Initial Thoughts:
So essentially, a spell damage dragon creature that deals damage to you when it dies.
Your average ordinary dragon is 10 Quanta for 10 Attack - 1/1 ratio.
Psion is a 4
creature for 4 Attack (Spell damage).
Based on the fact that for most vanilla creatures attack=cost, assume Spell Damage is a +0 factor to cost.
Ability Thoughts:
The singular limitation (Unstable) is reminiscent of a weapon - in general weapons do get -3 to their cost for having only one slot to play them in.
Based on the fact this card tries to limit itself to one copy at a time (much like a weapon), I'll guess it's worth a -3.
Regarding damaging yourself (a form of player-only damage):
Spells are difficult to compare against because most offer the liberty of targeting creatures as well.
UG is 20 damage to yourself for 1 Card + 8
( cross-element
cost is roughly 2 quanta) -and- 1 damage to all creatures.
Thunderstorm is 1 damage to all enemy creatures for 2 quanta.
So if we removed the 'thunderstorm' from UG we would get 6 Quanta spent for 20 damage.
- I disregard damaging your own creatures in this case because most UG setups specifically avoid having creatures or quinting them all, meaning that your 'creatures' never really get hurt in the first place.
- Fur makes a good point that UG players have to wait one turn. I'm not exactly sure how to factor that into cost.
Halving that, we get 3 quanta for 10 damage.
So I assume 10 damage to yourself
that will always happen is worth around -3 quanta.
In this case not every opponent would necessarily be able to deal 10 extra damage to you (Seeing as there are numerous other targets in a rainbow as well), especially when it shares an element with quintessence. I would downgrade the drawback to -2 value because of that.
Spoiler for Actual Balancing:
Cost = Attack + HP Factor + Ability + Bonuses
Unupped:
Attack = +10 (+10 damage unupped)
HP Factor = +0 (1-5 HP)
Ability = -3 for 'one copy limitation', -2 for potential damage, (Spell Damage is +0 - see Psion)
Bonuses:
Aether, Life and Light get -1 cost for their creatures.
So -1 for Aether Element bonus.
Result : 10 -3 -2 -1 = 4
Upped:
Attack = +13 (+10 damage unupped)
HP Factor = +0 (1-5 HP)
Ability = -3 for 'one copy limitation', -2 for potential damage, (Spell Damage is +0 - see Psion)
Bonuses:-1 for :aether types, and -1 or -2 for being upgraded.
Result : 13 -3 -2 -1 (-1 or -2) = 6 or 5
Conclusion : Final cost should be 4 | 6 .... I think. This is the first time I've tried to actually balance the 'self-destruct' damage by comparing it to other cards in the game. However I think the cost will need an increase based on the calculations above. (I would suggest you playtest a 4 | 6 cost version of this if you have the time.)
