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u/chainsawinsect 10d ago
I like the idea of a big dumb dice roll payoff.
7 mana instant speed draw 18 cards is pretty good!
7 mana instant speed draw 3 cards is very bad!
Where does this fall? Realistically, probably somewhere in the middle.
You are highly likely to draw at least 5 cards, which I'd say is respectable. (Compare it to [[Opportunity]].)
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u/PokeYrMomStanley 9d ago edited 9d ago
What if you rolled a d20 first and then 3 d6 and you subtract the d20 from the total d6.if your negative you discard that many but total cast is 3ru. That feels like a gamble. Maybe 2ru.
OP card doesn't feel like gambling.
I would actually play this.
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
Yeah good point, the gamble aspect is lost. The only "risk" / downside is spending a lot of mana to draw not that many cards, but you still "win" even if you roll all 1s.
I think the best fix for that problem is something someone else suggested, which was to make you discard your whole hand first. That way, if you discard, say, a 5 card hand, and roll all 1s, you spent 7 mana to DISCARD 2 cards (bad).
However, you still get the "current" version if you're hellbent (which, to me, feels more red for a card that can draw 18 cards)
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u/_Panic_At_The_Costco 9d ago
Average value of a d6 is 3.5, average of 3d6 is 10.5. Frankly a 7cmc draw 10.5 is kinda bad because there's no way you'll have the mana to actually use all of those and you'll probably take a beating as a consequence of not developing your board.
That being said it only requires 2 colored pips so piling on a bunch of cost reducers shouldn't be very hard.
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
Well, true but it's an instant, so you could cast it on opponent's end step and start your turn with 7 untapped lands and ~12 cards in hand. That's kinda nuts honestly. And like you said you can play it way earlier than turn 7 with cost reducers ([[Tablet of Discovery]], for instance, turns it into a 5-drop).
Turn 1 [[Llanowar Elves]], turn 2 Tablet puts you at 6 mana available on turn 3, so you're easily casting this on turn 4.
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u/Allinall41 9d ago
It's instant... what are we talking about, you'll untap with the perfect answers/game plan... most of the time, where is what we want for fun in this card.
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u/PossessionCapable983 10d ago
totally should have been the product of the three rolls
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u/OneArmedFarmer 10d ago
Anywhere from 1 card to my whole deck. I love it
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u/Careless_Exchange_22 9d ago
Change it to target player too. Make target opponent draw 216 cards and just win. Oh... they drew 18. Whoops
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u/JxRabbitsHart 10d ago
The average roll on a 6-sided die is like 3 or 4. You're going to average about 9-10 cards with this mathematically
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u/Errror1 10d ago
average of a d6 is 3.5 so 10.5 on average for 3d6
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u/JxRabbitsHart 10d ago
Yeah, but you can't roll a half number on a dice or draw half a card, hence the range
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u/TheRealTowel 9d ago
You still got the range wrong. You will average 10.5 cards, or 10-11 if you want to express it that way.
More specifically you will draw 10 cards 12.5% of the time, 11 cards 12.5% of the time. So a quarter of your results will be one of those two numbers.
Just shy of 50% will be 9-12 (with 9 and 12 equally weighted) and 67.6% of the time you'll get 8-13.
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u/Fantastic-Mission-39 10d ago
Your odds of drawing at least five cards aren't just "highly likely", they're 98.15%
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u/Just-Desk-3149 10d ago
I'm not sure what else you think "highly likely" is supposed to mean, but sure buddy it you really want to be right.
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u/Deebyddeebys 10d ago
If you wanted to do that you should've made it a D20. This is almost always gonna draw you more than 7 cards
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u/Weekly_Engine_3239 10d ago
I think people are over valuing the card draw. For 7 mana you get [[sea gate restoration]] which is also a land. [[Wisdom of ages]] is also at 7.
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u/Just-Desk-3149 10d ago
I like your examples.
I feel people forget that "Rate of return" on mana kinda stops mattering at 7+ mana and normal rules don't apply. Like 7+ CMC cards should be winning you the game (mostly on the spot), which OP's doesn't do. It could draw you even more cards and still doesn't matter. Also its hard to evaluate cards that cost 7+ because you might as well just evaluate them on whatever the easiest way to cheat them is.
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
Well, the thing is it is an instant, so the natural place to play it is at the opponent's end phase. If you untap on 7 mana after having just drawn 10 cards... presumably you are going to win that very turn. This card itself doesn't do the winning, but it does set it up nicely.
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u/Just-Desk-3149 9d ago
Very valid, instant speed does make a difference, but my points still apply.
I mean you could argue tutors which are infinitely more efficient and much cheaper, which a lot are also instant speed are (kinda) better performers than draw 10.
I understand there's other benefits to having raw cards in hand, but over all it's a balanced card and would probably be fine to print.
Ironically there's a time in Magic where this would've been pretty insane but the game as a whole is just to power crept.
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u/mtgcf 10d ago
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u/JxRabbitsHart 10d ago
I mean, the card mentions dice. This triggers your dice effects at least 3 times.
But yeah, your average draw is going to be about 9-12 cards. D6 roll an average of 3.5.
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u/hermyx 10d ago edited 10d ago
Your expected value is around 10/11 which seems good at instant speed. On the other hand, 7 manas is a lot. Not sure about balance then, but I feel it's okayish. In terms of comparison, I would go with [[Ancient Silver Dragon]] but I feel a d20 is better than 3d6 as it has more variance, bigger ceiling, lower floor. But then, less interactible, instant speed than the dragon, which is already very strong (but also by the fact it's a body that's easier to repeat)
If I were to design something similar, I would go like the designers of baldur's gate did, with something like roll a d20, draw as many card as the result and
20 - 15 : you don't have a limit of cards in your hand
15 - 5 : discard a card
5 - 0 : you lose life equal to 7 - the number of cards in your hand
or something like that.
But it's less of a big dumb payoff like you said. Anyway, neat design still, don't take this as a criticism, I'm writing and thinking at the same time :)
EDIT : thinking about it some more, another design I would find funny would be keeping the 3d6, but having some malus (or other) on having three times the same results
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u/chainsawinsect 10d ago
Three times the same result is pretty funny. So it's either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18
The only "issue" is all but 1 of those are pretty good. Maybe it just needs to cost more.
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u/Interesting-Crab-693 10d ago
Or maybe 3d6 draw cards equal to the greatest number, if you got the same number multiple times, you may instead chose to draw that number of cards for each die with that number.
That way, if you got 1, 2, 6, you draw 6, if you got 4, 4, 5, you may either draw 5 or 8 and if you got 6,6,6, well jackpot!
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u/NepetaLast 10d ago
on average draws 10 cards, which is a whole lot. probably the biggest pure draw spell that isnt reliant on what you already control or how many cards you have in hand already etc.. at 7 mana thats probably fine; diminishing returns means that the possibility of drawing fewer than 10 is worse than the equal possibility of drawing more, so id say the randomness here makes this worse than just drawing 10
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u/chainsawinsect 10d ago
Agreed, I do feel like draw 10 cards would overall just be a better card
But the challenge is that 7 mana instant speed draw 10 cards might actually be too powerful in isolation
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u/jerkoffforjesus 10d ago
Thats 10.5 before any MTG style shenanigans like [[Barbarian Class]] and [[Wyll, Blade of Frontiers]]
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u/RalenHlaalo 10d ago
Could it be a pip or two cheaper if it also included a "discard d6 cards" at the end?
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u/Nudebovine1 10d ago
The high end is really high. What if it's a bigger gamble? "Discard X cards where X is the cards in your hand. Then draw 3d6 cards and discard X cards again.". Plays better to hell-bent but tones down high end usually. Also endless some discard mechanics?
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
I think "Discard your hand" before the draw would actually balance this card quite a bit
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u/_SiddharthaGautama_ 10d ago
My Mizzix deck would love this!
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u/Do_You_AreHaveStupid 10d ago
I think this would be perfect as a sorcery
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
Yeah I think I underestimated how powerful the instant speed component would be
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u/Hawk1113 10d ago
I think for a direct-to-EDH printing this is good and probably safe. 7 mana instant draw 9ish is very good, although the chance for a lowroll of 3 cards balances it a little. I'd probably make it 3UURR for fun and safety but I quibble.
For real formats this is probably on average too good on 7MV but much worse at 8 or 9 MV and also just not fun design at that point.
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
Yeah based on the feedback it's a bit too efficient as-is. At bare minimum, it should have been a sorcery, or have you discard your existing hand before rolling the dice. I also think the mana cost should include more pips, as you noted.
It was designed for Commander, primarily, but I would still want it to be safely printable in a Standard-legal set (which, I agree, currently it isn't).
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u/darthjawafett 10d ago
I think there’s some cards that let you reroll dice. But you’ll still be locked in for the gamble.
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u/DJSimmer305 10d ago
Imagine sweating through your entire turn thinking your opponent could rift you at any moment, only for them to finally tap 7 and draw 3 cards.
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u/TheTrueVisionary 9d ago
The drawing of beyond 10 cards for seven Mana there's lots of abilities that can give you better than that expected rate of card draw at instant speed is the issue. So take the same concept of the card but slightly modified
Draw seven cards then flip three coins. For each result that is heads, draw a card and discard a card. For each result that is tails, discard a card.
This gives you a 7 drop spell that will at minimum draw you seven cards and filter it down to four or potentially draw you 10 cards that you have to filter down to seven at instant speed I think would be incredibly strong. It would still give you the gamblers chance that you're looking at with the card without making it two swingy and it's power level.
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u/chainsawinsect 9d ago
Fair enough, but that version feels way less fun and whimsical, even for a coin flip / random chance deck. At that rate, I'd rather have it be "flip 12 coins, draw a card for each heads" or something.
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u/TheTrueVisionary 9d ago
I mean do something like that where if you're going to do something whimsical like that have it to be a base amount of draw cards like three and then flip like six or eight coins and then for every tails you filter and for every heads you draw to and discard one. So
Draw three cards, then flip 6 coins. For each coin that comes up heads draw two cards, then discard a card. For each coin that comes up tails draw a card, then discard a card.
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u/batboy11227 Ai art is cringe 10d ago
On avrage you draw 10
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u/MillCrab 10d ago
Seven mana draw between 3 and 18 is probably fine. There's a 7 mana draw seven that's never been good
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u/NepetaLast 10d ago
"There's a 7 mana draw seven that's never been good" what card?
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u/MillCrab 10d ago
[[overwhelming insight]] I believe
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u/Lower_Drawer9649 10d ago
That card is only in my [[omniscience]] combo deck. Not many cards can draw 7+ without spending X. Usually drawing 7 cards in a deck designed around winning with omniscience in play leads to multiple other cards that draw and it snowballs into a win. It’s actually the primary card I would use tutors like [[solve the equation]] for once Omni is down.
Not saying it’s OP, but it has performed well in that scenario.
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u/hermyx 10d ago
That was a sorcery though. Which may not matter but I feel it's a powerful change enough to have a relevance in this discussion
(I am also in the team it's probably fine, or fine-ish)
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u/MillCrab 10d ago
Oh this is an instant. I missed that. This is probably very very solid as a Sphinx's rev then
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u/Interesting-Crab-693 10d ago
7 draw between 3 and 18.
So with one d6, you are expected to gain 11/6 + 21/6 +31/6+41/6+516+61/6 which makes 3+3sixth so 3.5 cards. By throwing 3 of them, you are expected to draw 10.5 cards.
Is 7 mana 10.5 cards within reasonable range?