Is Join Forces horrendously unbalanced? It takes a very useful effect, and acts as a force multiplier equal to the number of players at the table.
As an example: W Alliance at Arms
Sorcery
Join forces - Starting with you, each player may pay any amount of mana. Each player puts X 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the total amount of mana paid this way.
--
If there are four players at the table, for each mana invested into this spell, 4 soldier tokens are created, yes? Three of them will not be under your control, but whatever.
Is Join Forces horrendously unbalanced? It takes a very useful effect, and acts as a force multiplier equal to the number of players at the table.
No, not really. The point, it seems, is for Join Forces to be incredibly balanced, which is unfortunate given how political EDH can get. The only political Join Forces card I've seen is Mana-Charged Dragon. The other cards spoiled like Alliance at Arms are pretty mediocre because they benefit everyone equally.
As an example: W Alliance at Arms
Sorcery
Join forces - Starting with you, each player may pay any amount of mana. Each player puts X 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the total amount of mana paid this way.
--
If there are four players at the table, for each mana invested into this spell, 4 soldier tokens are created, yes? Three of them will not be under your control, but whatever.
No that's not how it works. Let's say I pay 2 mana, the next person pays 2 mana, and the next pays 3 mana. That's 7 mana total, so we all get 7 Soldiers. So yes, you can play cards that give you an advantage like Glorious Anthem or Honor of the Pure but since you now have a bunch of 2/2s to your opponents' 1/1s, it seems pretty likely they will see you as a big target.
No that's not how it works. Let's say I pay 2 mana, the next person pays 2 mana, and the next pays 3 mana. That's 7 mana total, so we all get 7 Soldiers. So yes, you can play cards that give you an advantage like Glorious Anthem or Honor of the Pure but since you now have a bunch of 2/2s to your opponents' 1/1s, it seems pretty likely they will see you as a big target.
So, if there are four players, 28 soldier tokens enter the battlefield, right? 7 for each player? That's 28 ETB triggers, and when the tokens die, that's 28 graveyard triggers. As an example, combine that with Goblin Sharpshooter and Vicious Shadows. Shapshooter untaps, kills every single token, and each of the tokens' deaths trigger Vicious Shadows for what is probably lethal, if they have more than 4 cards in hand. Or maybe you would prefer Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Dingus Staff, or Night of All Soul's Betrayal and Black Market for absolutely stupid amounts of mana.
Another one would be with Collective Voyage: Ankh of Mishra and Grazing Gladeheart, or Polluted Bonds. Honestly, Collective Voyage is a functional reprint of New Frontiers, which really wasn't that crazy. However, I am far more impressed with Alliance of Arm's ability to generate huge amounts of creatures (even if you only end up in control of a small portion of them).
So, if there are four players, 28 soldier tokens enter the battlefield, right? 7 for each player? That's 28 ETB triggers, and when the tokens die, that's 28 graveyard triggers. As an example, combine that with Goblin Sharpshooter and Vicious Shadows. Shapshooter untaps, kills every single token, and each of the tokens' deaths trigger Vicious Shadows for what is probably lethal, if they have more than 4 cards in hand. Or maybe you would prefer Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Dingus Staff, or Night of All Soul's Betrayal and Black Market for absolutely stupid amounts of mana.
Another one would be with Collective Voyage: Ankh of Mishra and Grazing Gladeheart, or Polluted Bonds. Honestly, Collective Voyage is a functional reprint of New Frontiers, which really wasn't that crazy. However, I am far more impressed with Alliance of Arm's ability to generate huge amounts of creatures (even if you only end up in control of a small portion of them).
Yes, there are combo potentials for these cards, but the same could be said for really any card printed. Join Forces is a clunky ability that is only useful under a couple of specific scenarios which you alluded to. The fact is that there are far easier and more effective combos to use in which all of the combo pieces are useful. The Join Forces cards have little use outside of their combos and trying to build an EDH deck around a single card usually doesn't work.
Your opponent would have to be one awful player to pump mana into your Alliance at Arms while Goblin Sharpshooter was on the table. You're much better off with Martial Coup.
So run mana ramp. Maybe RW Agrus Kol, Wojek Veteran, with tons of token generation backed by Mana Echoes, Mana Flare, Sol Rng, Everflowing Chalice. You give everyone a bunch of tokens (say you pump 5 mana into it, even if they pump 0 mana into it I believe they still get the tokens since it's like casting an X spell for 0, so every player gets 5 tokens, with four players, that's 20 ETB triggers), they smile and nod at you, grinning at the free material for their combos. You then respond with Earthquake for 1. Or Chain Reaction. Or a giant Fireball of doom if you have Mana Echoes in play. Or by winning the game if you have two Soul Warden effects and Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance in play.
Or maybe in a Teysa, Orzhov Scion deck- A Soul Warden effect backed by Carnival of souls, means you just got 20 free mana to turn into a Exsanguinate, Consume Soul, or heck, a Martial Coup.
If the only thing you can think of to do with a card that can generate that many ETB effects is to have Honor of the Pure in play... I take it you're not much of a Johnny?
Join forces will rarely see addititional input from your opponents... that is if you are using Join forces correctly. If you are utilizing them correctly, you will have cards on the board that give you reason to use them. Such as some great land fall effect with the green join forces sorcery that hunts for basics. No opponent is going to add in mana when each additional colorless he throws at the pile means you get one additional 4/4 beast token, you know? So really it is more a matter of, you paying off your opponents with whatever the beneficial effect is for them for you to get MORE of a bonus than them
Join forces will rarely see addititional input from your opponents... that is if you are using Join forces correctly. If you are utilizing them correctly, you will have cards on the board that give you reason to use them. Such as some great land fall effect with the green join forces sorcery that hunts for basics. No opponent is going to add in mana when each additional colorless he throws at the pile means you get one additional 4/4 beast token, you know? So really it is more a matter of, you paying off your opponents with whatever the beneficial effect is for them for you to get MORE of a bonus than them
Or capitalizing on what the Join Forces cards force your opponents to do. Remember, they don't get to choose to have X 1/1 tokens come into play under their control, or search up X lands, or draw X cards- they have to. The trick to abusing these cards is benefiting more from the immediate effect, but punishing your opponents for it.
Guys. Look, you can look all you want for ways to capitalize on JF and you're still not going to do as well with a slot in your deck devoted to a 1-cmc JF spell as you would with any other spell that provides that sort of resource.
Alliance at Arms? Say hello to Martial Coup, White Sun's Zenith, and Decree of Justice. And plenty of enchantment token makers, and Elspeth - so, no, even a mono-W tokens deck like Darien doesn't need a fourth, extra crappy token maker.
The blue one? How about Blue Sun's Zenith? At the very least, run Prosperity - it's an instant, you'll untap and get to use your new toys first. Do I really have to spell this out?
Of course, I'm basing this on the typical 4-player EDH pod. If you're into duelling my advice won't be relevant; of course, I don't consider duelling to be true EDH, so I could care less about that.
You have 2-3 opponents, and whether some of them are allies right now, eventually, ALL of them have to die in order for you to win. If everyone gets 10 1/1's, then that's 10 1/1's for you, and 30 1/1's for the enemy. Does this make any sense at all? Someone's going to mention "it's useful for when you're behind and you need to gang up on the leader". To which I say: there is an error in your planning. Don't plan to be the loser and include "dig myself out of a hole" cards. Plan to be the winner, and include "put everyone ELSE into a hole" cards.
And worst of all, most unforgivably of all, YOU are forced to announce your payment first! The mechanic might, just barely, have been playable if you had been allowed to announce your payment *last*. But since you announce it first, your opponents can just pay zero and say "thanks for the free stuff, moron". *Especially* if your deck includes ways to gain extra synergy or benefit from gaining your share. Is there anyone dumb enough to pay mana for Alliance of Arms when its caster controls a Doubling Season? Gah.
These spells are absolute and utter crap. I'm very disappointed that WotC decided to waste slots in this product on cards for the "tee hee, I'm going to just cast a random spell to screw with everyone because I don't care about winning" players. They already have plenty of crap like that to play with (basically every set has a new 6-CMC artifact or enchantment that creates random silliness).
At first I thought only the players who paid mana will get the tokens (which makes sense as the mechanic is named JOIN forces)... but after I reread it (and as many pointed out).. I think the mechanic is not as fun anymore.
However, it is still an interesting design and obviously these cards simply beg for their symmetry to be broken. Think of join forces as a "bonus" in which a player can pump your spell for mutual benefit, allowing for interesting policical play. On the other hand, I can see these spells backfiring.. haha.
@Kasreyn
symmetrical spells have a history of being powerful when you are able to build a deck around abusing the manner in which the spell functions. wrath of god balance pestilence earthquake nevinyrral's disk
the list goes on.
sure, in a vacuum, spells like alliance at arms don't look like much, but then neither does wrath of god... this is why new players frequently disregard them on the grounds of "oh, that gets MY stuff? rubbish!"... and it's only when players get more experienced and start looking at ways to abuse them that they discover the power in apparently 'symmetrical' cards....
in the right deck they have the potential to be devastating. in fact i'd go on to say they've got more value in constructed decks than EDH.
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@Kasreyn
symmetrical spells have a history of being powerful when you are able to build a deck around abusing the manner in which the spell functions. wrath of god balance pestilence earthquake nevinyrral's disk
the list goes on.
sure, in a vacuum, spells like alliance at arms don't look like much, but then neither does wrath of god... this is why new players frequently disregard them on the grounds of "oh, that gets MY stuff? rubbish!"... and it's only when players get more experienced and start looking at ways to abuse them that they discover the power in apparently 'symmetrical' cards....
in the right deck they have the potential to be devastating. in fact i'd go on to say they've got more value in constructed decks than EDH.
I addressed this very specifically in my post. Sure, a token producer is better when you have a pump effect out. But since these are sorceries and the caster must announce his payment *first*, his opponents will just choose to pay zero, because every additional mana they pay will help the caster more than it does them, because of the caster's superior ability to leverage the resource gained from the spell.
As such, since there are already plenty of spells that do similar things to each of these spells *without* giving the resource to every player (and some of them are even instants), there is no purpose in running these spells. Unless you're one of those people who likes to build EDH decks whose purpose is to screw with the game state rather than attempt to win. If that's the way you roll, feel free, but you should be aware that such deckbuilding necessitates a completely different value system for appraising card quality & so I can't address it here. Appraised from the perspective of EDH deckbuilding with the intent to win the game, the 1-cmc JF sorceries are clearly terrible cards.
Join Forces cards have varying levels of usefulness. Alliance of Arms can be broken in the way you described (there are no cards that can put 28 tokens onto the field for 8 mana- even if your opponents don't pay) and it's very easy to break the symmetry as you've described. The thing is, it's still a two card combo- I'd only put it in if it had a lot of synergy with other cards in the deck or had the potential to win the game on it's own. Most white decks would prefer Martial Coup.
Mana-Charged Dragon is also very nice in a very obvious way. Collective Voyage is entirely ridiculous with anything with landfall. They don't even have to pay! If you can make better use of the cards, there's no downside. No one-sided ramp spell is nearly as good for landfall. (I play perilous forays + rampaging baloths in one of my decks to get essentially the same effect.) And against some decks it is one sided ( don't know who's playing Hermit Druid Combo in multiplayer, though)
Shared Trauma is silly because mill never works in EDH. There are too many people playing recursion and reanimator type cards, and the graveyard is a resource. There are too many Eldrazi Titans. Perhaps it's more of a resource for you than them (eg. you have Chancellor of the Spires or The Mimeoplasm, but I imagine it to be not terribly effective. In a dedicated mill deck it's about as good of a kill spell as Braingeyser (or Minds Aglow, ha).
Minds Aglow is probably bad because I can't think of any way to abuse giving your opponents cards. Somebody might try to break it, but when you can pay 2 (Stroke of Genius) or U (Braingeyser, Mind Spring) and get the effect in its one sided form, you might as well.
Shared Trauma is silly because mill never works in EDH. There are too many people playing recursion and reanimator type cards, and the graveyard is a resource. There are too many Eldrazi Titans. Perhaps it's more of a resource for you than them (eg. you have Chancellor of the Spires or The Mimeoplasm, but I imagine it to be not terribly effective. In a dedicated mill deck it's about as good of a kill spell as Braingeyser (or Minds Aglow, ha).
I think that Shared Trauma is the best card of the sorcery cycle*. It has a lot of potential interactions with cards you cast after it resolves rather than having to have something on the battlefield prior. If you're sitting at a table of 4 and you cast this on t4 for 3 with Mimeoplasm depending on what you're playing against but having an extra 12 cards to choose from assuming no one else pays in is actually pretty good. It's also the only one of the sorceries that doesn't directly give your opposition resources to blow you out with on their turn. Untapping with a bunch of dudes, extra cards or especially lands will hurt you a lot. Them untapping with some cards in their graveyard probably won't hurt you very bad and possibly won't even hurt you at all.
I mean the card is no Buried Alive or Entomb but it isn't bad and I wouldn't play it outside of a The Mimeoplasm deck or possibly Geth but I feel like it's niche in that deck is solid as you can use both your and your opponents graves as a sufficient resource.
well, technically you would have to wait until your next upkeep to win...after 3 other people you just gave tokens to take their turns. you might not be at the required life total anymore.
If the only thing you can think of to do with a card that can generate that many ETB effects is to have Honor of the Pure in play... I take it you're not much of a Johnny?
Guys. Look, you can look all you want for ways to capitalize on JF and you're still not going to do as well with a slot in your deck devoted to a 1-cmc JF spell as you would with any other spell that provides that sort of resource.
Alliance at Arms? Say hello to Martial Coup, White Sun's Zenith, and Decree of Justice. And plenty of enchantment token makers, and Elspeth - so, no, even a mono-W tokens deck like Darien doesn't need a fourth, extra crappy token maker.
The blue one? How about Blue Sun's Zenith? At the very least, run Prosperity - it's an instant, you'll untap and get to use your new toys first. Do I really have to spell this out?...<snip>...
You have 2-3 opponents, and whether some of them are allies right now, eventually, ALL of them have to die in order for you to win. If everyone gets 10 1/1's, then that's 10 1/1's for you, and 30 1/1's for the enemy. Does this make any sense at all? Someone's going to mention "it's useful for when you're behind and you need to gang up on the leader". To which I say: there is an error in your planning. Don't plan to be the loser and include "dig myself out of a hole" cards. Plan to be the winner, and include "put everyone ELSE into a hole" cards...<snip>
These spells are absolute and utter crap. I'm very disappointed that WotC decided to waste slots in this product on cards for the "tee hee, I'm going to just cast a random spell to screw with everyone because I don't care about winning" players. They already have plenty of crap like that to play with (basically every set has a new 6-CMC artifact or enchantment that creates random silliness).
of course they are crap if you just cast them without any support or synergy from the rest of your deck. people are missing the point. you don't run these cards and just cast them without support (i.e. combos) and hope to pull out a win. the whole point is to use them in tandem with other spells and effects that capitalize on the fact that you are forcing each other player to gain the resource in question (for instance Suture Priest with the token maker).
As such, since there are already plenty of spells that do similar things to each of these spells *without* giving the resource to every player (and some of them are even instants), there is no purpose in running these spells.
again, you're missing the point. that is exactly the purpose of running these spells. because they give the resource to every player. if you're just running them to group hug or for the lulz, then yeah, whatever. bad idea (unless you're just into that sort of thing, some people are). but the real use of these cards comes from situations like forcing the table to gain X amount of little dudes right before you plop down a Massacre Wurm or giving everyone the option of fishing out several basic lands when you have Zo-Zu on the table (in which case, they will undoubtedly choose not to find any lands, and bingo - symmetry broken).
they are not meant to be analogues to asymmetrical options like Martial Coup, Explosive Vegetation, and other stuff the above posters have mentioned. they are meant to be Johnny cards allowing players to figure out how to build interesting combos around them.
As an example:
W Alliance at Arms
Sorcery
Join forces - Starting with you, each player may pay any amount of mana. Each player puts X 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the total amount of mana paid this way.
--
If there are four players at the table, for each mana invested into this spell, 4 soldier tokens are created, yes? Three of them will not be under your control, but whatever.
Cards this works well with:
Soul Warden
Soul's Attendant
Auriok Champion
Essence Warden
Suture Priest
Mana Echoes
Carnival of Souls
Hamletback Goliath
Then, if you want to get crazy:
Ather Flash, Lethal Vapors, Engineered Plague, Night of All Souls Betrayal, or Goblin Sharpshooter + any of these cards (since tokens do hit the graveyard, for an instant) is ridiculous.
Dross Harvester
Black Market
Blade of the Bloodchief
Gristle Grinner
Moonlit Wake
Sadistic Glee
Burning Sands
Tainted Aether
Dingus Staff
Vicious Shadows
These would also work with Wrath effects and things like Forbidden Orchard, the Hunted creature cycle, and Mercy Killing.
Post any other ideas you may have!
No, not really. The point, it seems, is for Join Forces to be incredibly balanced, which is unfortunate given how political EDH can get. The only political Join Forces card I've seen is Mana-Charged Dragon. The other cards spoiled like Alliance at Arms are pretty mediocre because they benefit everyone equally.
No that's not how it works. Let's say I pay 2 mana, the next person pays 2 mana, and the next pays 3 mana. That's 7 mana total, so we all get 7 Soldiers. So yes, you can play cards that give you an advantage like Glorious Anthem or Honor of the Pure but since you now have a bunch of 2/2s to your opponents' 1/1s, it seems pretty likely they will see you as a big target.
So, if there are four players, 28 soldier tokens enter the battlefield, right? 7 for each player? That's 28 ETB triggers, and when the tokens die, that's 28 graveyard triggers. As an example, combine that with Goblin Sharpshooter and Vicious Shadows. Shapshooter untaps, kills every single token, and each of the tokens' deaths trigger Vicious Shadows for what is probably lethal, if they have more than 4 cards in hand. Or maybe you would prefer Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Dingus Staff, or Night of All Soul's Betrayal and Black Market for absolutely stupid amounts of mana.
Another one would be with Collective Voyage: Ankh of Mishra and Grazing Gladeheart, or Polluted Bonds. Honestly, Collective Voyage is a functional reprint of New Frontiers, which really wasn't that crazy. However, I am far more impressed with Alliance of Arm's ability to generate huge amounts of creatures (even if you only end up in control of a small portion of them).
Yes, there are combo potentials for these cards, but the same could be said for really any card printed. Join Forces is a clunky ability that is only useful under a couple of specific scenarios which you alluded to. The fact is that there are far easier and more effective combos to use in which all of the combo pieces are useful. The Join Forces cards have little use outside of their combos and trying to build an EDH deck around a single card usually doesn't work.
You can find me on MTGO. My username is gereffi.
Or maybe in a Teysa, Orzhov Scion deck- A Soul Warden effect backed by Carnival of souls, means you just got 20 free mana to turn into a Exsanguinate, Consume Soul, or heck, a Martial Coup.
If the only thing you can think of to do with a card that can generate that many ETB effects is to have Honor of the Pure in play... I take it you're not much of a Johnny?
Tradsies here: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=336060
suture priest
Soul warden/soul's attendant with ajani's pridemate
windbrisk heights
honor of the pure
ajani goldmane
or in black:
blood seeker
reprocess
oh hey look there zealous persecution.. i mean jeez!
or in green:
overrun
beastmaster ascension
or just eldrazi monument
seriously..... this card is the absolute business.
Or capitalizing on what the Join Forces cards force your opponents to do. Remember, they don't get to choose to have X 1/1 tokens come into play under their control, or search up X lands, or draw X cards- they have to. The trick to abusing these cards is benefiting more from the immediate effect, but punishing your opponents for it.
Alliance at Arms? Say hello to Martial Coup, White Sun's Zenith, and Decree of Justice. And plenty of enchantment token makers, and Elspeth - so, no, even a mono-W tokens deck like Darien doesn't need a fourth, extra crappy token maker.
Collective Voyage? How about any of fifty jillion ramp spells that have been printed that benefit only YOU? How about Primeval Titan, Perilous Forays, Fertilid, Explosive Vegetation, and Genesis Wave? You don't need to run bad cards, there are plenty of good ones.
The blue one? How about Blue Sun's Zenith? At the very least, run Prosperity - it's an instant, you'll untap and get to use your new toys first. Do I really have to spell this out?
Of course, I'm basing this on the typical 4-player EDH pod. If you're into duelling my advice won't be relevant; of course, I don't consider duelling to be true EDH, so I could care less about that.
You have 2-3 opponents, and whether some of them are allies right now, eventually, ALL of them have to die in order for you to win. If everyone gets 10 1/1's, then that's 10 1/1's for you, and 30 1/1's for the enemy. Does this make any sense at all? Someone's going to mention "it's useful for when you're behind and you need to gang up on the leader". To which I say: there is an error in your planning. Don't plan to be the loser and include "dig myself out of a hole" cards. Plan to be the winner, and include "put everyone ELSE into a hole" cards.
And worst of all, most unforgivably of all, YOU are forced to announce your payment first! The mechanic might, just barely, have been playable if you had been allowed to announce your payment *last*. But since you announce it first, your opponents can just pay zero and say "thanks for the free stuff, moron". *Especially* if your deck includes ways to gain extra synergy or benefit from gaining your share. Is there anyone dumb enough to pay mana for Alliance of Arms when its caster controls a Doubling Season? Gah.
These spells are absolute and utter crap. I'm very disappointed that WotC decided to waste slots in this product on cards for the "tee hee, I'm going to just cast a random spell to screw with everyone because I don't care about winning" players. They already have plenty of crap like that to play with (basically every set has a new 6-CMC artifact or enchantment that creates random silliness).
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is up in Heaven now. EDH WUBRG Child of Alara WUBRG BGW Karador, Ghost Chieftain BGW RGW Mayael the Anima RGW WUB Sharuum the Hegemon WUB RWU Zedruu the Greathearted RWU
WB Ghost Council of Orzhova WB RG Ulasht, the Hate Seed RG B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade B G Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer G *click the general's name to see my list!*
However, it is still an interesting design and obviously these cards simply beg for their symmetry to be broken. Think of join forces as a "bonus" in which a player can pump your spell for mutual benefit, allowing for interesting policical play. On the other hand, I can see these spells backfiring.. haha.
symmetrical spells have a history of being powerful when you are able to build a deck around abusing the manner in which the spell functions.
wrath of god
balance
pestilence
earthquake
nevinyrral's disk
the list goes on.
sure, in a vacuum, spells like alliance at arms don't look like much, but then neither does wrath of god... this is why new players frequently disregard them on the grounds of "oh, that gets MY stuff? rubbish!"... and it's only when players get more experienced and start looking at ways to abuse them that they discover the power in apparently 'symmetrical' cards....
in the right deck they have the potential to be devastating. in fact i'd go on to say they've got more value in constructed decks than EDH.
Just pointing out that Prosperity is a sorcery...
I addressed this very specifically in my post. Sure, a token producer is better when you have a pump effect out. But since these are sorceries and the caster must announce his payment *first*, his opponents will just choose to pay zero, because every additional mana they pay will help the caster more than it does them, because of the caster's superior ability to leverage the resource gained from the spell.
As such, since there are already plenty of spells that do similar things to each of these spells *without* giving the resource to every player (and some of them are even instants), there is no purpose in running these spells. Unless you're one of those people who likes to build EDH decks whose purpose is to screw with the game state rather than attempt to win. If that's the way you roll, feel free, but you should be aware that such deckbuilding necessitates a completely different value system for appraising card quality & so I can't address it here. Appraised from the perspective of EDH deckbuilding with the intent to win the game, the 1-cmc JF sorceries are clearly terrible cards.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is up in Heaven now. EDH WUBRG Child of Alara WUBRG BGW Karador, Ghost Chieftain BGW RGW Mayael the Anima RGW WUB Sharuum the Hegemon WUB RWU Zedruu the Greathearted RWU
WB Ghost Council of Orzhova WB RG Ulasht, the Hate Seed RG B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade B G Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer G *click the general's name to see my list!*
Mana-Charged Dragon is also very nice in a very obvious way. Collective Voyage is entirely ridiculous with anything with landfall. They don't even have to pay! If you can make better use of the cards, there's no downside. No one-sided ramp spell is nearly as good for landfall. (I play perilous forays + rampaging baloths in one of my decks to get essentially the same effect.) And against some decks it is one sided ( don't know who's playing Hermit Druid Combo in multiplayer, though)
Shared Trauma is silly because mill never works in EDH. There are too many people playing recursion and reanimator type cards, and the graveyard is a resource. There are too many Eldrazi Titans. Perhaps it's more of a resource for you than them (eg. you have Chancellor of the Spires or The Mimeoplasm, but I imagine it to be not terribly effective. In a dedicated mill deck it's about as good of a kill spell as Braingeyser (or Minds Aglow, ha).
Minds Aglow is probably bad because I can't think of any way to abuse giving your opponents cards. Somebody might try to break it, but when you can pay 2 (Stroke of Genius) or U (Braingeyser, Mind Spring) and get the effect in its one sided form, you might as well.
I think that Shared Trauma is the best card of the sorcery cycle*. It has a lot of potential interactions with cards you cast after it resolves rather than having to have something on the battlefield prior. If you're sitting at a table of 4 and you cast this on t4 for 3 with Mimeoplasm depending on what you're playing against but having an extra 12 cards to choose from assuming no one else pays in is actually pretty good. It's also the only one of the sorceries that doesn't directly give your opposition resources to blow you out with on their turn. Untapping with a bunch of dudes, extra cards or especially lands will hurt you a lot. Them untapping with some cards in their graveyard probably won't hurt you very bad and possibly won't even hurt you at all.
I mean the card is no Buried Alive or Entomb but it isn't bad and I wouldn't play it outside of a The Mimeoplasm deck or possibly Geth but I feel like it's niche in that deck is solid as you can use both your and your opponents graves as a sufficient resource.
Also, another little morsel for making Collective Voyage more fun: Burgeoning
well, technically you would have to wait until your next upkeep to win...after 3 other people you just gave tokens to take their turns. you might not be at the required life total anymore.
^this.
of course they are crap if you just cast them without any support or synergy from the rest of your deck. people are missing the point. you don't run these cards and just cast them without support (i.e. combos) and hope to pull out a win. the whole point is to use them in tandem with other spells and effects that capitalize on the fact that you are forcing each other player to gain the resource in question (for instance Suture Priest with the token maker).
again, you're missing the point. that is exactly the purpose of running these spells. because they give the resource to every player. if you're just running them to group hug or for the lulz, then yeah, whatever. bad idea (unless you're just into that sort of thing, some people are). but the real use of these cards comes from situations like forcing the table to gain X amount of little dudes right before you plop down a Massacre Wurm or giving everyone the option of fishing out several basic lands when you have Zo-Zu on the table (in which case, they will undoubtedly choose not to find any lands, and bingo - symmetry broken).
they are not meant to be analogues to asymmetrical options like Martial Coup, Explosive Vegetation, and other stuff the above posters have mentioned. they are meant to be Johnny cards allowing players to figure out how to build interesting combos around them.