Stolen from http://multiverse.heroku.com/cards/11719 (Sudden Shatter)

Ok, so, this CAN still work as an artifact-blast, right?

As in, to counter an artifact spell like Artifact Blast? Nope. (It couldn't with the other wording, either.) During a spell's casting, only that spell's controller gets to play mana abilities, and the second ability here isn't a mana ability anyway. Even if it was, it wouldn't help. The available moments to activate this are (a) before they start trying to cast the spell, i.e. before you know it's in their hand, or (b) after it's on the stack and no longer in their hand.

Oh. Um, that was sorta the whole damn point of the card. Shoulda waited longer for comments on the source. Damnit. Without the blasting ability this is just kinda unpickably weak. Maybe it should only sac if it actually hits? But then it's "Reveal your hand" repeatably in red. Yick.

If you want it to counter an artifact spell, just make it ", , Sacrifice ~: Counter target artifact spell."

I was really happy about the random element, too, though.

Really? Why? Would the players be?

Well, the players who like red would, I think :)

"Red" has a heck of a lot more fans than "random" does. "Random" irritates most players. They deliberately did it in Innistrad to emphasise the feeling of lack of control to try to get the horror vibe going. (Yes, really. I didn't make that up.) But players generally don't like being out-of-control of their cards.

Well, I fall back on three arguments:

1. This is the only random card in the set, and surely the set can support one
2. In set, they're not really likely to have more than one artifact in hand.
3. I like random, and this is my set :)

I think if this does do discard, it's reasonable to make it random, as it usually won't matter, and it'll be interesting if it does. But I don't know if it should do that, or just do "counter target artifact spell" or something else, you're right that holding it until you're sure the opponent has a target is annoying, but OTOH, abilities on lands can be really weak and still useful.

@V: Ah, OK - fair enough. Yes, it's certainly fair for a set to have one random card. And the randomness is indeed actually pretty minimal in this case.

I still think it should just be ", , Sac ~: Counter target artifact spell" though.

You're probably right.

Functionally, it's better (targeted) and less good (because they can wait until you don't have the mana up to use it, rather than having to get the artifact out of hand ASAP in case you use it next time you have mana spare. So that's probably still balanced. But the blast version is saner; and thus should probably be in this set, with the random one left in my silly set.