Blazing Effigy

I like this card because it's weird. I have a soft spot for wordy, obtuse cards, and Blazing Effigy definitely hits that spot. It's a little like Chain Lightning in a bottle, but it's also a little like the world's first Zubera. In either case, I like the little guy.

But the problems.
Oh, the problems.

First off, "Effigy" makes only tenuous sense. Effigies are representations of hated figures -- essentially, they're proxies for abuse. When you're talking about "burning someone in effigy," you're talking about mocking up a likeness of that person and literally lighting it on fire. At best, this suggests that you disagree with the person in question; more often, it means that you're killing the stand-in because you can't get to the real guy.

But this card lets you burn both the effigy and its target. If you waste a burn spell to bin Blazing Effigy, you still get to dome another duder. It's like a bizarre Magic Voodoo Doll in that sense, but it doesn't gain you anything to do that. You get the exact same effect from just doming the opposing dude -- only you get to keep your weird little 0/3 durdlebot.

So the most effective use of Blazing Effigy is to run it out on defense. But then you run into that flavor-mechanics disconnect again -- at that point, it's your opponents' dudes that are burning your effigy, and you're redirecting their ire against them. It's like someone burning an effigy of him or herself. It just doesn't make any sense! There's another flavor-mechanics debacle here -- defensive cards don't fit well in red; this card could have easily been called "Vengeful Apparition" and been printed in white or black -- maybe both! -- and been a much easier fit.

Then, to top it all off, the card burns things harder if you're chaining Blazing Effigies together. This multiplier effect has some defensive synergy, but none on offense (short of slapping The Brute on one of your effigies and going to town, I suppose).

In any case, one of the fixed versions of this card saw a lot of tournament play.

The other still sees a lot of casual play.

So where does that leave us? Well, there's still room for shenanigans with this card.

I like this card a lot. It's got several interesting multiplayer applications -- pinging an opponent's creature so you can work together to nuke an opposing duder, f'rexample. It also triggers itself, so you can nuke your own dude with high toughness and then sac that guy to throw some more damage around. It's not good in a classic sense -- although Fling is similar and can end games abruptly -- but that doesn't bother me.

The one thing that might be a bother is how the card has a touch of color self-loathing. After all, if you nuke something -- and you're in red, so you're probably nuking something -- it's possible that this card will leap into play and ruin your day. However, I wouldn't worry about it; it's rare that a nuke doesn't kill a creature. I think the clause actually opens up many more tactical operations than it closes -- it makes nuking your own dudes, or intentionally half-nuking your opponents' dudes, a viable thing sometimes.

The text is also very, very long. I don't know if it passed the "unprintable" threshold, especially for a common, but if it did, it could be shortened up pretty simply -- give it Rancor's returns-to-hand ability and cost it at 1RR. It'd be a totally different card, and I'd argue that the text, while smaller, would be less clear, but if that's the rule to see print, that's the rule. (Similarly, it's possible that the second clause would need a rider limiting the ability to happening only if the creature is still in play. If it does, I'm certain this card's sailed past the limit on printability.)