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CardName: Dark Ritual Cost: B Type: Instant Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: As an additional cost to cast Dark Ritual, sacrifice a creature. Add {B}{B}{B} to your mana pool. Flavour Text: "In order to obtain, something of equal value must be lost..." Set/Rarity: Magic Essentials: The Eternal Core Set Common |
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I fear even this amount of downside will still leave this an impressively format warping card; open to abusive early wins.
Yeah, this doesn't actually help in any way against the ways that Dark Ritual is overpowered. I see this set has Lightning Bolt, so it might be that you're aiming for an overpowered set anyway, but if not then you may need to rethink this drawback.
"As an additional cost to cast ~, discard a card and pay 2 life" might be another idea? Rituals are already card disadvantage, though, so adding more card disadvantage probably doesn't actually mitigate anything either...
Formerly: Dark Ritual
I agree with Alex. This whole set is overpowered and not suitable for a real core set.
Dark Ritual was/is a staple card for the color and beautiful flavor. As perfect as Lightning Bolt and Giant Growth. It is only overpowered in relation to other cards which is really another way of saying that most other cards are grossly underpowered.
In the earliest days of Magic the most powerful cards were the Instants, Sorceries, Artifacts, and Enchantments. The creatures back then were laughable by today's standards. Wizards recognized this (way after the fact) and has been working to bring up the power level of creatures ever since the Modern era (Mirrodin & 8th Edition).
It is a travesty that we have cards that are strictly better or worse than an identical card. Dead Weight & Weakness, Lightning Bolt & Shock, Ashcoat Bear & Grizzly Bears to name a few. The game should not have cards that invalidate other cards.
Every card should be a choice of poisons. Dark Ritual feels powerful but then every card should feel powerful - even the commons. When player doesn't have to think about their decision to run a particular card the game is broken. Having someone jamming a playset in their deck because its better than anything else is a failure of design. To that end, the power level of other cards should be adjusted to so that format warping effects are righted.
That's just an argument for power creep. Spells were too powerful and creatures were too weak. The correct response was to reduce the power of spells and increase the power of creature. Just making everything more powerful will make the game degenerate.
In this case, the drawback seems good. Rituals can lead to really swingy advantages, but requiring a creature to be out shows you down nicely.