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CardName: Frozen in Fear Cost: 1B Type: Sorcery Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Until end of turn target creature gains "creatures blocking this creature get -3/-3 until end of turn." Flavour Text: Kulku left the white snow red and mortals in a panic. Set/Rarity: Ulaqat Common

Frozen in Fear
{1}{b}
 
 C 
Sorcery
Until end of turn target creature gains "creatures blocking this creature get -3/-3 until end of turn."
Kulku left the white snow red and mortals in a panic.
Updated on 24 Dec 2018 by Sorrow

History: [-]

2018-12-19 16:19:26: Sorrow created the card Frozen in Fear
on 19 Dec 2018 by Vitenka (unlogged):

Seems annoyingly wordy to get the effect. It's kinda flanking? But I guess that's not really applicable to anything ever again. And Archon of Supression?

Flavour seems mostly good - but the name's slightly unfortunate. Both because this doesn't grant Fear, nor lock down cratures from untapping - but also because it sounds like it should make the target freeze in fear; not the things the target then goes on to fight. "fearsome viasge" maybe?

And also, of course, red-flagged for potentially being mass-removal at common. Though you do need to pair it with Lure or a particularly dim opponent, given it's sorcery speed.

(This also seems to be one of several "Don't chump block me bro" cards in the set, is that really a big problem that the set is encountering a lot? I guess you've got quite a bit of conditional first strike?)

I was just looking to make an instant or sorcery to fill the last spot for a black common in the set that wasn't discard, direct removal, or indestructible as I'd already included those. Fear is a dead mechanic; I believe it's a waste to reserve the word because of past applications that won't rear their head outside of supplemental reprints. The frozen part is a bit more regrettable, especially since this a snow set.

"The don't chump block me bro" was likely just me not being diverse on designs and not looking beyond what I thought a color could do.

This is woefully underpowered. Your opponent, after all, can just choose not to block. Or they can choose to block and take the penalty. That makes this card worse than Artful Dodge without the buyback, since at least the Artful Dodge eliminated the opponent getting a choice.

As Vitenka mentioned, the saving grace to an ability like this is that you can 'always add Lure'. But 1993 Lure abilities, where the entire team must block, are rare nowadays (probably because it was so swingy, and either did not much, or caused a total blowout.) Nowadays, we tend to use "must be blocked, if able", which means that only one creature needs to block. And even then, it's infrequent. Standard only has two such cards

(That also sets aside Vitenka's concern about a possible red flag for removing multiple permanents in common. Assuming everything in Standard is operating as per normal, this card doesn't destroy multiple permanents unless your opponent chooses to double block... but double blocking already could already result in the destruction of multiple permanents, so nothing has changed. Lure, on the other hand, does destroy multiple permanents. That's the card that would force a red flag if it ever appeared in common.)

All this said, I would raise the penalty for blocking to a minimum of -3/-3. At that p/t reduction, there is a chance some players might find the card to be a better choice in some niche decks over Moment of Craving. Maybe a deck with a lot of 'damage to players' triggers on your attacking creatures. Moment of Craving, however, would still be the more generally useful card.

2018-12-24 03:49:12: Sorrow edited Frozen in Fear:

Updated based on jmgariepy's advice.

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