Water Torture

[Malakai]

Water Torture
1RR
Sorcery
Water Torture deals 1 damage to target creature or player, then remove Water Torture from the game and put a time counter on it.  It gains suspend.
Drip, drip, drip.

The idea here is that as long as the spell is successfully cast, i.e. isn't countered and has a legal target, it will go off again the next turn, every turn.

Why?  I always liked the Epic ability and spell cycle, but the problem with the Epic ability is that, because you can't play anymore spells, the effect has to be really good.  This lets you continue to play the game.  A 20 turn clock isn't an issue, given Darksteel Reactor does it more consistently. 

It's hard to balance the power level of something like this.  I originally drafted it as the same mana cost but 2 damage, and you had to flip a coin; if you lost you got 2 counters instead of one.  But I think flipping a coin all the time will be a little tiresome, and the whole idea makes it kind of clanky.  The other idea is make it 2RR or something and do 2 a turn.

Thoughts?

[asi]

This certainly looks quite similiar to the Red Honden...

I think it's ok, not very powerful, but at least it gives you +1 storm and is non-legendary, so you can cast 2-3 of them to get some sort of actual clock. Might be unfair against creature decks, much like the buyback of card slike Capsize ws nasty to play against in its days.

[andrewpate]

for two per turn?  Arc Blade is pretty bad, but that's a bit of a jump.

One damage per turn is interesting, but I like it a lot better when it's going to the dome every time.  Using this as an awkward Drop of Honey effect seems out of flavor for the water torture idea and makes it, as asi correctly points out, a bit too similar to Honden of Infinite Rage.  If you dropped the cost a bit and changed it to hit players only, I'd be happy with it.

[Titanium Dragon]

I think the proposed version (1RR, 1 damage to anything each turn) is probably fine; it is comparable to Honden of Infinite Rage but is gotten rid of in rather different ways.

[Malakai]

I had forgotten about the honden, which may be more or less powerful due to its cycle and being legendary.  Also, black can sometimes do something about this (see below) whereas the Honden is basically safe.

The flavor/name are less important to me than promoting interaction, and taking away to hit a creature basically just simplifies the game a bit: either find an answer to this or you lose in so many turns.  Also, if it targets a creature, players not playing blue can do something to counter it, such as sacrificing the creature, STP'ing it, or any other spot removal.

So if anyone can come up with a better name/flavor concept, I'm all ears.

[Glix]

Water Torture, flavor wise, seems like it should be black or blue black.  Furthermore, in actuality you don't die from water torture, you lose your mind.

I might try something like this:

Water Torture  UB
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, target opponent removes the top (some number, I'm thinking like 2 or 3) cards of their library from their game unless that player removes a card in their hand from the game.

I think that that captures the flavor of water torture, is in a better color for the concept, and doesn't step on too many card's toes (unless I'm mistaken).  It is a similar card, it just attacks different resources slowly.

You could do the sorcery with suspend thing, but I think that that just over complicates things as that is essentially an over complication of an enchantment.