Dilemma

[Trebuchet MS]

[spoiler Card Text]Your opponent banishes 1 card of their choice from their hand, face-down. You can only activate 1 "Dilemma" per turn.[/spoiler]

 

So what I've noticed is that a lot of old hand control cards give you the option to look at and pick out a card from the opponent's hand, disrupting their future plays and receiving information as to what they're hiding. That's really powerful, if MtG's Thoughtseize (and its price) taught us anything.

 

Later hand control effects that surfaced traded out the ability to receive said information and instead went for random discards. It worked for its time but eventually such effects seem to have slowly vanished in presence. Last we heard of such a card was the particularly powerful Wind-Up Hunter.

 

So I'm trying this out. Why not have a card that pseudo-discards a card (because way too many things trigger off getting sent to the Graveyard), but instead letting the opponent choose what they lose? The bite won't feel as bad with large hands, but as the game goes on and resources get depleted the difficulty of choosing tends to increase. Hard-OPT clause is there to prevent spamming.

[Sleepy]

I think mostly the game likes to work with hand control as little as possible. Otherwise there wouldn't be a safe zone to commit plays from.

That said, this card looks fair to me. It is a one for one on itself but always with the lowest possible impact it can get due to your opponent choosing and not letting you see anything. In fact, I don't think you'll ever even get to know what you hit after banishing it so it doesn't even allow you to guess what they might have left by looking at what they sacrificed.

Also, some searches out there nowadays are +1 searches so this might actually be counter-productive or at least fall out in favor of something like Mind Crush.

 

On second thought, the card might be a bit on the under-powered side of the spectrum. 

 

I suggest you have your opponent reveal the card before banishing it face-down. I understand looking at their full hand is too good, but you deserve at least some knowledge from this.

After that though, I think it'd still need a little more of an edge somewhere, but am not sure of what else to suggest...