Last week, Aaron Forsythe and Mark Gottlieb announced the most sweeping changes to MtG rules in a decade. You’ve probably read the article, but here it is for reference:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...ly/feature/42a

With a few exceptions, community response has been quiet and restrained with only a few people expressing an opinion on what these changes mean for you and me.

Nah, I’m kidding. People have gone fucking nuts.

All of the non-official MtG sites have been a mill for speculation and unfounded analysis. Wizards’ boards are a mess. Articles from the MtG punditry have been pretty fair-minded, taking an “I’m a little nervous, just like you, but let’s wait and see what it works out" position. The tone and caterwauling in discussion forums is another beast altogether. Some people don’t like change and feel the game is getting Yu-Gi-Oh’d into oblivion (dumbed way down).

I haven’t read all of the articles that have come out on the M10 rules changes, but found value in these:

The PChapin: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/s...s_Changes.html

The Zvi: http://www.top8magic.com/2009/06/rui...vi-mowshowitz/

The Ferret:
(Part 1) http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/m...rmed_Rant.html

(Part 2) http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/m...pressions.html

Others can talk about how all of the changes affect other formats. As this is a Legacy forum, the scope of this Adept Question is fairly narrow:

How do you think M10 changes will affect Legacy?

I’ve had a good amount of time to percolate what these changes mean for Legacy, have played some games under the new rules and thought I’d take the first shot at the answering this one.

Let’s take it from the top:

1) Simultaneous Mulligans – This is a positive change I think we can all get behind. I can’t even think of a downside, honestly.

2) Terminology Changes.

2a) The “In Play” zone becomes the “Battlefield.” Whatever. The names of zones are needed for rulebooks and come up in writing, but don’t seem to be used much in conversation outside of “Can I see what’s in your graveyard?” or “How many cards are left in your library?” Typical spell announcement for me:

Me (Playing against a red deck, announce): “Tarmogoyf.” (Silently pass priority)
Opponent: “Okay.” (Tarmogoyf silently enters the BATTLEFIELD.)

Me (Playing against a blue deck): “Tarmogoyf?” (Silently pass priority.)
Opponent: <Pauses> “Spell Snare.” (Silently pass priority.)
Me: <Pauses> “Daze.” (Pass priority)
Opponent: <Pauses> “It’s in.” (Tarmogoyf enters the BATTLEFIELD.)

I just don’t see the terminology changes making a difference. We usually imply reference to zones and don’t call them out by name In Real Life. This is going to vary from player to player. But if the term Battlefield doesn’t appeal to you, don’t use it. You don’t need to.

2b) Cast, Play, Activate. See above. We shouldn’t see any noticeable difference. Previously, we understood that these terms were a little weird, but it rarely (never?) mattered.

2c) RFG becomes the Exile zone. Functionally, the wishes have been nerfed a bit.

About the name, as above, people understand that Dark Confidant is “exiled” when hit with Swords to Plowshares. Sure, you can say “I exile Dark Confidant with Swords to Plowshares,” though that’s going to sound pretty forced and deliberate for the next year. More likely: “Send the Dark Confidant farming.”

As above you don’t need to call out the RFG/exile zone, unless your opponent is sloppy and dumps Bob in the bin instead. There you might have need to refer to the exile zone by name (“That exiled.”) Alternately, you can be old school and say “No, it’s RFG’d” or “It’s removed from game” instead. Not a big deal. Most games, it won’t even come up and when the exile zone is referenced, it’s most likely because of StP.

2d) Beginning of the End Step. Sure. This is going to be invisible to most in most games. We’ll still going to say, “End of turn, activate Top.”

3. Mana Pools and Mana Burn.

3a) Mana Pools Empty between steps and phases. No doubt, there are corner cases, probably involving Enchantress, where these changes may be significant. More likely scenarios:

* You tap an Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors to pay for Trinisphere (or another 3) and you don’t have to take a point of manaburn.

* You don’t take a point (or two) of damage if you float some mana (for whatever reason) and forget about it. This is more of a functional change in Vintage with Mana Drain.

* Can’t burn yourself to get additional uses out of the Pulse of the Field/Forge. Honestly though, who plays Pulse of the Forge in Legacy? Also any deck playing Pulse of the Fields (mostly U/W/x control) is unlikely to suffer intentional damage against any deck where you’d want the Pulse, post-board.

I can’t even think of the last time I took a point of manaburn and I bet it’s been a while for you too. It’s a rule that’s always been there, but really more of a corner case in the scheme of things.

Ultimately, Zvi says it best: “The bottom line is that we’d never consider introducing mana burn if it wasn’t already there, as it is rules complexity ... with only rare strategic benefit.”

4. Controllers of Token Own the Tokens. - "Dude, your Brand deck was always shit. It was cute when it worked out, but you were never going to ride that puppy to the Top 8 of a Grand Prix, were you?"

5. Combat Damage No Longer Uses the Stack.

A.k.a., the Big One.
A.k.a. the “Nice Mogg Fanatic” Rule.

The “stack,” as we know it, did not exist in Richard Garfield’s original rules, they were added in the sweeping 6th Edition rules changes in 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Sixth_Edition).

Under 6th Edition rules, combat damage was placed on the stack and resolved like every other object on a stack (last in, first out). Under the 6th Edition rules, you could declare your 3/3 Morphling as a blocker to your opponent’s Argothian Swine (a 3/3 trampler for 3G), stack the damage and then respond to damage on the stack by making Morphing a 2/4. End result: the swine dies and Morphling lives to tell a tale about some random fight in Urza Block Limited where you knew how the stack worked.

Under M10 rules, to allow combat damage to occur as a singular event, there is no longer a window to respond to combat damage on the stack (since it doesn’t stack). After you’ve assigned blockers, you have one last chance to play any trick you might have. If an assigned attacker/blocker is not in play (erm, on the battlefield) when combat damage "happens," no damage is dealt to the creature or the creature it was going to brawl with.

In practical terms, you can’t assign Mogg Fanatic as a blocker to an attacking 2/2 Mishra’s Factory, stack combat damage and sac the Fanatic in response to damage on the stack to get that last point of damage in.

Here, I don’t want to speak idly, so I dusted of some cards and double-fisted a 8-9 games this morning.

First up Ravager Affinity vs. Goyf Sligh
(A.k.a. Arcbound Ravager vs. Mogg Fanatic)

I considered mulling to find the cards I was looking for but then settled on trying to create as natural environment I could. There were no Fanatics in my opener, but that didn’t stop Sligh from spitting up three of the things in the first game.

A few things I observed:

1. Mogg Fanatic vs. a cranially-plated 14/4 Myr Enforcer is not much of a fight.
2. Mogg Fanatic vs. a cranially-plated 13/3 Frogmite (buffed by an Arcbound Worker modular token) is not much of a fight.
3. Mogg Fanatic can’t kill an unbuffed Frogmite on his own now.
4. Mogg Fanatic can no longer block an attacking Arcbound Worker and fling an extra point of damage where it’s needed.
5. Arcbound Ravager is less tricky than he used to be (assorted forms of “damage on the stack, respond with <x>”), but he’s still awesome.

After that, I played a few games between my U/w/g CounterTop and Goyf Sligh. Goddamn is Counterbalance a beating.

“Treva” by Bardo

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Ponder

4 Force of Will
4 Counterbalance
3 Spell Snare

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Vedalken Shackles

4 Tarmogoyf

4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Nantuko Monastery
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
3 Island

Sideboard. Assorted blue blasts, grips, relics, wraths.

After a solid hour of testing, I don’t think Mogg Fanatic is playable any longer. He seems painfully nerfed (even if works the way he was designed to work in Tempest), and doesn’t do enough for the power level of this format.

Using an analogy: M10 Mogg Fanatic is to 6th Ed. Mogg Fanatic what 6th Ed. Frostling is to 6th Ed. Mogg Fanatic. If that makes sense.

One other glaring thing I noticed (similarly noted in Part 2 of TF’s article): under M10 rules, you need to make tactical decisions. Decisions seem deeper in combat (what little there is in Legacy), rather than being on autopilot (“stack damage, do <x>”).

On a broader scale, I don’t think people will loathe the new combat interactions as they think they will. They seem more interesting to me, even though some cards we know have gotten some tweaking.

Also there are some new rules about gang-blocking.

Let us not forget, this is Legacy. Blocking is fairly rare and gang-blocking is all but a myth.

6) Deathtouch is now a static ability. What the fuck is “deathtouch?” Sounds cool, whatever it is.

7) Lifelink is now a static ability. Hey Don (AngryTroll), remember that GPT (Philly) at the Batcave four years ago, when you were playing U/W control and I was playing U/W Angel-Fish (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=1816). In game 2, I attacked with all my dudes, and you held an Exalted Angel back on defense not realizing that you’d be dead before you got life from the Angel? If that game happened next month, instead of 2005, you’d have lived and I would have had to find another way to win that game. ;)

Also, lifelink doesn’t stack any longer. So you can’t dump a pile of mana into your, um, Genju of the Fields, and get 6-8 life, instead of 2. Seriously though, there are corner cases, sure, but one instance of lifelink in a game is pretty damn rare in Legacy, and stacking lifelink is all but unheard of. Well, it’s about as common as having your Kederekt Creeper gang-blocked at your last Legacy tournament.

This is one of those things we’re going to see how it plays out.

Summing up:

1. Simultaneous mulligans. A Good Thing.
2. Terminology changes. It may come up, it may not. Doesn’t really matter either way.
3. Mana pools empty and mana burn gone. May come up, but it’s pretty fringe.
4. Token ownership. Irrelevant.
5. Combat damage no longer uses the stack. Still needs exploration; Mogg Fanatic sucks; other than that, you’ll need to think a little harder in those rare cases when there is creature combat. In most games (outside of aggro vs. aggro) we may not notice there’s been any change at all. Most affected format is Limited where creature combat and combat tricks are common.
6. Deathtouch is a static ability. *Stares at the monitor*
7. Lifelink is a static ability. Irrelevant.

Alternate Adept Question:

Have you played with M10 rules yet? How’d it go?