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CardName: Ionic Instability Cost: XB Type: Sorcery Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life for each color of mana spent to cast Ionic Instability. (For example, if you paid {W}{B}{U}{R}{G} to cast Ionic Instability, that player would lose 5 life and you would gain 5 life.) Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: New Mirrodin Common |
Code: CB06 Active?: true History: [-] Add your comments: |
to cast Ionic Instability, that player would lose 5 life and you would gain 5 life.)
Well that took me a long time to figure out.
Why is this not red?
Also, this is too similar to Ionic Surge to me.
Why not "Draw a card and lose 1 life for each color," or "Target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life for each color," or "For each color spent to cast ~, put a card from your graveyard on top of your library?"
EDIT: Crap, that last one is green.
I'm trying to avoid card drawing or card advantage, since Salvage is causing so much incidental card drawing in this set. I'm also trying to avoid overlaps with red... so direct damage to the head is kind of a bad idea, too.
I'm not super-happy with this card, because you're right, this is close to the green one. At least it does something we rarely see on a Magic card, though, so I do like that (Enrage used to be black from cards like Howl from Beyond. Increasing power is pretty red now... that's one of the reasons why this is a sorcery. That space isn't really carved out). I'd be happy to switch it with another more black ability... but I don't know what I can use. I have plenty enough regeneration in set, I couldn't imagine a way to make this be discard and be fair for a common, I've got my prerequisite creature kill cards already, and, as Alex and I discused on Ionic Thrust, you don't want the red card and black card of a cycle to kill a creature in mildly different ways. I want to avoid any more evasion in the set for now... you can see how this card got boxed in. Any other ideas?
All this said, I suppose the red card can deal damage to creatures, while the black card drains life to opponents. Or vice versa. Probably visa versa... If this card aimed for the opponent's head, it would be strictly better than Exotic Disease, and that was a pretty good card...
Lifedrain is my thought. EDIT: Hah, you thought of it too :P Exotic Disease was indeed pretty good, but this would be comparable, and actually needs you to spend the mana on it rather than just have the colour available.
Hmm... Well, at least you still have a reason you might want to pack Exotic Disease then. Okay, switching over. Geez... some of these Ionic spells are getting close to common backbreakers. I'm kind of glad this set isn't a real 5 color set... at least they're hard to set up in draft...