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CardName: Rakdos Haranguer Cost: 2R Type: Creature - Devil Pow/Tgh: 2/1 Rules Text: Haste Malevolent 1 - {2}{R} ({2}{R}, Discard this card: Target player sacrifices a permanent at random. Activate this ability only as a sorcery.) Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: New Ravnica Common |
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This needs to be sorcery speed only, at the very least. I also can't see this being on multiple commons. This is not a mechanic, this is a singleton effect.
I thought it was pretty cool when I first saw the ability, but Circeus does bring up a good point. In large quantities, this ability would be painful to play with and against. More often than not, I think this would lend to some very unfun games.
That said, I think you could get away with this as a keyword in a Magic set if the word was changed to a verb, and it was turned into a keyword action instead. That way, you could put a lot of variety into Malevolent, and not have it be so redundantly broken. For example:
Malevolent LD
Sorcery
Common
Destroy target land, then Malevolent (Target player sacrifices a permanent at random.)
Get what I'm saying? Altering how it gets used can give the keyword more legs, and give it a chance to appear on more and different cards.
That said... maybe it's still not appropriate for Rakdos? I mean, Populate appears on 14 cards in RtR block. I assume all guild abilities should be on par with that number in a block. Is Malevolent on 14 cards too many? I don't know.
(And on a separate side note... is it appropriate that it can get rid of enchantments? Another question that I don't got a good answer for.)
Crack the Earth and Misguided Rage allow red to "get rid of enchantments" to the same extent as this. Well... okay, there the defender gets to choose a permanent... hmm. Capricious Efreet does allow this, but that has been deemed rather dubious in the colour pie also.
Eh, red does get random.
I'd word it this way instead, to feel a bit more red:
When ~ ETBs, you may choose to sacrifice it. If you do, target player sacrifices a random permanent.
But I don't think I'd want very much of this ability - it's too likely to end up as "My turn? Draw a card. Undo your turn. Attack for one. End turn."
Red gets random, but it doesn't get to do anything it wants at random. Chaos Warp is famous for being way out of colour pie: it's a red way to get rid of enchantments. The fact that there's some randomness involved doesn't excuse it.
This is more borderline, because you don't get to choose a target.
Red gets "random" enchantment removal from time to time. It's just that it normally affects the whole board.