I was concerned for Loucks as soon as I saw him first put up the @ ideas.
That said, I think he was judged unfarily on a few other things.
Take Amorphize for instance:
Amorphize 2U Sorcery Draw a card, then put a card from your hand onto the battlefield face down. (It is a 2/2 creature.)
Why did MaRo let him use Morph if he doesn't want him to play with it?
In my opinion, Rules is scared of Morph for no reason. I really wish we'd get a new Morph set just so they'd finally have to confront their fear and fix it. Amorphize seems like a brilliantly obvious card to me, but it "doesn't work?" Why not? Nonpermanents can't be in play? Then let them through cards like this. That's what the basic rulebooks tell you, and it's something I think the Rules people should live by as well.
If something is grokkable and simple to put on a card, find a way to put it in the rules (as long as it also plays well and such, of course).
It reminds me of Tribal again. I couldn't remember the exact problem, but I read recently that it was because supertypes can't have subtypes? That's really stupid. You make the rules. It's not like you're following some sacred ancient document. If Legendary can have the Legend rule, then I don't see why Tribal can't have a rule that explains that it allows whatever type it's affecting to have creature types. I mean, it's not like making Tribal a card type didn't come with unique changes anyway. A card type that can never appear on its own, and shares subtypes with another card type? That makes it more strange than if it just applied a change to an existing type.
In my opinion, Rules is scared of Morph for no reason. I really wish we'd get a new Morph set just so they'd finally have to confront their fear and fix it. Amorphize seems like a brilliantly obvious card to me, but it "doesn't work?" Why not? Nonpermanents can't be in play? Then let them through cards like this. That's what the basic rulebooks tell you, and it's something I think the Rules people should live by as well.
In Mago's opinon, having nonpermanent cards on the battlefeild is a huge hassle for little gain.
Whose opinon do you think has more weight? If you don't like the rules, feel free to go down to the rules theory forum and suggest a change.
Rewriting half the rulebook so that one card can exist is ridiculous. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
If something is grokkable and simple to put on a card, find a way to put it in the rules (as long as it also plays well and such, of course).
The rulebook is over a hundred pages long. Adding a dozen pages to it every time you want to print a new card isn't feasible.
It reminds me of Tribal again. I couldn't remember the exact problem, but I read recently that it was because supertypes can't have subtypes? That's really stupid. You make the rules. It's not like you're following some sacred ancient document. If Legendary can have the Legend rule, then I don't see why Tribal can't have a rule that explains that it allows whatever type it's affecting to have creature types. I mean, it's not like making Tribal a card type didn't come with unique changes anyway. A card type that can never appear on its own, and shares subtypes with another card type? That makes it more strange than if it just applied a change to an existing type.
Because the rules are designed in a very specific way. You can either have a card type, and have it work in the existing rule structure, or have a supertype and have to rewrite parts of the rulebook.
* If you don't know the rules, don't complain about the rules. The rulebook is very long and has to work with thousands of cards. When the rules change, hundreds upon hundreds of cards have to be considered. It's easy to say "Oh, we can have instants on the battlefileld", but have you considered all the cards such a rules change would effect, and all the cards that would need errata now.
I'm kinda dissappointed as to how the judges are...well...judging. They ask the contestants to shoot for the moon. However, they applaud a mechanic that adds +1/+1 counters for attacking or playing creatures, but then roast a contestant because he tried to do a 6th color without superb implementation.
I'm not saying that there were no faults with @, but there should at least be some judging scale where taking a big risk with a great, but untried, idea is allowed some lieniency for less-than-stellar execution. Otherwise, the safest route to take will always be a mechanic that says "here's a bonus for doing something that has already been proven to work countless times (like attacking or playing creatures)".
To me, this punishes the more creative contestants who want to try new things and rewards those who want to win by staying low enough under the radar.
I was surprised by the results this round, I thought Devon's was the hands-down worst submission. I thought Jon was lacking spectacular execution, but I hoped the judges would give him enough credit for trying something so radical and unproven, especially this late in the contest. Having the guts to do it should count for something, in my book.
In my opinion, Rules is scared of Morph for no reason. I really wish we'd get a new Morph set just so they'd finally have to confront their fear and fix it. Amorphize seems like a brilliantly obvious card to me, but it "doesn't work?" Why not? Nonpermanents can't be in play? Then let them through cards like this. That's what the basic rulebooks tell you, and it's something I think the Rules people should live by as well.
In Mago's opinon, having nonpermanent cards on the battlefeild is a huge hassle for little gain.
Whose opinon do you think has more weight? If you don't like the rules, feel free to go down to the rules theory forum and suggest a change.
Rewriting half the rulebook so that one card can exist is ridiculous. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
If something is grokkable and simple to put on a card, find a way to put it in the rules (as long as it also plays well and such, of course).
The rulebook is over a hundred pages long. Adding a dozen pages to it every time you want to print a new card isn't feasible.
It reminds me of Tribal again. I couldn't remember the exact problem, but I read recently that it was because supertypes can't have subtypes? That's really stupid. You make the rules. It's not like you're following some sacred ancient document. If Legendary can have the Legend rule, then I don't see why Tribal can't have a rule that explains that it allows whatever type it's affecting to have creature types. I mean, it's not like making Tribal a card type didn't come with unique changes anyway. A card type that can never appear on its own, and shares subtypes with another card type? That makes it more strange than if it just applied a change to an existing type.
Because the rules are designed in a very specific way. You can either have a card type, and have it work in the existing rule structure, or have a supertype and have to rewrite parts of the rulebook.
* If you don't know the rules, don't complain about the rules. The rulebook is very long and has to work with thousands of cards. When the rules change, hundreds upon hundreds of cards have to be considered. It's easy to say "Oh, we can have instants on the battlefileld", but have you considered all the cards such a rules change would effect, and all the cards that would need errata now.
It seems like the easy fix would just be too make instants and sorceries on the battlefield do nothing, and get put into the graveyard as a state based action, probably along with some minor rewording to the definintion of a permanant. I certainly don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of cards or rules of this game, but I can't really think of any cards you would need to errata or any weird interactions. Aside from the obvious "its easier to cheat if you can put lots of cards without morph face down", what makes this not work?
Considering what a mess the rules for face down cards are, I wouldn't be suprised if this was a nightmare ruleswise, but I'm interested in what the specific issues are, since multiple people have talked about what a rules headache it is without really providing any examples of the big problems it would cause.
Magic is not Uno. Magic survives by virtue of groups of players willing to give up Friday nights to play it for five hours. Do you know many people who play Uno for five hours every Friday? Magic must, by necessity, get better as you play it more. Uno, we all know, is pretty much the same game after an hour as it is after a week, or a month, or a year. Magic as Uno is Magic at its end.
Your attitude towards dedicated players is insulting, and painful, and most importantly, damaging to the game. Magic does not survive the day people stop wanting to play it in every free moment.
You have hurt the game more than you've helped it.
How to autocard (do this to specify a card in your posts): Type [c]Black Lotus[/c] to get Black Lotus . Type [c=Black Lotus]The Overpowered One[/c] to get The Overpowered One .
Magic survives by virtue of groups of players willing to give up Friday nights to play it for five hours.
Magic does not survive the day people stop wanting to play it in every free moment.
The problem is that Wizards believes this is actually the niche group.
Ahhh... but are they really wrong?
I remember reading an article once about the position of the "hardcore gamer" within the market. I believe it was largely oriented towards console gaming, but the ideas it presented were applicable to any activity that has a hardcore element that devotes itself wholeheartedly to it, and a casual element that is more transient.
The hardcore gamer/sports fan/etc. believe themselves to be "the heart and soul" of the activity. They're the ones that stick through thick and thin, spend their hard-earned money on the product, and otherwise devote themselves to it. They see themselves as the center of the activity, and feel that they are the ones those organizing the activity should pay the most attention to. A game should be marketed to the hardcore gamer, a sports team should strive to excel in order to please its hardcore fans, and so on.
But the truth is, from the perspective of most groups, the hardcore fanatics are really just the fringes of an available market. They're not the center -- they're on the outer edges, those eccentrics that make up a tiny minority of the population. The real market lies in the more normal, casual people. The hardcore point at the casuals, and decry them for being transient. The hardcore are dependable and reliable! A transient gamer may make one purchase and then disappear! Why would transient gamers/sports fans/etc. make up the majority of marketing decisions?
Because they outnumber the hardcore, for one. Look at any sports event -- what percentage of the population in the stands has painted their faces and jumps around and cheers and waves banners? For every hardcore sports fan, there's probably a hundred more normal people who are just attending the game. So who makes up the majority of the ticket sales? Sure, a casual fan might only buy one ticket or invest a little in the product, but if any particular event/set/game has 10 casual people buying it for every 1 hardcore person, then the casual market is far outweighing the hardcore market.
Sure, Magic may be different from most other activities -- as was said earlier, it already has a fairly steep entry curve, which weeds out some of the more transient casual population. Magic also has a fairly dedicated, even professional competitive scene. But Wizards is also a pretty giant company, and has likely invested a lot into its market research, so if they feel that the casual market still outweighs the likely much smaller hardcore scene, they may very well be correct.
