Pointed Discussion

expensive!

Is it just me or is the art for this card really weird? It's like a photograph.

By the time you play this spell they'll either have 0 or 1 card in their hand.

I'd give this more of a common rarity, but I guess it's their card :P

Even though this card isn't all that great, it would still be funny to see someone drop this off of three rituals first turn.

I certainly agree concerning the photograph appearance, Kev Walker did an awesome artwork there.
The effect sounds appearling, the mana cost does not - this card is pretty much useless in lategame.
Most of the time a plain Mind Rot will do the same job then and you'll still have four more mana to spend on something else.

And with three Dark Rituals in my opening hand i'd rather want to cast Phage on turn one :/

Black's suposed to be the discard color, but a blue card, Amnesia, basically does this at 1 mana cheeper.

This is indeed expensive, but I can certainly see situations where it'd be handy, especially against a deck with heavy card draw.

Could also be fun to try to abuse it via the Madness mechanic.

Too expensive! Sadly, because the effect is quite nice...
I'm waiting for a card like this:

Sorcery
Every player discard his or her hand.
Like a Wrath of God for cards in hand. I think it would be quite helpful with the hellbent theme that there was in Dissension...
1/5

Had to be expensive. R&D REALLY didn't want anyone to be able to play this on turn 1 or 2.

Why would I need this? One With Nothing does half of what this does for {5B} less!

I prefer Identity Crisis.

Liliana's Caress
Howling Mine

@Leomistico
Mindslicer

People who get this played against them have very funny reactions. 4/5

I pulled this when it was reprinted in M13. It was patheitc back when it was first printed and is still patheitcly overcosted now.

Wit's End does not disrupt Battle of Wits. That's... awkward.

But just think, it says "target player" instead of "target opponent" so you can target yourself! Now for the low low cost of you can get One With Nothing at sorcery speed.

Yeah, mass-discard spells like this just don't work. Like with Monomania and Amnesia, the mana cost is so prohibitively large that your opponent will likely have one or two cards, if that, by the time you can play it. All too often your seven-mana "bomb" will be countered by your foe commiting the ultimate counter-strategy that is "playing cards."

Really, though, the effect can't be much cheaper. Would this be playable at four mana? Yes, certainly. It would likely become broken, especially with even a hint of mana-acceleration. By turn seven, though, if you're opponent hasn't crossed the win-by-now-or-lose threshold, then he's probably in a position where he's set up some sort of lock. Mass discard necessitates a high mana cost but by its very nature is only useful early on.

That is why cheap, targeted denial - cards like Duress and Thoughtseize - see play again and again. One-for-one ratios of mana-to-discard are powerful, such in the case of Hymn to Tourach or Gerrard's Verdict. If Wit's End guaranteed seven discards, then things might be more interesting - even then, though... seven mana, yo. What this card wants to be is Mind Twist. It is playable at essentially any stage in the game, and you pay only what you need to to wipe out your opponent's hand.

I guess you could say Wit's End is... patheitc?

Main issue here is that at 7 mana the only formats that would rather run this than Mind Twist wouldn't use it! I stumbled upon this while thinking of combos for it.

Actually, any card that casts the next for free (Hellcarver Demon) could use this while being essentially unable to use Mind Twist.

I'm a bit surprised at the comments on this card, but maybe that's because I play too much group game casual. This card is officially banned in our casual games because it's: A) Not fun to have your whole hand discarded, and B) far, far too powerful of an effect. We like to play stupid huge creatures and late game sorceries so it's not very common to see a player with 4 to 6 cards in their hand on turn six and beyond. In the casual environment I play in this card typically ends up being a 5 for 1, which is just too big of a swing in card advantage to allow.