cards you want to draw, the longer you wait to get them.  Playing this for 3 or 4 seems pretty fair, maybe as much as 5 first turn.  Pretty awesome thing to find in someone's hand if you slaver them too.

[Bram]

I don't know if it's wrong, but it's awkward for sure. Why not up the cost to BB and stick ith the original wording? It'll still be a good card that way.

[SpencerForHire]

Which would you prefer?
1)
Withering Library
{B}
Enchantment
As an additional cost for Withering Library, pay any amount of life.  Withering Library comes into play with that many <flavor> counters on it.
During your upkeep, remove a <flavor> counter from Withering Library and draw a card.  If you cannot, sacrifice Withering Library and discard your hand.

2)
Withering Library
{B}
Enchantment
As Withering Library comes into play, pay any amount of life and Withering Library comes into play with that many <flavor> counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a <flavor>counter from this;  if you do, draw a card,  if you don't, sacrifice Withering Library.
When Withering Library leaves play discard your hand.

[Nibble]

Flavor is nice and all, but looking at those wordings, the counters would be nothing but glorified fade counters. I kind of like the idea of using the already-existing fade mechanic for some simplicity, but the fact that you'd have to give it the Fading 0 ability to make it work might make it more messy.

Fading 0
As Withering Library comes into play, pay any amount of life and Withering Library comes into play with that many fade counters on it.
Whenever you remove a fade counter from Withering Library, draw a card.
When Withering Library leaves play, discard your hand.


I dunno, could work.


Edit: Hm, you could also change the draw ability to simply trigger on upkeep. Or draw step - then you don't get a free extra card when it's out of fade counters.

[SpencerForHire]

That makes this card broken.  You give it say, 10 counters, and for 2 mana you get.... 10 cards any time you want.

Edit: I deliberately made it so it DIDN'T have fading.

[Jacob Orlove]

That makes this card broken.  You give it say, 10 counters, and for 2 mana you get.... 10 cards any time you want.

I don't understand what you're even trying to say here.

[SpencerForHire]

The post I was responding to, Nibble post, originally said:

Remove a fade counter: Draw a card.

[Jacob Orlove]

Oh, I think we can all agree that would be dumb.

[Nibble]

The post I was responding to, Nibble post, originally said:

Remove a fade counter: Draw a card.

Er? I fail to see where this is coming from.

Whenever you remove a fade counter from Withering Library, draw a card.

This is very different, because it's triggered and not activated. You can't choose to remove a fade counter at your will, you only remove one per upkeep. It's the same net effect as the counters the way they currently are.

[SpencerForHire]

I could be mistaken but I thought you changed the wording in your last post from:  Remove a Fade counter: Draw a card.

It is irrelevant but that was my thought.