­Challenge # 078

So I guess this is a burn spell because you'll trigger it immediately. I hope so anyway.

I rolled "Do zero damage for 5" And boggled a bit.

I first tried and sorcery, thinking a one-shot one-sided pyroclasm at 7 would be fine.

But this is probably shinier. At 5 it's nothing, at 6 it's 1 damage to everything. At 7 it's 3 damage to everything, then at 8 it's 6 and starts to be game winningly cataclysmic. Should have given it a bigger name, I guess.

Ooh, splashy. So I cast this for 7, say, and then I have a stored... double Simoon, and then later a single Simoon. If fired off on the same turn that'll be some way towards a one-sided Wrath. If you managed to pay Plague Wind mana for this, then you'll get several Plague Winds stored over several turns.

It's a pity that making X=1 doesn't do anything useful; that's a bit of a nasty realisation when you twig that. But nonetheless, yeah, this scales up quickly to a pretty exciting card.

True, but I specifically had to make 5 do nothing. I could have cost it at and changed the damage formula to add X+1 but.. yeuch. This seemed cleaner.

Well, at 9 it's doing 4+3+2+1 so 10, or more likely 4 and 6. So a double mostly-wrath. Which doesn't kill really tough stuff, or regenerators.

But still yes, splashy as intended; while hopefully not being a complete lockdown all on its own (add a Doubling Season and um,yeah, that's a win.)

Oh indeed, it's definitely cleaner this way.

It will outright kill the opponent if you cast it for 11 mana. But, well, Blaze/Fireball will do that for 21. Possibly more problematically, this will outright kill all opponents for 11 mana. Or in EDH... to hit each opponent for 40 you'd need... 14 mana? That's prooobably okay. Somebody ought to have a counterspell or Krosan Grip by then.