I really want to push the concept of a Browbeat style card but with life gain. Can I get some advice on what would be some good, balanced numbers for this card? (CMC, damage and life gain all factored in)

LOL, nice name.

Good question. 5 dmg seems about right -- enough that it matters, but not so much that no-one will ever take it. And 2-3 mana seems right: any more and you might as well play lava axe, and 1 would be a bit ridiculously cheap even if the card wasn't that strong.

Judging from Vexing Devil a rare 1 mana card can give an opponent a choice between two 4-5 mana common effects. So this 2 mana card probably wants two 5-6 mana effects. (Very roughly, I'm coming to why this isn't exact.) How much life can you gain for 6 mana? Angel's Grace gains 7 life for four mana, and isn't usually seen as very strong. So I'd suggest at least 10!

The trouble with that is that even then the card may not be that attractive: if I have a pure aggro deck, I probably aim to win before my opponent can significantly attack me, so they probably don't care so much if I gain life, only insofar as once my attack has petered out, if I gain 10+ life I have a couple more turns to draw burn spells before they kill me. But that can slow the game down quite a bit, so it may not affect the outcome that much, just make things slower.

That said, in any sort of race, this would be a very interesting question of when do I play this, so I do quite like it.

I'm also not sure if it's red: red can do anything in exchange for threatening damage, but lifegain doesn't feel that red; it could be red/white or maybe red/green, or possibly black. But I'd leave it as red for the moment.

This isn't mono-red. I just read something on Maro's tumblr about lifegain never being red, no matter what.

Aww. I always liked Collapsing Borders. Maybe it's the exception that proves the rule.

I'd count Collapsing Borders as ok even if lifegain is nonred, although I don't know if Rosewater would agree :)

In this instance, I don't really care that Mark Rosewater says that life gain should NEVER be red. He and I agree on most things, but we have some disagreements, too (he even disagrees with R&D frequently =P). Threatening cards do all kinds of non-red things (that's one of the big charms of this sort of design).

­Breaking Point, Browbeat and Book Burning all have done things red doesn't have access to outside of those cards (outright creature destruction, straightforward card draw, and milling).

And Dash Hopes and Temporal Extortion applied the same flavour to black. This would raise a lot of eyebrows, most assuredly, but there are arguments both ways.

The cards you're citing are all rather old, which is not very solid ground to stand on. Breaking Point and Browbeat also have the disadvantage of doing things that are almost in red's slice of the pie.
The best I can say for life gain in red is that I'd rather see it there than in blue.

Gain 12 life for ? That seems a bit excessive, even if this is a rare. Let's compare this to Browbeat, a card that, admittedly, is just a little under tournament play:

Deal 5 damage to an opponent costs according to Lava Axe. But I'm aware that isn't a competitive price. seems strong, though.
Draw 3 cards costs on Concentrate, a card that hasn't seen print in a while. I think Wizards thinks concentrate is too good, the way they've been printing their cards lately.
Price of Browbeat ->

Now for "Want Some" Deal 5 damage: The same. About .
Gain 12 life: This is really hard to put a good price on... I admit. A quick search on Gatherer proves that there aren't any spells that straight up gains 12, 11, 10 or 9 life. The closest I can point to is Natural Spring at and Sylvan Bounty, which costs more, but includes cycling. Natural Spring is not rare material, but I think people would be happy casting it if it cost . Life gain is funny. It's all over the chart. It doesn't scale easily either. My best guess is that a one casting cost instant that gains you life, gains you 4 life. Angel's Mercy however, costs gains 7 life, and there have been tournament environments where people toss it in their sideboard. It seems that the rule of thumb is "Gain 4+1 for each you spend". Assuming there's a max cap to how useful a spell that gains you life which has a ludicrous casting cost, I'd probably say 4cc gets 8, 5cc gets 9-11 and 6cc gets 11-13. So gain 12 life costs ? I don't know... but I'd guess that's about right.
Want Some? costs . One mana less than Browbeat. I don't know about you, but if that card existed, most of my deck-building efforts would be based on taking advantage on how cheap that card is, and constantly Twincasting it and returning it from the graveyard with Snapcaster Mage and Scrivener to break the opponent...

Thinking about it, I think the thing with lifegain is that red would LIKE to draw cards and destroy creatures, and black would LIKE to counter spells and get another turn, because those fit broadly into their philosophies of "attack, attack, attack" and "do whatever I can to hurt the opponent", so they will bend the rules to get them if they can. But red doesn't really WANT lifegain: it doesn't want to draw the game out at all, it usually just wants to finish the opponent quicker.

jmg: Hm. I see what you mean. I think the thing is, in a normal red deck, both damage, or a 4/3 creature, or 3 cards are likely to be generally helpful. But that most decks are likely to only really want lava axe OR lifegain, but not really care about the other. So we have a choice between giving it enough life gain to be relevant to a typical red aggro deck (which is indeed a lot more than the cost would suggest), or balancing it for combo decks built around abusing the effect as often as possible and being able to take advantage of either (in which case it would probably have a smaller effect, but be unplayable in most decks, which will make players unhappy when they first see it).

OTOH, I'm amused to see what it COULD do as part of a snapcaster/twincast etc deck. And FWIW, I think it would be fine at 3 CMC, and maybe less broken.

@Alexander: I can dig a bump. Rare is supposed to be competitive after all.

@Jack: You ain't wrong, Jack, but there's a point where a card is just going nuts because "No true Scotsman would like both dealing damage and gaining life". This card, for example, could say "Opponent choose: Take 5 damage, or you gain 40 life". There's a point where the question begins to get absurd.

No, 'Red Deck Wins' doesn't want a card that happens to gain it 12 life, but some deck is bound to want that. That deck, by the way, could be blue/red control. Or Good Stuff W/B/r. Heck, Zoo would probably be comfortable packing a spell that won it a race against other zoo decks... it doesn't really care if it won the race by dealing damage, or gaining life...

Yeah. I think I'm saying "this card is unplayable (except in a niche) at less than 10 life" and you're saying "at more than 10 life, this card is broken". And the trouble with lifegain is, it's likely we're both right :) If so, the question is, are the decks that WOULD like this sufficiently widespread that it's worth printing, or not?

@jmgariepy The whole time I was working on the design for this card I'd always wanted it's CMC to be either 2 or 3 so I wasn't generally opposed to a bump. My only complaint now is that at its the same thing as Browbeat essentially and I feel like that's going to keep it from having its own identity. Would still be too cheap or maybe and an adjustment to the numbers? Maybe at that cost 6 damage and 14 life? Or and 4 damage and 10 life?

You're all very right, this is a difficult card to cost... But then I knew that from the moment I thought it up.

@Jack V I think Magic prints unplayable junk rares with way too much frequency (I'm really just thinking of limited bombs when I talk about most junk rares because I don't play limited). And Want Some? may be niche, but I think it's far from being not worth printing compared to other rares and even mythic rares. There's definitely some constructed deck this card could find a home in, even if it doesn't turn out to be really competitive.

Too be fair to Magic, it has to print junk rares by necessity. Most cards just aren't going to be as good as the best cards... and if they were, the game would either be boring, or confusing. Plus, some of us really like the junk cards. You always have to watch out for my opinion, since I love junk... I have a tendency to try to junk up the cards. ;)

That being said, I hear the problem with the close approximation to Browbeat. Instant speed might help. You also might want to drop the initial package of damage down to 4... If this was "Deal 4, or gain 12" and cost , I don't think anyone would complain that much... but they'd wriggle in their seat every time it was played against them. You're also getting a little closer to the sweet spot where people make bad decisions.

A dilemma sorcery I felt was too close creatively to Browbeat so I changed a few numbers around. Making it instant I think will also allow more potential for bad choices.