[M10] General Discussion on Rules Changes

I guess the "nonintuitive interaction" is going to prevent Cascade/Bonds. Probably they'll just ban Spoils of War and split cards because they're too confusing too?

Not that it's likely to matter that much, but there are a number of non-deathtouch critters that have 'whenever it damages a creature' abilities with the same issue. Will, e.g. Greatbow Doyen, Sengir Vampire, or Pit Spawn get the same sort of damage distribution ability? The interaction of these new rules is non-intuitive if a critter with deathtouch and a critter with trample are both blocked by one defending creature.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Then it was like... your creatures can no longer assign combat damage however you want. Unless they have Deathtouch, in which case they can. And this is intuitive and simple.

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Yep, the changes to the combat step (including the part where combat damage no longer uses the stack, and the bizarro tinkering with Lifelink) are the poster-children for how fucking ridiculous this rules update is.


2) How about the sign-off at the end of the article? "We know you're drivelling idiots, but fear not -- you've got a whole month to wrap your heads around the new rules. We also know you're not going to like them, but guess what? Too bad, they're happening. And don't bother complaining....we've heard it all before, we don't care about your opinion, and we're making these changes because we know what's best, and what new players want. Morons."

Fuck you, Aaron Forsythe and Mark L. Gottlieb.


3) Remember when the original Star Wars CCG went out of production, and a bunch of players just set themselves up as an unofficial players committee? That's what we should do....start a shadow-DCI that maintains the rules in all their post-6th-Ed, non-fucked-up glory.


4) Acidic Slime is amazing. Creeping Mold, but with a 2/2 deathtouch body attached for the laughable extra cost of :1:. Reminds me of when Eternal Witness was spoiled....Regrowth + a 2/1 body for an insignificant extra investment.

Obviously the Slime won't show up in Legacy, but for Cube/EDH/whatever, it's incredible.

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Originally Posted by vigilante

3) Remember when the original Star Wars CCG went out of production, and a bunch of players just set themselves up as an unofficial players committee? That's what we should do....start a shadow-DCI that maintains the rules in all their post-6th-Ed, non-fucked-up glory.

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This was discussed when 1.5 split into the Legacy and the lists were separated. Overall, worked out pretty well, but man, feelings ran high at the time.

Every few years, something like this happens, and everyone threatens to quit...the Post-6th Edition Rules (ended up a positive), the new card frame (meh...I think we all got over it), the blocks of two and two sets, and now this.

I'm pretty annoyed with the combat damage thing. The rest is all, well, a pain, but oh well. Also, the blocking thing. What if I want my Spiritmonger to damage a whole bunch of creatures, just to get bigger? Or my Wither dude to weaken multiple creatures, so that my remaining creatures are all bigger? Or if I want to Pyroclasm in my second main phase?

Or shoot someone with Mogg Fanatic? Or blow up an artifact or enchantment with Quasali Pridemage, or gain life with Ravenous Baloth or Darkheart Sliver, or Regenerate the team with Loxodon Heirarch, or draw cards with Yavimaya Elder, or sac Necrotic Sliver, or find a land with Sakura Tribe Elder, or bounce dudes with Hibernation Sliver, or make Morphling a 5/5, or Goblin Grenade an opponent, or Fling a Ravager, or move let Ravager eat dying creatures, or phase out Mist Dragon in Type 4? Pardon me, but it will come up more often than "almost never".

The blocking thing really doesn't seem counterintuitive at all. Even the mulligan thing annoys me...if I'm playing combo on the draw, how much my opponent mulligans makes a big difference.

Update :
- LED has become better in Ichorid (no mana burn for emergency One-With-Nothing)
- LED has become worst in ANT (no floating into draw step trick with AdNauseam on top)
- Wake Thrasher is a bit less Trash. Pulse of the Field do its thing better.
- Combat phase is less tricky (Fanatic, Lavamancer, Phage//FEB and so on)
- No more assignating damage at will ?! Split the damage before casting a well timed Pyroclasm-effect is not possible anymore ?! (beside DeathTouch critters i mean)
- => More dumb people have access to MTG sanctionned events (good for Wotc and player who seek to win over weak players, but less entertaining (ie tricky) to the mass of competitive players)
- Mulliganing is less strategical (Opponent mulls to 4 ? I guess I can keep my non-FoW hand and not losing turn0)
- Battlefield... Meh (even for us, non-english players, there were li'l confusion with CiP//Play//In Play. So WTF with this Yu-Gi-Oh flavor ?!)
- Mana Burn, Mana Pool and Phase//Step : Magic rules for Dummies. Flavorless, and dumb.
- Still, Exile instead of RFG is quite good in flavor. (The Wishes are impacted, but really marginaly imho)
- Beggining of the End step ? Sure, why not...
- ...

So, some rules are meaningless, the others are hindering the trickiness of the game.

We'll survive those changes, but I dislike the majority them. A lot.

I like to think I'm a pretty good bellwether on this shit. I was telling people they were overreacting when the banned lists were split because they were. That involved severe change, but there were clear reasons for it.

Most of these rules changes have no fucking reason at all beyond Mark Gottlieb and Aaron Forsythe being overly invested tools. They just wanted to make a mark and announce some flashy new changes to throw a gimmick onto M10.

Getting rid of mana burn was fine. The change in token ownership was random, but kind of makes sense I guess. The new names for zones are kind of dumb but make sense from a terminology viewpoint.

Past that this shit is stupid.

New players are going to need the rules explained to them. That's it. That's never going to change. The combat damage step was never confusing to anyone I talked to. Distribution of damage was never confusing.

This article is a poorly written self indulgent bit of tripe that doesn't even atttempt to explain the bizarre and poorly reasoned bullshit that was just done to the game.

I honestly don't know that I wouldn't be behind a full scale mutiny of the DCI at this point. They're quite clearly incompetent.

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Originally Posted by AngryTroll

Does this (half)nerf Hibernation Sliver also?

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Yes, it does. Fucking fuckers.

It's funny. They rationalize their changes by "how often does that come up?" and then they change the token ownership rules? How often do those come up? Well, they come up in casual (and competitive, for that matter) decks specifically built around the mechanic. That's uhh...it. Yeah. So WoTC basically managed to kill some decks with no benefit whatsoever. Way to go!

As for manaburn, if they're making everything else flavourful, why the hell remove that very flavourful ability? I've never talked to anyone who didn't know manaburn existed. It seems pretty intuitive to be honest. I mean, removing it seems to go against everything they're hoping to achieve here.


The wording changes are fine, although "exile" makes very little sense; Tormod's Crypt now exiles your entire graveyard! Extirpate exiles your Tropical Islands! ...yeah, the name leaves something to be desired. Lifelink, sure. Deathtouch, would be fine if not for that combat damage change (although it makes all kinds of sense that Deathtouch requires more power to regenerate against, but hey, screw sense!).

Speaking of which, combat damage, boy did they botch that up. The "assign damage"-change is unintuitive (seriously, isn't "assign power in damage however you want" a tad more intuitive than that?), unnecessary and dumbs the game down some more. I don't think a single positive thing comes out of that.

And removing the stacking of combat damage? Huh? I thought that was a good change back in 6th edition; added an additional strategical layer to the phase. It only hurts the noobs once - after that, they'll get it too. It's simple, it's handy and yeah...

to tell u the truth i always thought combat damage was the most confusing aspect. the problem every time they change the rules it actually makes the game more complicated when looking at the whole card pool. old cards need new errata, pretty soon older card will have a whole new function with new errata. so combat damage doesn't use the stack but burn damage does? so u can still block with elder and sac it right? it just dosn't do any damage.

Did you know Morphling untaps?
Did you know Morphling has shroud?
Did you know Morphling CAN'T eat dragons anymore :mad:

Mogg Fanatic = poop
Rainbow Efreet = a little bit better than Mogg Fanatic poop but still poop
Morphling = blue Hill Giant

I find it interesting every new section essentially starts with "From focus groups, we found people to be too stupid to understand these very simple concepts."

I said the same thing IBA said while talking with my friend on the phone about the new combat step. I was sitting here pissed off at the hypocrisy of the new blocking style. The idea behind a creature having deathtouch not having to follow the same rules should have given them some kind of indication this was really, really, really fucking stupid.

Finally, No mana burn! That's atrocious! Burn and aggro has a real tough time fighting through Pulse of the Fields as it is! Also, I posted it in the worst card thread. Power Surge, although terrible, is now the worst card in magic. It does nothing at all.

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That's uhh...it.

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And if this stuff was so edge and unimportant, it was kind of rude of them to make cards like Brooding Saurian and whatnot that were designed to foster that.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

I honestly don't know that I wouldn't be behind a full scale mutiny of the DCI at this point. They're quite clearly incompetent.

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I'm with you. As soon as I finished reading the article and found out my non-Call the Skybreaker MUC win conditions were useless, I felt like burning some buildings to the ground.

Quote from discussion forums that I appreciated:

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(Checks the date): not April 1st.

NOOOOOOOOO!

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EDIT: I just realized that Goyf got better. The argument of "it's a vanilla creature" is not as relevant. As many creatures abilities just got neutered.

Mana burn going away is kinda lame, but whatever.

I can live with all the other stuff, except for combat damage no longer using the stack. That really pisses me off.

what happen if you have multiple upkeeps now (paradox haze), does mana carry over between them? And no, I'm not the wiseguy who bought the entire internets out of Braid of Fire, as if it's going to be the next Natural Order for SCG to pricegouge on.

I remember some dork buying up every lodestone bauble on the net because Countryside Crusher was going to take over the world. Hah.

No mana burn? Ok, who cares after all.
Simultaneus mulligans? Ok, I can live with that.
Combat damage does no longer use the stack? Now THAT pisses me off. It's true, it simplifies the game (while that stupid blocker order thing complicates it instead...) but it removes a LOT of skill from the game. And really pisses me off.

PS: I can still declare Sakura-Tribe-Granny as a blocker and then sack it to get a land without taking damage right?

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PS: I can still declare Sakura-Tribe-Granny as a blocker and then sack it to get a land without taking damage right?

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Yeah, afaict. You can't ever randomly equip a Jitte to it and gain counters though. And of course getting multiple benefits from interactions is what decks like the rock are all about; otherwise, it's just a pile.

"I hope you'll agree, and here's to not doing this again for another decade."

you didn't need to do it now. i feel like this like the patriot act, the people had no say and it crapped on well established rules. And you expect to change the rules AGAIN in just ten years? how about leaving the rules alone forever if possible.

Having combat damage not use the stack means that you can't have your cake and eat it too with creatures with nice secondary abilities. No more blocking with a Qasali Pridemage and then saccing it to kill an enchantment or artifact after it has put its damage on the stack. You have to choose whether you want the damage or the ability. I don't have a problem with that.

None of the damage prevention stuff has worked right since the stack came into being. The idea that you can be holding a spell capable of saving you but if the opponent times his damage around your play of the spell it doesn't matter is completely unintuitive. The old system, where lethal damage was only assessed at the end of a phase made much more sense for damage prevention.

Example: at 3 life lightning bolt, pulse of the fields, lightning bolt kills you. How does that make sense from an intuitive point of view? Even if they only assessed lethal damage when the stack had fully cleared it would make more sense than it does now. It would restore symmetry to offensive and defensive play.

What else would I do with cake?

Ok so the tricks I loved about the game (combat step) are gone. Great...