[M10] Game Experience with Rules

[Bardo]

I'm cross-posting the last Adept Question here since the Q&A forum is a wasteland that has outlived its purpose.

Ground rules:
1) This thread is for discussion about ACTUAL M10 GAME EXPERIENCE. There are other threads to discuss the nature of "intuition" and M10 rules abstractly.

2) Pretend this is the Adept Q&A thread (on a good day). No one-liners, no hi-jacks, no gobble-gook/incoherent bullshit. Be intelligent, add value and preview your post. Junk will get deleted.

3) See #1 above. This thread is solely to talk about actual experiences and/or impressions about Legacy games using M10 rules.


[M10] Game Experience with Rules

Last week, Aaron Forsythe and Mark Gottlieb announced the most sweeping changes to MtG rules in a decade. You’ve probably read the article, but here it is for reference:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a

With a few exceptions, community response has been quiet and restrained with only a few people expressing an opinion on what these changes mean for you and me.

Nah, I’m kidding. People have gone fucking nuts.

All of the non-official MtG sites have been a mill for speculation and unfounded analysis. Wizards’ boards are a mess. Articles from the MtG punditry have been pretty fair-minded, taking an “I’m a little nervous, just like you, but let’s wait and see what it works out" position. The tone and caterwauling in discussion forums is another beast altogether. Some people don’t like change and feel the game is getting Yu-Gi-Oh’d into oblivion (dumbed way down).

I haven’t read all of the articles that have come out on the M10 rules changes, but found value in these:

The PChapin: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/shardslimited/17612_Innovations_Pro_Tour_Honolulu_Part_2_and_M10_Rules_Changes.html

The Zvi: http://www.top8magic.com/2009/06/ruined-forever-the-magic-2010-rules-changes-by-zvi-mowshowitz/

The Ferret:
(Part 1) http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/17617_Youre_Probably_Wrong_On_M10_An_Informed_Rant.html

(Part 2) http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/17631_Four_Long_Multiplayer_Games_With_M10_Rules_First_Impressions.html

Others can talk about how all of the changes affect other formats. As this is a Legacy forum, the topic is Legacy + M10.

I’ve had a good amount of time to percolate what these changes mean for Legacy, have played some games under the new rules and thought I’d get the conversation rolling.

Let’s take it from the top:

1) Simultaneous Mulligans – This is a positive change I think we can all get behind. I can’t even think of a downside, honestly.

2) Terminology Changes.

2a) The “In Play” zone becomes the “Battlefield.” Whatever. The names of zones are needed for rulebooks and come up in writing, but don’t seem to be used much in conversation outside of “Can I see what’s in your graveyard?” or “How many cards are left in your library?” Typical spell announcement for me:

Me (Playing against a red deck, announce): “Tarmogoyf.” (Silently pass priority)
Opponent: “Okay.” (Tarmogoyf silently enters the BATTLEFIELD.)

Me (Playing against a blue deck): “Tarmogoyf?” (Silently pass priority.)
Opponent: <Pauses> “Spell Snare.” (Silently pass priority.)
Me: <Pauses> “Daze.” (Pass priority)
Opponent: <Pauses> “It’s in.” (Tarmogoyf enters the BATTLEFIELD.)

I just don’t see the terminology changes making a difference. We usually imply reference to zones and don’t call them out by name In Real Life. This is going to vary from player to player. But if the term Battlefield doesn’t appeal to you, don’t use it. You don’t need to.

2b) Cast, Play, Activate. See above. We shouldn’t see any noticeable difference. Previously, we understood that these terms were a little weird, but it rarely (never?) mattered.

2c) RFG becomes the Exile zone. Functionally, the Judgment wishes may have been nerfed.
[/I]
About the name, as above, people understand that Dark Confidant is “exiled” when hit with Swords to Plowshares. Sure, you can say “I exile Dark Confidant with Swords to Plowshares,” though that’s going to sound pretty forced and deliberate for the next year. More likely: “Send the Dark Confidant farming.”

As above you don’t need to call out the RFG/exile zone, unless your opponent is sloppy and dumps Bob in the bin instead. There you might have need to refer to the exile zone by name (“That exiled.”) Alternately, you can be old school and say “No, it’s RFG’d” or “It’s removed from game” instead. Not a big deal. Most games, it won’t even come up and when the exile zone is referenced, it’s most likely because of StP.

2d) Beginning of the End Step. Sure. This is going to be invisible to most in most games. We’ll still going to say, “End of turn, activate Top.”

3. Mana Pools and Mana Burn.

3a) Mana Pools Empty between steps and phases. No doubt, there are corner cases, probably involving Enchantress, where these changes may be significant. More likely scenarios:

* You tap an Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors to pay for Trinisphere (or another 3) and you don’t have to take a point of manaburn.

* You don’t take a point (or two) of damage if you float some mana (for whatever reason) and forget about it. This is more of a functional change in Vintage with Mana Drain.

* Can’t burn yourself to get additional uses out of the Pulse of the Field/Forge. Honestly though, who plays Pulse of the Forge in Legacy? Also any deck playing Pulse of the Fields (mostly U/W/x control) is unlikely to suffer intentional damage against any deck where you’d want the Pulse, post-board.

I can’t even think of the last time I took a point of manaburn and I bet it’s been a while for you too. It’s a rule that’s always been there, but really more of a corner case in the scheme of things.

Ultimately, Zvi says it best: “The bottom line is that we’d never consider introducing mana burn if it wasn’t already there, as it is rules complexity ... with only rare strategic benefit.”

4. Controllers of Token Own the Tokens. - "Dude, your Brand deck was always shit. It was cute when it worked out, but you were never going to ride that puppy to the Top 8 of a Grand Prix, were you?"

5. Combat Damage No Longer Uses the Stack.

A.k.a. the Big One.
A.k.a. the “Nice Mogg Fanatic” Rule.

The “stack,” as we know it, did not exist in Richard Garfield’s original rules, they were added in the sweeping 6th Edition rules changes in 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Sixth_Edition).

Under 6th Edition rules, combat damage was placed on the stack and resolved like every other object on a stack (last in, first out). Under the 6th Edition rules, you could declare your 3/3 Morphling as a blocker to your opponent’s Argothian Swine (a 3/3 trampler for 3G), stack the damage and then respond to damage on the stack by making Morphing a 2/4. End result: the swine dies and Morphling lives to tell a tale about some random fight in Urza Block Limited where you knew how the stack worked.

Under M10 rules, to allow combat damage to occur as a singular event, there is no longer a window to respond to combat damage on the stack (since it doesn’t stack). After you’ve assigned blockers, you have one last chance to play any trick you might have. If an assigned attacker/blocker is not in play (erm, on the battlefield) when combat damage "happens," no damage is dealt to the creature or the creature it was going to brawl with.

In practical terms, you can’t assign Mogg Fanatic as a blocker to an attacking 2/2 Mishra’s Factory, stack combat damage and sac the Fanatic in response to damage on the stack to get that last point of damage in.

Here, I don’t want to speak about theory, so I dusted off some cards and double-fisted 8-9 games this morning.

First up: Ravager Affinity vs. Goyf Sligh
(Or Arcbound Ravager vs. Mogg Fanatic)

I considered mulling to find the cards I was looking for but then settled on trying to create as natural environment I could. There were no Fanatics in my opener, but that didn’t stop Sligh from spitting up three of the things in the first game.

A few things I observed:

1. Mogg Fanatic vs. a cranially-plated 14/4 Myr Enforcer is not much of a fight.
2. Mogg Fanatic vs. a cranially-plated 13/3 Frogmite (buffed by an Arcbound Worker modular token) is not much of a fight.
3. Mogg Fanatic can’t kill an unbuffed Frogmite on his own now.
4. Mogg Fanatic can no longer block an attacking Arcbound Worker and fling an extra point of damage where it’s needed.
5. Arcbound Ravager is less tricky than he used to be (assorted forms of “damage on the stack, respond with <x>”), but he’s still awesome.

After that, I played a few games between my U/w/g CounterTop and Goyf Sligh. Goddamn is Counterbalance a beating.

“Treva” by Bardo

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Ponder

4 Force of Will
4 Counterbalance
3 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Vedalken Shackles

4 Tarmogoyf

4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Nantuko Monastery
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
3 Island

Sideboard. Assorted blue blasts, grips, relics, wraths.

After a solid hour of testing, I don’t think Mogg Fanatic is playable any longer. He seems painfully nerfed (even if works the way he was designed to work in Tempest), and doesn’t do enough for the power level of this format.

Using an analogy: M10 Mogg Fanatic is to 6th Ed. Mogg Fanatic what 6th Ed. Frostling is to 6th Ed. Mogg Fanatic. If that makes sense.

One other glaring thing I noticed (similarly noted in Part 2 of TF’s article): under M10 rules, you need to make tactical decisions. Decisions seem deeper in combat (what little there is in Legacy), rather than being on autopilot (“stack damage, do <x>”).

On a broader scale, I don’t think people will loathe the new combat interactions as they think they will. They seem more interesting to me, even though some cards we know have gotten some tweaking.

Also there are some new rules about gang-blocking.

Let us not forget, this is Legacy. Blocking is fairly rare and gang-blocking is all but a myth.

6) Deathtouch is now a static ability. What the fuck is “deathtouch?” Sounds cool, whatever it is.

7) Lifelink is now a static ability. Hey Don (AngryTroll), remember that GPT (Philly) at the Batcave four years ago, when you were playing U/W control and I was playing U/W Angel-Fish (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1816). In game 2, I attacked with all my dudes, and you held an Exalted Angel back on defense not realizing that you’d be dead before you got life from the Angel? If that game happened next month, instead of 2005, you’d have lived and I would have had to find another way to win that game. ;)

Also, lifelink doesn’t stack any longer. So you can’t dump a pile of mana into your, um, Genju of the Fields, and get 6-8 life, instead of 2. Seriously though, there are corner cases, sure, but one instance of lifelink in a game is pretty damn rare in Legacy, and stacking lifelink is all but unheard of. Well, it’s about as common as having your Kederekt Creeper gang-blocked at your last Legacy tournament.

This is one of those things we’re going to see how it plays out.

Summing up:

1. Simultaneous mulligans. A Good Thing.
2. Terminology changes. It may come up, it may not. Doesn’t really matter either way.
3. Mana pools empty and mana burn gone. May come up, but it’s pretty fringe.
4. Token ownership. Irrelevant.
5. Combat damage no longer uses the stack. Still needs exploration; Mogg Fanatic sucks; other than that, you’ll need to think a little harder in those rare cases when there is creature combat. In most games (outside of aggro vs. aggro) we may not notice there’s been any change at all. Most affected format is Limited where creature combat and combat tricks are common.
6. Deathtouch is a static ability. *Stares at the monitor*
7. Lifelink is a static ability. Irrelevant.

Alternate Question:

Have you played with M10 rules yet? How’d it go?

[Solpugid]

Unless I misread the article, I believe the wishes are undergoing functional changes, and can't retrieve extirpated loams and the like.

[Otter]

The new rules haven't even come up at all in something like 9/10 of my games and in the few that they do, they haven't ever altered the outcome of the game.

[Nihil Credo]

A couple of days ago GreenOne and I played a few games of Zoo vs. Goblins before either of us realised that we were assuming different rule sets. Just saying.

[DrJones]

Genju of the Fields will still stack under M10 rules.

[Bardo]

Genju of the Fields will still stack under M10 rules.

Are you sure? Genju of the Fields was errata'd to have lifelink.

Oracle text: Enchant Plains
2: Enchanted Plains becomes a 2/5 white Spirit creature with lifelink until end of turn. It's still a land. (Whenever it deals damage, its controller gains that much life.)
When enchanted Plains is put into a graveyard, you may return Genju of the Fields from your graveyard to your hand.

If lifelink no longer stacks, then how would you get more than 2 life out of an attack?

[ThatGuyThere]

Are you sure? Genju of the Fields was errata'd to have lifelink.

If lifelink no longer stacks, then how would you get more than 2 life out of an attack?

Check your M10 Article. Cards originally printed without Lifelink are losing Lifelink and keeping the "When ... gain ..." trigger.

Good point. Thanks. - Bardo

No, seriously.

...a longer M10 opinion will follow. Basically it boils down to, "It'll be better for Standard, which is all they care about."

[kicks_422]

I've been playing on MWS a lot since the new rules have been introduced, using various decks. The only time the rules changes really mattered was when I was using Affinity (man, that deck loses A LOT of its tricks).

[Zach Tartell]

Double lifelink doesn't gain me double life?

Please explain.

[Aggro_zombies]

Double lifelink doesn't gain me double life?

Please explain.
Double lifelink now works in the same way double first strike or double trample works.

EDIT: Wizards had better make some serious adjustments to the number of targeted, instant-speed removal spells they print for Limited - i.e., print almost none. Zvi's analysis about the impact on pump and mana-requiring abilities in combat was spot-on, at least from what I can tell using Sha-Con-Arb draft.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

The new rules make combat less interesting. There are now less tricks you can do, less uncertainty, and less interactions. It's now just a matter of attacking and blocking.

It's a system that rewards vanilla creatures. :|

[Apex]

Well, the mana emptying thing is a big one for Ad Nauseam players, and will basically take out one of the more useful trick for that deck. Since you can't crack LED in response to Mystical Tutor in your upkeep, tutor for Ad Nauseam, and cast it with the floated LED mana anymore. That's actually kind of a big deal for combo players.

The wishes rule doesn't REALLY impact any deck, other than the Cunning Wish -> Flash of Insight thing in tide decks.

I played some games on mws too with my friends, we were playing standard, but the combat rules hardly ever came up even in standard (there's pretty much no double blocking outside of limited, and even in limited, it's rare), so like Bardo said, there's pretty much no way that's going to affect legacy. You won't be hearing anyone saying:"Blocking order?" anytime soon.

[ebbitten]

As far as wishes go I've used burning wish to get back a loam in aggro loam a couple times after extirpate. I've also used burning wish in TES to get something removed with diminishing returns. I've also used cunning wish occasionly in wish-still to get back something I pitched to FoW. These may be "corner cases" yet I enjoyed them immensely.

[AngryTroll]

...

Let us not forget, this is Legacy. Blocking is fairly rare and gang-blocking is all but a myth.

6) Deathtouch is now a static ability. What the fuck is “deathtouch?” Sounds cool, whatever it is.

7) Lifelink is now a static ability. Hey Don (AngryTroll), remember that GPT (Philly) at the Batcave four years ago, when you were playing U/W control and I was playing U/W Angel-Fish (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1816). In game 2, I attacked with all my dudes, and you held an Exalted Angel back on defense not realizing that you’d be dead before you got life from the Angel? If that game happened next month, instead of 2005, you’d have lived and I would have had to find another way to win that game. ;)


Have you played with M10 rules yet? How’d it go?




Well, Team Ninja got together and played for an entire night this week, both Legacy and EDH. Honestly, the new blocking rules never arose in an entire evening of playing. We thought we were going to get some M10 action when a Quasali Pridemage showed up, but even then, the Pridemage was more useful on the board than crashing into big dudes for no reason. Go figure.

There have been close calls with Pridemage and Etched Oracle, but really, except for Mogg Fanatic and Hibernation Sliver, the damage on the stack thing rarely seems to matter. Throwing Etched Oracle in front of all but a tiny fraction of creatures ends up with one creature dead, not both; same for Pridemage and most of the other dudes. Goblins, Ravager, and Slivers seem to take the brunt of this.

As far as the names changes go, I found myself saying "Cast" half of the time anyways, out of habit from way back in the day anyways. Not a big deal; I actually prefer Cast from a flavor point of view. Of course, I still "Summon" Goyfs on occasion.


I actually brought up that Exalted Angel example this week. So, yeah, I wouldn't have lost that game (well, for at least another turn or so)! That game was the first thing I thought of when I read about Lifelink. But on the other hand, I've thrown Armadillo Cloaks on Exalted Angels a time or two, and that won't be as awesome anymore.

[Taurelin]

I played a copule of matches with a mate, both casual and Legacy. Results:

1) Simultaneous Mulligans
Very natural.

2) Terminology Changes.
Rather irrelevant, because we're speakers of German anyway, and the magic slang has always been a mixture of both. Instead of "play" or "cast", we have always been saying
A: "I'd like to have a Tarmogoyf"
B: "Response: Brainstorm ... Force!"

3) Mana Pools and Mana Burn.
These were relevant in two situations (both in the same match when I was playing casual Faeries):
- In my Upkeep I played (sorry: cast(ed ???) ) Faerie Harbinger tutoring a Peppersmoke. However, I had to use a Dimir Aqueduct as my only source for B, and I couldn't float the black Mana into my draw step, thus having to wait a turn to play Peppersmoke. This cost me 1 life in the next attack.
- The next turn I played Peppersmoke without getting rid of the extra Mana (Dimir Aqueduct). According to the new rules, no mana burn occured.
So basically: -1 life, +1 life. Sounds pretty balanced to me.


4) Controllers of Token Own the Tokens.
Totally irrelevant.

5) Combat Damage No Longer Uses the Stack.
Never made a difference. I was still able to do combat tricks with all those Flash-Faeries pre-blocking, and Mogg still couldn't take down a Tarmogoyf singlehandedly.

6) Deathtouch is now a static ability.
Totally irrelevant.

7) Lifelink is now a static ability.
Totally irrelevant.

[FoolofaTook]

It's a system that rewards vanilla creatures. :|

It really rewards creatures with Shroud, because they can't be removed at instant speed unless they're the sole blocker/attacker and something like Diabolic Edict is played. Having Nimble Mongoose and StP/PtE is now really strong tactically in combat. Gigapede might start to see more play again also.

Example: I'm attacking with a Nimble Mongoose with StP in hand. The defender double-blocks with 2 Mishra's Factories. Under the old rules he could wait until the damage step to tap his Mishra's to pump in response to how I assigned damage. If I removed one of his Factories before that he could activate it to give the other one +1/+1. This allowed him to pump one of his Mishra's (the one with damage on it) to force me to trade off with the StP/PtE on a 2 for 1 basis - Nimble Mongoose AND StP/PtE for a single Mishra's Factory with the other one surviving.

Now the 2 Factories can at best trade off on an even basis by pumping both during the declare blockers phase and having one of them die to the Mongoose and the other get StP/PtE'd. I can always respond to his pump of a Mishra's with my StP/PtE and he never gets to stack damage before that point. He can't wait until the point that he can stack damage to make the decision of how to pump his creatures, he has to pump both of them to 3/3 to get his tradeoff. Trying to get tricky by pumping the first engaged blocker to 4/4, on the assumption that I do not have a StP/PtE runs the risk that he loses both Mishra's in a 2 for 1 with the Mongoose surviving. Shroud puts the attacker in the driver's seat here.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

What I really mean by that is, creatures that have activated abilities are significantly worse. First time using them under the new rules, I felt as though I was being punished for using creatures with abilities, because, in combat, they may have been better off as a slightly bigger or cheaper vanilla creature rather than a smaller creature with abilities.

[FoolofaTook]

What I really mean by that is, creatures that have activated abilities are significantly worse. First time using them under the new rules, I felt as though I was being punished for using creatures with abilities, because, in combat, they may have been better off as a slightly bigger or cheaper vanilla creature rather than a smaller creature with abilities.

I agree with this, however I highly doubt Qasali Pridemage is going to get removed from any decks that currently use him based on this change. He was ridiculously good under the stacking combat damage rules and is now only excellent. Just an opinion.

I think what this change does is to make creatures with activated abilities that potentially effect combat damage much worse to play. That's a small handful of creatures in the meta game. Static damage abilities like Exalted are promoted and activated damage abilities like the Mogg Fanatic sacrifice are demoted.

[DrJones]

I actually brought up that Exalted Angel example this week. So, yeah, I wouldn't have lost that game (well, for at least another turn or so)! That game was the first thing I thought of when I read about Lifelink. But on the other hand, I've thrown Armadillo Cloaks on Exalted Angels a time or two, and that won't be as awesome anymore.Wrong again. Seriously, this "old cards with lifelink stack but the new ones we print don't" is totally confusing. We need to contact judges and ask them to write to Mark Gottlieb asking for either adding the clause "gain that much life ...for each instance of Lifelink on this creature" on lifelink, or make old lifelink work as the current one and ruin our Essence Slivers. :eyebrow:

[JeroenC]

Seriously, this "old cards with lifelink stack but the new ones we print don't" is totally confusing.

It's pretty simple really. You just do what is on the card: if it has the old wording, it'll be triggered. If it has lifelink, ignore any and all reminder text and it has static lifelink.
One exception: Loxodon Warhammer. I think it has "new" lifelink, so everyone with Mirrodin editions have the wrong wording.

[etrigan]

It's pretty simple really. You just do what is on the card: if it has the old wording, it'll be triggered. If it has lifelink, ignore any and all reminder text and it has static lifelink.
One exception: Loxodon Warhammer. I think it has "new" lifelink, so everyone with Mirrodin editions have the wrong wording.

That doesn't seem all that simple. I'd rather they just errata all instances of lifelink, old and new, to just be lifelink. Having two versions, one triggered and one static, serves no purpose.

[Media314r8]

I recently played both my cube, and my commons cube in 6-8 man drafts while using the new rules. The normal cube rarely has much interactivity in combat, and the new rules were highly irrelevant, aside from cards like river boa, who would have put damage on the stack against some generic X/2 blocker and then died to my lightning bolt in response to a regeneration shield, but instead died to my bolt in response to 'PREgeneration', and my X/2 blocker lived (my opponent only had G open to regen once). Having to preemptively regenerate a creature is VERY counter-intuitive, and will likely upset a great many casual players. and further nerf non-troll regenerators.

In the commons cube, we had many more dude vs non-chump-to-stay-alive dude interactions, including some group blocks. (my 3/3 ambassador oak and his 1/1 elf friend blocking his 5/5 Crabapple Cohort, with me shocking his other attacking 2/1 deathtouch elf, then him ordering blocks 3/3, then 1/1, and me giant growth'ing my 3/3 to kill both of his guys and keep both of mine) In this case, I think that blocking is dirty cheats, as having an opportunity to attempt to remove attackers before you block, and then to cast pump spells after they lock in a order to your blockers makes blocking stronger than previously. This situation did not arise to often, but in most cases, the defending player came out ahead, save for in the cases where the double blocking defender had no tricks and the attacker had a removal spell, which is a two-for-one just as it would have been under the old rules.

The biggest change I noticed is the weakened power of combat tricks other than instant speed removal and pumps, which became stronger. Cards like momentary blink still performed well in conjunction with one of my friend's kavu climber, but it served as a way to eek out more card advantage, and grant pseudo-vigilance, rather than be a total blowout with damage on the stack. Cards like whitemane lion lost much of their power, and may get cut, as they now really require a good amount of decent CiP abilities, and serve mainly as a way to 'dodge' removal spells on your other guys.

Rav bounce lands improved greatly, with the notable uses being CMC 1 instants and spells like ponder, brainstorm, and shock not causing mana burn, as well as regen and other single-colored mana activated abilities being playable off a bounceland source without cause for worry over manaburn. This change I am actually less fond of, as the ability to float mana from upkeep to draw was relevant against a brainstormed-to-top of deck instant which had a cost only provided by a single source, which then was twiddled by their opponent's pestermite. My largest concern over this change is that is allows for sloppy resource management, from common occurrences such as paying incorrectly and then needing to use a bounceland later, to activating tolarian academy in EDH for a bunch of mana that doesn't need to be spent, to the Ferret's experiences in casual multiplayer.

The sky isn't falling, but regenerators, many combat tricks, and other activated abilities on dudes that plan on fighting got worse, big vanilla beaters and removal/pump spells got better, and tapping lands with a paw-swipe is encouraged. I personally am concerned that blue and black will be slightly nerfed in M10 limited, as bounce/non-removal combat tricks and sac effects were heavily relied on in 10th ed to make up for the green common pumps, the white angelic page-effects, and the red common burn. I suppose I should trust R&D to have forseen this, and perhaps given black more 'pay life/cards for better guys/effects' and blue more good counterspells like exclude and negate to make up for their loss of combat trickery.

It's not the same magic, but it's still Magic, so don't be so quick to sell all of your cards on ebay and resign yourself to Yu-Gi-Oh! However, if you do, please PM me with what you're selling, as I am convinced that this is not the end of Magic as we know it, but just an ugly bend in the road.

[ParkerLewis]

That doesn't seem all that simple. I'd rather they just errata all instances of lifelink, old and new, to just be lifelink. Having two versions, one triggered and one static, serves no purpose.

I beg to differ. The point is, if a card has never been printed with the keyword "Lifelink", why change its functionality for no reason other than "something similar already exists" ?

It's like saying "Troll Ascetic and his few pals are confusing because their ability s too similar to Shroud. Troll Ascetic & co should be errata'd as just having shroud".

The cards you are referring to don't have Lifelink, neither in their printed form nor in their Oracle form (well, as whatever date the changes will apply). It's that simple.

About the cards that have had two versions (one with the whole thing spelled out loud, and one with lifelink), ... there's only ONE (Loxodon Warhammer) in all of Magic, which although casual-friendly, is played practically nowhere else.

All in all, it doesn't feel like it would justify changing cards functionality just for this. At least, that's the conclusion Wizards reached.

[Pinder]

My first real experience with the M10 ruleset was after I bought the Duels of the Planeswalkers. All of the decks are pretty scrubtastic, so it plays out a lot like limited, with double/multiple blocks included.

And I gotta say, there were maybe a few times out of beating the entire game where I really wished a could stack combat damage to gain an advantage, and even then not being able to do so didn't always mean I lost. I can only imagine that in Legacy specifically, combat now will be virtually indistinguishable from the way it was. Corner cases will pop up (and we have a lot more tricks available to us than the inbred 6- or 7-deck meta in the game), but overall the experience is pretty much the same.

Mulligans in-game are completely instantaneous, so it's not really a great demonstration of the time-saving qualities of simultaneous mulligans, but but at any rate I didn't notice any difference in my decisions to mulligan, without knowing whether or not they were going to first.

[Otter]

I beg to differ. The point is, if a card has never been printed with the keyword "Lifelink", why change its functionality for no reason other than "something similar already exists" ?

While I agree with what you are saying completely, it doesn't seem like WotC really cares about respecting the printed versions of cards anymore (see: Lorwyn mass creature type errata. Seriously, how are you supposed to know Aquamoeba is an elemental?)

Anyways, I don't think it's relevant in a legacy context. I have not seen a lifelinked creature in ages, the only possibly relevant card I can think of is Exalted Angel, which will be remaining triggered.

[Goblin Snowman]

While I agree with what you are saying completely, it doesn't seem like WotC really cares about respecting the printed versions of cards anymore (see: Lorwyn mass creature type errata. Seriously, how are you supposed to know Aquamoeba is an elemental?)

Anyways, I don't think it's relevant in a legacy context. I have not seen a lifelinked creature in ages, the only possibly relevant card I can think of is Exalted Angel, which will be remaining triggered.

Rhox War Monk is played in quite a few decks. It just seems like cards with identical function should (logically) have the same effect in all cases. It's never going to be really relevant, but I still think not changing these cards (and Stinkweed Imp) is a poor choice.

[citanul]

* Can’t burn yourself to get additional uses out of the Pulse of the Field/Forge. Honestly though, who plays Pulse of the Forge in Legacy? Also any deck playing Pulse of the Fields (mostly U/W/x control) is unlikely to suffer intentional damage against any deck where you’d want the Pulse, post-board


It's the player who's playing against Pulse of the Fields that takes the mana burn to avoid Pulse of the Fields from returning to the opponents hand.

Nice detailed post though. I don't think the new rules are all that bad but what was wrong with the combat step in the first place? It was great as it was and didn't need a fix.

[Mordel]

A few days ago a buddy and I shuffled up our decks on MWS and I played with my weird GBr loam deck and he played with D & T and it was weird at first. At first we were typing shit about the battlefield and exile...correcting mws's automatic messages and such, but we dropped it pretty quick. Blocking felt pretty fucking advantageous to me with my goyfs and he seemed to be forgetting that he could stack combat damage right after he declared attackers and lost a grunt stupidly that way(I assume...unless he was stoned or something).

Obviously, the functional change of wish never came up for me in the games. No manaburn ever came up either, though no mana burn could be situationally nice for dutch stax(which is a deck I will play more and more in the future probably). To be honest, many of the changes remove the rare situations when their implementation could be of benefit to someone, but the issue that I hold with that is those rare strategic benefits and moments of guile are why I like the game and why I have abandoned "newer" formats.

Simultaneous mulls seem like a good plan to me. My play testing buddies and I play competitive, but friendly games, so we rarely if ever implemented the entire waiting for your opponent to mull down to five before mulling for a greedy hand. I honestly don't see the twenty seconds that this may save in a game to be a huge factor and think it is more of a way to make the game seem more friendly and forgiving to fledgling competitive players. I always liked being able to take a calculated risk and still have an advantage when I would take a greed mull when my opponent had gone to five and was on the play when I had a serviceable, but not great hand in a shitty match.

Again though: I don't think these rules changes will be of tremendous earth-shattering consequence, but I still do not like how they are contributing to simplifying the game further and it is spilling into a realm of eternal formats, which I had begun to pay attention to because of said simplifications in set design and such.

I read through the Zvi article and I was reminded again why when I was a little pro tour hopeful kid, the combo king, Zvi was my MtG hero of sorts: the level of complexity added by combat damage's autonomy from the presence of the way basically every other process in the game game occurs is actually more complex in a sense. I had never thought about it that way. The simultaneous nature of lifelink(and it not being able to stack any longer) and deathtouch add to this notion for me, personally. If I was a new player, the new combat rules, though allow for more straightforward interactions and less room for being made to feel like an idiot because of a "tricky play", seem more complicated. I think the only thing going for many of these changes, once again, is a more friendly-feeling game at a semi-competitive level.

Edit: In the future though, even if I do attend a bigger sanctioned even, I will never say "battlefield" or refer to something as "exiled" and if my opponent does, I will probably quietly snicker because if I wanted flavor, I would play an RPG. I play MtG for strategy, not dorky flavor that tries to make me feel like some sort planeswalker/God in a world where "I rule(!!!)".

[ParkerLewis]

if I wanted flavor, I would play an RPG. I play MtG for strategy

If you wanted strategy, you'd play Go.

Nobody would play MtG without the flavor. It just would be completely impalatable and, most of all, simply unplayable due to the absurd level of complexity.

If you don't believe me, I dare you to play even one game with proxies where you've changed all the game keywords to "Keyword AAA"/"Keyword AAB" etc, all Zone names to "Zone 1"/"Zone 2"/"Zone 3" etc, all stats (mana cost, cmc, power, toughness, type, etc) to "Stat 01"/"Stat 02", all card names to "Name 00001" etc, and all Phases/Steps to "Phase 01 Step A"/etc, all game actions (tap, play, cast, activate, draw, sacrifice, ...) to "Action 01"/etc.

Actually, you wouldn't even be able to make it past three turns without giving up or simply crapping on the rules all over the place.

[Shugyosha]

If you wanted strategy, you'd play Go.

Nobody would play MtG without the flavor. It just would be completely impalatable and, most of all, simply unplayable due to the absurd level of complexity.

If you don't believe me, I dare you to play even one game with proxies where you've changed all the game keywords to "Keyword AAA"/"Keyword AAB" etc, all Zone names to "Zone 1"/"Zone 2"/"Zone 3" etc, all stats (mana cost, cmc, power, toughness, type, etc) to "Stat 01"/"Stat 02", all card names to "Name 00001" etc, and all Phases/Steps to "Phase 01 Step A"/etc, all game actions (tap, play, cast, activate, draw, sacrifice, ...) to "Action 01"/etc.

Actually, you wouldn't even be able to make it past three turns without giving up or simply crapping on the rules all over the place.

AAA and AAB are harder to memorize than words like First Strike and Flying that already give you a basic mental picture of the rules behind them. If things like Keywords and phases are easy to memorize for me I don't care that much about flavor. It might be a reason to get into the game but not the reason to play it competitvely. Remove from the game or exile I couldn't care less during a game of magic as both concepts are easy to memorize.

[Nihil Credo]

Also, with a frequent keyword like "battlefield" popping up while teaching someone to play, I see things getting a bit more uphill for trying to get non-gamers to play the game(the old targetted demographic with past marketing campaigns by WotC/Hasbro) because on the battlefield makes me feel almost emberassed just thinking about it. There were more than a few people that I got into the game where I told them to ignore the silly fantasy game feel of the cards and pay attention to how great the strategy and interaction between players was and so forth.

Oh, come on. Magic has always oozed with "young adult fantasy" (AAlongi®). 'Battlefield' fits right into that: it affects the seriousness of the game exactly as much as 'graveyard'... and infinitely less than, say, Reversal of Fortune (http://magiccards.info/5dn/en/77.html) or those tired Goblin jokes.

That said, let's hear more actual game experience in this thread.

[ParkerLewis]

Perhaps I "mispoke" in the aprt about playing for flavor. I meant to say "oozing with flavor" or something along those lines. I consider myself pretty good at being objective most of the time and changing the names of two zones of play wouldn't change the fantastical feel that the game has, which I don't really care about a lot.

The keywords may have "flavor", but they are also fairly practical in that their names explain what the effect does to an extent.

I agree, and that was my main point. The thing is, I'm not sure you can reasonably distinguish the "cool factor" from the "useful factor" (as in the effect is directly implied by the name) of flavor.
I mean, it's "cool" because you recognize the spell's name in its effect (it feels like you're actually doing what that spell evokes according to its name).
That's also precisely what makes it simple to process : your synapses are already precabled to get the card as a whole and integrate it.

I see what you want to mean when you're saying "i don't care about flavor, as long as you forget about the complexity issue that would arise without it". I'm just under the impression the two aspects are too intertwined to take separately.

No big deal anyway.


It all comes down to if something isn't broken, don't fix it. A lot of people say the changes don't bother them and they don't really bother me, however ignoring them and continuing to use the old terms regardless seems to be a trend that I have been noticing. When I think back to things that confused me as a little newbie in revised, the similarity between the in play zone and playing of cards is not something that stands out. Interrupt timing, banding, regeneration and first strike(I know, I know) are what stand out to me. With putting things into play, "into" is the functional word that made the difference painfully fucking obvious.

Well, everyone had their own difficulties. You had yours with first strike but didn't with the word "play". This is your specific case. Still, most probably there will be certain items that will come up more often than others among new players. The multiple uses of the word "play" probably was one of them (it's not like Wizards doesn't have actual data from this, even only from the Customer Service center that some people still DO call, or maybe simply judge feedback from low level tournaments, you get the idea), so they clarified things up.

You in particular wouldn't have been helped, but the alleged point is that a majority of new players would (and will).


Besides, if they wanted to try to flavor things up, why are lands still being put into play? Why not "create" them or something similarly terrible to "battlefield".

No idea, actually. Hmm, in fact, I can guess why "create" wouldn't do the trick. You, as a wizard, are not supposed to create the lands. You're just using them, and IIRC the metaphor is that you're opening "portals" to those faraway places to take mana from (or something).

But your question stands, and I don't really know. Maybe they didn't find any satisfying word ?

On the opposite, battlefield is a perfect description for what the "in play" zone actually is. There's really no way you could call it "terrible" from a flavor perspective.


Also, "exile" works for creatures, but what about spells and less tangible things? "Exile cunning wish after playing it" how the fuck to I exile something that is not tangible? Why don't us humans just exile jealousy and hunger? Probably something silly like the word's existant meaning, which specifically applies to individuals. Exiling stuff from my graveyard? They're going to take the spells I have cast and the lands that have been destroyed and move them into some sort of no man's land country? What the fuck? How does that work?

Well, here the problem is not about "exile". The problem is about non-creature spells, because "graveyard" would already be something strange to "put used sorceries/instants" to.

I guess the point here is to just make the best of what you can. "Graveyard" is evocative. Even if it might not be a perfect fit in all cases, it's still evocative. Same thing for Exile, and that's the important aspect (that is, as long as you don't have any better term at hand).


Also, with a frequent keyword like "battlefield" popping up while teaching someone to play, I see things getting a bit more uphill for trying to get non-gamers to play the game(the old targetted demographic with past marketing campaigns by WotC/Hasbro) because on the battlefield makes me feel almost emberassed just thinking about it.

This honestly looks like a simple question of habits. There really shouldn't be any reason to be embarassed about battlefield if youre not about graveyard, library or dragons.


There were more than a few people that I got into the game where I told them to ignore the silly fantasy game feel of the cards and pay attention to how great the strategy and interaction between players was and so forth.

That might work for them, and that can be a good approach if you want to try to negate the "geek" vibe. Still, same as above, if there is the need to resort to this, ie ignoring basically all terms in the game - "creature", "sorcery", "artifact", creature types like "dragon", "elf", etc - then really ignoring one additional term isn't an issue.

Additionnally... you might very well argue that this is not the public those changes are aimed for. Honestly, you'll find incomparably more people who have gotten into the game because they wanted to play with those "dragons" and mana and all the awesome stuff than people who got in the game IN SPITE of that... Does that even exist, and more importantly, does the game even need or want these players ? I can't help but highly doubting it.


The feel/flavor of cards and the game was fine the way it was, but if they want to change keywords, that's great. The big issue is that they are catering to the wrong crowd with this move in that the geeks that they are trying to appeal to with "battlefield" would probably pick the game up fairly easily regardless of the names of two zones of play. I have met some degenerate MtG nerds that would play the saddest and most dorky concept/theme decks and none of them looked at MtG as fantasy game in the sense of you get lost in the flavor of the game, they all seemed to look at it as a fun strategy game with cool cards.

(emphasis mine)

How is that a problem... ?


There is a fundamental flaw in squabbling about the keywords for me though in that the changes made by them will be very, very small. Tiny. To me, this begs the question that if something is being touted as trivial as these two words, why really bother to change them at all?

You've spent a consequent number of lines describing how you think it would have a negative impacton numerous aspects (including player acquisition), and now you're saying there's no consequence at all, so why change anything.

There's something wrong here : )


I think that it all comes down to preferences and one's subjective experience(s) with the game in regards to how you feel about the flavor being kicked up a notch, but to assert that the flavor of MtG is required on the part of every player for their past or continued enjoyment is quite narrow-minded.

Then I will reiterate. I maintain flavor is required for enjoyment, if only to make the game playable by a human brain.


My big thing with the two keywords is the thought process and reasoning behind implementing them, not their newfound existence. I'll be aware of their impact on the rules, but I will not be adopting them in how I speak when playing the game for a very long time, if ever.

Well, nobody forces you to, as long as everything's clear between you and your opponent. The two "old" words will probably live a very long life after July 11th. Just like lots of old players (including me) have still been saying "activate" even up til now.