Wall of Shards

Ward Costs Overview

Regarding the hypothetical Ward costs that give opponents an upside instead of directly costing you anything, there's at least one card which does that repeatedly: Wall of Shards has an opponent of your choice gain life as a cumulative upkeep cost. This demonstrates that the game already treats benefiting your opponents as a cost.

Just because a card was printed once that does something doesn’t mean all problems with that thing were solved. Wards have to be costs and another player doing something isn’t a cost.

Cumulative Upkeep Lifegain Solved Three Color Wall of Shards Walls Ward

Ward Mechanic Nuances

"Would “Ward- Target opponent draws a card.” not work? No. It's not a cost" - I don't see why "an opponent draws a card" couldn't work as a cost, "an opponent gains 1 life" was used as the cumulative upkeep cost on Wall of Shards, and drawing cards was used as a cost on Psychic Vortex. Neither of those are intuitively costs, but they do work in the rules.

You can say “When this is targeted, you draw a card”. It doesn’t work with ward, but the ability can work.There is nuance with the cards you’re referencing that make them different from this case.

Card Draw Cumulative Upkeep Mechanics Psychic Vortex Rules Three Color Wall Wall of Shards Ward

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