Community

All I can say is this guide was amazingly helpful, thanks!

Sep 12, 2009 -- 8:43PM, Joumae wrote:

Lifelink changes in functionality.

So if I were equip a creature with two Spirit Loops, you would only get the affect once and not twice even though it has two sources? >> 

Spirit Loop has NOTHING to do with Lifelink; And, it is NOT affected by Lifelink's functional change.
Each Loop triggers when the Creature deals Damage, and the Aura's controller gains that much life for each resolution.

However, if the Creature's Enchanted by 2 Lifelinks, then it has 2 instances of Lifelink.
It does NOT matter how many instances of Lifelink a Permanent has, it's controller ONLY gain that much once from Lifelink.

Under the old rules, prevention and regeneration spells/abilities would be played after combat damage was put on the stack so that people could respond apropately to the damage being dealt.

In an attempt to give this same responsiveness, the block order was established, but the block order doesn't work well enough.

For prevention, the difference between then and now is that the attack can respond to prevention effects by modifying the amount of combat damage he deals.  If the goal was to give prevent a chance to respond to damage being dealt, then it needs to know the amount of damage being dealt. but with the block order method that amount can never be know until its too late.

If you prevent 1 damage to your creature in a mult-block or trample situtation, the attacker can now respond by upping the damage dealt to above lethal, or he could even use a pump.

The only way to ensure creature safety is to prevent above and beyond the expected amount of damage,  but then this creates waste.  If i use a prevent 5 damage spell on my 3/3, my opponent can then respond by only assigning 3 to that creature and the rest to the next blocker or to the player if it had trample. This results in a waste of 2 damage prevention.

IF i play a prevent 3 damage spell on my 3/3, my opponent can chose to assign 6 damage(for agruments sake, i am not giving a set power to the attacker) instead, thus my creature still dies and the prevention amounts to nothing.

In order to save a creature, you have to overcompensate the damage prevention amount. which leads to waste.

If i hold both a prevent 3 and prevent 5 card in my hand and my creature is a 3/3 either i have to make a wasteful play (the 5 prevent) to save it, or if i try to use the less wasteful prevent 3, my creature could still end up dying.

Its a lose lose sitituation because the attacker gets to chose to blocking order, thus he can for the most part assure that either your first creature dies, or you end up wasting a card to save it.

If i have a 2 damage spell and a 5 damage spell, and i want to kill a 1/2, using the 5 damage spell would be a waste of 3 damage.

Prevention spells being played after damage was on the stack could never account for a damage spelled afterwards anyway,  so a player using a damage spell with the new system after a prevent spell is played really isn't any different. whats different is the new added option of changing combat damage amounts that makes prevention wasteful.

Regeneration:

regeneration was normally played after combat damage was put on the stack.

Lets say my opponent attacks for 5 and i block with a 1/1 and a 1/3 regenerator.

under the old rules, the attacker would usually apply lethal to the 1/1.  in order to force us to use mana, the attack assigns 2 to the 1/1 and 3 to the 1/3

lets say i have a prevent 1 spell in my hand that is cheaper than the regeneration cost.

The least wasteful move would be for me to use the prevent 1 instead of the regeneration.

net result is 1/1 dies an 1/3 lives with effiecent mana used.

Now with the new rules:

blocking order is chosen so that the 1/1 is first.

if i play the 1 prevent on the 1/1 and don't regenerate, he assigns 2 and 3 and both mine die

if i play the 1 prevent on the 1/3 and don't regenerate, he assigns 1 and 4 and both mine die

if i only regenerate the 1/3, the kills the 1/1,

If i play the 1 prevent on the 1/1 and regenerate the 1/3, he assigns 2 and 3 and the 1/1 still dies.

overall the result appears to be the same in that under the old and new rules i could only save the 1/3, but with the new rules, in order to save the 1/3 i have to pay the more expensive regeneration cost. Thus the play is less efficent.

However in both these examples the attacker in factoring the regenerative abilities of a creature.  However, if regeneration comes from a spell, by the old rules the opponent couldn't really factor in for regeneration when assigning damage, creating the possiblity of a scenario where both creature could be saved.  With the new rules, and spell version of regeneration makes no difference because the attack still gets to factor it in with his damage assignment.

Removal effects:

Under the old rules, you play prevent once combat is on the stack, if someone plays a removal card in response to your prevention your creature would still die, however the damage directed towards it would go down with it.  End result is that a removal is traded for a prevention, and the creature is traded for the damage that could have been aimed else where.

Now with the new rules, if the opponent removes a creature in response to your prevention, not only do you lose the creature, but the attacker gets to readjust the damage assignment too, resulting in a net gain for the opponent and a net lose for you.  You still lose the creature, the spell, and you still end up having to deal with that damage.

In both cases, if the removal was played first (with old rules, removal being before damage is on the stack, since there is almost no point in playing removal on a creature with lethal) the prevention spell can still be played to prevent, so there is no change here.

*Spoiler*

The whole point of the combat changes was to remove sacrificing shenanigans from the combat as well as other instances of missing creatures dealing damage.  Its funny that they don't care about the same shenanigans of missing O-rings still causing removal which is just as unintuitive as a sacrificed creature still dealing damage. However i would like to side track for a moment to this card.

Mindbreak trap: ignoring the trap trigger effects, what this card does is :Exile any number of target spells.

Within the detailed rules, if a spell is exiled it also gets removed from the stack, more or less countering it without using the word counter.

Whats with the double standards!

If i tap my prodigal pyromancer to deal 1 damage and someone exiles it in response, my 1 damage still remains on the stack.

When you cast a spell, its effect goes on the stack, just like how when you trigger a permanents ability, its effect goes on the stack.  So why should exiling of the spell cause the effect to disappear when exiling the permanent doesn't do the same.

With the way that mindbreak trap is functioning the only major difference between it and Dissipate is the inclusion of the word counter (ignoring the trap clause and the fact that mindbreak can have multiple targets)

Why is this relevant?

Instead of changing the combat sequence, an application of this double standard could have made the same fix. If a creature ends up changing zones, then its combat damage disappears from the stack. Just like how if a spell changes zones its disappears from the stack. Not i am only applying this to combat damage at the moment.

Then you just add another rule where if the creature assigned damage changes zones, then the damage just gets reassigned to the player.

(correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe under the oldsystem, if an attacking creature was blocked but then the blocker was removed before combat damage was assigned, then the attacking creature would just assign its damage normally to the player, unless there was another blockers. If not and the attackers damage fizzled, then just fizzle it again with these changes.)

With this change:

-prevention and regeneration wouldn't lose their effectiveness as you could appropriately apply the right amount of prevent to a known amount of damage, or regenerate only when you know lethal is going to be dealt.

-Deathtouch wouldn't require the complicated change of specificing that it can ignore the blocking order.

-Creature would still be free to distribute damage as they please to multiple blockers, thus allowing cards like tremor and other global damage dealers to be used during the second main phase to finish off all those creatures.

-with free distributing, not only does Kederekt Creeper keep its functionallity, but forgotten cards like Charisma would still be able to let you gain control of as many creatures as you can in combat by only assigning one damage to each blocker.  With the block ordering rules, charisma has lost some of its power

The end result

-Removal spells become more powerful in that they can prevent combat damage

-Sacrifice abilities become weaker as you can't do both damage and sacrifice.

-self bouncing becomes less effective

Overall you only have the intended target going down, which was sacrificing and bouncing shenanigans.

Alternative

Another simple alternative rule change to getting rid of the sacrificing shenanigans would be this.

-Creatures involved in combat while combat damage is on the stack can't leave the battlefield.

This is even cleaner than the first suggestion. now as long as the creature has combat damage on the stack, it can't be sacrificed, bounced, or any of the other unitutive shenanigans that you were trying to get rid of in the first place. And with any extra changes to deathtouch needed, and without any loss of effectiveness in prevention and regeneration. and all the cards that predate deathtouch and weren't errataed to have deathtouch do lose the ability to distribute damage to maximize death.

This choice has the minimal effect on changes to other cards and the only thing it changes about combat is the part that you didn't want (none existant creatures dealing damage).

by the way i really don't like mindbreak trap,  next their is going to be, return target spell to owners hand, return target spell to owners library, exile target spell.  All of which are going to have the same functionality and end result of a counter spell, but without the counter clause that lets them get around uncounterable spells.    The whole point of an uncounterable spell was so that end results of a counterspell wouldn't happen to it. So that you could safely spend all that mana without worry. If exiling a spell or changing its zone has the exact same results, then there is no point to counterspells.   counterspell could just as easily be replaced by "put target spell into the graveyard." I don't like it. it makes a double standard that shouldn't be.

Sep 30, 2009 -- 12:32PM, Feigel wrote:

Sep 30, 2009 -- 12:06PM, mrbananas wrote:

Within the detailed rules, if a spell is exiled it also gets removed from the stack, more or less countering it without using the word counter.

Whats with the double standards!

What "double standard"?

If you remove a Spell from the stack, it doesn't resolve.
If you remove an Activated or  Triggered ability from the Stack, it doesn't resolve.

I believe what actually said was: If you exile my creature in response to me activating it's ability, why does the abilities effect stick around, while the same doesn't happen with spells.

And here is a side question:If I exile a spell, is the CARD exiled? If I mindbreak trap a lightning bolt, what happens to the lightning bolt card. Does the card get exiled? or does the spells effect just get removed from the stack and the card goes to the graveyard.

I can see newbies getting really confused