So..I skip my forge key step. Got it.

I get the amber from my opponent forging keys. Got it.

Does this mean they don't forge a key? Do they forge a key AND I get six amber?

If they have 13 amber...do they attempt to forge, I get six, they don't get a key...they try again...I get six...now they have 1 amber remaining and I have twelve and they have no key?

The action makes sense. I just got all this amber now I kill the artifact and give my opponent one turn to react and try to stop me or or get it back.

You only skip YOUR forge a key step. Meanwhile, your opponent is able to keep on forging keys like normal. It essentially just gives you all of the amber that they spend when forging their keys (instead of it going back into the amber pool). The card itself is a reference to the film "The Sting", an old 70's heist movie, so you are stealing someone else's hard-earned amber when they think it is safe and sound back in the pool. Hope that helps!

“You” on the card is the controller of the sting not the current player

This is how I see it working.

You play sting, which activates it's abilities at the end of your turn (when you ready it).

Your opponent forges a key. You get how many ember the opponent paid for their key.

You can't forge a key on your next turn, because your Sting is still active.

You need to choose that house (shadow), to be able to remove the Sting.

You can forge a key on your next turn, if you still have enough ember.

Sting only helps you with your opponents first two keys. It's pointless after they've forged two, unless you have an unforge deck. It's in the rule book, so I would expect that it exists in some form. At it's very quickest, sting can allow you to forge a key just two turns after your opponent. By that time, you might have enough for two keys (which you'd need an action, creature or artifact to help you forge). I've seen Key Charge, Chiota Hazri, Key Abduction and Epic Quest . Doing a little search over at compendium shows me that there's a Key of Darkness card also, but those are the only five cards that allow a second key (or third) key to be forged during a turn.

The Sting is one of the few card that generate aember that I will discard instead of just play for the aember, unless the situation is actually good for me to play it.

If it were an omni ability then the card would be solid but since it's not, it generally leads to losses more often than wins.

If you happen to play it right before your opponent forges a key and or you have a dominant board position with Shadows creatures (typically a rare occurence) then you can play this card without much downside.

I'm general the card is really bad at what it does.

2 hours ago, KFMixer said:

You can't forge a key on your next turn, because your Sting is still active.

You need to choose that house (shadow), to be able to remove the Sting.

Key Charge Begs to disagree with you. Your other point about it being useless after their first two keys depend on if you own a Key Hammer and various ways to increase key costs. If you have both, and your opponent has no good way to quickly mess with your Aember pool, you can basically seal a three turn win.

2 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

The Sting is one of the few card that generate aember that I will discard instead of just play for the aember, unless the situation is actually good for me to play it.

If it were an omni ability then the card would be solid but since it's not, it generally leads to losses more often than wins.

If you happen to play it right before your opponent forges a key and or you have a dominant board position with Shadows creatures (typically a rare occurence) then you can play this card without much downside.

I'm general the card is really bad at what it does.

I have a deck that combines it with key charge and three witches of the eye - the sting is a way to stack up a large amount of Æmber for it. With the right setup, it can forge all three keys in one turn. Punishes decks with weak Æmber control really hard.

So, then you'd need to declare shadows to remove the Sting, and then somehow play a Maverick Key Charge, or be on logos with two phase shift, although I'm not sure that using the action on an artifact counts as "playing one non logos card"

1 minute ago, KFMixer said:

So, then you'd need to declare shadows to remove the Sting, and then somehow play a Maverick Key Charge, or be on logos with two phase shift, although I'm not sure that using the action on an artifact counts as "playing one non logos card"

The sting only lets you skip your forge step, it doesn't forbid forging outside of it.

Great point, that's what I was missing my logic. There's no reason to remove Sting, if you can forge with a different method.

5 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

I have a deck that combines it with key charge and three witches of the eye - the sting is a way to stack up a large amount of Æmber for it. With the right setup, it can forge all three keys in one turn. Punishes decks with weak Æmber control really hard.

An extreme example, well outside the norm, that requires a significant amount of set up, doesn't change the fact that The Sting is generally a bad card.

So you need The Sting, a way to forge all your keys outside the forge step, a large amount of set up and hope that your opponent doesn't have any sort of aember control.......

"I'll call house Shadows and discard The Sting" is going to be the far more frequent play.

If the opponent has forged no keys, almost always play it. It's basically a free 7 aember.

If the opponent has forged 1, you need to know what their options for bursting are. If they have a cheat you should be worried. If you need to catch up though, I would still play it at 1, if I can play it immediately before they forge.

Yeah, at 2 keys it's worthless without a key hammer. And even then, you have to call dis to do the hammer, then somehow do the sting before they turn that aember into a key again. If you are going to be unforging, you really should be looking to unforge and also keep them off the key through a steal, a capture, or by increasing the key cost. Using the sting there would be weird. Maybe there is a deck where that's the right move.

2 hours ago, saluk64007 said:

If the opponent has forged no keys, almost always play it. It's basically a free 7 aember.

If the opponent has forged 1, you need to know what their options for bursting are. If they have a cheat you should be worried. If you need to catch up though, I would still play it at 1, if I can play it immediately before they forge.

Yeah, at 2 keys it's worthless without a key hammer. And even then, you have to call dis to do the hammer, then somehow do the sting before they turn that aember into a key again. If you are going to be unforging, you really should be looking to unforge and also keep them off the key through a steal, a capture, or by increasing the key cost. Using the sting there would be weird. Maybe there is a deck where that's the right move.

In my experience this is a trap. It's going to force you to call shadows at a later point in the game and that will put you behind at least one turn. Both my friend and I have a deck with The Sting in it and each time it hits the table it's a complete non-factor

Typically we see something like this.

I get close to forging a key, my opponent plays The Sting.

I forge a key at the start of my turn, and my opponent gets 6 aember.................then that same turn I steal/capture/etc. my opponent's aember.

Even if I wasn't able to do it the same turn, unless my opponent can forge outside the forge step, The Sting has to be destroyed before my opponent can start forging again and that forces them to call Shadows. They could have a pretty weak Shadows play but they are forced to take it if the want to catch up.

Can The Sting be useful? Sure if it's in a deck that can forge outside the forge step, or if you have a strong suit of Shadows cards that allows you to always have a positive turn when calling Shadows, but, this just isn't the norm. Which is why it's one of the few cards that is frequently better to discard then to just gain the aember for no effect. It's long term impact is usually bad, unless you have a lot of other good things going one.............which don't really need The Sting to be good on their own.

Your argument is the same argument as any argument for gaining aember when playing against a steal deck. And "you'll have to call shadows at some point which puts you behind" - um... you'll probably be calling shadows again at some point. Maybe on a turn when you steal some of that aember back and are pretty sure you wont lose it again before the next forge.

The sting is nearly as good or as bad playing before the first key forged as any "gain 7" aember card would be. Unless you really don't want to call shadows again. But you may as well hold your good steal card, play the sting to get their forged aember, then call shadows to steal whatever you lost back and remove sting. But yeah. Really good if you pair it with making their key cost more.

It's true, sometimes gain 7 is bad.

Except normal play does not lose you a full turn of tempo to start reaping the rewards of your extra aember. The more opportunities you give your opponent to mess with your aember total, the worse it is for you.

I have found that Shadows is generally not something you want to have to call repeatedly. It runs out of gas and then end up doing things like wasting a turn to sacrifice The Sting and play 1 or 2 mediocre cards just to get your tempo back. Probably calling Shadows and being forced to call Shadows at the wrong time are too different things.

In my experience, there are more Shadows decks with The Sting and nothing to compliment it, so that is why I generally pitch it. It's not a rare card that improves your deck on it's own. The deck has to support it, or it's a liability. For a rare, I would have expected it to be an Omni effect.

10 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

For a rare, I would have expected it to be an Omni effect.

It is enough for a rare to be interesting, doesn't need to be all-powerful. The sting as omni-sacrifice would be a no-brainer. The sting in its current form can provide a certain type of deck (those with key-charge and especially those that can reuse that card, currently 304 decks achieve this with witch of the eye, 122 with nepenthe seed, with an overlap of 40, of the decks using witch of the eye, 70 have more than one) with a truly unique alternative game plan. Won't always work, but the skill in that situation lies in recognizing the states where it will and those aren't as rare as you'd think.

Look, The Sting is only as good as the deck and player. Basically, I have a deck where I can call Shadows freely without needing shadows cards in my hand if I want and I have enough support from the other houses in my deck that Sting is just nabbing free aember while I'm robbing you blind and generating my own aember like mad. I only get foiled by Principle or that dis monster that steals all Aember if you have more than 7

On 12/8/2018 at 10:51 AM, Admiral Deathrain said:

It is enough for a rare to be interesting, doesn't need to be all-powerful. The sting as omni-sacrifice would be a no-brainer. The sting in its current form can provide a certain type of deck (those with key-charge and especially those that can reuse that card, currently 304 decks achieve this with witch of the eye, 122 with nepenthe seed, with an overlap of 40, of the decks using witch of the eye, 70 have more than one) with a truly unique alternative game plan. Won't always work, but the skill in that situation lies in recognizing the states where it will and those aren't as rare as you'd think.

The Sting pairs well with Miasma (common), to be played in the turn when the Sting is sacrificed. In effect, both players lose a turn but the player with the Sting gets 6A for free.

Better still if there is a Key Hammer in the same hand, to repeat the effect, or Chota Hazri etc. to forge nevertheless. I may guess that in 1/2 of the decks where it appears, the Sting is dead weight, but in the other half it can become rather useful. The cards have to be available at the right time, however.

1 hour ago, Blackchibidono said:

I only get foiled by Principle or that dis monster that steals all Aember if you have more than 7

Be careful. That Dis creature, Drumble, only captures all æmber, it doesn't steal anything.

I've seen Sting used very well. Actually, I won a round in a sealed tournament because of this card. I brought it out right before he forged his second key. It gave me a huge ember advantage. I enjoy this card, but it has to have good tactics around it.

Also, people seem to be stuck on the Action: Sacrifice The Sting part not being OMNI.

Any other House's Artifact Removal or anything that will bounce an artifact can also be used to get rid of your Sting without needing to call Shadows.

So, that increases the number of decks where The Sting can be useful. (No I don't know the actual numbers on this, just that it exists.)

I thought the Sting was one of the worst cards in the game. Then I got a deck with the Sting, three Vezyma Thinkdrones (among 8 Mars creatures), Arise and Key Abduction. I now love the Sting 😉