Pointed Discussion

hitler would say: that's gas

this is actually a picture of Meta. as you can see, that's wilfy on the left and Doran on the right

The card isn't meta by far, though.
Far too slow, and does about twice as much damage on yourself than to the creature you're collecting counters for each turn.

The one time the phrase "This'll hurt me more than it hurts you" is fact.

combo this with General's Regalia and an indistructable creature or 1 that can regenerate or something and youll have to worry about how many pain counters are on it. the only problem is that it might get a lil pricy.

He played it early on in the game. I decided I wouldn't play any creatures than. He suddenly realized that he had no way to get rid of it or even had creatures of his own in his deck to use it on. It killed him. oops.

Fun with Darien, King of Kjeldor.
The chamber makes Darien give you tokens, and it kills at the same time possible blockers.

just turn it into a creature and give it lifelink. Come on, that's what magic is all about

Wow, that's... really bad. Here's how much damage you can do to a creature for a mana and n damage to yourself:
0: 1 damage
1: 2 damage
3: 3 damage
6: 4 damage
10: 5 damage
15: 6 damage
21: 7 damage

The best use I can see for it is putting it in a deck without creatures and giving it to your opponent. But he could still get rid of the counters by targeting one of his own creatures. So you'd have to do something to prevent its activated abilities too. And then probably give it shroud to prevent your opponent from just getting rid of it. And even then, he could still sacrifice it to something.

Also, now that I think about it: what's the idea behind this card? A planeswalker creates an empty torture chamber where his minions make new torture equipment all the time. Only they test the equipment on their master to make sure it works well. And then, after a single proper use, all the equipment breaks down despite all the testing, and they have to start building new machines from scratch.

I guess you could combo it with Personal Sanctuary. But then you still have to wait a bunch of turns to kill a big creature. It's too slow.

Karn: How did we get on this crappy card?
Tahngarth: Beats me!
Karn: :<
Tahngarth: :<

Best I can think to do with this card is...

Personal Sanctuary + Pithing Needle + Donate

Ack. Here's my redone version:

Wracking Torture 1RR
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a charge counter on Wracking Torture, than it does 1 damage to you for each charge counter on it.

Sacrifice Wracking Torture: Wracking Torture deals 1 damage to target player and each creature they control equal to the number of charge counters on Wracking Torture.

Still not even that good, but much better than this card... >_>

You can still activate the ability even if there are no valid targets, it just fizzles.

Okay, the IDEA of this card is actually awesome. Something that you save up counters on, but that you pay for saving up too many at a time, and have to weigh the cost of saving for a big blowout vs. keeping it as empty as possible... just that base concept is cool. Now, if only there were a version that was... I dunno... marginally useful?

Remember, pinging is good in limited. All their 1 toughness guys they ever play are now useless, and your burn spells can now kill creatures that are 1 bigger than they could before, and their guys need 1 more toughness than normal to survive combat. On top of that, this card can also deal with 2+ toughness guys (repeatedly!) if you can wait a turn or two and pay 1 or 3 life. The result is a lot of value from a card that can be played in literally any limited deck.

Why does it deal damage to the owner of the Torture Chamber? Is he wracked with conscience seizures at the end of each turn, or something? I highly doubt that someone who was willing to use a Torture Chamber in the first place would be susceptible to that.

This is underrated as of 5/13/2014. If you took away the pain counter mechanic, and it just said, "Torture Chamber enters the battlefield tapped. (1),(T): Torture Chamber deals 1 damage to target creature," it would be a solid 3, at least. Cut a point for it maybe hurting you, add half a point for the ability to turn this pain into gain... 2.5.