[M10] General Discussion on Rules Changes

Current Mood: Mostly OK

Simultaneous Mulligans: Yay! Excellent change.

Aside:

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Originally Posted by Kuma

Everything I've read in this thread confirms my belief that virtually all Magic players, even a lot of good ones, don't know how to take mulligans. Whether or not your opponent mulligans should have zero bearing on whether or not you do. The purpose of a mulligan is to give yourself the strongest hand possible. If an average six card hand is stronger than your seven, you take the mulligan; it doesn't matter if your opponent is holding seven cards or zero. For all this fear of mulling into oblivion, it doesn't happen enough to worry about.

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You may be a good Magic player, but if so it's despite your lack of understanding of stochastic events. It's a neat coincidence that I just finished writing a post that also works as a response to yours.

Battlefield: It definitely had to change, but the new name SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOMETHING NO MORE THAN TWO SYLLABLES LONG. Again, why not 'field'?

Cast, play, activate: It could work, but it needs some clarification. How will Abeyance read - "you can't activate activated abilities"? Ew. "You can't activate abilities"? Then how is Bind going to read: "Counter target non-triggered ability"? Ew.

A second issue is that you 'play' all cards off of Mind's Desire, which makes no sense since there should be no such thing as 'playing Tendrils' any more. Still, even if it will require an ad-hoc passage in the CompRules it's an improvement over the than the 'play into play' tongue-twisters we used to have.

Exile: Short and to the point, well done. The Wish nerfing is sad, though: it's flavourful, but I would have preferred errata ("an exiled card or a card from outside the game").

Beginning of the End Step: Ugly, ugly, ugly. While they were there, they might have tweaked the rules a bit more to allow something sleeker; "On the end step", maybe? (By the by, I'm for replacing 'at the beginning of your upkeep' too). I'm seriously concerned this is going to cost us some cool card in the future that will become too wordy for print.

Mana burn: Good riddance. We lose a few interactions, we gain a world of possibilities.

Mana pools empty on steps: Good, it never made sense anyway. Rishadan Port could use the help, and as for LED/Nauseam... I'm torn on whether I want to see that deck helped or beaten into the ground.

Token ownership: No, no, no. This one seems massively stupid. Am I the only one who found the original rule intuitive? I always associated 'owner' with 'who owns the physical cards', and in the case of tokens I was used to the guy playing Forbidden Orchard or Haunted Dork bringing his own pieces of paper or cardboard.

Combat damage: On the one side, the old system never made any sense (and no, Goaswerfraiejen, archers and the like usually have other mechanics to represent that). On the other, I am sceptical that the new system can support the type of fun and puzzle-ish interactions that the old system allowed for all the time, particularly in Limited. Post-combat Pyroclasm is just the tip of the iceberg in what we're going to lose.

Since I consider gameplay a far more important issue than consistency, if the next few blocks end up making for terrible drafting I'll join the Gott Hasst Gottlieb club. If not, there will be congratulations for far exceeding my expectations.

Deathtouch: Utterly idiotic: they tried to have their pie and eat it too, but that usually ends with eating shit (Trample + Deathtouch makes total sense now, right?). The proper thing to do was to just swallow their pride and replace the mechanic.

Lifelink: Sure, fine.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

I gave you the tokens. Therefore I own the tokens. This one is stupid. Hardly matters, but stupid.

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I think you got this backwards. This is the behavior they are changing so that the controller becomes the owner.

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Originally Posted by jjjjjjjones

Sacrifice ~ : ~ deals 1 damage to target creature or player. Play as a sorcery only.

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Not at all. The ONLY thing that has changed is its ability to effectively deal 2 damage in combat. It can still deal 1 in response to removal.

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Originally Posted by Finn

I think you got this backwards. This is the behavior they are changing so that the controller becomes the owner.

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No, he got it right...if player A has a Forbidden Orchard, and gives B tokens, it makes intuitive sense that A owns them (if A brings a some Tokens to give to player B).

If A just says, here, have a token, I don't know, make one or something, then it is more confusing. Still not rocket science, but I can see how it is confusing. Once you have it explained once, though, it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

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Originally Posted by from Cairo

The inability to split up damage also sucks for things like Pyroclasm, Volcanic Fallout, Fire//Ice.

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Shouldn't change Fire//Ice. Sure, you can not kill two creatures in combat, and then kill them with Fire//Ice, or you can just kill one in combat and finish off the second one with Fire.

Pyroclasm is super lame, though.

Most of the changes I don't care about. The rewordings seems unnecessary. The Combat step changes are a hit for someone who enjoys playing agro (Goblins and Pridemage both got substantially worse). The inability to split up damage also sucks for things like Pyroclasm, Volcanic Fallout, Fire//Ice. The combat step really just seems dumbed down, like there is alot less thought involved in attacking and blocking, with so many tricks removed. Beyond that I guess I don't have much feeling on it, maybe playing with the new rules a bit will bring out more positives/negatives.

Ah yes. I think I misunderstood what precisely Taco was complaining about.

But yeah, Nihil. I do a lot of reading into how long it takes my opponent to decide to mulligan and how many times he does so. This is the first step in me guessing what deck he is playing. And in Legacy where the first turn is hugely important, any info I can to sculpt my hand before that happens is a very big deal. Again, the rules have been simplified at the expense of strategy. But I still like the changes. We get more than we lose.

Not sure if this was already discussed: In the new system, trample + deathtouch means that just 1 damage is assigned to each blocker, and the defending player takes the rest? Anyway, when I think of the casual group that I occasionally play around with, the new blocking system is just going to decimate their brains. They were so close to fully learning the old system too!

I like what they've done with Deathtouch and Lifelink. I was kind of surprised that they bothered to change deathtouch though, it seems like a rather obscure ability. All-in-all I suppose I wouldn't mind seeing more of it though.

Both of these changes end up making a lot of sense, and they should be great moving forward. I can only imagine the insanity that would have occurred on online forums during the changes in Classic 6th edition.

HEyhey,
anyone realised that Extirpate got better?
It's like wow, but still sucks.

Here is the clarification about the issue with trample + deathtouch

The confusion seems to have been caused by an editor that gave a wrong answer, but I hope this is the final ruling about those keywords.

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Originally Posted by DrJones

Here is the clarification about the issue with trample + deathtouch

The confusion seems to have been caused by an editor that gave a wrong answer, but I hope this is the final ruling about those keywords.

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look at that its a mess just like the countertop thread.

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Originally Posted by Finn

We get more than we lose.

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What are we getting exactly? Design space? Sounding a little too optimistic for a change that has yet to be justified. I'm all for Wizards making new cards and not resorting to reprints in every set, but all we get are crappier lands and a gimmick each set.

It's interesting, and by 'interesting' I mean 'terrible', that with Deathtouch you do have to choose if and how to protect/regenerate your blockers before you know how that Wren's Run Vanquisher is going to deal damage.

Deathtouch may be going to be the new Trample, i.e. they'll end up temporarily retiring it from core sets until they figure out a way to make it less retarded.

I for one found combat complicated when I first started. Then, I turned seven, stopped drooling all over myself, and learned to read.

Seriously, Wizards?

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Originally Posted by Nihil Credo

It's interesting, and by 'interesting' I mean 'terrible', that with Deathtouch you do have to choose if and how to protect/regenerate your blockers before you know how that Wren's Run Vanquisher is going to deal damage.

Deathtouch may be going to be the new Trample, i.e. they'll end up temporarily retiring it from core sets until they figure out a way to make it less retarded.

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I totally agree. Trying to figure out exactly how deathtouch, trample and banding all work with the new combat system is making my head hurt. I fail to see how these changes are supposed to be more "intuitive" and make the game "less complex".

I was reading the page and I was a bit confused with this one part...


"The first thing that happens during the combat damage step is that combat damage is assigned. If an attacker is blocked by multiple creatures, the attacking player can divide its combat damage among them. The player starts by assigning damage to the first blocking creature in line. If that creature is assigned lethal damage, further damage may be assigned to that creature and/or the next one in line. If lethal damage is assigned to the second one, the attacking player can move on to the third, and so on. This works very similarly to trample."


Does that mean, that If I attack with a 3/3 and the opponent blocks it with three 2/2s. Do I have to deal lethal damage first to the 1st one? Or can I still assign a damage split of 1 damage to each one. For the sake of casting Tremor (1 damage to each) on the 2nd main phase.

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Originally Posted by Zappa

Does that mean, that If I attack with a 3/3 and the opponent blocks it with three 2/2s. Do I have to deal lethal damage first to the 1st one? Or can I still assign a damage split of 1 damage to each one. For the sake of casting Tremor (1 damage to each) on the 2nd main phase.

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Combat update hoses plays such as post combat Pyroclasm and Tremor.

Your 3/3 isn't going to get blocked by three 2/2 many times, though, being that two is usually enough to kill it.

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Originally Posted by Arctic_Slicer

I totally agree. Trying to figure out exactly how deathtouch, trample and banding all work with the new combat system is making my head hurt. I fail to see how these changes are supposed to be more "intuitive" and make the game "less complex".

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I agree. The new combat rules seem to be trying to fix something that isn't broken. My question is what's easier to program? An AI under the new rules or the old rules and which would be more competitive?

The AIs in all the previous Magic computer games were horrendous and the games were historically flops. This is all complete speculation but I'm very interested to see what rules the new 360 game uses.

It took my girlfriend about a week to gather an understanding as to just how the old system worked. It wasn't all that difficult and while she isn't some sort of pro, she has gotten pretty good at the game.

I just can't justify the changes to the rules in my head. It's 50 percent not wanting to adjust from a system I enjoy and 50 percent not being able to justify these rule changes. I hadn't realized there was a Legacy deck in development that abused the ownership rules of tokens but I had a casual version that followed a similar idea with taking the draw back out of pongify, it was pretty lullzworthy when it made it's debut at our weekly gaming session.

It's just silly, and from what I have talked with to my casual group concerning the changes we are just going to play with pre-M10 rules... and you know, not bother buying cards anymore. I'll go play Yu-gi-oh or something again if I want mindless combat. We grew up learning how the stack worked, it wasn't a difficult concept to explain. It makes sense... I'm just raging over this.

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Originally Posted by Nihil Credo

Token ownership: No, no, no. This one seems massively stupid. Am I the only one who found the original rule intuitive? I always associated 'owner' with 'who owns the physical cards', and in the case of tokens I was used to the guy playing Forbidden Orchard or Haunted Dork bringing his own pieces of paper or cardboard.

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AGREED. Of all the rules, this one is the worst.

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Originally Posted by Volt

I have! It won me a game once.

But, yeah, corner case.

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Sigh. Dammit. You're like that one guy in a room who has a life that nobody could possible ever map out, and was probably put on earth just so you could do all kinds of bizarre stuff so that when someone says something like "I bet nobody in this room has ever performed taxidermy on a live duck using only a bottle of vodka, a fisher price train set, and a frozen cucumber," you can raise your hand, tell the story, and make the guy who said it glare at you and go "Shut up!" angrily. It's still a good point.:)

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Originally Posted by Arctic_Slicer

Combat update hoses plays such as post combat Pyroclasm and Tremor.

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Aw, man, they hosed Tremor? Nerfing my Citadel of Pain/Spectral Searchlight deck was bad enough, but this is the line, yo.

I don't like change, Wizards just made my day (in a bad way)