Mill 10. In red. For three.

Well, I guess it's the sets THING, but wowsers.

(And, of course, combining with the increase damage stuff is the reason for doing it as damage. I would like some reassurance that I can't use "Damage cannot be turned into something else" effects to make this utterly dominant.)

Heh, yes, this is good with Furnace of Rath :)

V, you may like to note the existence of Glimpse the Unthinkable.

I don't think you have to worry about the damage be done in a different form. So far nothing I know of by Wizards or us seem to do that. Correct me if I'm wrong though. :D

No, I'm not aware of anything that'll do that.

I know erode's supposed to be in more than blue and black, but I would have expected this card to deal damage to creatures as well. Otherwise, this just looks like cheating, to me.

Red can do Book Burning and Burning Inquiry. It's the third-best mill colour after blue and black. So... this doesn't seem horribly out-of-pie at rare.

Also nice with War Elemental :)

Oh, not saying it's an impossible thing for red - it's just, well, right up at the top end of imaginable power.

Made it hit creatures as well. I'm a bit iffy about it though, because it seems like a little to powerful to hit creatures. Thoughts?

There's very little difference between 5 damage and 10 damage to creature. At some point, it just becomes "Destroy target creature." See Stomping Slabs: same price, 7 damage.

Reasons to let it hit creatures:

• it will feel more like a burn spell rather than a mill spell

Reasons to not let it hit creatures:

• it will probably have to cost a little more to do 10 damage to a creature
• it will be snapped up early in drafts as premium creature removal, so be a lot less available to people who want to play an erode strategy.

So I'm not sure.

It never occurred to me that increasing the casting cost would be considered a bad thing. As far as I'm concerned, a well-designed card is a well-designed card. Trying to make a card do something for the sake of making it competitive seems like a mistake in my eyes. But, I definitely understand where the problem comes from.

To me, mill decks seem 'better' to me if they are part of a "control, then mill" strategy. I can see why erode creatures racing the opponent through milling would be exciting, but casting 6 mill sorceries by turn 5, and winning the game is non-interactive and doesn't seem very fun. Is a card that is intended to mill an opponent, but can hit a key creature instead worse than a faster card that only intends to mill? I guess that's a personal decision. I can say, though, that the first thing that jumped in my head when I saw this card was "4x this card + 4x Glimpse the Unthinkable + 4x Tome Scour".

Well sure - it makes it a stronger card.

My comments aren't from whatever uncommented change you made to the card recently - that comment bumped it up to the top of the recently-changed list and brought it to my attention, is all.

I also worry about the "Kill creatures" change. It turns it from a pure mill (as you say, boring to play but interesting in that it brings another strategy into consideration) to "Kill a creature. Oh, or you can mill stuff if you really want to" Which is a very different card.

Okay, changed it back to just players. I'll justify it by saying that it is still damage, and able to be prevented, redirected, increased, etc. Also by keeping it damage it still retains it's feeling of being red.

Now for the math. If this costs 3 and hits someone for 10 cards it's the equivalent of doing 4-5 damage to a player plus robbing them of options which is just a bonus. (10/50 cards = 4/20 life i.e. 1/5. 50 because by the time you get to play this your opponent will already be on 50 cards.)

I'll repeat it again: milling someone does not deny them options, it's a lot more likely to grant them options. Just as self-mill isn't a drawback, milling an opponent is more likely to help them than hinder (until you mill their last card). You're unlikely to mill specific things they're going to tutor for because they're likely to have multiple copies; but it's quite plausible that you'll give them cards to flashback, retrace, unearth, reanimate, reclaim, delve, or pay as additional costs.

By contrast, damaging someone generally removes options (the option to pay life into things like Phyrexian mana). Mill is only denying options if it's exile rather than into graveyard.

That said, I think this is fine on its own. (Although it needs you to take a lot of care about how strong mill is in the rest of the set.)

While I'd have preferred the other version, I can still get behind this card. After all, there's a good chance that the card as printed now would get a lot more people talking about it. That's probably a good thing.