Pointed Discussion

This card certainly looks terrible. But don't underestimate card advantage. The extort is just kicker on an already decent card.

Yes, I'm aware that it's a 1/3 for 5. Against an aggressive deck this is not your friend. But he's okay in slow limited games.

The discard effect is not bad, but discard is something one should be doing as early as possible, not at 5cc. Granted, by the time you cast this your opponent probably have 3 or less cards in hand, but it's stil pricy for its ability and size. Extort, too, is something that should come earlier.

He's cool, but he's not 5-mana-cool.

That's a decent amount of stuff you get, but for ? I'd be fine with a 0/1 at ... but then, that'd just be unfair, wouldn't it???

With mana-burn removed. This is quite a good substitute if you want to kill yourself.
Yes, you do not win, but you haven't lost by your opponent's hand, so...ROCK ON DUDE!!!

All things considered, it's pretty much a Castigate on a stick with Extort.
I still feel like it could have cost less, however.

This is an awesome card. Not only do you remove your opponent's best card in hand, you are also protected from them responding with an instant because you choose the card on resolution.

Well look at it this way: by turn five your opponent probably only has like 2 cards in his or her hand, so you only have to pay 2 life!

Why is he not like 4/4 intimidate or something? That still wouldn't be overpowered. 1/3 is just bad. Sure, you can get some life back with Extort, but that is too slow.

How come no one is pointing out you can pay any amount of life, one can abuse this with fateful hour with type 2 or at least a Death's Shadow. It can go into a glass cannon deck I suppose.

either have it cost 2BW or have it be a 2/4

Ok confesser seems a bit overpriced for his ability. and I give him credit for paying X life reveal X cards but still that ability seems to be too late in the game to matter much. Lets price him step by step. a 1/3 body should cost should be sufficient. Extort, the growing consensus is that Extort should add 1 more mana in the casting cost, so now we have , Lastly the Castigate ability, being able to pay life to see that many cards from your opponents hands is pretty nifty, you also get to choose to exile one of the cards. So they have decided to add more mana to this guy making him a I can understand why people think he should cost less, but for his abilities I think his cost is just fine, my only problem is that his power and toughness will never let him live long enough to Extort from your opponent. Turns 6 and later you are probably trying to stabilize the board position and having a 1/3 creature wont help you stabilize.

He would've been a better limited card if he was a 2/4 creature with the same abilities tacked on. Not a decent attacker but a great blocker who can stall the ground games. Lastly Exile is NOT discard, its a very powerful effect that permanently removes a threat, discard goes to the graveyard and has a possibility of recursion.

Reminds me of Rakdos Ringleader. You read the abilities and it sounds great but then you look at the cost and its just... Not worth it.

Terrible card, but one of the most Orzhov cards there is. Human (majorit subtype on Orzhov watermarked cards), life draining (the most popular ability of Orzhov watermarked cards, thanks to Extort), and causes discard, through an exiling manner, which is another Orzhov thing. But... Such a terrible card!

@vantha the days of a 1/3 body costing WB for an uncommon are long gone. You'd be expecting something like a 1/6 or 2/2 death touch.

It's an uncommon, and it has a NEW keyword. I'm not sure exactly where I feel 'Reminder Text' should sit, but I think that even if you convinced WOTC to ban any all Reminder Texts from Rares, there would still be a good argument for keeping the RTs on Uncommons, especially brand new ones, especially ones like extort where the Reminder Text actually contains something important (the {W/B} mana symbol.)

There's no room on this guy for more than Extort and his ability, the way it's worded. As he is, costing one mana less would make him just fine in my book.
Since he has extort, I definitely don't want him to have high power- a good butt is a nice thing for an Orzhov cleric, and even flavorful because they're fat. :)

So here are the number choices we have:

1/2 -bad weaksauce
1/3- what it is
1/4- possibly pushed because of the removal's range in Standard? However a 5-mana uncommon might deserve to be pushed?


2/2- boring. while they USUALLY like equal P/T's for combat simplicity, they've recently...not exactly reversed this, but they don't want to print so many Bears that people don't have anything to think about on the combat step.
2/3- these stats are what I would pick because then it would be very attractive to equip, enchant, or otherwise improve him the rest of the way to being a fighter, but you would still need more cards to make it good.
2/4- considering he already has extort AND a discard ability, even for 5 mana, this seems like a lot to give a creature of this card's purpose.

If they didn't take Limited so much into account since New World Order, this guy would probably be a little beefier, but he's not beefy because he would be too high a pick in Limited if he was.

He's very close to good tho, and he's not at all a bad choice for a Noob Deck to run if you've pulled some Gift of Orzhova while you're waiting to get the rares from the set.
I wish that we could relegate ONLY commons to 'good for New Players without Rares', but commons aren't strong enough to be the Top End of any deck that doesn't want to get mauled unless you specifically go on the Pauper Forums, which means you aren't really a New Player very much?

I like it when we have a range of cards in set meeting not only every Psychographic's and every Format's needs, but also as many ranges of 'Player Newness' needs. This guy is not as good as rares, plain and simple, but he's much more easy for a new player to just accidentally get a playset of and try to run at FNM.
imo the game actually needs, not BAD cards, but it can use the rarities to make simpler, not overpowered cards to make the game fun on any Budget.

It's actually scary how complicated the R&D balancing act is once you think of just how huge and varied their market audiences are and how many people need to have cards they can use....

Any card can obviously be made better if you ignore the Balance Constraints of a one Format or another or ignore the need for sets to actually contain Commons and Uncommons instead of all Rares and Mythics....but you can't do that. R&D makes mistakes, but I don't think this is one of them. If you want the Spike Version, we already HAVE Castigate and don't actually NEED this guy to be as good as Castigate.

For your casual games there is Edgewalker to make him cost 3.

This guy has real value in Commander, especially in an Oloro, Ageless Ascetic deck. You're gaining life every turn anyway so 6 or 7 life to access all the cards in an opponent's hand isn't that steep a price. And he has extort which Oloro loves.