Balefire Bolt

[OdinVanguard]

--Optional--

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Balefire Bolt / Balefire Lance
Cost: 6 / 4
Stats (if creature or weapon): -NA- (spell)
Ability(ies):

• unupgraded: "Your opponent discards their top deck card for each 15 you own. They lose maximum health equal to the first card's cost."
• upgraded: "Your opponent discards their top deck card for each 15 you own. They lose maximum health equal to the first card's cost."

I went with bolt / lance naming scheme because of the way that it links to quanta in the player's pool for its effect.
Unlike other bolt / lance spells, this spell only affects the opposing player.

Thematically, it is erasing the cards from time, removing all trace of them and pulling some of the enemy players life force away with them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Power#Balefire

If this seems to overshadow the void effect in darkness, it can always be changed to simply deal damage instead.

The rewind synnergy is intentional.

[serprex]

-3 cost bonus why?

[Chapuz]

This is so f**ing powerful

[timpa]

The damage easily overshadows the other bolts in the game ...

[OdinVanguard]

-3 cost bonus why?

Derp
Was supposed to be a 2 point reduction... fixed

This is so f**ing powerful

The damage easily overshadows the other bolts in the game ...

Ya, I know, its gonna need some balance work... Maybe 1 card for every 15 ?
I do want to keep the millish behaviour of this thing, even more than the damage aspect...

I could also go with "based on its cost" instead of "equal to its cost" so things like dragons won't cause quite as massive obliteration... maybe use square root of cost rounded up? At that point a miracle would only drain 4 maximum health.

Also, the damage output will vary based on the deck it is played against.

Decks that have average card costs of 2 or less would be on par with other bolts as it is right now.

With square root scaling, decks with average card costs of 4 or less would be on par with other bolts.

At 15 per discard, decks with average card costs of 3 or less would take average damage

Move up to 15 per bolt and square root scaling and decks with average costs of 9 or less yield par damage.

So there is definitely room for tweaking here, I'm just trying to figure out a good balance right now.

[timpa]

well, I thought it milled only one card, so you could control the damage with RT.

To make sure the mill is balanced I'd think of how many bolts/quanta do you need to kill with fire and ice and make sure its not enough to deckout with this quantity. The problem is that this is in-element with inno and that milling reduces the options your opponent has to answer.

I'd rather see this with a fixed low quantity for milling and scale the damage appropriately.
For the cost consider that a one card mill makes this plus RT an instakill + added effects.

[OdinVanguard]

well, I thought it milled only one card, so you could control the damage with RT.

To make sure the mill is balanced I'd think of how many bolts/quanta do you need to kill with fire and ice and make sure its not enough to deckout with this quantity. The problem is that this is in-element with inno and that milling reduces the options your opponent has to answer.

I'd rather see this with a fixed low quantity for milling and scale the damage appropriately.
For the cost consider that a one card mill makes this plus RT an instakill + added effects.

I really want to keep the milling a scalable thing. It makes it stand out from other cards.

Maybe the damage could equal the cost of the first card discarded then just add 1 for each additional card.
Two card single insta-kills are already in game viz freeze+shockwave, and unsummon + burn card / inno.
The only tricky thing here is that this is in-element with its combo pair.

Right now, innovate can provide an effective 3 card mill, plus more with the rico combo. This spell doesn't target so rico will not be a problem.
Given that this is purely offensive, it should be reasonable to have it slightly more effective as a mill... A cap of 5 or 6 milling is probably about right then...
99 / 6 is roughly 15 to 16 so that will be the mill increment count I guess... The cost can then be 6 / 4.
So the unupped can pull off a single card mill at 99 , while the upped version can pull off a double tap with 98 or 99

Lastly, at a cap of 5 and 6, the most that this can mill is 30 / 36. With 6 innovates as well, that pushes the threshold to 48 / 54...
So the upgraded version with a full complement of this and innovate can pull off a standalone deckout... provided that the innovates operate optimally.