The mechanic is difficult to balance. By forcing your opponent to discard cards, you are essentially trading your one card and X quanta for however many cards that your opponent is discarding. That is blatantly overpowered in terms of card advantage-- spend one card to destroy multiple. Earthquake does this too, yes, but earthquake has a clear target-- and the pillars will at least have already had a turn to generate quanta. Even at a 1:1 ratio, a neutral card advantage, it's still comparable to an 'instantly destroy Y' card. It is slightly weaker at 1:1 than that because your target is presumably random, but at worst it is still a major nuisance. Explosion has a set target and a restriction on what it can target. Lightning has a set target, a restriction on what it can target, and a value of 'damage.' A card for a known card. This idea has less of a restriction, because the discards are indiscriminate.
As for deck ideas: 6 of the discard, 6 shards of bravery, mark of fire, whatever pendulums I need to power both. Maybe some fire bolts to get at what comes through, or some rushy cards of fire/discard_element.
