[M10] General Discussion on Rules Changes

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Originally Posted by gnat

No, assign lethal damage (=1 under deathtouch) and go on to the next creature.
That's what's behind it.

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Right up to the point where trample gets involved.

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Originally Posted by gnat

No, assign lethal damage (=1 under deathtouch) and go on to the next creature.
That's what's behind it.

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Actually, after re-reading the articles section on deathtouch again, I think Sun_Ra may have been right. Maybe Im just confusing myself through their poor wording in the article, but let me grab the snippet that is throwing me off.

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Originally Posted by The Article

Moving on to combat .... If a creature with deathtouch is blocked by multiple creatures, the declare blockers step works the same way. The attacking player still orders the blocking creatures to show which is first in line for damage, which is second, and so on. The ordering is irrelevant to the creature with deathtouch, but it's still done because the creature might lose deathtouch before combat damage is assigned.
When it comes time to assign combat damage, a player can divide damage from a creature with deathtouch as he or she chooses among any of the creatures blocking or blocked by it. (If that seems familiar, that's how all creatures operated under the old system.) You can ignore the ordering.

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Now, after reading (and posting) before, I agreed with gnat that the "lethal damage" was only 1 since deathtouch was present. So you still had to follow the order you chose, but you could get through it alot quicker than if you had to deal damage = toughness. But in that snippet, its stated that the blocking queue is still set by the attacker, but it "doesnt matter" since the creature has death touch because "you can ignore the ordering". I dont like that, I could get behind having to only deal 1 damage to each creature in the queue, and I understand how trample works with deathtouch, but this does seem like they are giving it a special "ignore the new rule" pass.
It makes deathtouch a much more attractive option for an attacker, especially now since pump/protection/regen has to be spent before damage is assigned (leaving the death touch creature to just pick off the ones without it).

I dont know, maybe Im just mis-reading the article or getting facts mixed up from the thread, but thats how I take it. I plan on re-reading the article again over lunch, maybe it will make more sense.

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Originally Posted by Hollywood

It only "fucks" up the rules in the hypothetical sense because no Banding cards are actually played in tournaments. If there were good ones, perhaps. But there aren't. They essentially reworked Rampage with Bushido, so don't be surprised if someday they try and clear the air with Banding by changing the name and dumbing-down the ability ever-so-slightly so people can understand what it does.

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Banding has always worked, and just as intended. The problem is that other than in White Weenie decks it had no viable play space and there were much better creatures to put into play if you had a White Weenie deck. For :w: :w: you could have a White Knight or a Mesa Pegasus. That wasn't a hard call.

The main ideas of Banding - which were to allow a defending player to decide where the damage went on multiple creatures blocking the same creature, and the ability to force a defender to block multiple creatures as if they were a single attacker and without being assured of where the damage his blockers were doing would go - were weak compared to just adding Swords to Plowshares to the deck so you didn't get blocked by anything big enough to bother your wave of attackers. For :w: you could include Benalish Hero in your deck or Swords to Plowshares. Easy call.

I never ran into a situation in which Banding came up in the old meta in which it was not absolutely clear how things worked in combat. It didn't matter though because decks with Banding got behind the curve for a White Weenie pretty quickly and rarely won as a result.

Many people in this thread complain that Wizards is making the game too simple because new players don't want to learn the old combat rules. At the same time, hardly anyone here has bothered to learn about Banding (for example) or the new combat rules for that matter. If anyone read the comprehensive rules, they would find that the rules for Banding are extremely solid, short, and easy to remember. Secondly, the new combat rules are much more logical than the old rules:
1) No other kinds of damage use the stack. For example, someone casts Devastating Dreams. As players are choosing lands to sacrifice, I realize that I want to prevent damage to my creature. Too late, I've made this mistake a number of times early on. Having combat damage use the stack when no other damage uses it is merely inconsistent.
2) Neither declaring attackers nor declaring blockers uses the stack. Now none of the special events during combat use the stack. This makes sense.
3) It's more realistic. Why would a creature be able to receive lethal damage in combat and then still be able to do something else? It should already be dead. Also, the tiered blocking system is easy to remember because it's just like trample. Overall, everything is way more consistent.

So to everyone that is supporting these changes, are you all just jumping on the bandwagon or did you really want these changes to happen before this announcement? Just interested in what the players actually want and not bullshitting a change just to be the Devil's advocate.

The bandwagon around here is definitely against the change.

Snorlax, I have never had any experiences with Deathtouch that the changes will affect. And in the case of Mana Burn I don't care one way or the other. But for the other stuff, I have talked about how backwards they are with friends - in some cases for a for a long time. I am therefor pleased with the changes. And I am not the only one. There is definitely a certain segment of the player community who pay enough attention to game mechanics to want the game to be more streamlined. I suppose I am part of that group.

The fact that it pisses off Jack Elgin is just a fringe benefit.

I don't think many people were thinking "wow this stacked combat damage sucks, I can't wait until they do away with it!" At the same time, the decision has been made, and I, for one, can live with it. If they kept stacked damage, I'd live with that too. I don't want it to sound like I'm just blindly following the will of the mighty DCI; I just don't think this is such a huge deal. It's been blown way out of proportion to the extent that many don't even fully understand what they're complaining about (e.g. ZOMG FACTORY SUCKS!!! NOW I HAVE TO RITUALISTICALLY BURN MY ENTIRE LANDSTILL DECK!)

This is not true for all, as salient points have been made about how this decision detracts from a strategic part of combat, especially in Limited. However, I would still like to advise the masses: let's try this out before we condemn the changes, the DCI and the game of Magic straight to hell.

Remove Wizards' sloppy cock from your mouth.

Nothing is intuitive about ownership of tokens going to whoever controls them, unlike any other scrap of paper or cardboard on the table. Nothing is intuitive about stacking blockers instead of dealing damage however you want with a blocked creature. Nothing is intuitive about ignoring that for creatures with Deattouch.

And at the same time, mana burn is incredibly flavorful and intuitive, but they're getting rid of that for convenience's sake.

I have no doubt that they started out wanting to streamline the game and make it more intuitive, but somewhere along there they just got carried away and started fucking with random shit that seemed like it would be cool to fuck with.

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Originally Posted by on1y0ne

Combat Phase under M10 Rules:

1. Beginning of Combat Step

• Active (Attacking) Player casts spells or activates Abilities.
• Non-Active (Defending) Player casts spells or activates Abilities.

2. Declaration of Attackers Step

• All Attackers are declared and costs to attack are paid.
• Active (Attacking) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.
• Non-Active (Defending) Player casts spells or activates abilities.

3. Declaration of Blockers Step

• All Blocking assignments are declared and all costs are paid.
• *If multiple blockers are assigned to an attacking creature, Attacking Player chooses blocking order.
  
• Active (Attacking) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.
• Non-Active (Defending) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.

4. Damage Step

• *Damage is assigned and dealt. If multiple blockers are assigned to an attacking creature, damage is assigned to the blocking creatures in the blocking order. Lethal damage must be assigned to the first blocking creature before any can be assigned to the second. Lethal damage must be assigned to the second blocking creature before any can be assigned to the third, and so on. Trample damage is assigned to defending player or Planeswalkers once lethal damage is assigned to all blocking creatures.
  
• Leaves the Battlefield, goes to the graveyard, and similar abilities trigger and go on the stack.
• Active (Attacking) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.
• Non-Active (Defending) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.

5. End of Combat

• At end of Combat triggers go on the stack.
• Active (Attacking) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.
• Non-Active (Defending) Player casts Spells or activates abilities.
• Until end of Combat effects end.

* New combat rules beginning with M10

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"Lethal damage" = toughness?

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Remove Wizards' sloppy cock from your mouth.

Nothing is intuitive about ownership of tokens going to whoever controls them, unlike any other scrap of paper or cardboard on the table. Nothing is intuitive about stacking blockers instead of dealing damage however you want with a blocked creature. Nothing is intuitive about ignoring that for creatures with Deattouch.

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Whoah, whoah.

Are you seriously suggesting it was intuitive that YOU owned the tokens made with Forbidden Orchard/Hidden Horror, whatever, even though they came into play under your opponents' control?

Get the fuck out of here.

A couple of days later...

I acknowledge that the new rules regarding combat damage are more sensible than the old ones. I was initially upset because they happened to fuck over my tier 2 pet deck. I'm over it now.

The only rule change I have a minor complaint about is the abolishment of mana burn, but it's not worth getting in a twist about.

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Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges

"Lethal damage" = toughness?

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Yes, as far as I can tell from the article. If you look at the example with the Behemoth, it only needs to assign 2 damage to the Suntail Hawk in order to continue assigning damage to the next guy, even though it would have taken 3 damage to kill it (the hawk had +1/+1 and the first damage to it prevented).

It was also cleared up on the Wizards forums that deathtouch damage != lethal damage, so deathtouch + trample is not the awesomesauce.

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Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges

"Lethal damage" = toughness?

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Technically, it seems to be close to "toughness-(damage already assigned)", but yeah, they should have just called it that. Since order-of-damage-assignment can matter in some extremely unlikely circumstances, when it's possible for both the defending and attacking player to be assigning damage to the same creature, so they'll need to determine order of damage assignment in the new rules.

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Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges

Are you seriously suggesting it was intuitive that YOU owned the tokens made with Forbidden Orchard/Hidden Horror, whatever, even though they came into play under your opponents' control?

Get the fuck out of here.

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I'd have to say it is. In general, anything that you put into play (excluding Bribery trickeration etc.) is something that you own, no matter whose control is was being put under. Perfect example: why shouldn't tokens behave like sleeper agent?

So, if your opponent owns the tokens created with, say, Forbidden Orchard, does that mean that if you bring the appropriate token cards with you, put them into play under your opponents control, and then try to take them back after the game, you're stealing? Or is this "own" in the poetic sense?

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Originally Posted by Wrath_Of_Houlding

I'd have to say it is. In general, anything that you put into play (excluding Bribery trickeration etc.) is something that you own, no matter whose control is was being put under. Perfect example: why shouldn't tokens behave like sleeper agent?

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I think it was sarcasm.

It's completely intuitive that tokens work like any other permanents in the game. It's also completely intuitive that all creatures distribute combat damage the same way, not based on whether or not they have Death Touch.

These two rules fucked up the entire thing. The mana burn, mulliganing, name changes didn't really matter to me, and Lifelink being changed to occur as combat damage was dealt was fine too.

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Originally Posted by SpatulaOfTheAges

Whoah, whoah.

Are you seriously suggesting it was intuitive that YOU owned the tokens made with Forbidden Orchard/Hidden Horror, whatever, even though they came into play under your opponents' control?

Get the fuck out of here.

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The new ownership way is less intuitive. If you played any other card and it came into play under your oponents control you still own it. So what is intuitive about if it's a card and comes into play under an opponents control you still own it, but if it's a token they own it. The new way definitly makes less sense.

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Originally Posted by IBA

So, if your opponent owns the tokens created with, say, Forbidden Orchard, does that mean that if you bring the appropriate token cards with you, put them into play under your opponents control, and then try to take them back after the game, you're stealing? Or is this "own" in the poetic sense?

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Well, seeing as how the token cards are mere representations of the tokens - and not the tokens themselves, I am confident that reasonable people can manage some Skittles or beads or something to avoid the entire theft problem. I mean, unless you are dying to pick a fight. But I can't imagine anyone like that. Oh wait...

The old token ownership rule required lengthy explanation to every player I ever introduced it to. I imagine that is true for the rest of you as well. How precisely is that intuitive?

I must be a noob, but before the changes and after the changes, does DAMAGE use the stack? I know that COMBAT DAMAGE used the stack before the change and with this new change, it doesn't. I was just wondering if DAMAGE used the stack pre and post change.

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Originally Posted by IBA

It's also completely intuitive that all creatures distribute combat damage the same way, not based on whether or not they have Death Touch.

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I know this seems like it makes sense to you, but allow me to change some fine details.

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Originally Posted by IBA edited

It's also completely intuitive that all creatures can be blocked the same way, not based on whether or not they have flying.

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Death Touch breaks rules. The details of it are clearly printed in the reminder text. So does Flying...and Trample...and Lifelink, and everything else. I happen to think that it is random luck that Gottlieb is involved in a team that got it right, but it's going to be ok. Really. Take your chill pills or smoke something or whatever.

Now that I think about it: they sensibly changed name to the "in-play" zone to avoid confusion and improve readability. But then why didn't they change "counter [target spell]" to something else as well (foremost candidate: "cancel")?