Hope this isn't too negative, but it will never happen.
The land system is one of the greatest assets of MtG. Everything else hinges upon it. Mana screw and mana flood may make you feel bad, but they are the gateways into becoming a better deckbuilder. As a regular drafter, I can assure you that one of the greatest questions I deal with every week is this - "16, 17, or 18?" People who misjudge get screwed or flooded more often, and they lose. It's a chance for the skilled player to show his mettle.
On the other hand, mana screw and mana flood can help an inexperienced player dominate a pro. Any player can beat any other player if the lands don't cooperate. And that's the luck aspect of MtG, which is just as important as the skill side. The day we completely eliminate mana screw and mana flood is a dark day for the game.
If you're a good deckbuilder, and with a pinch of luck, you're going to be able to play meaningfully most of the time. The only reasons you can argue to change the rules are 1) you're not a good deckbuilder, 2) you're unlucky or 3) you don't know when to mulligan. You've got the tools to work on 2 out of 3 of those. Nobody can fix the third one. There's just no reason to change the rules.
I play primarily online limited matchups which means that the chances of coming away with a victory after mulling to 5 or less is very close to 0. In most limited matchups you are trading cards on a 1 for 1 basis, so having 2 less than your opponent right from the start is typically fatal.
The definition I use for mana short is having 2 or less land on turn 3, and the definition I use for mana flood is having more lands than spells at the point you've drawn 17 cards (including your starting hand) or having more lands than spells at the point the game ends if the game ends before you've drawn 17 cards.
As stated earlier, games in which either of those things [or a muligan] occur do not constitute the majority of my limited games, but they occur in 3 out of 4 of my limited losses. It doesn't have anything to do with the vividness of losses, just the volume of games that can be attributed to them.
As for strong anecdotal evidence to support the seriousness of muliganing, even to 6 cards is that when I used to play paper Magic there was one player who was clearly above the rest, and since I was just starting out (again, since I'd played a little Magic when it first came out in 95), I would virtually never beat him in straight-up games where we both kept 7 cards. But the thing I noticed is, that if he mulled to 6 cards, I went from almost never beating him to beating him more often than not. Apparently the skill that eventually enabled him to go pro amounted to a fraction of a card in limited.
If Magic had been built differently from the start, perhaps resource management would have been done in a different way. But there's no way to change it now that wouldn't radically alter deck construction.
I've found, when teaching people to play, that the most difficult lesson to get them to accept is that you need to have around 40% land in your deck. Most players resist, telling me that they only need to get four or five lands out to run their deck, and 24 (or 18 in limited) is too many. But I remind them that the entire reason you need that many lands is to maximize the chances that you will draw all the land you need.
Any method of altering land draw that guarantees you'll get the land will also eliminate the need to maximize this chance. Therefore, all decks will simply play enough land to cast their most expensive spell, and perhaps a few more in case of land destruction. There's just no reason to play any more than that if you know for a fact you'll see the land appear.
Applying this rule to limited play does mitigate the impact of decks that specifically take further advantage of the ability to exile any two cards from your hand at any time, but it does mean that no deck will need anywhere even close to 18 lands. It also severely depowers cards that search for lands while increasing the power of land destruction (because players will use less lands, and there is temptation to play exactly as few as you need). Cards that allow you to look at cards from the top of your library would be more powerful as well, since you'd be allowed to shuffle whenever you needed. Similarly, cards that put your opponent's permanents on the bottom of their library would be less powerful. "Bottom of the library" will no longer mean "probably never seen again."
As I hope I've demonstrated, even a seemingly small rules change like you've proposed will have a powerful ripple effect on the way Magic is played.
The guarentee that you'll draw a land in the mechanic I am proposing also requires you to give up two spells to do it. Which seems like a balanced cost for the effect. Likewise the cost of drawing another card from your deck is tossing 2 lands. This will not radically change deck construction, because the best possible draws will still be to draw a mix of lands and spells so as not to suffer the -1 CA cost every time you are required to smooth out the draws. The main effect will be that if you keep a 2 land hand and don't draw your 3rd land for several turns you will have the option to discard to get that land, rather than playing nothing. Likewise less games will be determined solely by mana flood, because at the point you flood you can start discarding lands (2 per end step) to speed the draws along.
Most limited matchups are going to be decided by CA anyway, but in the system I am proposing the players who use this mechanic heavily will still be at a disadvantage compared to players who have draws that are more consistant with the makeups of their decks, just less of a disadvantage than they would be in the current system, where the disadvantage is traditionally that you get to play nothing for several turns.
The problem is your definition of mana-screw. For you, to not be screwed means to have the exact number of lands you need. Missing a land-drop isn't fatal, nor is it mana-screw unless it does for multiple turns in an early manner. Not dropping a land on turn three or even three and four doesn't lock up the match, that's just untrue. If you really need a third land on turn three or you die, there's a problem with your deck. You should also pack up more lands in that case, up to 26 or 27 sources.
Having 18 lands out of 40 cards means that having a 9/8 lands/cards ratio is perfectly within the odds. Nothing surprising there, and in limited, quite a good distribution.
That part about always losing to a seven-cards hand versus winning more often than not against six is statistically impossible. Having one less card can't turn the tides that much, simple as that. I've mulliganed countless times and won. One card does not makes that big of a difference.
The problem is that even if you removed lands entirely, with your narrow definition, you'd be back at the start : 3/4 of my limited losses are due to lack of a bomb. I mulligan, but if I didn't get at least a bomb in my starting hand or by turn three, I'm dead. We should be able to [other suggestion].
Yeah... Until next game, where it'll be right back.
Seriously, there's no way to deal with Rancor in any format. It should be banned, except Gleemax is a lobbyist for the Rancor party, so that'll never happen.
You can't ban rancor, it just returns to your deck.
You might want to actually talk to the Flavor & Storyline Board people... since, you know, our whole reason for playing Magic is the flavor. I'm willing to bet you'll get a lot more interest there than in General.
Indeed, both posters down there would be thrilled.
When talks about banning Jace first started, I was thinking that I would see him banned come June 20th. But as I think more about it, I don't really think that Jace is the problem anymore. Sure his power level leaves very little to the imagination (opening Jace is like opening a refrigerator box with a naked girl on the inside), and sure his price does have a strong impact on what players choose to play (playing Jace is like being intimate with a woman and she doesn't charge you in the morning), but it is not the source of all the problems in Standard.
How do people think saving room to print more abilities on cards is dumbing down the game?
Do you really think, say, Akroma would ever be printed if she said, "Akroma can block by creatures with this ability and cannot be blocked by creatures without this ability. If a creature without this ability would deal combat damage by Akroma would be destroyed, prevent all combat damage that creature would deal to Akroma this combat. Attacking does not cause Akroma to tap. If Akroma is blocked and deals lethal damage, it deals the remainder of its damage to the defending player. Akroma may attack and use abilities that require tapping in the casting cost the turn it enters the battlefield. Akroma cannot be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by black or red sources" rather than her "dumbed down" wording she has? No freaking way. Keywording and shorthand allows them to make complicated cards easy to play with, allowing them to be printed in the first place.
1. cast frankie peanuts 2. ask opponent "will you concede the game this turn"? if they say yes, you win; if they say no, play a staying power 3. subsequently ask "will you attack this turn"? and "will you cast a spell this turn"? (using a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir for the second question if necessary) to ensure they can't disrupt the combo 4. donate them a platinum angel 5. play a mox lotus and braingeyser them for every card in their library. play an opalescence and donate them a glorious anthem and a blacker lotus , then play enchanted evening . play and activate a mindslaver and then donate them a fastbond and the mox lotus (returning one of the donates to your hand with eternal witness or whatever) 6. during their turn, play every permanent in their hand (playing lands with fastbond) then (as yourself) cast mirrorweave on the blacker lotus, so every permanent becomes a copy of it. proceed to tear up every card they control, and hopefully do it before they notice that they aren't bound by staying power's ability anymore and can concede
Dark Ritual being overpowered is determined more by what is done with it than the card itself.
True, but the fact that it enables so many ridiculous things is pretty telling. It's like, sure I can use a shotgun as a bludgeoning instrument, but that doesn't make it not a shotgun.
Shortly before Serra died, she transferred her spark into an angel whose full name was Asha Avacyn Bolas. Her dragon father groomed her for her positions in Alara and Innistrad, and she's also been getting help from her uncle Ugin in the form of Urza, who was resurrected as Marit Lage to be the avatar as which she projects herself into material realms. Grieslbrand is a split personality who sometimes wanders the planes disguised as a human woman named Liliana Vess.
Everyone's life would be easier if players would, instead of coming to the 'net for help with a deck, just netdeck and be done with it. And I'm not talking about some Top 8 lists, for the Casualists, too, can benefit from netdecking. I've netdecked plenty of decks from the Casual Play forums from users such as Mown, Raedien, Floopfoot, and a few others. I snatched straight the heck out of my web browser. Yes, people, your original idea fell victim to a savage netdecker. You have been assimiliated.
Suppose I wanted a Zombie deck. Why on earth would I spend time searching Gatherer for a decent list of Zombie cards when Raedien already did it for me? Taking time to be creative or waiting on people on the forums to tell you why your deck sucks or 'go to Casual forums' is a disasterous waste of time (to me).
That being said, Magic was ruined back in Alpha when they added all that rules and cards [Debutantes avert your eyes]. My friends and I still like playing it the "pure" way (Basically we go into the woods and hit eachother with wiffle bats while shouting made up obscenities. You know, the way Garfield wanted it to be played).
Don't worry about it. I've come up with a list of changes to fix EDH.
-First off, there's no commander. -The minimum deck size is 60 cards, and each deck can have up to four of each card, save basic lands and relentless rats. Also decks have no color identity. -Starting life total is 20.
Here's a clever play you can try yourself: -Convince friend to run relentless rats.dec in legacy tournament -Get a deck with lots of mill, yixlid jailer, and humility -Drop humility and jailer, wait for him to dump his hand, mill him out -All his rats now have no abilities. Call a judge because he's playing an illegal deck with more than 4 of a single card. -Get him/her banned from competitive magic play
L, is for the leather gloves you weaaaar. O, is for the organs that guy could spaaaare. V, is very very, extraordinay. E, is for every vagrant i butchered in a wine cellar befooooore.
The outer layer of the Magic: the Gathering box, the carton, or crust, is fairly thin and light, and contains largely aluminosilcates.
Within that lies the middle layer, consisting of the familiar booster pack. Although solid, the booster packs' high temperatures allow them to acutally move around within the booster box. This flow, sometimes called convection, is cited by frustrated box mappers as one of WOTC's most genious uses of thermodynamics since the Ravnica block.
No one knows what lies at the core of the booster box, but scientists theorize that it must be especially dense in order to make up for the large amount of fluff distributed amongst the booster packs.
I imagine [Ajani 3's] second ability involves him hurling the creature at your opponent Brion Stoutarm style, then the guy is just like "Okay, that may have worked, but don't- GOD DAMN IT!" as he does it again because cats don't give a **** :33.
Its like that one time Elves broke out in a field of Jund. Elves became a resurgent hit, then died off again once Jund adapted to the rest of the field of G/W that it required mass removal that inherently pooped on Elves too.
Submit to the menace. Delver can, and will blot out the sun.
"I remember my days as a youth at Tolarian Academy ." "Wow, small multiverse, I actually went there too." "WAIT, DON'T- Well ****, there's $200,000 in student loans well spent."
And flavor goes out the window when you cast a second copy of a planeswalker right after the first one dies, so...
"Hey Nissa, I need a favor." "You just asked me for a 'favor' like thirty seconds ago, and it turned out to be having Sarkhan Transmogrify my only follower into a dragon like 5 times -which dickery aside also violates some laws of causality - and then you let me get beaten over the head by that hedron crab." "...I'll give you " "...Well all right then."
GM, I don't think Dill is better than you. I KNOW it. Even if he wakes up every morning, clubs a baby seal, steals all the TV remotes from within a block's radius of his house and then robs hungry orphans of their food he'd be better than you, for the simple reason that he learns from his mistakes.
What would they have to fight about? Like, all I can think of now is Gideon going "Hey, long-ears! I'm gathering a group of 'Walkers together to fight some tentacle monsters.....you want in?" and Tamiyo going "Ew! Hentai no bakka Gideon-desu desu!" and flying away.
I open 4 packs just to be on the safe side. Not only do I get more cards than everyone else, but I also get to spend the rest of the night off. Win Win.
MaRo has a thing for people opening boosters with bad cards. But since he can only get so many bad cards printed in each set, he has found a devious way of getting more bad cards into circulation: He makes entire print sheets with just bad rares, then puts them onto the assembly line. He proceeds to wring his hands and twirl his evil mustache that he grew for twirling purposes as a lightning bolt strikes in the background. Afterwards, he goes to make sure that the good cards are only opened by everyone's friends, and that we all only get to open bad cards. He does this by memorising each booster, than switching them around accordingly. Whenever someone complains about a card, he immediately jumps out from behind a chair to yell "WELL, IT'S NOT FOR YOU!" before merging back into the shadows in order to devise new ways in which he can screw over players, then claim that he has valid reasons for doing so.
Mark Rosewater is sitting in a seemingly innocuous cable TV van, outside of Bankaimastery's house. Sitting nearby are two hardened criminal hackers, fresh out of prison, and filled with resentment at their lack of physical fitness. "Have you managed to hack his brainwaves yet? The set deadline's coming up fast." "We're almost through. It should be coming up on the screen any second." The hacker presses a button, and Kevin's thoughts flash onto the screen. Mark and the hackers stare in amazement at the sheer beauty, the elegance, and the raw truth of what they see. It's like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brilliant light shines across the screen, the truth of existence is made clear to them, and they despair at their own foolishness, their own ignorance, their own inadequacy. And then they steal his ideas. As they return back to R&D, Mark sneers at a haggard old man chained to a cast-iron sphere. The man looks up from his laborious task of breaking rocks in the dungeon of Wizards of the Coast headquarters, and asks a question: "Kevin, my greatest student. He - he's all right, isn't he? You didn't hurt him?" Mark deals him a weighty blow with his boot. "Know your place, Richard. Get back to work."
I'm only opposed to it because it bears so little relation to how people actually play the game. The example of Miracles is actually a much better one then the Clone example I was trying to use.
From the game's perspective, the card can move instantly from face down in the library to revealed in the hand and that's fine for the rules. But in real life, we can't actually do that, so the card spends a good bit of time in locations that are neither where that player's library is nor where that player's hand is. And that's fine for real life. What I don't want is the disconnect to be explicitly codified. Along the lines of
183664.697 A game of Magic as laid out by these rules exists only as a pure Platonic ideal, utterly unrealizable by fallible mortals limited by the confines of physicality and the ravages of evil and sin.
183664.698 The cake is a lie, too.
I know it's true, but I don't want the rules to actually straight-up tell me that.
Pfft this cant be serious can it? If it is please delete your account OP. Its not even close to ban worthy, considering what JTMS and stoneforge had to accomplish to get banned i see the WotC selling magic to aquire Pokemon before that ever happens.
I'm trying to imagine sorin markov as a gym leader in one of those pokemon games which you have to beat him to get his badge... somehow I imagine that he would stab you in the chest with his sword before giving you the badge, even if you beat his pokemon....
Personally, I'd be fine with tea time but then I'm not gonna waste the mana summoning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn . He always takes all the sugar, drinks the whole pot of Earl Grey and doesn't even say thank you. SO. RUDE.
Break the Card is a regular thread in the Cards and Combo Forum. Quite simply, the participants are given a Johnnystatic card (e.g. Xenograft ) and are asked to build a deck around it. The winner and honorable mentions are sigged below. Get brewing!
This week's Break the Card was based around Xenograft . Thread : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27681049/Break_the_card_:_Xenograft?pg=1
Winner : Axterix with his Vampdrazi deck. Finalist : Vektor480 with his Ally/Golem/Plant deck. Honorable mentions : Zammm for the Turntimber Ranger combo and TinGorilla for suggesting Sarkhan the Mad .
Here's the link to the Mindlock Orb contest : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27697565/Break_the_Card_:_Mindlock_Orb?sdb=1&pg=last#497536269
Here's the link to Break the Card : Bludgeon Brawl : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27715169/Break_the_Card_:_Bludgeon_Brawl?sdb=1&pg=last#498208797
Winner : Vektor and his Grab the World deck. Finalist : Crandor with his Awesome Aliteration deck. Honorable mentions : RP Jesus with his Wat deck and Zix200 with his Signet Renewal deck.
This week was Followed Footsteps : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27748677/Break_the_Card_:_Followed_Footsteps?pg=1
Winner : Tevish_Szat with his Exponential Growth deck. Honorable mentions : Zix with his Carbon Copies deck and Escef with his Fungus of Speed and Time deck.
This week's card was Jace's Archivist : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28063377/Break_the_Card_:_Jaces_Archivist.
Finalists : Jentaru with his "Consecration of the Draw" deck and HereticSmitty with his "ADHD: The deck" deck. Winner : JaxsonBateman with his "The Archives Are Endless!" deck.
I will say that the burden of proof is on you and it's easy for us to sit here and say that this change is bad. But it isn't exactly a new proposal, and the math has suggested time and time again that it wouldn't work out. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing it in action and hearing some results, though.
Still, if you're gonna change the land system, it has to be as natural as possible because overall the mana system has proven to work really well at regulating game play and making different decks viable in different ways.
The land system is one of the greatest assets of MtG. Everything else hinges upon it. Mana screw and mana flood may make you feel bad, but they are the gateways into becoming a better deckbuilder. As a regular drafter, I can assure you that one of the greatest questions I deal with every week is this - "16, 17, or 18?" People who misjudge get screwed or flooded more often, and they lose. It's a chance for the skilled player to show his mettle.
People who judge the 16, 17 or 18 question correctly still get screwed and flooded, and at roughly the same rates as people who just pick 17 all the time. Picking 16 or 18 traditionally means trading the likelihood of shorting for the liklihood of flooding because you think your deck will handle one of those two better than the other, while the liklihood of hitting mana issues as a whole remains the same. This statement is also incompatible with your next one. Either the existence of mana issues are a way for skilled players to increase their win rates over unskilled ones, or they allow unskilled players to win games vs skilled ones that they could not win otherwise pulling all win rates towards 50% so that skilled players do not consistantly dominate matchups.
On the other hand, mana screw and mana flood can help an inexperienced player dominate a pro. Any player can beat any other player if the lands don't cooperate. And that's the luck aspect of MtG, which is just as important as the skill side. The day we completely eliminate mana screw and mana flood is a dark day for the game.
I always find it amusing when people promote this aspect of mana short/flood as a feature rather than a bug. As if the popularity of MtG rests on a lot of tempremental 12 year old who are going to stop playing if they don't win the first time out. You shouldn't expect to win vs a skilled player until you are a skilled player yourself. Intentionally promoting mana screw as a way for inexperienced players to beat skilled ones is a holdover from the point Magic games were played for ante, so that new players didn't lose all of their cards and just give up. At this point mana issues cause more players to quit early out of frustration than to play longer due to the wins they eek out over stronger players. Even the least experienced players know that when they beat a skilled player who sits on two mana for 8 turns that they didn't get their on their own. You have to win in games where both players are playing cards for it to be a meaningful victory.
If you're a good deckbuilder, and with a pinch of luck, you're going to be able to play meaningfully most of the time. The only reasons you can argue to change the rules are 1) you're not a good deckbuilder, 2) you're unlucky or 3) you don't know when to mulligan. You've got the tools to work on 2 out of 3 of those. Nobody can fix the third one. There's just no reason to change the rules.
I am a good deck builder, I know when to muligan, and I am not unlucky. While I am able to play meaningful games most of the time, I'd like to play meaningful games much more often. 100% of the time would be ideal, because those are my favorite ones, the ones where both me and my opponent keep out initial 7, and neither of us hit mana issues for the entire game. In the current setup there are far too many games decided by mana issues on both sides of the table, it's rare that I play a limited match where mana issues/muligans don't decide at least one game. My favorite matches are the ones that come down to 3 close games, where both sides start with the same number of cards and neither side is ever held up by mana issues.
I will say that the burden of proof is on you and it's easy for us to sit here and say that this change is bad. But it isn't exactly a new proposal, and the math has suggested time and time again that it wouldn't work out. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing it in action and hearing some results, though.
Still, if you're gonna change the land system, it has to be as natural as possible because overall the mana system has proven to work really well at regulating game play and making different decks viable in different ways.
The land system works well when the distribution of lands drawn roughly follows the land distribution in the deck. When you make up a deck with 42.5% land, yet draw out 66.7% land in the first 21 cards, it means your deck is now working about as well as a deck whose entire composition is 66.6% lands, because after you're dead you aren't drawing any more. Likewise if you draw 5 straight spells after keeping a 2 land hand your deck is now working as well as a deck whose entire composition is 16.7% land. That is, not well at all, because you're not around to see your subsequent draws.
I am not trying to redo the entire land/resource system, I am only trying to create a mechanic that ensures the really erratic land/spell splits occur less often. Whatever average distribution of lands/spells your deck has as a whole, that average distribution should remain unchanged after this mechnic is in place. The mechanic should only reign in the extreme draws, preventing the situations that I described in the first paragraph.
I am confident that once people implement my fix or a similar one they will enjoy playing a greater number of meaningful games, and won't want to return to the way the game was before. I'm sure even the current muligan system had some push-back, but now it's hard to imagine the game without muligans. It's just human nature to be resistant to change.
The problem is your definition of mana-screw. For you, to not be screwed means to have the exact number of lands you need. Missing a land-drop isn't fatal, nor is it mana-screw unless it does for multiple turns in an early manner. Not dropping a land on turn three or even three and four doesn't lock up the match, that's just untrue. If you really need a third land on turn three or you die, there's a problem with your deck. You should also pack up more lands in that case, up to 26 or 27 sources.
Hitting your third land drop is something that should happen over 90% of the time if you consistantly muligan 0 and 1 land hands. However for that <10% of the time that you don't you are at an extereme disadvantage in limited. It doesn't mean that you won't be able to play out a full match if you go on to hit a land in your next 1 or 2 draws, but you can pretty much forget about winning unless you are playing an exceptionally low curve or your opponent has hit mana issues as well. To give you some hard data, my game win rate in RtR is currently 82% if I keep my first 7 cards and don't hit mana issues. That drops to 27% if I keep my first 7 cards and hit mana issues (which means I kept 2 lands), and 0% if I muligan and miss my third land drop with my 6 card hand. Hitting your first three lands is a huge deal in limited, and one of the best predictors on whether you'll win the game. Likewise hitting mana flood in the first 17 cards is generally something that shouldn't happen provided that you're playing 17 lands and you dump all of your 6 and 7 landers and weak 5 landers.
That part about always losing to a seven-cards hand versus winning more often than not against six is statistically impossible. Having one less card can't turn the tides that much, simple as that. I've mulliganed countless times and won. One card does not makes that big of a difference.
This is against one player in particular in limited matchips. At the beginning when I was first playing him I would say I lost about 4 out of 5 games against him when we both kept our initial 7, while I won about 3 out of 5 if I kept my initial starting hand and he muliganed. One card makes a huge difference in limited because most games are decided by one or two cards. The vast majority of cards cancel out on a 1 for 1 basis, and the ones that don't (because they're bombs), still cancel out on a 1 for 1 basis with removal.
The problem is that even if you removed lands entirely, with your narrow definition, you'd be back at the start : 3/4 of my limited losses are due to lack of a bomb. I mulligan, but if I didn't get at least a bomb in my starting hand or by turn three, I'm dead. We should be able to [other suggestion].
It's human nature to be unsatisfied with improvements. But just because we are all collectively on a hedonic treadmill doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying to make things better. The major updates to the rules over the years have all made Magic a better game, I'm certain that there is something left that be done to fix extreme mana issues.
I'll admit that resistance to change is always a hurdle, but this isn't exactly a new idea. People have been complaining about mana flood and mana screw for over a decade. It's a rough part of the game. Possible solutions have been suggested (including ones similar to yours), but none have satisfactorily shown that it would improve the game, and much of the issues brought up in this thread have held true through testing out these implementations. The current resource system isn't the only one out there, and the current mulligan rule wasn't always the standard mulligan rule. There's plenty of room for change, and I think people in this specific forum especially are willing to hear it. But what you're presenting isn't new. Thus the instant rejection. I suggest playtesting it and presenting your results. In the past, they've been unkind to the new ideas.
You're playing a card game. Luck is an inherent part of it, and a good one. Magic shouldn't be determined only by skill, because that's Chess or Checkers, not a card game. A big part of Magic's fun is the interaction between skill and luck. Sure, it may be frustrating to see that answer in your hand and that one land you're missing, or hitting three lands in a row when you really need an answer, but if every draw was relevant, then you'd have linear games : whoever gains a bit of early advantage will win the game, because it would be incredibly difficult to gain back an edge.
The numbers you're pullin gup just don't make sense. One card doesn't make that much of a difference. I've won countless limited games where I mulliganed (I do this quite regularly) and lost as much when my opponent mulliganed. It's a very strategic part of the game that's very interesting and that I'd never want to see go away. I'm a big mulliganner, and I'm also a successful player at my store. You're overestimating the impact of it.
And your definition of mana-screw is too broad. Not hitting your third land isn't fatal. Not hitting it for three turns is. The odds aren't 10%, far from that. That would mean that one game in five is decided by mana-screw. I can guarantee you that limited isn't decided by lands 20%+ of the time.
Yeah... Until next game, where it'll be right back.
Seriously, there's no way to deal with Rancor in any format. It should be banned, except Gleemax is a lobbyist for the Rancor party, so that'll never happen.
You can't ban rancor, it just returns to your deck.
You might want to actually talk to the Flavor & Storyline Board people... since, you know, our whole reason for playing Magic is the flavor. I'm willing to bet you'll get a lot more interest there than in General.
Indeed, both posters down there would be thrilled.
When talks about banning Jace first started, I was thinking that I would see him banned come June 20th. But as I think more about it, I don't really think that Jace is the problem anymore. Sure his power level leaves very little to the imagination (opening Jace is like opening a refrigerator box with a naked girl on the inside), and sure his price does have a strong impact on what players choose to play (playing Jace is like being intimate with a woman and she doesn't charge you in the morning), but it is not the source of all the problems in Standard.
How do people think saving room to print more abilities on cards is dumbing down the game?
Do you really think, say, Akroma would ever be printed if she said, "Akroma can block by creatures with this ability and cannot be blocked by creatures without this ability. If a creature without this ability would deal combat damage by Akroma would be destroyed, prevent all combat damage that creature would deal to Akroma this combat. Attacking does not cause Akroma to tap. If Akroma is blocked and deals lethal damage, it deals the remainder of its damage to the defending player. Akroma may attack and use abilities that require tapping in the casting cost the turn it enters the battlefield. Akroma cannot be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by black or red sources" rather than her "dumbed down" wording she has? No freaking way. Keywording and shorthand allows them to make complicated cards easy to play with, allowing them to be printed in the first place.
1. cast frankie peanuts 2. ask opponent "will you concede the game this turn"? if they say yes, you win; if they say no, play a staying power 3. subsequently ask "will you attack this turn"? and "will you cast a spell this turn"? (using a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir for the second question if necessary) to ensure they can't disrupt the combo 4. donate them a platinum angel 5. play a mox lotus and braingeyser them for every card in their library. play an opalescence and donate them a glorious anthem and a blacker lotus , then play enchanted evening . play and activate a mindslaver and then donate them a fastbond and the mox lotus (returning one of the donates to your hand with eternal witness or whatever) 6. during their turn, play every permanent in their hand (playing lands with fastbond) then (as yourself) cast mirrorweave on the blacker lotus, so every permanent becomes a copy of it. proceed to tear up every card they control, and hopefully do it before they notice that they aren't bound by staying power's ability anymore and can concede
Dark Ritual being overpowered is determined more by what is done with it than the card itself.
True, but the fact that it enables so many ridiculous things is pretty telling. It's like, sure I can use a shotgun as a bludgeoning instrument, but that doesn't make it not a shotgun.
Shortly before Serra died, she transferred her spark into an angel whose full name was Asha Avacyn Bolas. Her dragon father groomed her for her positions in Alara and Innistrad, and she's also been getting help from her uncle Ugin in the form of Urza, who was resurrected as Marit Lage to be the avatar as which she projects herself into material realms. Grieslbrand is a split personality who sometimes wanders the planes disguised as a human woman named Liliana Vess.
Everyone's life would be easier if players would, instead of coming to the 'net for help with a deck, just netdeck and be done with it. And I'm not talking about some Top 8 lists, for the Casualists, too, can benefit from netdecking. I've netdecked plenty of decks from the Casual Play forums from users such as Mown, Raedien, Floopfoot, and a few others. I snatched straight the heck out of my web browser. Yes, people, your original idea fell victim to a savage netdecker. You have been assimiliated.
Suppose I wanted a Zombie deck. Why on earth would I spend time searching Gatherer for a decent list of Zombie cards when Raedien already did it for me? Taking time to be creative or waiting on people on the forums to tell you why your deck sucks or 'go to Casual forums' is a disasterous waste of time (to me).
That being said, Magic was ruined back in Alpha when they added all that rules and cards [Debutantes avert your eyes]. My friends and I still like playing it the "pure" way (Basically we go into the woods and hit eachother with wiffle bats while shouting made up obscenities. You know, the way Garfield wanted it to be played).
Don't worry about it. I've come up with a list of changes to fix EDH.
-First off, there's no commander. -The minimum deck size is 60 cards, and each deck can have up to four of each card, save basic lands and relentless rats. Also decks have no color identity. -Starting life total is 20.
Here's a clever play you can try yourself: -Convince friend to run relentless rats.dec in legacy tournament -Get a deck with lots of mill, yixlid jailer, and humility -Drop humility and jailer, wait for him to dump his hand, mill him out -All his rats now have no abilities. Call a judge because he's playing an illegal deck with more than 4 of a single card. -Get him/her banned from competitive magic play
L, is for the leather gloves you weaaaar. O, is for the organs that guy could spaaaare. V, is very very, extraordinay. E, is for every vagrant i butchered in a wine cellar befooooore.
The outer layer of the Magic: the Gathering box, the carton, or crust, is fairly thin and light, and contains largely aluminosilcates.
Within that lies the middle layer, consisting of the familiar booster pack. Although solid, the booster packs' high temperatures allow them to acutally move around within the booster box. This flow, sometimes called convection, is cited by frustrated box mappers as one of WOTC's most genious uses of thermodynamics since the Ravnica block.
No one knows what lies at the core of the booster box, but scientists theorize that it must be especially dense in order to make up for the large amount of fluff distributed amongst the booster packs.
I imagine [Ajani 3's] second ability involves him hurling the creature at your opponent Brion Stoutarm style, then the guy is just like "Okay, that may have worked, but don't- GOD DAMN IT!" as he does it again because cats don't give a **** :33.
Its like that one time Elves broke out in a field of Jund. Elves became a resurgent hit, then died off again once Jund adapted to the rest of the field of G/W that it required mass removal that inherently pooped on Elves too.
Submit to the menace. Delver can, and will blot out the sun.
"I remember my days as a youth at Tolarian Academy ." "Wow, small multiverse, I actually went there too." "WAIT, DON'T- Well ****, there's $200,000 in student loans well spent."
And flavor goes out the window when you cast a second copy of a planeswalker right after the first one dies, so...
"Hey Nissa, I need a favor." "You just asked me for a 'favor' like thirty seconds ago, and it turned out to be having Sarkhan Transmogrify my only follower into a dragon like 5 times -which dickery aside also violates some laws of causality - and then you let me get beaten over the head by that hedron crab." "...I'll give you " "...Well all right then."
GM, I don't think Dill is better than you. I KNOW it. Even if he wakes up every morning, clubs a baby seal, steals all the TV remotes from within a block's radius of his house and then robs hungry orphans of their food he'd be better than you, for the simple reason that he learns from his mistakes.
What would they have to fight about? Like, all I can think of now is Gideon going "Hey, long-ears! I'm gathering a group of 'Walkers together to fight some tentacle monsters.....you want in?" and Tamiyo going "Ew! Hentai no bakka Gideon-desu desu!" and flying away.
I open 4 packs just to be on the safe side. Not only do I get more cards than everyone else, but I also get to spend the rest of the night off. Win Win.
MaRo has a thing for people opening boosters with bad cards. But since he can only get so many bad cards printed in each set, he has found a devious way of getting more bad cards into circulation: He makes entire print sheets with just bad rares, then puts them onto the assembly line. He proceeds to wring his hands and twirl his evil mustache that he grew for twirling purposes as a lightning bolt strikes in the background. Afterwards, he goes to make sure that the good cards are only opened by everyone's friends, and that we all only get to open bad cards. He does this by memorising each booster, than switching them around accordingly. Whenever someone complains about a card, he immediately jumps out from behind a chair to yell "WELL, IT'S NOT FOR YOU!" before merging back into the shadows in order to devise new ways in which he can screw over players, then claim that he has valid reasons for doing so.
Mark Rosewater is sitting in a seemingly innocuous cable TV van, outside of Bankaimastery's house. Sitting nearby are two hardened criminal hackers, fresh out of prison, and filled with resentment at their lack of physical fitness. "Have you managed to hack his brainwaves yet? The set deadline's coming up fast." "We're almost through. It should be coming up on the screen any second." The hacker presses a button, and Kevin's thoughts flash onto the screen. Mark and the hackers stare in amazement at the sheer beauty, the elegance, and the raw truth of what they see. It's like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brilliant light shines across the screen, the truth of existence is made clear to them, and they despair at their own foolishness, their own ignorance, their own inadequacy. And then they steal his ideas. As they return back to R&D, Mark sneers at a haggard old man chained to a cast-iron sphere. The man looks up from his laborious task of breaking rocks in the dungeon of Wizards of the Coast headquarters, and asks a question: "Kevin, my greatest student. He - he's all right, isn't he? You didn't hurt him?" Mark deals him a weighty blow with his boot. "Know your place, Richard. Get back to work."
I'm only opposed to it because it bears so little relation to how people actually play the game. The example of Miracles is actually a much better one then the Clone example I was trying to use.
From the game's perspective, the card can move instantly from face down in the library to revealed in the hand and that's fine for the rules. But in real life, we can't actually do that, so the card spends a good bit of time in locations that are neither where that player's library is nor where that player's hand is. And that's fine for real life. What I don't want is the disconnect to be explicitly codified. Along the lines of
183664.697 A game of Magic as laid out by these rules exists only as a pure Platonic ideal, utterly unrealizable by fallible mortals limited by the confines of physicality and the ravages of evil and sin.
183664.698 The cake is a lie, too.
I know it's true, but I don't want the rules to actually straight-up tell me that.
Pfft this cant be serious can it? If it is please delete your account OP. Its not even close to ban worthy, considering what JTMS and stoneforge had to accomplish to get banned i see the WotC selling magic to aquire Pokemon before that ever happens.
I'm trying to imagine sorin markov as a gym leader in one of those pokemon games which you have to beat him to get his badge... somehow I imagine that he would stab you in the chest with his sword before giving you the badge, even if you beat his pokemon....
Personally, I'd be fine with tea time but then I'm not gonna waste the mana summoning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn . He always takes all the sugar, drinks the whole pot of Earl Grey and doesn't even say thank you. SO. RUDE.
Break the Card is a regular thread in the Cards and Combo Forum. Quite simply, the participants are given a Johnnystatic card (e.g. Xenograft ) and are asked to build a deck around it. The winner and honorable mentions are sigged below. Get brewing!
This week's Break the Card was based around Xenograft . Thread : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27681049/Break_the_card_:_Xenograft?pg=1
Winner : Axterix with his Vampdrazi deck. Finalist : Vektor480 with his Ally/Golem/Plant deck. Honorable mentions : Zammm for the Turntimber Ranger combo and TinGorilla for suggesting Sarkhan the Mad .
Here's the link to the Mindlock Orb contest : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27697565/Break_the_Card_:_Mindlock_Orb?sdb=1&pg=last#497536269
Here's the link to Break the Card : Bludgeon Brawl : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27715169/Break_the_Card_:_Bludgeon_Brawl?sdb=1&pg=last#498208797
Winner : Vektor and his Grab the World deck. Finalist : Crandor with his Awesome Aliteration deck. Honorable mentions : RP Jesus with his Wat deck and Zix200 with his Signet Renewal deck.
This week was Followed Footsteps : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27748677/Break_the_Card_:_Followed_Footsteps?pg=1
Winner : Tevish_Szat with his Exponential Growth deck. Honorable mentions : Zix with his Carbon Copies deck and Escef with his Fungus of Speed and Time deck.
This week's card was Jace's Archivist : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28063377/Break_the_Card_:_Jaces_Archivist.
Finalists : Jentaru with his "Consecration of the Draw" deck and HereticSmitty with his "ADHD: The deck" deck. Winner : JaxsonBateman with his "The Archives Are Endless!" deck.
: Regenerate.
