Pointed Discussion

Not bad, not good. Obviously no where near the strength of its predecessor Mind Twist!

One of the strongest enablers in black for the madness mechanic.

Obviously not as strong as mind twist or even Mind Shatter, but it has good Synergy with reborn decks, which were amazing around the time of Tempest (Animate Dead, Recurring Nightmare, Volrath's Stronghold, Living Death, just to name a few). Amazing with Goyfs. 3/5.

Only playable with reanimation, dredge, and hellbent cards. But eve those type of crads can be combined with something better.

The Coercion-like nature of the effect made it interesting, but in the end the high mana cost and card disadvantage always seemed like too high a price to pay, even for this powerful an effect. Even in Tempest block sealed decks where I ended up running black, this usually sat in my sideboard.

This card always struck me as just a little too much to cast. Then they printed Last Rites, which set the mana cost at 2B flat and doesn't make you discard the cards until it resolves, which both hides how many you will discard and allows you to keep those cards if Last Rites is countered.

Hmm.. the way i see this, it's an easy way to spend {1}{B} to simply look at your opponent's hand, an excellent function for decks containing Black and Blue.

Pros:
-Synergizes with Madness Decks
-You get to look at your opponent's hand
-You get to choose the cards to be discard (Big difference right there with other discard cards)
-You can pick lands

Cons:
-You want to invest cards and mana to make it more effective
-Counterspell or any other counters can be devastating. (Yes Delay will hurt.)
-Even if it resolves you still lose card advantage. (Card quality though is entirely different.)

2/5

Alternatives:
Distress - For BB you get to see your opponents hand and discard 1 non-land card.
Mind Twist and it's Standard Legal counterpart Mind Shatter - For all your random discarding needs.
Last Rites - (Like the PlagueWielder said) You get all the effects for 3 mana only difference is you can't pick land cards which isn't that bad since you still get the Quality > Quantity effect.
Duress and Ostracize - For just B, you can get rid of a creature / non-creature card in your opponent's hand. No card disadvantage either.

This is a situational card that doesn't really fit into traditional discard decks. As others have mentioned there are other options with lower costs that achieve a similar result. The benefit of using this card allows you to put put cards into your own graveyard that you can pull back out much sooner than you would be able to if you had cast it from your hand, (e.g.: Animate Dead + Massacre Wurm) and causes an opponent to lose whatever benefits you as being out of their hand/in their graveyard.

I abandoned my hope when I saw on Broken Fall, that Gerrard lived.

This card comes first in my alphabet deck

This is the first card alphabetically that isn't an Un-card.

Ghastlord of Fugue just got murdered? Wanna play Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur but hate drawing before discard? Got out Nectropotence? How is it people are willing to pitch cards to Force of Will as a 3-for-1, when this card is X=X+1? If you have more cards, make them topdeck next turn...I understand in normal settings, this blows, but in commander, it's aight.

Actually, there aren't many cards that do THIS much for Living End, and the rest of them are usually Blue or Red. :) This is a card that dumps things into More than 1 Player's Graveyard.

Good for exploiting those Liliana Vess-type effects. The only better way to do this is with Windfall or Wheel of Fate variants- Black is actually pretty weak at this, though Last Rites is another viable choice!

(You can get rid of your own cards and you can get rid of your opponents' cards, but it's actually more difficult than you'd imagine to get rid of EVERYONE'S cards in Mono-Black. It's kind of an element of Chaos when you make literally everyone lose their cards, which is more Blue/Red than Black. Black might pay A LOT to get CERTAIN victory, but it DOESN'T very much enjoy paying anything to get Vulnerable Win-Cons that may be more Magical ChristmasLandia. Black Hates Christmas. :P )

It is a pity this is outclassed by Last Rites as strongly as it is. It seems like it'd be a good candidate for one of those weird X-cost flashback spells (like Conflagrate, maybe with a flashback cost of sacrifice X permanents?)