Holy Assurance - 5w Sorcery If all your opponents agree, the game ends as a draw. Otherwise you gain 25 life.
Mental Assurance - 5u Sorcery If all your opponents agree, the game ends as a draw. Otherwise you draw ten cards.
Evil Assurance - 5b Sorcery If all your opponents agree, the game ends as a draw. Otherwise each opponent discards their hand and sacrifices a creature.
Random Assurance - 5r Sorcery If all your opponents agree, the game ends as a draw. Otherwise flip a coin. If you win the flip, you win the game. If you lose the flip, you lose the game.
Primal Assurance - 5g Sorcery If all your opponents agree, the game ends as a draw. Otherwise put three 5/5 green Wurm creature tokens with trample onto the battlefield.
The name of the cycle at present comes from the phrase mutually assured destruction. It's not mutual in this case, but the idea is still that you're trying to force people to agree to a peaceful solution otherwise you will unleash something fearsome.
This cycle is a kind of 'punisher' mechanic like Browbeat , in that it gives your opponent a choice. Therefore, both choices have to be worth more than the mana cost to make the card worth playing. (Why would you play an Armada Wurm that gives the opponent a choice not to get stepped on by the wurm?)
In practice, if you're at a point in the game where a draw would be unfavorable for you, you just won't cast this card. These are the opposite of win more, they only help you when you're behind.
I wanted to choose effects that would make the opponent think they still had a chance to win so they wouldn't choose the draw every time. For example, that's why the green one doesn't create twenty power worth of creatures.
Some people say that a game of Magic should never end in a draw under normal circumstances. But never is a strong word in a game with over 10,000 cards. The point is that although there are some players who wouldn't like these, there are some players who would. This is not for power gamer Timmy, but social Timmy may enjoy dropping one of these in a multiplayer game and forcing his friends to talk about it. Then of course there are the Johnnies who like making oddball decks.
If there are any players who really hate drawing, they can always choose not to agree on these cards and face the consequences. It's not like you Academy Rector - Flash a Divine Intervention .
As for Spike, he would probably recognise the power of getting the opponent to agree to a draw when he was behind, and enjoy the mind game of trying to decide if he can still win rather than agree to the opponent's Assurance, but might complain that these cards make matches longer (a match only ends after a player has two wins, so there can be any number of drawn games per match) and so is used in stalling tactics. The white one in particular stalls things no matter which choice you go with, but it shouldn't be a problem because life gain is not that powerful anyway so it won't show up in tournaments much. I guess Spike will admit that if you cast a six mana card you deserve a strong effect and it's up to him to beat someone despite them using that card otherwise the draw is his own problem.
The blue one is a bit of a dodgy design because you're unlikely to be able to use enough cards after you draw them so you'll have to discard in your end step, but I thought drawing only seven wasn't powerful enough (at least this way you can keep the best seven).
The red one is even worse because if an opponent doesn't like drawing and doesn't like coinflips then they'll hate to be subjected to this card, and it kind of doesn't fit the cycle because it's the only one with a drawback in the non agreement situation and the only one that always ends the game immediately. On the other hand, how cool is it to combine all those different things into a card that still makes sense? And how funny is it to try and evaluate... do I have more chance in a rematch or just let them flip a coin? If I won game one, I'd probably let them flip. I can see the flaws in my own designs but I keep 'em anyway because there's something about these (and red in particular) that I love.
This seems like a terrible idea, but it's still making me crack up. Either we draw the game or I get a stupidly overpowered effect for 6 mana! Your choice.
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Gonna fix the red one. It would probably have to be banned in edh. The problem comes from how in a game with more than two players you shouldn't get a 50/50 chance of winning.
Choose a player at random. If the chosen player is you, you win the game. Otherwise, you lose the game.
Changes probabilities, but does nothing with the chosen player so it seems like a hack.
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Choose a player at random. That player wins the game.
Fair, but ends game immediately and could have silly results.
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Choose a player at random. If the chosen player is you, you win the game. Otherwise, you lose the game and copy this spell under the chosen players control.
Still ends the game immediately, but much more strategic. Lets players reevaluate whether to draw after you've already lost. This is my favourite.
