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CardName: Force the Hand Cost: BB Type: Instant Pow/Tgh: Rules Text: Target permanent's controller activates an activated ability of that permanent of your choice. You make all choices. (That player pays all costs, activating mana abilities as necessary. You can't make a choice that player can't pay for.) While Force the Hand is on the stack and not resolving, spells and abilities can't be played. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Sienira's Facets Rare
Force the Hand
 Target permanent's controller activates an activated ability of that permanent of your choice. You make all choices. (That player pays all costs, activating mana abilities as necessary. You can't make a choice that player can't pay for.)
While Force the Hand is on the stack and not resolving, spells and abilities can't be played. |
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The wording here is horrible. But the problem is, I want this to be usable on Legacy Weapon when its controller's only source of W is a GW dual. The final stronger-than-split-second line is necessary to stop them tapping the dual for G in response so that you can't make them fire the Weapon.
As written, the card allows you to play a loyalty ability of any planeswalker, including your own, on any player's turn. That could be very interesting. It's probably undercosted. It's probably too strong for BB, even accounting for the dependency on your opponent's deck.
It's also a counterspell for BB in many situations, since you can force them to spend all their mana at interrupt speed.
Eh, no, once the opponent has started casting a spell, you don't get a chance to intervene until after they've finished paying all costs.
Well, as much of a counterspell as drain power, which is often good enough. Locks them out for a turn if they've got an 'x' or a repeatable '1' ability anywhere on the table.
I'm reaching the conclusion this card is just way too fiddly, variable, and wordy to actually be worth it. I'm going to kill it.
That's probably wise; it's always really hard to remove cool cards, but statistically some would unfortunately benefit from it ;(
Although now you say that, I suddenly brainstorm several other conceivable options:
(1) Make it a morph trigger or explicitly a special action, which may fix the "can't activate stuff" without extra rules text.
(2) Change it so you pay the cost, which loses the "force" flavour, but could still be interesting. (Would the current wording let you activate any number of mana abilities? If so, shoulld it have?)
(3) Say "you control target player's next turn until you play an activated ability".
Probably there's no good wording, but i still thought it was interesting.
Hmm. (1) would drag the set in a very different direction to where it's going right now. (2) could be interesting, but makes it less strong. (To the parenthetical: I don't actually know - which is another sign this is a problem card.)
(3) seems like it could actually work - replace the first paragraph with "You control target player until you play a nonmana activated ability or the phase ends" - but it's a) not as clear what it's trying to do, and b) has some unintended consequences like seeing their hand, and getting to take special actions like declaring attackers or turning morphs face-up.