No, if you choose 19, you'd lose 19 life. Then, you'd discard your hand and draw 7.
You discard and draw 7 if you chose the larger number, and if you choose the smaller number, you lose that amount of life but don't discard or draw.
Edit: Actually, upon further thought, if you choose the smaller number I don't think you lose life either. Each player has to choose the same number (e.g., the largest number) and you'll both lose that amount of life and draw 7.
@horologium said in [CMR] Wheel of Misfortune:
No, if you choose 19, you'd lose 19 life. Then, you'd discard your hand and draw 7.
You discard and draw 7 if you chose the larger number, and if you choose the smaller number, you lose that amount of life but don't discard or draw.
No, if you chose the smallest number, you don't lose life. Basically nothing happens to you then.
@griselbrother Right, sorry, my post is a little unclear: I mean you wheel for the price of 19.
Even so, isn't a one-sided wheel like that basically game over? It's better than even Windfall.
@maximumcdawg That would be great...I'm packing gut shot now 
@thewhitedragon69 Hah!
I'd be more worried about bolt, but sure.
You know whats even worse? You see your storm opponent cast this, decide not to pay life to make sure she has to get maximum storm because she's likely to choose 19, but then she chooses 1.
Or... both players bid 19 so everyone loses life and no one draws 
If people play this, it is going to be a real skill tester. On turn one like described, what amount of life do you bid to prevent a one sided wheel? If the large majority of people just decide it's too risky and bid 0 then players are by and large going to adapt and pick 5 or some other safe number as opposed to 19. I suspect very few people are going to bid 19 because the other player is not going to want to wheel on turn one anyway, just bidding to prevent. It's a really complex design.
That being said, it has a lot of synergy with stuff like scourge of the skyclaves and Deaths shadow, and also feels like it would just be a strong hand refill if your opening plays were to toss burn to face so your opponent cannot outbid you. This card is absolutely much better if you are already ahead.
This plus Grapeshot seems like it could work. You can finish off your opponent if they steal it. You are already a Storm deck playing a Draw 7 so that is a Storm spell.
This card looks like great fun. I agree with Protoaddict that it will be a real skill-tester. I think like all "punisher" cards this one is much weaker than it looks in decks that try to play it "fairly," while preserving some life for fetchlands, Force of Will, Mana Crypt flips, etc. I think it's stone busted in decks specifically build to bid 19 life and combo off that turn.
This card is great for a burn deck, which is loaded with Bolts and Chain Lightning’s. It allows you to pick a more modest number because if the opponent chooses to high you can just burn them out.
Also, you might not want to bid 19 life if you plan on casting more than one wheel
It's funny that if you are on the play and you fetch you will lose the bid and draw nothing.
@fsecco I think you mean, “if you are on the play and you fetch, your opponent can guarantee you will lose the bid”.
Opponent might not want to exercise that guarantee because he does not want to forfeit the ability to activate fetchlands or to cast FoW/Misstep/etc. after the wheel.
I highly doubt people will actually pay 17-19 lives for this on turn 1. You'd need a god draw with 3-4 mana floating after the wheel to have a somewhat reliable kill. If you don't win that turn, you're pretty much dead to anything.
@dshin said in [CMR] Wheel of Misfortune:
@fsecco I think you mean, “if you are on the play and you fetch, your opponent can guarantee you will lose the bid”.
Opponent might not want to exercise that guarantee because he does not want to forfeit the ability to activate fetchlands or to cast FoW/Misstep/etc. after the wheel.
Yeah, I thought it was clear this was what I meant. The thing is that if you don't pay 19, you give your opponent a chance to just deny you the cards. Depending on what you got left in your hand, that means game over.
Suppose you're playing against a Storm player that dumps his hand (which he needs to do in order to have mana to play anything after Wheel. He plays Wheel with 1 card left in hand after a FoW battle. What do you pay? You may just choose to pay a lot of life just to stop his card and control the game from there. It's your choice.
Also, if you have a good hand with good permition, you may just pay 0 and let this resolve, since you won't have to lose your hand. It's like he's having all the trouble to draw a new hand while you can hold on to your FoW, FoN + Trap and deal with whatever he draws without the " "forced mulligan".
So I think the card has several scenarios in which it's very bad, and I wouldn't be excited to play it too much.
@wagner said in [CMR] Wheel of Misfortune:
I highly doubt people will actually pay 17-19 lives for this on turn 1. You'd need a god draw with 3-4 mana floating after the wheel to have a somewhat reliable kill. If you don't win that turn, you're pretty much dead to anything.
You can also cast a mini-Tendrils to gain the life needed to cast the second Wheel. Presumably you are running the Wheel in a TPS shell (since if your deck is based around artifact acceleration only, PO is just better than even a one-sided Wheel of Fortune, no?).
@fsecco said in [CMR] Wheel of Misfortune:
It's funny that if you are on the play and you fetch you will lose the bid and draw nothing.
Actually, scratch that. Your opponent can guarantee you don't draw cards even if you have the same life total. Yeah, I don't think this is good enough for a 2-player game.
@fsecco said in [CMR] Wheel of Misfortune:
Also, if you have a good hand with good permition, you may just pay 0 and let this resolve, since you won't have to lose your hand. It's like he's having all the trouble to draw a new hand while you can hold on to your FoW, FoN + Trap and deal with whatever he draws without the " "forced mulligan".
If your hand has good permission you probably just counter this.
I think this card has more legs in other formats that don't have access to Wheel of Fortune. In some of them this is actually better because life totals matter more, burn is viable, deaths shadow is a thing, etc. I don't actually think this shows up in burn to be honest, 3 mana is probably to slow, but in storm for sure it becomes an option.
@protoaddict said in [CMR] Wheel of Misfortune:
I think this card has more legs in other formats that don't have access to Wheel of Fortune.
so exactly legacy? this is coming from a commander set.
Contract from Below might be a better comp than Wheel of Fortune, since the effect is one-sided.