Ruling the Land of the Jacket Potato People
by Cameron Veigel
As you are all aware by now, there are going to be some changes to the rules of the game that we all love. In fact, some of us play it not because we love it, but because we lack anything better to do and may as well be a wizard in control of a magical force. I haven’t yet read the rules update, and I haven’t read much of the discussion that’s been on the forums. All I have had is a couple of subjective conversations with magic peeps, and figured it would be best to sit down with a level head and write my thoughts down. Maybe I can restore some peace to the multiverse. I’m sure the rules aren’t that bad, right?
1) Simultaneous Mulligans.
I’m not going to reprint all the wizards’ text here because this article would go forever. I’m assuming you are familiar with it. If not, check out the article here. Now on with it.
In reality, this is only about a 1.5 on the annoyance scale. It does take a lot of time and boredom from the start of some matches, and is only really a psychological disadvantage. I liked to look stone faced across the table at my opponent, obviously squirming with their rubbish hand, not revealing how sick my hand was until they settled on five cards. Ultimately, we will all live with this change, and even in premier events a lot of my opponents didn’t follow it anyway to save time/they didn’t care.
2) Terminology Changes
Hmm…this one is a little more annoying, but doesn’t actually change the game so it’ll all be sweet. It’s dumb that wizards think they need to make the game more flavourful when they have a billion people playing it already, but hey, it literally is their world. Battlefield is a bit…childlike, I think. It’ll take some getting used to, and I’m pretty sure that even when I do I’ll still say things like ‘put this guy into play’ just because it’s so much easier to say.
Cast...Play...Same effect.
The cast v play scenario is logical, but I thought it already made sense (though I can see why people wouldn’t understand) and I don’t think the phage scenario presented is as foolproof as they think. Noobs are still going to think they can do things like that because ultimately they want to, and they will see the words in a way that makes that work. Also, reading it myself, it doesn’t immediately suggest to me anymore than the old wording did that it won’t work, but maybe that’s just me.
Exile is sweet. It does fill the whole ‘that card is no longer in the game. At least until you bring it back with any one of a bazillion cards’ which was getting to be more and more apparent. It’s a little sad that you won’t be able to RFG your fact or fiction with Grim Lavamancer then cunning wish it back, but we all have to lose something I guess. Doesn’t really make the wishes a lot worse considering the formats they are legal in (at least, I don’t think) but subtle genius interactions will suffer here.
The change to the end step situation is genius. No more will I have to explain to my opponent how I am manipulating a loophole to wreck them with Rakdos Guildmage or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, it will be much more present in the cards themselves. It’s a little clunkier in the wording, but optimally it is about everyone being on the same level of understanding, which wasn’t the case before.
3) Mana Pools/Burn
Hmm…I don’t know how I should react to this one. Now it seems there is less need to tap mana correctly. Sometimes it is necessary to tap mana certain way (with filterlands as an example) which will result in excess mana to burn you at the cost of actually playing a certain spell. Now there is no drawback. It kind of makes filterlands better, but I feel mana burn is actually a tool that teaches newer players (now hear me out).
Burn teaches them to pay attention to the game state. Many times my opponents online have played a tower gargoyle, or equivalent, for full cost, and then mana-burned due to their Etherium Sculptor. Now they can just laugh it off. There is no need for them to learn how to focus on all the cards as much, as there is no large penalty for failure. Even moderate level players suffer from this. I have personally stolen a win from a Tron deck that cycled decree of justice at end of turn for whatever they had available, then putting my stifle on the table I explained how they died. This is no longer the case. Now you can just tap all your mana, announce a trigger, and then shrug if your opponent has it. That doesn’t feel like magic to me.
Citadel of Pain? Man I used to love that card! The other dudes that rely on you having your lands tapped are better, sure, but they weren’t and still aren’t going to see play. It’s just a little frustrating because the life total is the biggest resource you have, and learning how you can manipulate it can get you to much higher levels of playing. There aren’t any more toss ups, if it’s beneficial to have your lands tapped, tap them. The article states that 99.9% of games you won’t notice it’s gone. I disagree. In those games, either people aren’t aware of its existence as a tool or people are unwilling to tarnish their life total for possible gain. Not being able to float mana from your upkeep destroyed lotus into your draw step also bugs me. Living life on the edge with mana in your pool makes everything more exciting.
4) Token Ownership
Ouch. It bugs me due to Warp World and Forbidden Orchard, but that deck doesn’t exist in competitive play so I’ll get over it. Most of the time this change isn’t going to negatively affect the game and the impact is so minor that I don’t really care about this change. I will have to update my EDH decks a little though. ?
5) Damage No Longer Uses the Stack
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!??! Combat for dummies, much? The damage stack is a huuuuuuge advantage that good players have over average ones, and while that represents that the rules are confusing for some, that isn’t really the problem. There are always going to be people that look at the rules harder because they want to win more. They should be rewarded, not punished. At any rate, let’s look at this step by step.
Magic players express shock at the changes.
Let me preface this by saying that I agree with the lack of sense this made, and have struggled with this from time to time, shaking my head as my call to heeled creature somehow still destroyed their guy. But I don’t think this game is about sense for me; it’s more like a giant puzzle, with rules and loopholes. Learn the loopholes, master the puzzle.
I can’t decide whether combat will now favour the attacker or the defender, but it certainly seems as though it is a system that will favour someone. Maybe it just favours the guy with the trick. Playing with these rules might show different.
So I attack my 5/5 into a pair of 4/4s. In the old rules, I split the damage and wreck him post combat with Pyroclasm. In the new rules, I’m trading down the curve, straight up. Isn’t that bad? I’m pretty sure playing Pyroclasm precombat won’t make him double block, and if that was my only way to win I can’t be rewarded anymore. In reality, a 6/6 that was going to kill 3 guys still kills those three guys, but the defender now doesn’t necessarily have the chance to save the one he wants with a giant growth after damage is assigned (or the attacker just as much). Now you have to go for it before damage, and if you get wrecked by a trick, you probably lose your whole team, rather than just that guy (who was realistically about to die anyway). No more can our 4/4s stack damage and my pump spell draw a removal spell for my ‘dead’ guy or I win by a pre-damage pump from my equally sized opponent’s guy ruined by Unsummon.
As an example, Knight of the Skyward Eye attacks a player with Grizzly Bears (who built that guys deck?). Bears block. Correct way to play? Put damage on, then (usually) pump to save your knight. The way a lot of people play? Pump before damage, lose their guy to shock (man this guys deck is full of hits) and still not kill that bear. I will now feel like I’m not playing around anything to a degree, and feel like my play is being dumbed down, but they aren’t my rules to make.
Next example. Someone attacks me with a pair of 2/1s. I have Mogg Fanatic. I laugh. Scornfully. I stack damage, take two on the life total resource, and kill both his guys. The attacker learns not to be retarded in future. I learn that I am still awesome. Everybody wins. Now I have to ‘chump block’ a guy that I would normally trade with, and shoot another guy down. That isn’t really a good deal, but realistically Mogg Fanatic has had his time to shine. I don’t even think that’s the worst part. I think its worse that an aggressive red deck can’t aggressively bash in to a 2/2 and force the opponent to make the hard decisions. The best the mogg can do is ‘gain 2 life’ and deal 1 damage. That’s the worst lightning helix ever. Didn’t even kill the guy…
I realize that a lot of the time there isn’t going to be a lot of change to the way combat plays out. Dudes that were going to die still will, and people are still going to play their tricks (a lot of them the same way they always did). The window for wrecking tricks is larger, but probably not large enough to make the game ‘dead’. I will miss the mystery of wondering what my opponent has after I stack damage, or revealing my own explosive play after the same, but we will adapt. I dislike the fact that I can’t save choice creatures, and I think that is the part that suffers the most now. If I want t pump/prevent damage to my key guy, you are going to know about it, and if possible can beat on him harder than you were going to, to make sure he stays down. That’s lame. That’s the bit that bothers me more than anything and probably leans more toward favouring the attacker. I guess instant speed removal is at a premium now. Tricks are the new big thing.
The part I understand the least is that this change seems to have come about due to the lack of sense revolving around creatures leaving play and still dealing damage. If that was the problem, why didn’t they just add the rule that creatures absent from play don’t deal damage? That would create fewer blowouts against tricks, would it not? Sure, Mogg Fanatic still suffers and cards like Nantuko Husk aren’t going to be as sick, but it solves the problem of making sense and still keeps the game relatively the same. Why do I have to tell my opponent where the damage is going before it does? The other bit ‘people expect to be able to save creatures that are actually going to die’ is also pretty illogical, as with damage on, playing a prevention spell does that. If people were trying to play it before damage was stacked then having their guys get hit harder and killed anyway, how is that different to the new system? If anything, it’s worse, because they can’t learn a way in which to save their guys.
Overall this new system, once adapted to, will probably be fine. I just don’t understand their reasoning in relation to these two points. Either I’m missing something, or they are contradictory. Maybe both.
6) Deathtouch
This one I hate, for multiple reasons. Why should a deathtouch creature be allowed to split its damage when a normal creature can’t? If everything is meant to be more flavourful and logical, why is a Kederekt Creeper more intelligent than say Arcanis (clearly a smart dude) or Niv-Mizzet (anyone that draws cards is a genius, right?). It can’t be due to the other creatures striking the creature then succumbing to the taint of its flesh, or the ability would simply destroy all blocking creatures. It just doesn’t seems fair or consistent that a deathtouch guy can do whatever it wants while all other creatures are struck by new rules that deny them the ability to think logically and attack who they want.
I also don’t like that you can’t kill a deathtouch guy then save your guy with call to heel before the trigger resolves. Depending on what deathtouch stands for, this could make sense. If it’s some kind of poisonous strike, then you are saving the creature before it is fully infected. If it’s meant to be a look/touch/stroke can kill type dealio, then how did your third blocker live? I think it made more sense as a trigger, just because it felt more flavourful to me. Your guy strikes down a creeper then suddenly SMACK – there’s something on the stack. His eyes go wide, he knows he is dead as soon as you and the other giant mage say ‘pass’, he’s just hoping you save him before you do.
Not having to regenerate twice is probably better, as it is less clumsy, but I did enjoy beating up regenerators with 1 mana available because they didn’t think too far ahead. As with the rest of these changes, it won’t seem to matter soon enough.
7) Lifelink
This one doesn’t suck, but it does create some situations that I find unfavourable. I, as I’m sure many others have also done, have won games through lifelinking guys due to there not being enough time to gain the life. I liked this interaction. It gave aggressive strategies a leg up, and forced players in certain matchups to play more intelligently. The fact that lifelink also doesn’t stack anymore kind of blows, but cleans up some pretty dumb game situations. Games where each player has multiple instances of lifelink and can never actually die are kind of hilarious the first couple of times, but these days they seem to be happening at every event to the point of annoyance. Now players can just die.
The weirdest part of this is that old pseudo-lifelink cards are going to be triggered lifelink as opposed to the new rules. I understand that the wording is different so the abilities aren’t actually the same, but errata is there to change the wording upon cards to keep them consistent with modern/updated rulings. With this in mind, wouldn’t it be simpler to just make everything that wants to be ‘lifelink’ behave in the same way? Surely newer players are going to find some old cards with lifelink and expect them to behave like modern cards, which they obviously won’t (especially because they won’t necessarily recognize ‘whenever’ as a trigger). I’m sure if they said ‘this is how lifelink will now function on everything’ we would have all got on board. Just seems unnecessary to have two different operations on the same ability.
All in all, I really don’t think this announcement is as bad as a lot of people are saying. There is really only one change that makes a big difference, and I’m prepared to play it out before I condemn it to death and just play EDH with ‘old school rules’. Apart from the parts that I noted dislike toward, I am essentially happily unfazed by the update. Complain about it all you want; I’m going to spend that time finding more ways to wreck you under the new rules.
Cameron Veigel
Got there on rating.
