[Article] Give Red "loses all abilities" effects

[DrJones]

I wrote an article to suggest WotC to give red a new common effect, in the hopes that it will make red decks more interesting and less handicapped against certain decks/cards, and hopefully help balance current and future legacy, modern, and standard metagames. I wrote it on the terrible GDS2 wiki because it is stated that all card ideas posted in that wiki belong to WotC and I needed examples to support my points; plus, I don't think mainstream MTG sites would be interested on articles about philosophy of future mtg design.

http://community.wizards.com/magicthegathering/wiki/Labs:Gds/gds2/DrJones/Card_Suggestions_for_Legacy

[Greenpoe]

Great article and lots of solid arguments. I dislike that MtG has increasingly become "If a creature doesn't have an ETB effect, it sucks."

[TsumiBand]

I wrote an article to suggest WotC to give red a new common effect, in the hopes that it will make red decks more interesting and less handicapped against certain decks/cards, and hopefully help balance current and future legacy, modern, and standard metagames. I wrote it on the terrible GDS2 wiki because it is stated that all card ideas posted in that wiki belong to WotC and I needed examples to support my points; plus, I don't think mainstream MTG sites would be interested on articles about philosophy of future mtg design.

http://community.wizards.com/magicthegathering/wiki/Labs:Gds/gds2/DrJones/Card_Suggestions_for_Legacy

I was going to post about how that would literally put this ability in every color, but then I used Gatherer to do a couple of searches for your suggested "Ambush" mechanic (which is honestly a great name for it, an ambush would leave one to fend solely on their wits and not their training, which is a good way to imply they've temporarily 'lost' their abilities) and it honestly looks like it is a fairly homeless mechanic. It exists on about 15 cards, and is usually accompanied by a power/toughness shift to something useless like 0/1, 1/1 or 0/2.

For my part, as long as the p/t shift is left off of the ability it does seem like it could be Red more than anything else, since it's just such a 'gotcha' effect - and even though it's a little insipid to do so, could easily be put on any given Shock variant to create a removal spell/combat trick that could see interesting situations, particularly in Limited. (Insert fantasy situation of a 3/4 first strike vs a 2/2 with first strike, and the 2/2 controller casts "Shock-Ambush" for great victory.)

[Finn]

I kinda like the idea. The argument has merit, as a field full of bland damage-dealing creatures is where red shines.

That Syracuse card is flat-out, stupid, busted overpowered.

[Nonex]

It exists on about 15 cards, and is usually accompanied by a power/toughness shift to something useless like 0/1, 1/1 or 0/2.

For my part, as long as the p/t shift is left off of the ability it does seem like it could be Red more than anything else

*/* creatures always have an ability which constantly calculates its P/T. Losing all abilities without setting a new P/T leaves such creatures undefined, something the Comprehensive Rules contemplate and define as 0. It doesn't seem fair to them, especially when some are */* and others are */*+1. That's why removing all abilities is always accompanied with a fix P/T.

[rufus]

[quote]*/* creatures always have an ability which constantly calculates its P/T. Losing all abilities without setting a new P/T leaves such creatures undefined, something the Comprehensive Rules contemplate and define as 0. It doesn't seem fair to them, especially when some are */* and others are */*+1. That's why removing all abilities is always accompanied with a fix P/T. [/qoute]

It should really be 'triggered and activated abilities'. 'Mask of Muraganda' allows is pretty silly for stuff with Phyrexian Dreadnaught. vanishing, echo, possibly evoke, fading, cumulative upkeep... Syracuse seems lame by comparison.

Here's another fun one:
R2
Stomp Derpinator
Dwarf Wizard
Whenever a player activates a land's ability, counter that ability unless it is a mana source.
2/2

WotC does definitely hate :r: and :b: and give :u: way too much good stuff, but I doubt they'd listen to any outsiders about it.

[Arsenal]

The OCD in me wants Wizards to complete the color cycle of iconic 1X creatures. Like Goyf (1G), Snapcaster (1U), Stoneforge (1W), and Bob (1B)... Red has nothing on that power level. Maybe a sweet 2/1 1R Ambush guy with some other awesome ability?

[Mewens]

I could get behind this.

I'd also like red to get Stifle effects (I don't care if blue keeps 'em, too, but they've always felt red to me – trade a card for a short-term gain) and flash for non-creature permanents. (Red already gets haste, which is like aggression-only flash; it seems natural to me that its chaos-causing global effects would be able to come out of nowhere.)


*/* creatures always have an ability which constantly calculates its P/T. Losing all abilities without setting a new P/T leaves such creatures undefined, something the Comprehensive Rules contemplate and define as 0. It doesn't seem fair to them, especially when some are */* and others are */*+1. That's why removing all abilities is always accompanied with a fix P/T.

That's not quite true. Titania's Song removes abilities because early designers weren't sure how to address artifacts that were turned into creatures, so skirted the question entirely. (Tetravus is another example of "design around rules questions" cards.) In white, the flavor of Humility and such was to bring its targets low; the power-and-toughness change represents a creature being put into its place, not an attempt to be fair to Lhurgoyf. As far as fair goes? I don't care. Not only are such cda critters rare – there's only a handful of them in the game – but it doesn't bother me in the least that a given ability has some inherent downsides.

[TsumiBand]

WotC does definitely hate :r: and :b: and give :u: way too much good stuff, but I doubt they'd listen to any outsiders about it.

Also have to consider that unless it's something like YMTC they pretty much have to ignore submissions. MaRo blogs about it all the time; he doesn't even let himself read submissions (apparently) because of the potential for IP theft accusations and so on. Or something. Always a little hard to tell with those guys when it's a legal or moral issue :/

At any rate, he also says R and B are too close for comfort on the color wheel, so giving Red this bit of trickery would be a pretty sweet gift IMO.

It does sort of insta-kill things that have p/t related directly to card text though, so I wonder if they wouldn't need to tweak it a little bit or else it is just maybe too good with Red's already present burn. If Red can turn you into an x/3 with no abilities, everything is Boltable; which is totally card disadvantage, no doubt about it, but combined with its ability to just out-and-out skunk Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary or, whatever else has an asterisk in the ass... yeah it might be a little over the top, on second thought. But if there were a fixed version, seeing it in Red would make more sense than anywhere else.

[phazonmutant]

There's a lot of rules complexity with "Loses All Abilities" that may prevent it from being on commons (although it is a pretty grokable concept), and it also doesn't really "fix" a lot of the problems you identify like ETB effects or Shroud / Pro: Red.

Humility is one of the most complicated cards in the game largely due to its "loses all abilities" clause. The rules interactions with this mechanic are similarly complex - for example:
- If you have Mask of Muraganda and Magus of the Moon in play, are nonbasic lands Mountains? (answer: yes, because Magus starts applying in layer 4, even though he loses all abilities in layer 6)

I see that Mask of Muraganda stops ETB effects, but you're not going to print that at common. In fact it's hard to imagine more than one junky rare that will strip abilities from creatures entering play. Similarly, unless you print something like an Ambush Wrath of God, you can't target that hexproof guy or Pro: Red guy with your red mechanic. Your Ambush creatures can't block a Pro: Red, relevant landwalker, or unblockable guy. So that leaves design space for essentially bad combat tricks with complicated rules interactions or rare-hating hatebears that don't work well? It also has the problem of being a potent combo enabler for certain cards.

It's a cool idea, but I don't see it getting printed as is.

[Gheizen64]

Why i love the concept, it's a rule hassle. To deal with Pro-red and hexproof dudes, red should just get more Crack the earth cards. Something like:

Earth Rift R
Sorcery
Each player sacrifice its highest converted mana cost permanent. If 2 or more permanents are tied, he choose which one to sacrifice.

Remove all those pesky Huge untargetable monsters and fit perfectly into Red phylosophy of mass destruction. Put this on a creature (something like 3RR, flying trample 7/7, and you've got some good anti SnT tech that sucks because it almost always sacrifice itself).

Or even some Cataclysm variants:

Earth Rift 1RR
Sorcery
Each player sacrifice a land, then sacrifice a creature, then deal 2 damage to each player.

Wildifire was a card, some variants with "sacrifice" instead of dealing damage would still make perfect sense.

[DrJones]

I see that Mask of Muraganda stops ETB effects, but you're not going to print that at common. In fact it's hard to imagine more than one junky rare that will strip abilities from creatures entering play. Similarly, unless you print something like an Ambush Wrath of God, you can't target that hexproof guy or Pro: Red guy with your red mechanic. Your Ambush creatures can't block a Pro: Red, relevant landwalker, or unblockable guy. So that leaves design space for essentially bad combat tricks with complicated rules interactions or rare-hating hatebears that don't work well? It also has the problem of being a potent combo enabler for certain cards.That isn't necessarily an issue, the effect in its current form is pretty flexible. If you want to target a Hexfproof dude you can have the effect target the spell rather than the creature. For protection, you can put the effect on a colorless permanent with a colored activation. You can put it an activated ability or instant if you want it to stop creatures with evasion. There are wordings that stop ETBs, and others that don't. There are implementations that are better on offense, and others are better at defense.

I agree about the hidden complexities of this suggestion. I know the most complex part of Humility comes from it being implemented as a continuous effect. When the effect lasts until end of turn/combat, however, it can be printed at lower rarities. As an example, Snakeform has a more confusing effect and that one was printed as common. I asked Mark Rosewater and Aaron Forsythe about that specific card and they replied that at the time of Eventide it was acceptable, but that under "New World Order" they no longer can print it at common. Aaron also mentioned it's possible to make a case for this effect to be red, even if commons can't use it.

Possible common implementations would include limited versions of the effect (lose flying, cannot regenerate), or replacing cards with vanilla tokens instead of altering a card's text.

@TsumiBand The GDS2 wiki is a workaround, as there is a rule in place that says that anything written in it belongs to Wizards, so they have automatic protection and can safely read the suggestions without worries. That's why I wrote the article in it. I still placed the cards at the end of the article as a safeguard, so they can choose to skip them if they feel obliged to do so.

[Aggro_zombies]

The problem with this is that many of the cards you marshal in support of "This is a red ability" are old, and thus not reflective of the modern color pie. What about Red flavorfully justifies making a creature lose all abilities, either temporarily or otherwise? The only thing I can think of is that you're making the creature really, really mad, so mad that it forgets everything other than just punching you in the face, but that implementation seems a little iffy.

This seems like an exercise in box-checking. There aren't a lot of organic designs that come out of this, meaning a lot of the cards will end up being "Something with Torpor Orb randomly stapled on," which is okay but not something I'd want as a core red mechanic. Also, as others have pointed out above, this has a lot of rules issues even for experienced players because knowledge about how layers work is not very widespread or deep among the player base. New players would be pretty confused by this as well, particularly interactions with triggered abilities such as EtB and leaves-play triggers. Finally, red tends to solve its problems by burning people - see Burning-Tree Shaman for what many of these cards would end up being.

This is certainly something that could show up occasionally at higher rarities in red, but not more often than that, I think.

EDIT: Flavorfully, I think stripping all abilities seems white (in the vein of Silence or Arrest - white is a big fan of rules and thus prohibitions) or blue (either as an analog to Stifle or as mind magic that causes a creature to forget its skill set), which is kind of funny because those are red's two enemy colors.

[Arsenal]

Do people actually care about flavor? I mean, I suppose it's okay to have, but flavor shouldn't hinder/stifle the function and development of new cards.

[DragoFireheart]

Head Smack
Common
R
Instant

* deal 1 damage to target creature. That creature is dumb until the end of turn.


(Dumb creatures lose all abilities)

[DLifshitz]

Do people actually care about flavor? I mean, I suppose it's okay to have, but flavor shouldn't hinder/stifle the function and development of new cards.

To some extent, yes. If nothing else, artwork and flavor makes it easier to memorize how cards work.

[Darkenslight]

Head Smack
Common
R
Instant

* deal 1 damage to target creature. That creature is dumb until the end of turn.


(Dumb creatures lose all abilities)

Clearly needs to be called Facepalm.

[Piceli89]

http://cdn.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Turn-Burn-Dragons-Maze-Spoiler.jpg

You ask, you (almost) get. Blue still wins :P

[Richard Cheese]

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/be/133.jpg
Where's your color pie now!??!

[Arsenal]

To some extent, yes. If nothing else, artwork and flavor makes it easier to memorize how cards work.

Artwork assists you in being able to easily recognize a card regardless of the language of the text. I'm unclear as to how the flavor of the card would help you do the same.

[Aggro_zombies]

Artwork assists you in being able to easily recognize a card regardless of the language of the text. I'm unclear as to how the flavor of the card would help you do the same.
Some people actually care about the flavor, some don't. Many of the abilities colors are or are not allowed to have are based on definitions surrounding the flavor of those types of magic. Would the game be better from a tournament perspective if flavor was abandoned and all colors theoretically had access to all abilities? Maybe, but I doubt it. Division of what colors can or can't do is central to the game.

[TsumiBand]

The problem with this is that many of the cards you marshal in support of "This is a red ability" are old, and thus not reflective of the modern color pie. What about Red flavorfully justifies making a creature lose all abilities, either temporarily or otherwise? The only thing I can think of is that you're making the creature really, really mad, so mad that it forgets everything other than just punching you in the face, but that implementation seems a little iffy.

This seems like an exercise in box-checking. There aren't a lot of organic designs that come out of this, meaning a lot of the cards will end up being "Something with Torpor Orb randomly stapled on," which is okay but not something I'd want as a core red mechanic. Also, as others have pointed out above, this has a lot of rules issues even for experienced players because knowledge about how layers work is not very widespread or deep among the player base. New players would be pretty confused by this as well, particularly interactions with triggered abilities such as EtB and leaves-play triggers. Finally, red tends to solve its problems by burning people - see Burning-Tree Shaman for what many of these cards would end up being.

This is certainly something that could show up occasionally at higher rarities in red, but not more often than that, I think.

EDIT: Flavorfully, I think stripping all abilities seems white (in the vein of Silence or Arrest - white is a big fan of rules and thus prohibitions) or blue (either as an analog to Stifle or as mind magic that causes a creature to forget its skill set), which is kind of funny because those are red's two enemy colors.

I think I disagree with the box-checking metaphor. Inasmuch as 'flavor' is concerned, I think it's more like startling something and causing it to 'forget itself' as it were, which is (probably?) why Dr Jones went with Ambush as a creature keyword. It doesn't directly mess with your intellect like Black or Blue might, it just jumps out from behind a bush and makes your creature go "AHH WTF oh it's YOU you motherFUCKER". Which is really really Red.

While people are right to point out that certain situations just turn it into a "destroy target card with power-toughness rules in the wrong damn place", if there were a way to create the same effect without just shutting down cards with too many rules, it would be a really decent suggestion.

I mean really, what kinds of tricks does Red usually get besides burn-related punishment for doing something? Red is full of cards like Price of Progress, Pyrostatic Pillar, things that just deal damage for doing a thing Red doesn't want you doing. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to startle a creature and make it lose combat abilities while it reconstitutes its will than, say, stealing a dude for a turn. Threaten effects to me feel like possession, which is Black all over.

[Koby]

http://cdn.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Turn-Burn-Dragons-Maze-Spoiler.jpg

You ask, you (almost) get. Blue still wins :P

Who knew that Burn was Amazing?!