Oooh, it's like storm - but not instantly broken :)

It occurred to me that we have a lot of creature abilities in this set, but not many instant/sorcery abilities. Since we're playing with the word "Chain" why not do something that's bit of a where Storm meets Metalcraft? Granted, there was a cycle of something like this in Shadowmoor (Dream Thief and company), but they were a little different and just on 5 cards.

If we went this route, we'd need to be very careful with the flavor. Every one of these cards should feel like belong to a slavery theme, since the mechanic itself doesn't imply slavery. I think, though, that a combination of the name, and constantly hitting people over the head with themes of slavery would carry the day, though.

A one of splash that might seed a few more cards. If it doesn't, though, I'd assume that this mechanic is out. It doesn't make any sense by it's lonesome and only works if it has some flavor support, or other cards that like it.

I didn't want this card to have the same cc as Doomseek and the cc on that card seems unchangeable, so this bumped to cost more and discarded one more card in both modes. My mechanic is very unhappy with me...

Any words on this common? I think the other keyword for Chain is out of contention, and I was wondering if this one worked, or failed to work for similar reasons. I hate to pull back into "Black is all about sacrificing in this block" because it happens so often. But, it seems like we've painted two layers onto black - Fortifications and 'Work 'till you die'. A third mechanic probably takes away from all mechanics, and both forts and 'work 'till you die' seem inappropriate to remove.

In retrospect, when asking for black mechanics, I think I should have assumed up front that we would be working with a sacrifice mechanic, and worked with people to make the sacrifice mechanic to be as unique as possible. Hindsight, eh? We still may want to brainstorm around that. First, though, opinions on this card, please?