If this made all your spells cost 1 more, I'd be on board. But right now this is Essence Scatter with big upside for creatureless decks. Would definitely see sideboard play, if not mainboard and make control decks quite dominant.

How is this Essence Scatter with upside? It's rather more narrow Force Spike/Mana Tithe.

I agree that the restriction to creature-less decks (or decks that only use that one finisher creature nce they stailized so don't care enough about the cost/circumvent casting cost for it) is problematic as a balance tool here.

But is it even needed? Is type-reversed Spell Pierce so good that even reducing the tax you need a drawback like this?

Uh yeah - this is two significant drawbacks on top of a Force Spike. Did you perhaps misread it as sticking around?

This would be interetsing costing .

I forgot about Force Spike. I was going for type-reversed Spell Pierce, and thought that present Magic feels a bit more favoring to creatures. That thought made me think if such a card existed, it'd be a lower cost for the controller of the target creature spell than Spell Piece and that it'd have some type of additional draw back.