Pointed Discussion

Ah yes, the Testicle.

An interesting insurance policy, although there are two major issues with it:

1) Tons of "game killing hits" are now life-loss vs damage.

2) A lot of high-damage strikes from the likes of red can't be redirected. (ie Lava Burst )

There are definitely worse artifacts you could have though, and it is hard to argue with the casting cost.

2.5/5

Woot! Take only 5 from Progenitus!

Actually quite good in non-white EDH if your in a meta where Big-One-Shot-General-Hits are making your life miserable. Overall a pretty good 0 drop artifact too (just not better than the creatures, moxes, X spells or the baubles). Seems to have been made to stop stuff like Channel + Fireball and does that pretty well too.

@ Gaussgoat:

Says in the rulings that it's not prevention, so it works even on damage that can't be prevented. Which is quite good.

Wow, this is exactly what you should be able to get for 0 mana (plus a card). Actually just outright preventing the damage might have been alright; Fog, after all, prevents all damage from multiple sources for a single mana. But still, this card is kind of elegant, I like.

sexy art, but it doesn't fit the card.

"Actually quite good in non-white EDH if your in a meta where Big-One-Shot-General-Hits are making your life miserable. Overall a pretty good 0 drop artifact too (just not better than the creatures, moxes, X spells or the baubles)."

Any spot removal would be better (or a Fog effect, which would at least stop all of the damage). With the sphere, you don't actually solve the problem; the general is still alive and will just kill you next turn. It's doubtful the opponent will have left himself open to a counter-attack, either, as he will have known going into the turn that you had the Sphere waiting. For this reason, he also won't have gone all-in with a card like Hatred or Berserk.

Had it flat out prevented the damage, it would have been solid. As is so often the case, preventing damage and gaining life won't win you the game, hence removal or threats are better.

Says "prevent" right on the card. Why would that be Oracle-updated away? Plenty of red cards care about the difference.
Easy to template the right way: "The next time a source of your choice would deal damage to you this turn, prevent half of that damage, rounded down."
Of course, this would make the card even less useful, but it's a matter of principle.

So if i were to doomsday would it reduce the life loss from half your current life to 1/4 your current life?

Did anyone notice? This is a baby Maze of Ith!

this looks like an awesome card in Casual. Not even exactly EDH....try 'non-Singleton, basically double-ton, half-Budget, half-irrational overspending SUPER CASUAL 40-60-80-100 Card with like a single awesome foil Mythic Rare because you wanted it even if it's a bad/or cheap one, or because your awesome friend gave it to you for free.'

basically, in MAGIC games involving decks looking like they were built by Joey Wheeler, this card seems freakin' sweet. =)

EDH I'm just throwing out there is way too competitive to use this actually effectively, bc frankly Maze of Ith is an absolute Staple of the format and really worth putting in your deck. You'd use Maze of Ith exactly like 'Dark Sphere, but just better.' Because the corner cases where the cards are 'different', tend to be situations where a completely different type of card, like a lifelinker or a counterspell, would be a better response than this type of permanent 'damage shield that does nothing else'. In EDH, so many of the cases where you'd want this card, totally involve 'an opponent's Legendary Creature General Damage', that Maze of Ith is preferred.

But the card is still awesome even though EDH isn't exactly the right format for it! :)

seems like no one realizes or mentions the secret tech of this card -
CMC = 0
that makes it much more useful than just for the damage reduction,
think of the tricks with Master Transmuter, for one.