Pointed Discussion

What would anyone ever want this card for?

Nice draw combo with Dragon Appeasement.

Pariah wold work well with this or Glacial Chasm to keep it Ice Age Block...

Lim-dul drives a harder bargain than Yawgmoth.

You can avoid sacking a permanent by discarding a card...by paying BB to draw a card, to avoid sacking a permanent by discarding a card...

I believe the Lich is saying "Pay no attention to the Necropotence behind the curtain."

Fantastic synergy with Cadaverous Bloom. Cycle your hand to get to what you want and you'll hardly even notice the painful drawback.

Hey look! It's Khabál Ghoul!

What if. . . your life total couldn't change?

Other than that, this is not really so much a draw engine as it is treating your hand as a shield to your life total.

Paired with Dragon Appeasement, as long as you have tons of token generation, it does become a rather good draw engine. Allowing you to trade creatures and mana for cards. You could simply run some painlands and damage yourself, causing you to sacrifice permanents off of Oath and draw some cards off of Appeasement. But all in all you could just skip the damn sacrifice and just play Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Bargain.

The most embarrassing thing about this card is it was printed in Ice Age along with Necropotence.

"IIIIIII'M READING A BOOK!!!!!!!!"

Just don't cry when you get Blightning 'ed.

Solitary Confinement?

Or maybe a fun casual combo: Pariah + Stuffy Doll + this. Draw cards for BB, don't worry about the drawback and revert all damage back to your opponent.

I'm sorry, why is this rated so low? My friend runs this in a blue black where he donates this and necropotence. hurts like hell. Destroys everyone. (Unless, of course, we are missing some rule.)

Crazy that this was printed alongside necropotence.

What were they thinking?

I'm just try to understand. Is the sacrificing prevented by just ONE discarded card or by a discarded card for each 1 life lost?

Wait, I'm kinda confused. This doesn't actually prevent the damage, does it?

: Draw a card O.k. off the bat that sounds cool... Sac a permanent or discard a card for each life lost. Oh well i can still draw a card for two mana over and over.

This might be better for Donateing to someone else than for holding onto, as long as the receiver has no black mana.

Donate and then hit them with Pestilence over and again, or Exsanguinate for some serious devastation.

@JackTheStripper: ...wut? Your friend... Donates... NECROPOTENCE?!?! The best draw engine ever made!?! What is he THINKING!?! I mean, I can see the "combo" at work, but that would be vastly overshadowed by the sheer stupidity of DONATING NECROPOTENCE! For the trouble he takes to create a weak combo that can backfire horribly, he could just have created a perfectly serviceable Necropotence-fueled black deck! But... I guess I have to thank you for telling me about the most mindboggling thing I have heard all day...

Oh, and in regards to Donating this? Yeah, why not, especially when one's already got Necropotence to fill one's draw engine needs.

For everyone confused about how this and Necropotence were in the same set...(1) They're variants of two different black cards. Necropotence is a variant of Greed, this of Lich. (2) WotC didn't necessarily understand just HOW powerful Necropotence was going to be; they probably figured the life payment, and the inability to draw cards normally, would make people be cautious about how to use this. (For the record, Necropotence was generally considered to NEED Nevinyrral's Disk in case the can't-draw-normally clause became genuinely deleterious.) Remember that not everyone at WotC back then was thinking in pure Spike terms; the game wasn't designed with tournaments in mind, after all. No one was thinking that anyone would pay 19 life in a single stroke (did ANYONE?). On the other hand, paying 8 life at once was probably QUITE sufficient...

EDIT: Just to clarify...Ice Age was intended to be playable not just with all the earlier sets, but all by itself. Contrast with all the previous expansions--Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires--which needed AT LEAST Unlimited/Revised, and not just for the basic lands. Hence all the variant cards (this of Lich, Necropotence of Greed, Elvish Healer of Samite Healer, the Talismans of the Ivory Cup cycle, Wall of Pine Needles of Wall of Brambles, etc.) and flat repeats (Sleight of Mind, Power Sink, Counterspell, the Circles of Protection, Tor Giant for Hill Giant, Kjeldoran Warrior for Benalish Hero, Icy Manipulator, etc.).

You pretty much get to blow through your whole deck until you get what you want if you combo this with Cadaverous Bloom.

Donate....Necropotence.


I'm sorry I'm still trying to process that.

Wow. You're friend is an evil genius. That sounds like the only 'fair' thing under the sun to do with Necropotence.

Necropotence is EVEN broken as a GIFT!

WHADAFUQ NECRO!!?!?????!!!

This goes in my accent deck.

Not the most powerful card around, but I like the flavor; black cards should all have severe drawbacks for very powerful effects.

Not as good as Necropotence but it can still be fairly effective in the right deck. Obviously you would have to be an idiot to play this against red.