Pointed Discussion

They need to make another one of these with a lower cost. Say B2 or BB.

the effect is an interesting one, but the mana cost makes this card unappealing...

Why doesn't this just cost B?

All cool cards should be playable at the very least. I understand the need for bad cards, but why can't they all be simple? It's only going to be used by new players who don't have enough cards that they can replace it, anyway, so they won't mind bad cards being simple.

This card being so bad is just wasted potential. The effect is cool, but not only does the cost actively discouraging anyone with enough cards from using it, it also makes it hard to play it as intended even if you're willing to use it anyway. Who's going to have enough mana to use this over and over? A thousand stings would cost 5000 mana, after all. Make it cost B, THEN it could be used as the flavor suggests.

probably used only for its second ability alone with some kind of discard engine? If you use squee in black, then sometimes might as well use this.

What many of you are forgetting is that cards like this work best in the environment they were created in.

Take a look at Join the Ranks for instance. Two measly 1/1's for 4 mana? Sure, it can be used for a couple of surprise blockers but that's not nearly worthy of a 4 mana if viewed in this sense. But, what makes this card fantastic is the fact that it puts two "soldier ally" tokens on to the battlefield and the zendikar block is rife with creatures that have abilities that trigger when an ally enters play. So, not only do you get those abilities, but you get them twice!

Now look at this card from what it was like to play kamigawa back then. This set was rife with "splice" cards that could ride on the back of other arcane spells by paying a cost making for some good card advantage. This is also a set with a lot of "whenever you play a spirit or arcane spell" abilities.

So, let's consider that you have a Kyoki, Sanity's Eclipse on the battlefield as well as a Thief of Hope 's. In your hand you have a Blessed Breath

So, you cast this spell every turn for 5 mana, splice blessed breath on to it for an additional 1 mana and what you have is for six mana a turn you are dealing two damage, gaining two life, exiling a card from your opponent's hand, and giving yourself a 6/4 attacker with protection from the color of your choice. Tasty! And, of course, this is an instant. If your opponent is playing off the top of his deck then playing this card every turn right after they draw basically shuts them down.

If it were just the "Target Player loses 1 life, you gain 1 life" that would probably be worth 1. The ability to return it to your hand for further use is probably worth BB, if not 2B. The fact that this is an arcane spell makes it worth the 4B.

@Velacteis - Your scenario is highly situational and would work just as well with many other cards - or simply without this card in the same context. Comparing this to Join the Ranks - a card made for a specific tribe - is a terrible comparison. This card does not have a tribe or scenario in which is excels like Join the Ranks (despite your attempts to create such a scenario). This card does not "sweeten" any other cards simply because it recurs on its own sometimes. You failed to mention in your scenario about how you achieved and maintain a larger hand than all your opponents. This is not worth just because it is an arcane, nor is it worth because it recurs automatically. It is not worth , at all. SleetFox is completely correct with his analysis, while you are overcompensating for a card that is not worth it. It has a cool name, and a cool picture. That's all it has going for it.

At least you know you will have more cards in hand if they cost this much XD
fail card...

I will now perform Death of a Thousand Stings!!!

-does something asian-

HIII-YA! D:<

-pokes for 1 damage and gains 1 life-

=_=;;

At a single Black mana, this wouldn't have been game breaking in the slightest. It would have actually been good, but nowhere near overpowered.

The Arcane, Splice on Arcane, Spirits, and Soulshift were complete fails as far as Magic history goes. Flavor-wise, I thought the Champions block was pretty cool, but the vastly underpowered cards made the whole set a pitiful mess. There weren't enough splice-able cards, they were consistently over-priced (manawise) and weak, and the spliced cards were just as useless. Add this to the fact that it was in Standard the same time as Mirrodin Block and you have yourself a failure sandwich. If you can't tell, I played Standard back during Mirrondin/Kamigawa Standard, and it's not a surprise it's what got me to quit playing. Hilariously enough I got back into Standard only to be met by Jace the Mindsculptors and Stoneforge Mystics running rampant. Bad timing is an understatement.

Anyway, this card is the epitome of a failed era. 0.5/5

I tried so hard to play this card. I really did. Every deck that I thought this might be helpful in it I would rather have had a land sitting in my hand than this. I've tried it in block, draft, constructed... I really really tried to make this card worth it. But, I just couldn't. The ONLY time that this proved remotely useful was a massive multiplayer game where I had all four of my Jet Medallions out, and even then it was so so...

Guys, you're overlooking the fact that you need to spend only one hundred mana to kill your opponent with this card. And then after all that, you get twenty life back too!

WHAT IS THAT? WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT?... NO OH GOD! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAH GOD! THEY'RE IN MY EYES! AAGH!

Strictly better than Helix Pinnacle.

Death of a Thousand Stings: gather round to see a cool idea be made completely and utterly useless.
This is one of Wood Elemental's best friends.
The only feasible way to win using this would be to hope your opponent dies in a fit of laughter after seeing you spend five! mana to deal......
one point of damage.

The one use I can think of for this thing is arcane spells that either don't require a cost or barely require one, to use them every turn.

Even then, there are probably better options.

You know a card is bad when it could have costed less and still would've seen zero play. I honestly think this is in the top 15 worst cards ever.

It's comparable than Wood Elemental, IMO;.

@ CeremonialBathory This card works with Forbid in U/B without playing Squee. That alone makes this card useful. If you can't ensure you have more cards than your opponent in a deck with U/B, then you're doing it wrong.

It should've cost like 2 less, agreed... but you guys seem to be missing the point. It's meant to be a reusable splice enabler, if you can maintain CA you continue to beat them down with mechanic, problem is the whole cmc was ridiculous in this set.

I figured out what's going on in the art. The dragon is whispering to her, "Guess what the mana cost of your card is going to be."

Seriously, this card is so flavorful, has an awesome name, and great art. What a waste for something this awesome, in theory, to be unplayable.

Yeah its overpriced, but the kami block has a lot of cards still used today.
Anyways, you could do some neat tricks with this card, or just use it as a humiliating win condition when you already have them on lockdown.

Wow, it's like proto-Extort! Except costing 4 more, not allowing you to pay W, costing you a card, and only able to be used once a turn at best.

I think they meant "Death of a Thousand Mana."

Death of a Hundred Mana.

The idea is that you use this as a way of infinitely splicing into arcane with your other spells. In a splice deck, because you're casting multiple spells through a single card, you'll often have plenty of cards in hand to ensure the triggering of Death of a Thousand Stings's second ability so you can re-use it turn after turn. The only problem is that, at 5 mana, Death of a Thousand Stings costs so much that you won't reliably be able to afford splicing other spells onto it. Long-Forgotten Gohei somwhat fixes that problem, and it really is great if you get to cast this for {1}{B} or {B} and splice a ton of Glacial Rays onto it, but without multiple Goheis on the battlefield this just isn't very good.

At a glance, {2}{B} seems like a good cost for this. But then again, if this was costed at {2}{B}, 4 Goheis on the battlefield would allow you to cast this and splice two Glacial Rays onto it for a total cost of {B}{R}{R}, which, although rare, would be very strong at the time. Still, {3}{B} probably wouldn't be too much to ask for, but considering this set is from the block that followed the Mirrodin block, I'm not surprised to see that Wizards didn't take any chances and just toned everything down in order to try and "fix" standard a little bit.