What's with the worth segments starting 5 seconds into hammy still talking? I had to stop listening because of the talking over each other driving me crazy.
"Any changes in set release policy for Legacy sets?
Worth: The next few non-MED sets will be done the same. Master's Edition 3 is still being thought out."
Great. More overpriced cards, because availability is so low. If anything, I thought Stronghold's release would point to their idea being a failure.
If Mox Diamond is selling for $44, just think what would happen if they put Power into MED3 and use the Stronghold-style release. Good god.
"Additional Details:
Urza's sets have been added to the calendar for next year assuming things remain the same, Planechase will likely be held until after Multiplayer is better. There is no secret conspiracy to kill 2 headed giant online."
Well, first off, multiplayer =/= casual. That said, unless Planechase is very heavily skewed towards multiplayer, there shouldn't be a reason to postpone it.
I was looking forward to buying Planechase for 1v1 with some clanmates, but if the Planes are being made with multiplayer in mind, that'll be a huge let down. I don't mind effects such as "Each player does X" or anything, but I hope they don't go crazy with multiplayer-only functions, like the use of the word teammate.
Limited is going to turn back into what it was back around the Mirage days, you play creatures and removal and now you will go back to splashing removal if you won't play it outright. So if you don't open removal/draft removal your chances for winning just plummeted. What a super positive change.
p1p1
Any of the 3 cards you describe are first pick calibre cards, and any is defensible.
The power vs. consistancy argument has been covered in depth before so I won't go
into it here. I think that you have missed an important consideration here though, in
that in ACR drafts the packs are NOT equal. UB is very strong in pack 2, but very weak
in pack 3, whereas rb and gw are relatively weak in pack 2, but stronger in pack 3.
If you pass the Gargoyle and take a common over it it's going to send a very strong
signal that esper is open, and the guy next to you will go into it. This is not a bad
thing. If you get passed a nuts esper deck, you are not obliged to pass the pick on,
and screw the guy next to you over, and warp is not THAT much worse than gargoyle if you
do go esper. However, if you put the guy next to you into ub, it's a bad idea to try to
go base ub because you're going to rely on pack 2 for the majority of your deck. So taking
gargoyle, and passing warp is a leaning towards wu, rather than a ub base.
p1p4
Quietus spike is a very powerful card and almost certainly better than iguanar in AAA or
AAC draft. The format has got quite a lot faster now, so I can see iguanar's value going
up. It's good in the same way that demonspine whip is good, it turns all your random
bears into legitimate game ending threats, and is MUCH less mana intensive. Given you've
seen 3rd pick gargoyle (a suggestion that esper is open), I think you take spike here.
Iguanar is defensible as it allows you to be flexible though.
p1p5
Kiss is very expensive atm. One of the weaknesses of wu decks is that they can be raced
on the ground. Metalurgeon just stops this happening, it's one of the best cards you
can hope to get in an esper deck.
p1p6
This and deft deulist are key cards in wu because they gum the ground whilst you win
in the air.
p1p7
Welkin guide is a powerful tempo card. I'm not sure I would ever want to sb Shore Snapper
in as it's a 3 mana 2/2, with an evasion ability that cost tempo. This pick is just wrong
imho.
p1p8
I like bant battlemage a lot, it has two powerful (especially the blue) abilities, and can
send your big artifact creatures to the air in a race. Dispeller's capsule is a slow and
clunky sb card. I don't think this pick is WRONG in the same way that p1p7 is, but I would
not make it personally.
p1p9
Plowbeast is obviously the pick.
p1p10
If you'd taken plowbeast last pack, this pick would be a lot easier. In later packs you
have the option of sanctum plowbeast to gum the ground, and excommunicate is a very
powerful tempo card in the wu archtype. You have no removal to this point, and, whilst
excommunicate is not removal, it does a fine job at immitating it in a pinch.
p1p12
I don't understand why you don't take platoon here. It's unlikely that you will be playing
a lot of black in your final build and you're never going to be playing vectis silencers.
p1p13
....
p2p1
Atm bolas is a double splash, and you have almost no fixing. I'm not saying you shouldn't
take bolas (although that darklit gargoyle is very very tempting) but understand what you
are getting yourself into.
p2p6
Makes me wonder how late that agony warp went in pack 1.
p2p8
Zombie outlander is criminally undervalued. Your late game options atm amount to 1 nicol
bolas, and you have what, 6 evasion creatures already, with a pack to go. It's between
frontiers and mace here, I personally would take the mace and give up on playing bolas.
p2p9
Wait, you've said that you don't have a lot of artifacts in p2p4, but you take slasher
over unsummon? I don't know what you were thinking her. Unsummon is a great tempo card
even when it doesn't combo with anything. I don't like this pick at all.
p2p11
So, after all that talk of taking fixing in p2p1 you hate draft instead of taking
kaleidostone?
p3p4
No other options? Both page and glory of warfare are great in your deck. I don't dislike
the borderpost pick here, but at least discuss why you don't take it over the powerful
esper card and rare bomb.
p3p5
Talon Trooper is the clear pick here.
p3p6
I wouldn't criticise persecution here.
p3p11
With one plowbeast already, this pick is beyond clear.
Not sure why P1P12 you took an unplayable Kraken's Eye over a sideboard card - Contaminated Bond. Your deck is not very fast and can easily get run over by a white weenie deck packed to the brim with Steadfast Guards and Youthful Knights, Bond can help keep life totals more equal. White/Red or White/Black can get to lethal beatdown very quickly and Contaminated Bond can help you race. White/Black can also use it as psuedo-Falter to do the last few damage.
Hunted Wumpus is pretty good but I'd go for the consistency of Rootwalla. The way your deck ended up Wumpus is better but that is unusual.
Also agree with the Sift over anything else in P1P3 except maybe Rod of Ruin.
I don't know why you picked the Vampire Bats over Treetop Bracers, it's the only good way Green has to push damage through in a stalemate and is a combo with your later pick Phage which is questionable without a lot of removal or evasion.
Awwwww yeah! Swinging with fatties and pump. You're probably onto something with shroud in the current environment.
The last deck I made was an equipment deck. I only played it for one night because the "Timmy moment" has since passed. I had 3 Berserks and 8 pieces of equipment for a total of 12 pump cards. In about half my games I was flooded by support cards without enough creatures to employ them. I noticed your lists have 13 and 10 "pump" cards. That never happened to you? But then again, all of my creatures were small and generally non-evasive. I was playing creatures like Nacatl with Taiga + Savannah. None of my creatures were finishers like Uril. That's gotta be where I went wrong.
First, I hate the rules changes. I like about half of them, but I hate the loss of mana burn and the new combat steps. And I really hate the new deathtouch. Naturally I'm focusing on the negative things.
That said, I don't get fuming mad over it either. I don't post anywhere else on the Internet except here in these comment fields. But I'd guess that the people you're calling paid shills are people like me: people who care, but who also don't get worked up over it. MTGO players are also wayyyyyyyyyyy more Spikey than any other group of Magic players.
I disagree that the MTGO thread is the "sanest, most comprehensive, and most well though out thread of the bunch". When the game is being raped by rules changes that make no sense the sane thing to do is speak up about it. The MTGO boards in general are populated by paid shills or folks that behave no differently from paid shills. "Thank you WoTC, may I have another?"
Hunted wumpus is not one of the most sketchy cards in tenth if you actually play it right. Running it out on turn 4 is idiotic, but if you wait until your opponent has 1 or 2 cards in hand to play it, it will most likely do its job.
Anonymous .... Hunted Wumpus is the most sketchy card in 10th as the format is all bombs and it is easily dealt while allowing for a creature to be put into play for free. In reality this isn't the greatest comment without backup as this creature is one of the worst in 10th.
That's a good scenario with the Baloth. It was always a pretty sick play. Personally it'll drop the value of some cards and raise others, but I like the change.
Been further deckchanges since posting ^^ Figure of destiny and Ajani primarily. Mana reflection might find a home too. So many options to explore. Maybe should have written more about them but I wanted to get it out there :)
Some of his picks are questionable yes, but second pick hunted wumpus is not one of them. That card is insane. Good Job getting second in the event, keep it up.
This guy wrote a whole book on mtg strategy, and is far more levelheaded than most (direct correlation to being better at the game). I'm with him on this one.
there was certainly a time when rush was favored in constructed, it oscillated for a long time, I believe even making type 2 affinity decks, in the mirror in block it was amazing as your dorks could trade with their dorks and rush won you the attrition war, certainly there was a longer period where affinity was played without it especially when it hit extended, but rush was a specter to be afraid of for a long long time as it is now in pauper constructed.
Blocking 5 attackers with 3 avatars of hope isn't really much more complicated than it is now (which is to say fairly complicated for people who aren't rules experts). The attacker orders the 3 Avatars for each attacker:
123 123 123 123 123
Which avatar plays 1 2 or 3 in each of the triplets in the above example is up to the attacker, but most likely he would order them in whichever way kills the most of them, assuming he has enough attacking power to kill one of them in the first place. Or maybe he has a 3/3 with deathtouch and you're getting boned.
Because the new deathtouch looks anything but simple, and deathtouch+trample is certainly not intuitive. What, deathtouch damage is lethal, so you can assign it to multiple creatures, but isn't lethal, so you can't assign it to the player? How does that make sense?
I can't understand what was complex about combat damage going on the stack, either. Heck, when I came back to the game around 8th Ed, it took me 10 minutes to go from "horrendous knowledge of pre-6th edition rules" to "functional knowledge of post-6th edition rules". Then it took me a week or two hanging around the rules forums and reading Rune Horvik's Saturday School to become a rules guru. There are lots of rules but they are essentially pretty well streamlined and easy to grasp, once you got the basics. Really, all you need to know to play Magic is a) the turn order, b) understanding the principle of the stack, c) know the state-based effects and d) RTFC. Attacking and blocking is much more intuitive when you choose how to spread the damage around, I think, than when you have to line up the dudes and play bowling, and I dread to think of situations where you have multiple blockers that are each double-blocking multiple creatures. Oh yeah, that's going to be real intuitive.
Are the basics going to be easier? Possibly. I'm not really sold on the matter, but it is possible that some idiots somewhere do have IMMENSE trouble grasping the concept of combat damage going on the stack, and that is somehow preventing wider-spread adoption of MTG. Maybe. Frankly, to me it seems as though there are actually more steps, not less - you just take out a "weird" step that fits in with the rest of the rules, and then replace it with a "weird" step that doesn't fit in with the rest of the rule.
But the corner cases are not getting simpler - and in fact I feel pretty confident in saying that they are getting much, much worse. The way deathtouch works now is messy, and as aforementionned, messier with trample. It doesn't make any sense. Creatures that can block multiple creatures are going to create huge memory issues and I don't think we know yet whether the blocking player will need to "line up" the attackers. If you block two hill giants with an avatar of hope, do you need to declare an order, then deal lethal damage to one before you can kill the other? Have they even thought about this? I can't wait to block 5 attackers with 3 avatars of hope in a paper game. Juuuuuudge!
The more I thought about the "balance" issues of the changes, the less concerned I was about them. Each color loses a little but gains a little - green loses the most, but it still has the best creatures, and as tricks get worse having the best dudes is going to matter a lot more, I think. We might also end up with way fewer instant speed removal, or more circumstancial removal, to make combat tricks matter again. The "lost opportunities" will also be replaced - we lose some decisions, but we also gain some more. Deciding blocking order might end up being more interesting than the system we currently have. Really, these concerns have been ebbing in my mind since the beginning of the announcement and now I'm pretty sure I don't mind them much.
What does scare me, however, is that they haven't put enough thought into their system. The fiasco with "deathtouch+trample" in the [O] thread certainly points to this - why do they always seem to have "old memos" lying around and then using those as official answers? That excuse gets pretty damn old and frankly, you'd think they would have been better prepared for the ensuing drama because IT WAS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO HAPPEN. I mean, people threw a shitstorm over the card face change, and that was frankly nothing compared to this rules change. Why didn't they have people knowledgeable about the new rules and corner cases handy? Is it because those people don't exist? Is it because they hadn't thought of those corner cases?
What it looks like is that they're taking a system that works and makes sense within the framework of the game, one that people have been playing with and know, and then replacing it with a system that doesn't make sense and is going to create a lot of bizarre interactions with dozens of obscure cards that nobody has thought of yet. NOBODY will know how the rules work intricately, people will ask questions in drove and who will be able to answer?
It seems whenever I think of an ability that changes the way combat work ever so slightly, it completely fucks up the new system. How much thought have they put into it? Have they even thought about it at all? And why the fuck have they spent the last two years making a bunch of cards nobody gives a shit about work "as intended" as per pre-6th rules, and now they're going to make a truck load of cards not work "as intended" and they're not going to care.
All of this, it seems, for no net gain. Some mythical players that might be convinced to join the game... NOW THAT NOBODY CAN EXPLAIN IT TO THEM?
These changes make combat much simpler. I reacted poorly at first, but after seeing how it plays out a bit, its really very intuitive. The MTGdaily article really made it sound a bit more complicated that it really is. And as others have pointed out, although there is strategy depth lost. There is new depth in other areas.
I think giftsungiven.com does the best job of explaining how it will be more simple.
Just to be clear, I'm not happy with the changes themselves. I think they're removing a powerful feature of the game at the expense of simplicity.
I am however, happy (in a way, it's complicated) that the changes are forcing myself and others to rediscover the game and find out what is good and what isn't good all over again. It's a rediscovery that is kind of fun, despite it being under forced and rather surprising circumstances.
But I will say two things about these changes:
1) The rules are simplified. Both for using and explaining.
2) There will be cards made with these new changes in mind.
I'm surprised so many people are happy with these changes but I'm certainly not going to quit. Shards block was the most fun in limited I've had since odyssey, probably unearth deja vu, and m10 looks good so far.
What's with the worth segments starting 5 seconds into hammy still talking? I had to stop listening because of the talking over each other driving me crazy.
"Any changes in set release policy for Legacy sets?
Worth: The next few non-MED sets will be done the same. Master's Edition 3 is still being thought out."
Great. More overpriced cards, because availability is so low. If anything, I thought Stronghold's release would point to their idea being a failure.
If Mox Diamond is selling for $44, just think what would happen if they put Power into MED3 and use the Stronghold-style release. Good god.
"Additional Details:
Urza's sets have been added to the calendar for next year assuming things remain the same, Planechase will likely be held until after Multiplayer is better. There is no secret conspiracy to kill 2 headed giant online."
Well, first off, multiplayer =/= casual. That said, unless Planechase is very heavily skewed towards multiplayer, there shouldn't be a reason to postpone it.
I was looking forward to buying Planechase for 1v1 with some clanmates, but if the Planes are being made with multiplayer in mind, that'll be a huge let down. I don't mind effects such as "Each player does X" or anything, but I hope they don't go crazy with multiplayer-only functions, like the use of the word teammate.
Limited is going to turn back into what it was back around the Mirage days, you play creatures and removal and now you will go back to splashing removal if you won't play it outright. So if you don't open removal/draft removal your chances for winning just plummeted. What a super positive change.
ok, some comments
p1p1
Any of the 3 cards you describe are first pick calibre cards, and any is defensible.
The power vs. consistancy argument has been covered in depth before so I won't go
into it here. I think that you have missed an important consideration here though, in
that in ACR drafts the packs are NOT equal. UB is very strong in pack 2, but very weak
in pack 3, whereas rb and gw are relatively weak in pack 2, but stronger in pack 3.
If you pass the Gargoyle and take a common over it it's going to send a very strong
signal that esper is open, and the guy next to you will go into it. This is not a bad
thing. If you get passed a nuts esper deck, you are not obliged to pass the pick on,
and screw the guy next to you over, and warp is not THAT much worse than gargoyle if you
do go esper. However, if you put the guy next to you into ub, it's a bad idea to try to
go base ub because you're going to rely on pack 2 for the majority of your deck. So taking
gargoyle, and passing warp is a leaning towards wu, rather than a ub base.
p1p4
Quietus spike is a very powerful card and almost certainly better than iguanar in AAA or
AAC draft. The format has got quite a lot faster now, so I can see iguanar's value going
up. It's good in the same way that demonspine whip is good, it turns all your random
bears into legitimate game ending threats, and is MUCH less mana intensive. Given you've
seen 3rd pick gargoyle (a suggestion that esper is open), I think you take spike here.
Iguanar is defensible as it allows you to be flexible though.
p1p5
Kiss is very expensive atm. One of the weaknesses of wu decks is that they can be raced
on the ground. Metalurgeon just stops this happening, it's one of the best cards you
can hope to get in an esper deck.
p1p6
This and deft deulist are key cards in wu because they gum the ground whilst you win
in the air.
p1p7
Welkin guide is a powerful tempo card. I'm not sure I would ever want to sb Shore Snapper
in as it's a 3 mana 2/2, with an evasion ability that cost tempo. This pick is just wrong
imho.
p1p8
I like bant battlemage a lot, it has two powerful (especially the blue) abilities, and can
send your big artifact creatures to the air in a race. Dispeller's capsule is a slow and
clunky sb card. I don't think this pick is WRONG in the same way that p1p7 is, but I would
not make it personally.
p1p9
Plowbeast is obviously the pick.
p1p10
If you'd taken plowbeast last pack, this pick would be a lot easier. In later packs you
have the option of sanctum plowbeast to gum the ground, and excommunicate is a very
powerful tempo card in the wu archtype. You have no removal to this point, and, whilst
excommunicate is not removal, it does a fine job at immitating it in a pinch.
p1p12
I don't understand why you don't take platoon here. It's unlikely that you will be playing
a lot of black in your final build and you're never going to be playing vectis silencers.
p1p13
....
p2p1
Atm bolas is a double splash, and you have almost no fixing. I'm not saying you shouldn't
take bolas (although that darklit gargoyle is very very tempting) but understand what you
are getting yourself into.
p2p6
Makes me wonder how late that agony warp went in pack 1.
p2p8
Zombie outlander is criminally undervalued. Your late game options atm amount to 1 nicol
bolas, and you have what, 6 evasion creatures already, with a pack to go. It's between
frontiers and mace here, I personally would take the mace and give up on playing bolas.
p2p9
Wait, you've said that you don't have a lot of artifacts in p2p4, but you take slasher
over unsummon? I don't know what you were thinking her. Unsummon is a great tempo card
even when it doesn't combo with anything. I don't like this pick at all.
p2p11
So, after all that talk of taking fixing in p2p1 you hate draft instead of taking
kaleidostone?
p3p4
No other options? Both page and glory of warfare are great in your deck. I don't dislike
the borderpost pick here, but at least discuss why you don't take it over the powerful
esper card and rare bomb.
p3p5
Talon Trooper is the clear pick here.
p3p6
I wouldn't criticise persecution here.
p3p11
With one plowbeast already, this pick is beyond clear.
Not sure why P1P12 you took an unplayable Kraken's Eye over a sideboard card - Contaminated Bond. Your deck is not very fast and can easily get run over by a white weenie deck packed to the brim with Steadfast Guards and Youthful Knights, Bond can help keep life totals more equal. White/Red or White/Black can get to lethal beatdown very quickly and Contaminated Bond can help you race. White/Black can also use it as psuedo-Falter to do the last few damage.
Hunted Wumpus is pretty good but I'd go for the consistency of Rootwalla. The way your deck ended up Wumpus is better but that is unusual.
Also agree with the Sift over anything else in P1P3 except maybe Rod of Ruin.
I don't know why you picked the Vampire Bats over Treetop Bracers, it's the only good way Green has to push damage through in a stalemate and is a combo with your later pick Phage which is questionable without a lot of removal or evasion.
Awwwww yeah! Swinging with fatties and pump. You're probably onto something with shroud in the current environment.
The last deck I made was an equipment deck. I only played it for one night because the "Timmy moment" has since passed. I had 3 Berserks and 8 pieces of equipment for a total of 12 pump cards. In about half my games I was flooded by support cards without enough creatures to employ them. I noticed your lists have 13 and 10 "pump" cards. That never happened to you? But then again, all of my creatures were small and generally non-evasive. I was playing creatures like Nacatl with Taiga + Savannah. None of my creatures were finishers like Uril. That's gotta be where I went wrong.
really though, i wonder what will become the new mogg or the new gg....
is now sorcery growth way better then instant? they usually weighted it better for sorcery as far as mana cc, hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
First, I hate the rules changes. I like about half of them, but I hate the loss of mana burn and the new combat steps. And I really hate the new deathtouch. Naturally I'm focusing on the negative things.
That said, I don't get fuming mad over it either. I don't post anywhere else on the Internet except here in these comment fields. But I'd guess that the people you're calling paid shills are people like me: people who care, but who also don't get worked up over it. MTGO players are also wayyyyyyyyyyy more Spikey than any other group of Magic players.
I disagree that the MTGO thread is the "sanest, most comprehensive, and most well though out thread of the bunch". When the game is being raped by rules changes that make no sense the sane thing to do is speak up about it. The MTGO boards in general are populated by paid shills or folks that behave no differently from paid shills. "Thank you WoTC, may I have another?"
Hunted wumpus is not one of the most sketchy cards in tenth if you actually play it right. Running it out on turn 4 is idiotic, but if you wait until your opponent has 1 or 2 cards in hand to play it, it will most likely do its job.
Anonymous .... Hunted Wumpus is the most sketchy card in 10th as the format is all bombs and it is easily dealt while allowing for a creature to be put into play for free. In reality this isn't the greatest comment without backup as this creature is one of the worst in 10th.
That's a good scenario with the Baloth. It was always a pretty sick play. Personally it'll drop the value of some cards and raise others, but I like the change.
Been further deckchanges since posting ^^ Figure of destiny and Ajani primarily. Mana reflection might find a home too. So many options to explore. Maybe should have written more about them but I wanted to get it out there :)
Some of his picks are questionable yes, but second pick hunted wumpus is not one of them. That card is insane. Good Job getting second in the event, keep it up.
This guy wrote a whole book on mtg strategy, and is far more levelheaded than most (direct correlation to being better at the game). I'm with him on this one.
there was certainly a time when rush was favored in constructed, it oscillated for a long time, I believe even making type 2 affinity decks, in the mirror in block it was amazing as your dorks could trade with their dorks and rush won you the attrition war, certainly there was a longer period where affinity was played without it especially when it hit extended, but rush was a specter to be afraid of for a long long time as it is now in pauper constructed.
Blocking 5 attackers with 3 avatars of hope isn't really much more complicated than it is now (which is to say fairly complicated for people who aren't rules experts). The attacker orders the 3 Avatars for each attacker:
123 123 123 123 123
Which avatar plays 1 2 or 3 in each of the triplets in the above example is up to the attacker, but most likely he would order them in whichever way kills the most of them, assuming he has enough attacking power to kill one of them in the first place. Or maybe he has a 3/3 with deathtouch and you're getting boned.
Point is, put a sock in it.
Because the new deathtouch looks anything but simple, and deathtouch+trample is certainly not intuitive. What, deathtouch damage is lethal, so you can assign it to multiple creatures, but isn't lethal, so you can't assign it to the player? How does that make sense?
I can't understand what was complex about combat damage going on the stack, either. Heck, when I came back to the game around 8th Ed, it took me 10 minutes to go from "horrendous knowledge of pre-6th edition rules" to "functional knowledge of post-6th edition rules". Then it took me a week or two hanging around the rules forums and reading Rune Horvik's Saturday School to become a rules guru. There are lots of rules but they are essentially pretty well streamlined and easy to grasp, once you got the basics. Really, all you need to know to play Magic is a) the turn order, b) understanding the principle of the stack, c) know the state-based effects and d) RTFC. Attacking and blocking is much more intuitive when you choose how to spread the damage around, I think, than when you have to line up the dudes and play bowling, and I dread to think of situations where you have multiple blockers that are each double-blocking multiple creatures. Oh yeah, that's going to be real intuitive.
Are the basics going to be easier? Possibly. I'm not really sold on the matter, but it is possible that some idiots somewhere do have IMMENSE trouble grasping the concept of combat damage going on the stack, and that is somehow preventing wider-spread adoption of MTG. Maybe. Frankly, to me it seems as though there are actually more steps, not less - you just take out a "weird" step that fits in with the rest of the rules, and then replace it with a "weird" step that doesn't fit in with the rest of the rule.
But the corner cases are not getting simpler - and in fact I feel pretty confident in saying that they are getting much, much worse. The way deathtouch works now is messy, and as aforementionned, messier with trample. It doesn't make any sense. Creatures that can block multiple creatures are going to create huge memory issues and I don't think we know yet whether the blocking player will need to "line up" the attackers. If you block two hill giants with an avatar of hope, do you need to declare an order, then deal lethal damage to one before you can kill the other? Have they even thought about this? I can't wait to block 5 attackers with 3 avatars of hope in a paper game. Juuuuuudge!
The more I thought about the "balance" issues of the changes, the less concerned I was about them. Each color loses a little but gains a little - green loses the most, but it still has the best creatures, and as tricks get worse having the best dudes is going to matter a lot more, I think. We might also end up with way fewer instant speed removal, or more circumstancial removal, to make combat tricks matter again. The "lost opportunities" will also be replaced - we lose some decisions, but we also gain some more. Deciding blocking order might end up being more interesting than the system we currently have. Really, these concerns have been ebbing in my mind since the beginning of the announcement and now I'm pretty sure I don't mind them much.
What does scare me, however, is that they haven't put enough thought into their system. The fiasco with "deathtouch+trample" in the [O] thread certainly points to this - why do they always seem to have "old memos" lying around and then using those as official answers? That excuse gets pretty damn old and frankly, you'd think they would have been better prepared for the ensuing drama because IT WAS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO HAPPEN. I mean, people threw a shitstorm over the card face change, and that was frankly nothing compared to this rules change. Why didn't they have people knowledgeable about the new rules and corner cases handy? Is it because those people don't exist? Is it because they hadn't thought of those corner cases?
What it looks like is that they're taking a system that works and makes sense within the framework of the game, one that people have been playing with and know, and then replacing it with a system that doesn't make sense and is going to create a lot of bizarre interactions with dozens of obscure cards that nobody has thought of yet. NOBODY will know how the rules work intricately, people will ask questions in drove and who will be able to answer?
It seems whenever I think of an ability that changes the way combat work ever so slightly, it completely fucks up the new system. How much thought have they put into it? Have they even thought about it at all? And why the fuck have they spent the last two years making a bunch of cards nobody gives a shit about work "as intended" as per pre-6th rules, and now they're going to make a truck load of cards not work "as intended" and they're not going to care.
All of this, it seems, for no net gain. Some mythical players that might be convinced to join the game... NOW THAT NOBODY CAN EXPLAIN IT TO THEM?
Yeah that's fucking fantastic.
These changes make combat much simpler. I reacted poorly at first, but after seeing how it plays out a bit, its really very intuitive. The MTGdaily article really made it sound a bit more complicated that it really is. And as others have pointed out, although there is strategy depth lost. There is new depth in other areas.
I think giftsungiven.com does the best job of explaining how it will be more simple.
Some of the picks are questionable but overall the article is easy to read and understand. Can't wait for the next bandwagon!
Wow.
And here I expected more wailing and gnashing of teeth... interesting comment by him, for sure.
Pat Chapin has an analysis of the rules changes at the following link over at the Starcity forums.
http://forums.starcitygames.com/viewtopic.php?t=318185
Nice recap, thanks for the decklists. Enjoy the surf, if you are not home already.
:)
Just to be clear, I'm not happy with the changes themselves. I think they're removing a powerful feature of the game at the expense of simplicity.
I am however, happy (in a way, it's complicated) that the changes are forcing myself and others to rediscover the game and find out what is good and what isn't good all over again. It's a rediscovery that is kind of fun, despite it being under forced and rather surprising circumstances.
But I will say two things about these changes:
1) The rules are simplified. Both for using and explaining.
2) There will be cards made with these new changes in mind.
I'm surprised so many people are happy with these changes but I'm certainly not going to quit. Shards block was the most fun in limited I've had since odyssey, probably unearth deja vu, and m10 looks good so far.