How Good is Pain Magnification?
General forum
Posted on April 8, 2024, 9:04 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
I have copies of Pain Magnification in several of my decks, but I am not certain if I shall keep those copies in those decks, since I have realized that it is best in decks that have a dedicated discard theme, whereas I put it in those decks mainly because I thought that it was a cool card (in my defense, that card was first printed in the original Ravnica block, which was released only shortly after I had begun playing the game in 2003). Therefore, I wonder how everyone else feels about that card.
What does everyone else say about this? How good of a card is Pain Magnification?
DemonDragonJ says... #3
wallisface, in that case, I am very glad that I have chosen to remove Pain Magnification from the decks in which I had it.
April 8, 2024 9:31 p.m.
wallisface says... #4
Here’s a general checklist of things to contemplate when trying to evaluate a card:
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how powerful is its effect? Keeping in mind the mana investment?
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how immediate does its effect happen?
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how often would this be a strong/weak topdraw, given an otherwise empty hand?
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how useful is the card if you’re behind in boardstate?
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how well does the card function on it’s own? - Are there hoops you have to jump through for it to do anything?
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how much hand-holding does it need to be useful, and how easy us it to provide that help?
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how easily disruptable is its effect?
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are there cards that achieve what this card’s doing, but better?
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how focused is the card? Does it fit into a coherent archtype, or does it require a fractured/non-focused playstyle?
You should be able to generically ask those questions of any card and get a pretty good indicator of it’s general usefulness (there will always be outliers as some cards become much stronger if heavily built-around).
It’s also worth noting that magic players are notoriously bad at evaluating new cards, so I wouldn’t stress too much when you accidentally over/under value a cards power.
April 8, 2024 11:36 p.m. Edited.
Last_Laugh says... #5
I personally think it's highly underrated. I think of it as a "curse all opponents" effect since they can trigger it on each other and with a little politics you can make that happen.
April 9, 2024 2:44 a.m.
Last_Laugh I agree with you, in commander it looks like a very snowballey enchantment. I think Pain Magnification might take the right deck to be great, it's not a rakdos staple, but in the right build it would absolutely be a must remove threat.
The main drawback I could see with it is that in commander players can get very salty about discarding and not everyone will have enchant removal, so you may become the archenemy when you play this.
Just throwing out ideas here, but Pain Magnification might be brutal in a rakdos Blade of Selves deck that runs Balor and Archon of Cruelty as reanimated blade carriers.
April 9, 2024 7:57 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #7
Regarding commander: I think having something like this will force people to change their play style, holding back a card or two, which isn’t an insignificant effect... especially if they’re a combo player. I’ve got this in my rakdos watermark deck (obviously) and I’ve enjoyed having it out on the table every time. YMMV.
wallisface says... #2
3 mana is super slow for a discard effect, and what’s worse is that the opponent gets to choose what they’re discarding.
To make this even slower & clumsier, it does absolutely nothing when it’s played, and forces you to put in serious work to get any kind of payoff… you need to deal at least 2-lots of 3 damage just to still be significantly worse than Blightning (which, is still a pretty terrible card)
April 8, 2024 9:24 p.m.