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Recent updates to Cards With No Home: (Generated at 2025-05-05 20:54:03)
Although this is far too complicated, it does seem to follow almost exactly your understanding of a chess gambit.
I don't understand your proposal, though. If you remove mode 3, then what does it mean to "put your creature on the line"? How can you be "risking" your creature? If any time a creature is risked it gets sacced, that's "Sacrifice a creature", no gambit involved. If any time a creature is risked it doesn't get sacced then it's not at risk at all. And if the opponent gets to choose whether the creature gets sacced or not, then why wouldn't they always choose to kill it (modulo it being something like Kokusho)?
Roughly what I was saying. If we remove mode 3 altogether, the spell has an immediate benefit (return a land) and a secondary benefit (return the spell if I choose to put my creature on the line.) That's four choices (which land to target, whether to activate Gambit, which creature to Gambit, and whether or not my opponent will agree to the gambit.) Seems like plenty of decisions to me without involving the return of 3 lands.
Though, I apologize Alex. I didn't see your version on the Code Geas set when responding to this card. I wasn't responding to Gambit in general, just the way it evolved over here.
The key elements to a gambit in chess, AIUI, are:
So I'm not quite sure what jmg is proposing. Giving your opponent the choice of sacrifice or no is only meaningful if the version where they accept is also better for you, which I think requires the two modes or something similar.
In my version Positional Gambit, the player casting the spell is risking the piece by casting the spell. In Link's version here, casting the spell gives you the caster the choice of a "safe" move or a "risky" move; and if you make the risky move, the opponent then also has a choice whether to "capture" the piece or not.
I.e. my version has two modes once you've cast the spell:
The opponent chooses which of 1 and 2 you make, which means that you the caster might choose not to cast the spell if saccing a creature would be devastating to you.
Link's version has 3 modes:
And the caster chooses whether it's 1 or 2-or-3, and in the 2-or-3 case the opponent chooses whether it's 2 or 3. That's an extra level on top of my version, and those grindy choices do indeed make this very Spike.
Mm. Though I'm not sure why Gambit need to be attached to modal spells. The first mode alone would have been fine (giving your opponent the choice of sacrifice or no.) It's the extra mode that really hammers home the spike.
I don't think anything this cheap should be giving more than one poison counter. Compare Decimator Web.
Outside of a dedicated infect set, this feels odd; since it's a black thing to do. Inside of one? Run four, in every deck, so every deck is red.
This is probably way too good. Infect is frustrating enough to play against without this in its toolbox.
See also Puncture Blast. I'm not sure. It seems both too strong, and fine at the same time. Part of the problem is that I'm not a fan of deal direct poison to the opponent... or at least, not for cheap, or not in increments of more than one poison per spell.
But getting back on track... on one hand, I feel like this is too cheap because this is the rough equivalent of "Put 3 -1/-1 counters on target creature, or deal 6 damage to target player." Heady stuff. But that's the case only in a dedicated infect deck with no non-infect way of dealing damage. Does that matter? Or do the natural restrictions of playing that deck help balance this card?
Lowered the mana cost by
. Might lower further.
Indeed, it was, as Everlasting Torment, along with a lifegain hoser and damage-prevention hoser, all for 2 mana cheaper than this card.
I'd call that an intended feature for interesting combos, and stay as is. ("All creatures have wither" seems printable at this cost, to me.)
I originally had it say "permanents" Since Pyramids did something similar for lands, but I decided it was enough of a niche case to warrant limiting the effect to creatures only.
Changed it to affect only creatures, and added another "each" before step. Don't know if it's proper contemplating, but it seemed better to me.
Mmm... this would work to save a 4/4 creature that gets, I dunno, Soul Sculptored between two Magma Giants.