These are all good points. This card in specific does need some tweaking (It was an older card in the treasonous cycle), and I might look into play testing some of these to determine if treasonous as a whole needs tweaking.

This is mixing Servos with Thopters. :(

These treasonous designs are all incredibly parasitic and trying to offset a drawback - encouraging you to do something you don't like, because the designer is fully aware that you won't like treasonous. Rather than encourage you to have your nice cake, you're asked to eat mud. Poisonous, treasonous mud.

If treasonous was just one aspect of a larger whole, that might be worth it, but that's all there is.

Finally! My treasonous liuetenant pays off! ... that really isn't much of a reward, is it?

Yeah the mechanic by its self is a heavy drawback in base tribal decks. I was more looking to be a piece to a combo for either a treasonous combo (like the five color card that has treasonous token synergies) or just a good source of self inflicted damage for some combo (I don't exactly know one off the top of my head, but I bet there is something that this can pair nicely in)

Mmm. On its own, it's pretty terrbile. This set does have ways to turn treason to your advantage (opponent has to pay 1 per treason creature you control, etc.) so I guess this is an enabler for that deck.

I'm confused - treasonous is a drawback, right? Why would I want to play, or what's the point of, a 1/2 for with a drawback?

I would btw include the reminder text for treasonous in these (so "Treasonous" within square brackets).

What is dealt the damage?

"you lost life this turn" is not a cost, so this doesn't need "in addition to its other costs".

It's not hard removal, but it can be recurred cheaply. Not a common.

Let's look at what jameschanlee has to say about that! They have designed a mechanic called interrogate that actually also has to do with revealing cards from hand, but adds much more punch.

Look at Dream Walker! Now the revealed card can't be played either. Your proposal of randomly revealing would make this more potent as well.

How about:

• "Whenever ~ deals combat damage to an opponent, interrogate them. (That player exiles a card from their hand at random until your next turn.)"

If you want this at lower mana value, this probably would need a safety valve e. g. "(That player reveals a card at random from their hand, then exiles it until your next turn if it is a nonland card.)"

Would create some weird tension to playing lands, maybe, so this needs some more thought put into it.

t's more... why would I bother? "I got five creatures through; from the size of this - that's 2 power each, so that's half your life. Oh, and I guess I can look at your hand too, for some reason?" It's just not a big enough reward to fuss with.

Now saying that - knowing what your opponent has coming does have value. Just maybe not enough value to be worth a keyword.