how did playing work before the stack in 6th ed?

[perm]

I played back then, but i was little and did it very casually. Could anyone help me out?

[cdr]

http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana300/mtgcom_arcana_130_pic1.jpg

http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana300/mtgcom_arcana_130_pic2.jpg

http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana300/mtgcom_arcana_130_pic3.jpg

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/arcana/130

[sunshine]

Wow, I really hope you whipped that up as an ad hoc response in *checks time stamps* eight minutes.

[wcm8]

Hahahah...

Magic is complicated, but that flow chart looks more confusing than some parts of ACLS (any medical people here?). I'm glad they simplified things to where they are now.

I seem to remember there being the concept of "FILO", aka "first in, last out". It's pretty similar to the idea of the stack. I started playing circa Ice Age, so my memory about that may be a bit hazy.

[perm]

also, what was a 'fast effect' and 'forced effect'?

[dahcmai]

It was pretty close to what it's like now. It played a lot like "the stack". If you played a spell, your opponent had a chance to respond, then you had a chance to respond to whatever he played and so on. There wasn't any responding to spells ealier in that chain. When everyone was done, you resolved them one by one "Last played, first resolved" or "last in, first out" as we said back then.

For example, today if I played Balance and wanted to sac all my lands to a Zuran Orb so the Balance wiped out lands also, I would have to respond to my own spell first. By the Revised rules, I don't have to, the opponent has to decide if he wants to do anything about it first. If he doesn't, I get priority back and can respond to the spell now. It's almost backwards from the way it is now.

Interrupts were simple. Try to imagine Split Second where you can only play Split second spells in response. Oh yeah, they printed a crap load of Split Second spells too. That's interrupts.

Ok, I lied, Interrupts weren't that simple. When there was a bunch of instants being cast in response to each other and someone decided to toss an interrupt in there, it built an "Interrupt Bubble". You had to resolve the Interrupt Bubble first and then go last in first out with the rest of the instants. That's the main reason people hated interupts. Wusses.

You could hit zero life until the end of the "phase" or "step" by today's wording. Negative life was common.

Banding was confusing still. I'm not going into that unless you really want to know.

Damage Prevention was confusing also. Honestly, I never really got it down exactly how it worked, but it's close to our "clean up step" now. You basically removed all damage from creatures and did COP's and such at the end of turn. The order was the confusing part.

Mana Abilities are pretty close the way they are now. It changed several times, but it seems to have came back to the old way.

There was Mana Burn.

Mono Artifacts were ones you could use once a turn.

Continuous Artifacts were like Winter Orb, always on.

"Fast Effects" were just anything faster than an instant speed coming from a creature or artifact. Activated ability in simpler terms. We had a lot of timing issues.

"Forced Effect" is the old way of saying Triggered ability now.

What's funny is a lot of M10 rules changes they did actually just reverted back to the original way it was done. Like "Damage on the stack", that didn't exist in revised rules. So it's actually comforting to see that back to normal. Well, normal for me.

Now if they only would actually use Enchant World, Banding, Rampage, and all those other cool abilities again.


Go download Microprose's Magic the Gathering PC game and play Shandalar. It's an old game, now abandonware that uses all the old rules. It's a ton of fun also.

[freakish777]

http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGALP/power_sink.jpg

This card was a counterspell with a built in Time Walk because your opponent couldn't respond to Interrupts except with more Interrupts.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAG5TH/dark_ritual.jpg

For a brief period of time, this card couldn't even be responded to, because it was a Mana Source.


Under the original Alpha rules, once a stack of instants was built up, all spells resolved simultaneously! (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/jc20 )

[Bardo]

I played from 1994 - 1996 (then from 2003 to now). Timing and batch-related stuff was mainly determined by consensus of the players around the table. The rule book was only helpful to a minimal point (play one land a turn, untap your mana once a turn, etc.); the WotC Customer Service phone line was helpful in ruling on cases where we couldn't agree (if I untap your attacking creature with Jandor's Saddlebags, does it still do damage like Maze of Ith?) but wait times could be pretty long and long-distance actually cost money back then. Consistency from group to group was way the fuck off, but the discovery was fun. WotC didn't publish spoilers for a long time, so it was a mess / totally fun trying to figure out what was in the set. I remember pulling a Jester's Cap from an Ice Age pack, casting it later that day and folks were like, "Fuck, that's awesome." Good times. Over all, not very much different, but the information overload has kinda stolen some of the fun moments of discovery that made the game special and a lot different than it feel today.

[DrJones]

Counterspells were less strong under fourth and fifth edition rules because the trick of casting Brainstorm to find Counterspell/Force of Will did not work. You could find the card, but the time to cast it had already passed.

[Julian23]

I was told there was some way of making your spells practically uncounterable with Zuran Orb? How did that work?

[EssKay]

Lands only came in starter decks, which also contained tiny rulebooks, the whole game summed up in ~10 pages! Dual lands were $10, Balduvian Horde was awesome, and we walked uphill to school both ways with plastic bags for shoes.

Also artifacts with constant effects could be "turned off" by tapping them. Much fun was had with Icy Manipulator and things like Winter Orb and Howling mine.

Fast effects and FILO worked a lot like the stack does now, but I believe once everyone was done adding fast effects, everything resolved. You couldn't do tricks like with Izzet Guildmage and add something, let it resolve, then add something else before other spells/effects resolved.

Banding wasn't really that complicated, it had two functions: first, if at least one blocking creature has banding, defending player gets to distribute damage. Second, you can band attackers (including one w/o banding) they're all blocked as a group, and you get to distribute damage among them. I think the idea was that you could team all your little guys up to take out your opponent's mighty Shivan. Of course, if there's banding on both sides then you just agree to a draw and go get a sandwich.

[Finn]

I seem to remember that lands were in boosters in the beginning. I think their removal was a later thing - much later. First in, last out, was the rule of thumb. But then there was the crazy thing that damage happened afterward.

So, if you Giant Growth a Lord of Atlantis, and I respond with Lightning Bolt, he is not killed. But if you Giant Growth a Lord of Atlantis, and I respond with Sword to Plowshares, you only get 2 life. And amazingly there were pretty big hurt feelings when they changed the rules to make sense.

Anecdotally, our house rule for a very long time was "direct damage could only target a player if he/she had no creatures". We did this because Fireball had the word "target" on it, and the rule book defined target as "a particular kind of card in play" or some such. It seemed like it should be able to hit players, but the rules said otherwise. So we winged it.

Oh, and I once convinced the table that my Tranquility would cause everyone to discard any enchantments they had in hand because the revised printing actually said "all enchantments are discarded". I even believed it myself.

[Nightmare]

Don't forget that tapping a blocker meant it didn't deal damage in combat - which made cards like Mishra's Factory WAY worse, and cards like Master of Arms WAY better.

[Eldariel]

"Fast Effects" were just anything faster than an instant speed coming from a creature or artifact. Activated ability in simpler terms. We had a lot of timing issues.

Wait, weren't fast effects equivalent in speed to instants and interrupts (and mana source every now and then) the only even-faster part? That's how I always played it.

[Finn]

Adam, did you notice the added text to Master of Arms? That was a pretty recent addition - like 2 years ago or something. I don't imagine they are likely to reprint that any time soon, so I wonder why they went and put power-level errata on it. I mean, sure it did very little without it, but that seems to fly in the face of Gottlieb's policy.

At any rate, yeah Mishras have been much better ever since then.

[Mayk0l]

I remember pulling a Jester's Cap from an Ice Age pack, casting it later that day and folks were like, "Fuck, that's awesome." Good times. Over all, not very much different, but the information overload has kinda stolen some of the fun moments of discovery that made the game special and a lot different than it feel today.

I know exactly what you mean. I remember buying some Nemesis boosters when I started, trying to figure out which cards were the best ones. Then my friend took his deck from "way back" and beat me with D'Avenent Archers. I was shocked. This card, typical art I didn't recognise from any of my Nemesis cards, from a set the store didn't even sell boosters of! I remember thinking "My god, how friggin' big IS this game".

Nowadays I browse through spoilers and conclude that 99.9% is unplayable. I pick up the fatty for EDH, the single good card for Legacy, all from Ebay. I remember I searched for an Arcanis for my deck for months. It felt so good to finally trade one. That's gone, I guess.

[Nightmare]

Adam, did you notice the added text to Master of Arms? That was a pretty recent addition - like 2 years ago or something. I don't imagine they are likely to reprint that any time soon, so I wonder why they went and put power-level errata on it. I mean, sure it did very little without it, but that seems to fly in the face of Gottlieb's policy.

At any rate, yeah Mishras have been much better ever since then.

WHAT! I did not notice that, and it makes NO sense to me whatsoever.

[cdr]

that seems to fly in the face of Gottlieb's policy.

There's more than one policy. See: Mox Diamond.

[MMogg]

@ Master of Arms errata: makes sense to me if you consider errata are usually applied to make cards function the way they were intended to function and as Nightmare said, the card used to function the same way: prevent the damage of tapped blockers.

[freakish777]

@ Master of Arms errata: makes sense to me if you consider errata are usually applied to make cards function the way they were intended to function and as Nightmare said, the card used to function the same way: prevent the damage of tapped blockers.


In that case I want every pre M10 creature with a sacrifice ability on it to have the following errata:

"Damage still stacks for this creature. Fuckers."


Its either that or Master of Arms needs to lose that line of text!

[Nihil Credo]

@ Master of Arms errata: makes sense to me if you consider errata are usually applied to make cards function the way they were intended to function and as Nightmare said, the card used to function the same way: prevent the damage of tapped blockers.
Problem is, where does that stop? Shouldn't the "that creature deals no combat damage to creatures it's blocking" clause also be added to Twiddle and Icy Manipulator? It used to be a major pro for both cards. Shouldn't Mirror Universe get a "You only die from non-positive life at the end of the step" continuous effect, since it's the only thing that made it playable?

If there is a clear rule establishing when and to what degree a wording should be altered to to mimic pre-6th rules, I have never seen it made explicit.

[cdr]

I think it's pretty silly to attempt. Pretty sure it started with not wanting to make Mox Diamond broken. And once you've done that, hard to keep it from snowballing from there.

[MMogg]

Problem is, where does that stop? Shouldn't the "that creature deals no combat damage to creatures it's blocking" clause also be added to Twiddle and Icy Manipulator? It used to be a major pro for both cards. Shouldn't Mirror Universe get a "You only die from non-positive life at the end of the step" continuous effect, since it's the only thing that made it playable?

If there is a clear rule establishing when and to what degree a wording should be altered to to mimic pre-6th rules, I have never seen it made explicit.

No, because Twiddle and Icy Manipulator were not made with that specific interaction in mind (as in, it isn't an essential part of the card's function. Sure, they take advantage of it, but it isn't a core aspect of the card's design and those cards function properly without it.). Perhaps Master of Arms was always supposed to take advantage of that one rule, and when the rule changed, they had to add that line of text to keep the same purpose of that one card. I used Gatherer to check what other cards might be similar, but Master of Arms seems to be unique to this situation in the pre-6th Ed era. I don't have a problem with it, especially since the errata doesn't exactly make Master of Arms go from crap to broken, it's going from crap to still crap.

I think a clear rule would be more constraining than liberating. I think they should be allowed as much flexibility as possible to try to make the cards do what they were intended to do.

[perm]

Am I mistaken or wasn't mogg fanatic printed before stacking combat damage?

[Bardo]

Am I mistaken or wasn't mogg fanatic printed before stacking combat damage?

Right. Mogg Fanatic originally worked the way it does now -- no stack damage, sac in response to kill your attacking 2/2.

[cdr]

Am I mistaken or wasn't mogg fanatic printed before stacking combat damage?

6th Edition was released between Legacy and Destiny, so yes.

However, since its last printing was after 6E but before M10 rules, you could argue it was 'intended' to be able to be sacced with damage on the stack, so it should get errata to be able to.

[Trans Am]

Pretty sure it started with not wanting to make Mox Diamond broken.

Broken how ?


However, since its last printing was after 6E but before M10 rules, you could argue it was 'intended' to be able to be sacced with damage on the stack, so it should get errata to be able to.

That would be nice, yes.

[MMogg]

Broken how ?

The original wording let you tap it for mana without discarding a land, then it was sacrificed. The errata makes it so you have to discard the land or you don't get to use it.

Compare:

"When Mox Diamond comes into play, choose and discard a land card or sacrifice Mox Diamond."

and

"If Mox Diamond would enter the battlefield, you may discard a land card instead. If you do, put Mox Diamond onto the battlefield. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard."

Edit: I should say, I don't know if that necessarily makes it "broken", because it would pretty much be a Lotus Petal, but anyway . . . I think that's what cdr was referring to.

Edit #2: I guess in the original wording you could also Stifle the effect, but I'm not sure how broken that would make it. lol

[Glorfindel]

Edit #2: I guess in the original wording you could also Stifle the effect, but I'm not sure how broken that would make it. lolIf Mox Diamond would enter the battlefield, you may either discard a land card or pay :u: and discard a card named Stifle instead. If you do, ... etc.

[EssKay]

Also there was a difference between destroy and bury.

[MMogg]

Also there was a difference between destroy and bury.

There still is. I mean, they just did the opposite of what they usually do and took a keyword (bury) and replaced it with more words (cannot be regenerated), but the function is the same. It's weird how they did that. With them moving more and more towards keywords, maybe they will bring back "bury". :smile:

[dahcmai]

That was half the reason that Lotus Vale was so expensive for a long time and has enough of a reputation to stay a little pricey. You literally played it as a Black Lotus in place of your land drop.

Remember the stupid in-between turns step that allowed a Wall of Roots to go infinite? That was so dumb.


@Eldariel

The fast effects were technically equal to instant speed while Interrupts were faster than everything. Kind of like now how instants and activated abilities are the same speed, but some abilities were played as interrupt speed and it threw everything for a loop. There's a few cards out there that specifically mention interrupt speed on them. Mana Abilities were another thing again. Speed was so confusing back then. Luckily it didn't come up much and people didn't care.

Half the time I was drunk as shit along with my friend and neither of us cared. I was too busy saying "ah shit, Marton Stromgald? Damn, Kobolds gonna kill me".
(http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/../member.php?1497-Eldariel)

[Meekrab]

Counterspells were less strong under fourth and fifth edition rules because the trick of casting Brainstorm to find Counterspell/Force of Will did not work. You could find the card, but the time to cast it had already passed.
Er, that makes Brainstorm stronger now, not Counterspell weaker back then.

[Finn]

Dahcmai, I thought the Wall of Roots thing never really worked. I can't remember if the guy got away with it at the one tournament or not, but we aren't talking about abusive due to a rules gap. They just had to make a ruling and stick with it. And they did.

[cdr]

Oh, it certainly worked. Depending on the HJ. For a little while.

bethmo, January 1998:

There is no current official ruling about using "Use this ability only once
each turn" mana sources between turns. There are reasonable arguments in
favor of it being usable zero, one, or indefinitely many times. So it's up to
the head judge at any given tournament to decide. If I'm doing any head
judging before there is an official ruling, I'll pick the "zero" option, and I
strongly recommend that others do likewise.

Guess what card the inbetween was created for, starting that mess? (Hint: one of the most problematic cards in history)

[majikal]

Oh, it certainly worked. Depending on the HJ. For a little while.

bethmo, January 1998:


Guess what card the inbetween was created for, starting that mess? (Hint: one of the most problematic cards in history)
Must have been Time Vault.

[dahcmai]

Of course it was Time Vault, what card has had more errata than any other. It's just silly how much that one has been tossed around only to come back to it's original wording unchanged. lol It's really ironic.


Now for some future debate. Here's one to read and think about the possibility of removing it's power errata. I was a nice guy and linked it to the un-errated text.

Transmute Artifact (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?printed=true&multiverseid=1047)


Think about it, you'll get it. there's already one card with a similar errata that has it's errata removed. That's the amusing thing. A friend of mine wrote in about it saying it needs to come off because the other is. Heh. It's sadly broken if they do.

[Finn]

OMG, your friend is genius. So, shall we preempt the move by making Flash for artifacts? Even if it is not an instant kill card, you could make the argument that it is a trigger and can be responded to with an activated abiilty. So which artifact do you get?

[Nightmare]

We already have a list prepared for the day that happens...

[Dilettante]

Is there another card like Impulse where the original wording made the card have a tedious and unnecessary action? *sigh* The days when the DCI was the number you called for a judge ruling...

[dahcmai]

Duplicant, Sundering Titan, Epochrosite, Etched Oracle, Grim Poppet, Triskelion, Jester's Mask, Magister Sphinx, Phyrexian Dreadnought tricks, Painter's Servant tricks, Sharumn, Summoner's Egg (lol), even the Skyship Weatherlight makes for stupid psuedo-Mana Severance stunts.

It would be dumb to remove that errata so I doubt they ever will. I think Sundering Titan alone would be a little much. UU, blow up most of the other guys lands. Ouch... It would be a makeshift show and tell with the egg too. Might as well play both in the same deck no less.

[Nihil Credo]

Now for some future debate. Here's one to read and think about the possibility of removing it's power errata. I was a nice guy and linked it to the un-errated text.

Transmute Artifact (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?printed=true&multiverseid=1047)


Think about it, you'll get it. there's already one card with a similar errata that has it's errata removed. That's the amusing thing. A friend of mine wrote in about it saying it needs to come off because the other is. Heh. It's sadly broken if they do.

If I were tasked with writing the un-errata, I'd interpret the flavourful "or CARDNAME fails" clause (which, incidentally, has never been printed anywhere else) to mean that the searched card never gets into play in the first place.

[Pinder]

If I were tasked with writing the un-errata, I'd interpret the flavourful "or CARDNAME fails" clause (which, incidentally, has never been printed anywhere else) to mean that the searched card never gets into play in the first place.

I'm inclined to agree. Then it would just make Transmute Artifact a kind of shitty Entomb for artifacts, because the one you're searching for would go straight from the library to the yard. Might still be worth it for Welder, though.

[dahcmai]

Either way, with cards going up in price the way they do now, I'd keep a set of these around for quick sale if they ever remove it. You know they will fix it in nothing flat if they did take off the errata so you'd have to sell quick. Flash revisited.