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Sep 6, 2010 -- 2:02AM, fatguy_poolshark wrote:

Yall both suffer under the confusion that Chase/Staple=utility. it does not.


yes this is a blatant breaking of the "no utility printings" rule. As was mindbreak trap, but at least the way it was done was completely new.

Not sure where you got the idea I thought chase/staple=utilty I never said anything about it. And to be clear as it is now I do not think this is a utlity card. I view a utilty card as something that a wide variety of decks would want to play. This is not such a card as it will need a new deck to support it. Just looking back thru the last few days of standard events and the few extended that fired I saw 0 decks that could even consider running this. My opinion may change as more of the set is spoiled but as it is now I just can't see many decks that would want to use this.

Sep 6, 2010 -- 2:29AM, fatguy_poolshark wrote:

So... your definition of a utility card is a card a lot of decks want to play... isnt that the definition of a staple?

Yes it is but I don't see all staples as utilty cards which you seemed to imply. My mistake if I took it the wrong way. And yes I do see deck viabilty as part of what I think  of makes a utilty card.

We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not  want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what  I'll define as cards that fill a universal function.

There's no promise to the players in there.  The "rule" was never written in stone.  They didn't come to this decision because players asked them to do so and they acquiesced.  They decided to their own reasons, and the decision was made amongst themselves.  This is distinctly different from the Reserve List, which specifically states the following:

Reserved cards will never be printed again in a functionally identical form.

Do you see the difference in language, here?  For the Reserve List, we've got a definite statement.  There's no gray area there.  It's not about desire.  It doesn't say "we don't want to print these cards again".  It says that, regardless of intent or any other factors, it will not happen.

Now look at Rosewater's quote again.  Nowhere in that quote does he say that utility cards will never show up at mythic.  He says there are things they don't want at Mythic.  There's two parts to that.  Firstly that it's simply a desire.  Desires cannot always be fulfilled.  Secondly, it's an opinion of the people who were around making the decision at the time.  That decision was made sometime in early 2008 (the announcements came out in June of 2008, so presumably the decision was made months prior to that).  That's more than two years ago.  The people who decided against utility cards at mythic originally have had two years to change their minds, and there's been two years for those people to leave Wizards and to be replaced by new people - something which happens regularly.

Rosewater never made a promise, and he's not obfuscating his language to avoid having made a promise (or broken one) either.  The promise and the rule are inventions of the community.  You are reading what you want to read, and he shouldn't be held accountable for that.

I said there were two problems.  The second problem is the reason for the "no utility" desire.  People seem to ignore what reasons there may have been for this when it serves their arguments.  Obviously, the reason not to want mythic rares to be universal utility cards is to prevent virtually every tournament player (not to mention competitive casual players) from needing to acquire four copies of mythic rares in order to remain competitive.  I think everyone can agree that this is why utility was initially excluded from R&D's plans for mythic rarity. 

Well, Mox Opal is not a 4-of that most decks are going to need.  First of all, it's got metalcraft.  That means it's only good in a deck with a significant number of artifacts.  This may be an artifact block, but that doesn't for a moment mean that every Standard deck will feature lots of artifacts.  There will be decks that have no particular use for a Mox Opal , and where the opportunity cost of drawing one late will be too great to risk any potential rewards.  Corollary to that, it's legendary.  This means that even the decks that absolutely do want to run it will probably not run four copies. 

So on the one hand, there's no promise to have been broken in the first place.  On the other hand we have a card which does not betray the spirit of the decision even if it betrays the letter of the decision.  A decision which was made years ago and was never intended to be unchangable.