When they changed the rules in 6th, interaction we take for granted now were just being discovered like the at end of turn phrase on cards.
for Example Waylay was a pretty innocent instant for 2W that put 3 2/2 first strikers into play and then bury them at eot. This was intended to be purely blocking but with the new rules you could cast waylay in your opponents eot step and the trigger on waylay would not check till your eot step. This effectivly gave you a white ball lightning, and took std by storm for the 2-3 week window it was allowed to run rampant.
As this talk about the vote makes me wonder if it's better to have judges decide. It's too late for this contest (unfair to change the rules after the contest). In the future would it be better have a panel of judges? Even if people don't cheat the vote, they still have clans, friends, etc. The more active and social person could win, not based on merit but based on they know lots of people. From the look of the votes, there isn't a large enough amount of voters to say that a person with an 80 person clan couldn't really sway the votes.
Part of me says people voting is great, we decide our next pop stars, why not decide our MTGO stars? But in a small community where one person cheating, running a "vote for me" campaign, has access to a strong social network, or any number of ways to snag the popular vote, why not let judges decide?
I ran a film fest a while back. I thought it would be fun for the audience to decide the winners. The filmmakers that brought the most people with them won the contest. The next year I invited a bunch local celebrities (actors, the screenwriting teacher, etc.) to be the judges and the winners were more deserving.
This is going to date me, but anyone remember 6th edition? No? Well, there was a big change in the rules back then too. There use to be spells called interrupts, and spells called instants. Interrupts were 'faster' than instants. Counterspell was an interrupt, Lightning Bolt was an instant. Also, tapped blockers did not deal damage in combat (what the heck?!?!), hello Icy Manipulator! With the introduction of 6th edition, they consolidated the timing of spells into what we now call 'the stack'. No more interrupts, every 'fast' spell became an instant. And tapped blockers? Now they deal damage.
These were big changes. The biggest changes to the rules in the history of Magic at the time. There was probably some whining about how much simpler 'the stack' made magic, and some minor grumbling about dumbing down of combat, but all in all the changes made Magic a better game, and you didn't have to be an expert on some strange rules to work out how a game played out.
Here again, if mana burn is going to be on the way out, then the people who 'lose' are the ones who are the most technically proficient at the game, the ones that are good at tapping mana and announcing spells. Is that what we want the difference in a match to come down to? I don't think so. Everyone outside of the best mana tappers will have a better time and enjoy their games more. Stumbling over the rules is the biggest hurdle a new player can face. Anything that makes the game more accessible, while not altering the core dynamics of the game, will only help to grow and maintain the player base.
for Kaleidoscope - Mirrorweave, and after sideboarding Curse of Chains
Admittedly, UG has few options for pure creature removal. That's not a reason to play weak creature removal. It's a reason to play to UG's strengths, attacking with huge creatures that often can't be targeted by your opponents. I'd rather play some combination of Lorescale Coatl, Plaxcaster Frogling, Trygon Predator, and Snakeform for 3 drops and then use Mirrorweave to win combat matches rather than to play with Flying Coatl to play a defensive game with offensive colors.
If you're going to limit yourself to two colors in Kaleidoscope, you should play to the color's strengths rather than try to mitigate it's weaknesses.
for Pauper - Temporal Spring, it's never a dead card
they make all of these drastic changes to the game... but i still can't see what i type when i draft, it's been like that for about 10 years. if they are so focused on changing keywords for no reason, maybe they should use a little more focus on magic online. i mean they waste time putting out an xbox game that will FLOP (its the same thing as magic, you are just restricted to the cards they give you) when they should have paid that company to make magic online an actual useful program. i mean someone was saying wow to the fact that there were like 3 or 4 thousand players on magic online at once (someone wrote an article about it a few weeks ago). That is god awful. this game has always been way bigger than asheron's call (at least the paper version of magic), and i remember that game back in the day would have 8 servers with that many people playing on them. that was a 3d mmorpg and it wasnt even 10% as glitchy as magic online. magic doesn't even have graphics for god's sake. and oh yea, fix it so i can submit my deck twice. actually no wait, just invent keywords like battlefield and get rid of mana burn instead. real awesome choices.
Here's the most relevant point I think to the discussion surrounding the power of Gush in Pauper, quoted from SpikeyBoyM's first reply,
" the power level of Pauper is relatively flat, so drawing more of the same is not as swingy as, say, drawing a Cryptic Command."
I fully endorse this comment, but what does it mean? It means there is not a huge difference in the abstract power level of one card compared to another. For this reason, the best decks in the format all have strong synergies between the cards in the deck, and that is where the power of any particular deck comes from. Mono black is good because of the cards in the deck, but more importantly how they all fit together. They use black mana and swamps to produce powerful effects (think Crypt Rats, Tendrils and Corrupt). That's why you won't find Corrupt in an Affinity deck and also why you won't find Myr Enforcer in a mono black deck. The synergies are just not there.
Now, what does this tell us about Gush and Wild Mongrel? There are synergies there, but they pale in comparison to the rest of the format. Wild Mongrel is a good man in a supporting role, but the rest of the cast is missing, and so U/G is underpowered compared to the top decks of Pauper.
I've been running 4 coatl and 4 snakeform in my first attempt at a pauper deck, and whenever I draw the coatl I wish I either another threat or snakeform instead. I know this is pauper UG and not kaleidescope, but I have to agree there are better cards out there.
The lotus land could make the game an instant win with banefire or even help martial coup to even greater effect. Combine it with countryside crusher and/or knight of the reliquary to good effect.
With regards to Mike Long's list:
So Gush and Mongrel are there together...but so is Winter Orb. Gush there helps by allowing you to "untap" multiple lands per turn. Also, the deck has the aforementioned Dryad to grow from Gush and Waterfront Bouncer, a great way to deal with the board position of another player and use the returned lands from Gush. I know you've acknowledged this, but I feel it should be reiterated.
As for the Vintage Article, Doug Linn tried it on a lark and posted a 3-2 record with one Gush (and was targeting a very specific metagame). And just because a card can randomly win games does not mean it is good. In the most recent PE, Vithian Stinger randomly won me a match but looking back having it was the wrong call.
My biggest issue, when it gets right down to it, is that you are seeking to exploit Gush and you settled on Mongrel, which is fine. However, this barely exploits Gush and in fact is just a nice interaction.
You mention only two decks for matchups, providing very little instruction about how to play them (Against Affinity, do this...against TE, do that) and make no mention of four top decks: Cloak, Storm, MBC, Slivers. You are standing by Gush as a broken card when in fact, it is simply not good in the format currently.
I am sorry that I misremembered the discussion about Deep Dog and Gush- the took place on my testing e-mail list.
Gush is a fine card, and yes, with Mongrel, does some great things, but those things are simply not good enough in competitive Pauper. In a format where the top aggro deck can kill on turn three and combo can win as early as turn two, waiting until at least turn 3 to swing for seven damage on one creature seems sub par.
#9 is an excellent deck idea but I personally think that it needs some fine tuning. Such as:
1- You don't have to have all the big and scary monsters in the deck. Some of them, which you only have one of, could have been played in multiple copies. For example Angel of Despair. For example Maelstrom Archangel. And to add more of them, I would remove some other monsters such as Malfegor and/or Nicol Bolas.
2- You should have some form of Mass Removal. Why not consider Child of Alara? It comes into play with Impromptu Raid and then goes to the graveyard at the end of turn. As well as everything else on the board. Yours is a form of combo deck (or call it semi-combo if you like) and every such deck needs a reset button. I can't think of a better one than Child of Alara for this deck.
3- Cheating monsters into play is nice but why stop there? Why not cheat to keep them in play? Why not play Turn to Mist? Or Mistmeadow Witch? I haven't tried this but I think that these tricks should work (rules-wise (but maybe they don't work, so try first)). And they work like a charm with "comes into play" creatures... such as Angel of Despair!
4- You could then fill the rest of the deck with cards that can protect yourself. Trial/Error and Teferi's Moat are the first cards that come to my mind.
5- You should also have some form of control over your deck. What will be the top creature card of your deck when you activate Impromtu Raid? How about Congragation at Dawn? You can't find room to add four copies of it to the deck but surely one or two the most, wouldn't hurt.
As I said yours is a great deck idea and I have to say that the more I think about it the more I like it. However it needs some tuning.
I'm sorry, but gush and daze are far from broken in pauper and I find it hilarious when noobs choose to run them thinking that just b/c they are expensive that they must be awesome...
I partially agree with you and maybe you're right. Time will tell. It won't drastically change the game to the extent the stacking rules changed the game, nor would it have the same effect of removing summoning sickness. That was an exaggeration on my part. But comparing it to the stacking rules is a similar exaggeration.
Stacking drastically changed the game as well as drastically simplifying an overly complicated combat phase. It was a much needed change that made the game better. But how does removing mana burn simplify the game?
I know it's a difficult concept to grasp (the differences between land, mana, the manapool, and manaburn), but it is relavent to the game. There should be some set back for tapping a land that produces 2 mana and only using one of them. Saying that the mana just dissappears from your manapool when you don't use it makes the concept harder to grasp IMO.
How many times have you tried to teach somebody Magic and they struggle so hard with the land concept? I've always explained to players that land is like a store you own that produces you money. Mana is the money. And the manapool is like your imaginary wallet. Maybe it could be simplified if you just had one phase where you burn instead of burning at the end of each phase but mana just "going away" would be hard to explain to a noob. I can see it now, players trying to use their mana three turns after they should've burned.
But who knows. Wizards has all the control and time will tell.
This may be off base but I haven't heard anyone else speculate yet so I'll chime in... While my knee-jerk reaction to the new "phrases" for M10 isn't positive, I can't help but wonder if the changes are setting up some significant changes to Magic down the road.
I think the "Play" vs "Cast" is a good example. My first thought after reading the preview "SILENCE" was "what other ways are there to play spells then?". I quickly realized that Cycling was one way now and that wizards may be inventing new ways in the future that are similar to being resurrected/persisted from the graveyard, suspended/exiled spells, cascaded spells, storm spells. What if Cascade is the tip of the iceberg and soon multiple spells will be chained off one another with the first spell being the only "casted" spell?
"Battlefield" may also be setting up a variety of alternate "game zones". What if you could attack through the graveyard? Or if planeswalkers don't exist on the "battlefield" but would be damaged/destroyed in the new zone?
I just think people should consider the possibilities beyond the impact to the flavor of the game as it exists today.
Finally I disagree with the removal of Mana Burn as there have been many challenging moments where that 1 or two points of burn have made the difference. I've actually be stuck at 1 life with a Pila-Pila enchanted with the Power of Fire aura and not be able to machine gun my land due to the mana burn. It's not fun but it's a challenging part of the game you have to consider.
HOWEVER, considering the subject of my post, what if the excess mana can be stored for future turns to help power out bigger spells? I never thought a 7 casting cost spell with 3 different colors would ever be useful but look at Cruel Ultimatum! Who knows what the future sets will bring and what fundamental changes may be coming in the next 5-10 years.
There is no doubt that getting rid of mana burn will change the game. I'm not sure that it will be for the worse.
The 6th edition rules drastically changed how combat damage and the stack operated, and I think that change turned out pretty well. Sure, some cards played differently after the 6th edition rules and people grumbled and complained about that, but things are a lot easier to understand now. I don't really see too much of a difference between that situation and the mana burn situation.
I totally agree with this guy. Mana burn is crucial and to be honest, I really think this is just a rumor. Surely Wizards knows how important mana-burn is. That's like taking away summoning sickness to make the game faster.
Surprisingly Gush + Mongrel is even good enough in T1 -- where Doug Linn, JP Meyer, and Co. used it to win in a fully powered metagame with props to Wild Mongrel for "randomly winning games".
Again I'm not suggesting that Gush + Wild Mongrel is as good as Gush + Tog or Gush + Orb, but it doesn't have to be.
Also a look through the thread you linked from PDC shows discussion of legality of Gush/Daze and a few mentions of Gush/Daze in MUC but I once again find nothing with regard to U/G.
At first, I was skeptical of the new name changes. After reading your reply though, I started thinking about it different and I totally agree. Most adults are into fantasy and role-playing... most kids are. If Wizards tries to rope in adults to learn their game and spend their check on cards, Magic will die. Now talking a kid into spending his/her allowance on something like Magic... totally different. If different words appeal to a new crowd, who cares?!? It's still the same game. Let Wizards do their maketing thing. I'm sure they pay people good money that really know about marketing (and hopefully have knowledge of the game) to come up with these ideas.
My one bone though is that I feel like they have too many key-words these days. I mean, it's dandy on the core set but I think they should put certain restraints on certain key-word mechanics. As hard as it is for a veteran of Magic to imagine, most people would need to carry around a pocket-dictionary to memorize all of Wizard's key-words.
And what ever happened to the little books they put in starters? Those were a great idea. Even if they don't want to put them in all starters, they need to have a little more literacy aimed at newer players than just the fold-up paper they give you. I mean, who wants to pull out a freakin road map every time you get confused about tapping? It's inconvinient and embarassing for the newer players. Nobody wants a giant target on them shouting "HEY! I'm a new guy!"
I would hardly consider instant errata a good thing. I'm going to cringe every time I see a Phyrexian Dreadnought that reads "When Phyrexian Dreadnought enters the battlefield..." or a Swords to Plowshares that reads "Exile target creature...". Paper players get the option to simply ignore the changes while online players have them forced down their throat.
I've been playing since sixth edition and never been one to think the sky is falling but I think mana burn is crucial. If you played md5 you know that mana burn can actually win you the game
I can see where some people think that the names are 'bad' or juvenile or what have you. But really, this game is still a game that is targeted to the 13+ market, grabbing a new generation of young players is probably a good thing in the long run.
I think that Magic has matured over the years, along with a lot of its player base. However, a lot of its playerbase started at the young age that WotC is now once again targeting with these changes.
After reading a lot of the feedback on the official mtg.com forums, it seems like a lot of today's players started playing young. But now we need new young players, and we need to grab them with things they think make sense or that they can wrap their heads around.
All in all, the changes are aimed at bringing in fresh, young players. Something that benefits all of us for a good long while.
Just a different perspective for those who feel that youth-ifying the game is a bad thing. It's actually a way to keep the game alive and growing for the future. I expect that it will go through a similar maturity cycle over the next 10 years again.
Thanks for the kind words whiffy! We are still trying to find the right balance between 'too much commentary' and 'just enough commentary'. :) I think we're getting closer to the sweet spot each week.
Also, thanks for the details on the Planeswalkers in Classic. They are a solid card type when the game doesn't end on turn 2 (I'm looking at YOU Necro decks). I expect that we'll see some of them sneak back in after the necro decks are hobbled again.
It's too bad that this turned out to be a 'how many people can i ask to vote for me', because i really liked the idea of this contest. I'm happy my deck, #9, made it into the voting and hope people pick it up and play with it a little bit, it's a lot of fun. I personally am not going to be telling anyone to go and vote for my deck, since i feel like that's against the spirit of the contest.
White Lightning for the win!.
When they changed the rules in 6th, interaction we take for granted now were just being discovered like the at end of turn phrase on cards.
for Example Waylay was a pretty innocent instant for 2W that put 3 2/2 first strikers into play and then bury them at eot. This was intended to be purely blocking but with the new rules you could cast waylay in your opponents eot step and the trigger on waylay would not check till your eot step. This effectivly gave you a white ball lightning, and took std by storm for the 2-3 week window it was allowed to run rampant.
As this talk about the vote makes me wonder if it's better to have judges decide. It's too late for this contest (unfair to change the rules after the contest). In the future would it be better have a panel of judges? Even if people don't cheat the vote, they still have clans, friends, etc. The more active and social person could win, not based on merit but based on they know lots of people. From the look of the votes, there isn't a large enough amount of voters to say that a person with an 80 person clan couldn't really sway the votes.
Part of me says people voting is great, we decide our next pop stars, why not decide our MTGO stars? But in a small community where one person cheating, running a "vote for me" campaign, has access to a strong social network, or any number of ways to snag the popular vote, why not let judges decide?
I ran a film fest a while back. I thought it would be fun for the audience to decide the winners. The filmmakers that brought the most people with them won the contest. The next year I invited a bunch local celebrities (actors, the screenwriting teacher, etc.) to be the judges and the winners were more deserving.
I'm curious to see what other people think.
This is going to date me, but anyone remember 6th edition? No? Well, there was a big change in the rules back then too. There use to be spells called interrupts, and spells called instants. Interrupts were 'faster' than instants. Counterspell was an interrupt, Lightning Bolt was an instant. Also, tapped blockers did not deal damage in combat (what the heck?!?!), hello Icy Manipulator! With the introduction of 6th edition, they consolidated the timing of spells into what we now call 'the stack'. No more interrupts, every 'fast' spell became an instant. And tapped blockers? Now they deal damage.
These were big changes. The biggest changes to the rules in the history of Magic at the time. There was probably some whining about how much simpler 'the stack' made magic, and some minor grumbling about dumbing down of combat, but all in all the changes made Magic a better game, and you didn't have to be an expert on some strange rules to work out how a game played out.
Here again, if mana burn is going to be on the way out, then the people who 'lose' are the ones who are the most technically proficient at the game, the ones that are good at tapping mana and announcing spells. Is that what we want the difference in a match to come down to? I don't think so. Everyone outside of the best mana tappers will have a better time and enjoy their games more. Stumbling over the rules is the biggest hurdle a new player can face. Anything that makes the game more accessible, while not altering the core dynamics of the game, will only help to grow and maintain the player base.
Matt
my point is that they would make more money if modo was a reliable program than they will ever make releasing a game on xbox.
for Kaleidoscope - Mirrorweave, and after sideboarding Curse of Chains
Admittedly, UG has few options for pure creature removal. That's not a reason to play weak creature removal. It's a reason to play to UG's strengths, attacking with huge creatures that often can't be targeted by your opponents. I'd rather play some combination of Lorescale Coatl, Plaxcaster Frogling, Trygon Predator, and Snakeform for 3 drops and then use Mirrorweave to win combat matches rather than to play with Flying Coatl to play a defensive game with offensive colors.
If you're going to limit yourself to two colors in Kaleidoscope, you should play to the color's strengths rather than try to mitigate it's weaknesses.
for Pauper - Temporal Spring, it's never a dead card
they make all of these drastic changes to the game... but i still can't see what i type when i draft, it's been like that for about 10 years. if they are so focused on changing keywords for no reason, maybe they should use a little more focus on magic online. i mean they waste time putting out an xbox game that will FLOP (its the same thing as magic, you are just restricted to the cards they give you) when they should have paid that company to make magic online an actual useful program. i mean someone was saying wow to the fact that there were like 3 or 4 thousand players on magic online at once (someone wrote an article about it a few weeks ago). That is god awful. this game has always been way bigger than asheron's call (at least the paper version of magic), and i remember that game back in the day would have 8 servers with that many people playing on them. that was a 3d mmorpg and it wasnt even 10% as glitchy as magic online. magic doesn't even have graphics for god's sake. and oh yea, fix it so i can submit my deck twice. actually no wait, just invent keywords like battlefield and get rid of mana burn instead. real awesome choices.
Here's the most relevant point I think to the discussion surrounding the power of Gush in Pauper, quoted from SpikeyBoyM's first reply,
" the power level of Pauper is relatively flat, so drawing more of the same is not as swingy as, say, drawing a Cryptic Command."
I fully endorse this comment, but what does it mean? It means there is not a huge difference in the abstract power level of one card compared to another. For this reason, the best decks in the format all have strong synergies between the cards in the deck, and that is where the power of any particular deck comes from. Mono black is good because of the cards in the deck, but more importantly how they all fit together. They use black mana and swamps to produce powerful effects (think Crypt Rats, Tendrils and Corrupt). That's why you won't find Corrupt in an Affinity deck and also why you won't find Myr Enforcer in a mono black deck. The synergies are just not there.
Now, what does this tell us about Gush and Wild Mongrel? There are synergies there, but they pale in comparison to the rest of the format. Wild Mongrel is a good man in a supporting role, but the rest of the cast is missing, and so U/G is underpowered compared to the top decks of Pauper.
Name one for Kaleidoscope-UG please.
LE
I've been running 4 coatl and 4 snakeform in my first attempt at a pauper deck, and whenever I draw the coatl I wish I either another threat or snakeform instead. I know this is pauper UG and not kaleidescope, but I have to agree there are better cards out there.
The lotus land could make the game an instant win with banefire or even help martial coup to even greater effect. Combine it with countryside crusher and/or knight of the reliquary to good effect.
It has 3 congregation at dawns in it =P
With regards to Mike Long's list:
So Gush and Mongrel are there together...but so is Winter Orb. Gush there helps by allowing you to "untap" multiple lands per turn. Also, the deck has the aforementioned Dryad to grow from Gush and Waterfront Bouncer, a great way to deal with the board position of another player and use the returned lands from Gush. I know you've acknowledged this, but I feel it should be reiterated.
As for the Vintage Article, Doug Linn tried it on a lark and posted a 3-2 record with one Gush (and was targeting a very specific metagame). And just because a card can randomly win games does not mean it is good. In the most recent PE, Vithian Stinger randomly won me a match but looking back having it was the wrong call.
My biggest issue, when it gets right down to it, is that you are seeking to exploit Gush and you settled on Mongrel, which is fine. However, this barely exploits Gush and in fact is just a nice interaction.
You mention only two decks for matchups, providing very little instruction about how to play them (Against Affinity, do this...against TE, do that) and make no mention of four top decks: Cloak, Storm, MBC, Slivers. You are standing by Gush as a broken card when in fact, it is simply not good in the format currently.
I am sorry that I misremembered the discussion about Deep Dog and Gush- the took place on my testing e-mail list.
Gush is a fine card, and yes, with Mongrel, does some great things, but those things are simply not good enough in competitive Pauper. In a format where the top aggro deck can kill on turn three and combo can win as early as turn two, waiting until at least turn 3 to swing for seven damage on one creature seems sub par.
-Alex
#9 is an excellent deck idea but I personally think that it needs some fine tuning. Such as:
1- You don't have to have all the big and scary monsters in the deck. Some of them, which you only have one of, could have been played in multiple copies. For example Angel of Despair. For example Maelstrom Archangel. And to add more of them, I would remove some other monsters such as Malfegor and/or Nicol Bolas.
2- You should have some form of Mass Removal. Why not consider Child of Alara? It comes into play with Impromptu Raid and then goes to the graveyard at the end of turn. As well as everything else on the board. Yours is a form of combo deck (or call it semi-combo if you like) and every such deck needs a reset button. I can't think of a better one than Child of Alara for this deck.
3- Cheating monsters into play is nice but why stop there? Why not cheat to keep them in play? Why not play Turn to Mist? Or Mistmeadow Witch? I haven't tried this but I think that these tricks should work (rules-wise (but maybe they don't work, so try first)). And they work like a charm with "comes into play" creatures... such as Angel of Despair!
4- You could then fill the rest of the deck with cards that can protect yourself. Trial/Error and Teferi's Moat are the first cards that come to my mind.
5- You should also have some form of control over your deck. What will be the top creature card of your deck when you activate Impromtu Raid? How about Congragation at Dawn? You can't find room to add four copies of it to the deck but surely one or two the most, wouldn't hurt.
As I said yours is a great deck idea and I have to say that the more I think about it the more I like it. However it needs some tuning.
Just some thoughts.
LE
I'm sorry, but gush and daze are far from broken in pauper and I find it hilarious when noobs choose to run them thinking that just b/c they are expensive that they must be awesome...
I partially agree with you and maybe you're right. Time will tell. It won't drastically change the game to the extent the stacking rules changed the game, nor would it have the same effect of removing summoning sickness. That was an exaggeration on my part. But comparing it to the stacking rules is a similar exaggeration.
Stacking drastically changed the game as well as drastically simplifying an overly complicated combat phase. It was a much needed change that made the game better. But how does removing mana burn simplify the game?
I know it's a difficult concept to grasp (the differences between land, mana, the manapool, and manaburn), but it is relavent to the game. There should be some set back for tapping a land that produces 2 mana and only using one of them. Saying that the mana just dissappears from your manapool when you don't use it makes the concept harder to grasp IMO.
How many times have you tried to teach somebody Magic and they struggle so hard with the land concept? I've always explained to players that land is like a store you own that produces you money. Mana is the money. And the manapool is like your imaginary wallet. Maybe it could be simplified if you just had one phase where you burn instead of burning at the end of each phase but mana just "going away" would be hard to explain to a noob. I can see it now, players trying to use their mana three turns after they should've burned.
But who knows. Wizards has all the control and time will tell.
This may be off base but I haven't heard anyone else speculate yet so I'll chime in... While my knee-jerk reaction to the new "phrases" for M10 isn't positive, I can't help but wonder if the changes are setting up some significant changes to Magic down the road.
I think the "Play" vs "Cast" is a good example. My first thought after reading the preview "SILENCE" was "what other ways are there to play spells then?". I quickly realized that Cycling was one way now and that wizards may be inventing new ways in the future that are similar to being resurrected/persisted from the graveyard, suspended/exiled spells, cascaded spells, storm spells. What if Cascade is the tip of the iceberg and soon multiple spells will be chained off one another with the first spell being the only "casted" spell?
"Battlefield" may also be setting up a variety of alternate "game zones". What if you could attack through the graveyard? Or if planeswalkers don't exist on the "battlefield" but would be damaged/destroyed in the new zone?
I just think people should consider the possibilities beyond the impact to the flavor of the game as it exists today.
Finally I disagree with the removal of Mana Burn as there have been many challenging moments where that 1 or two points of burn have made the difference. I've actually be stuck at 1 life with a Pila-Pila enchanted with the Power of Fire aura and not be able to machine gun my land due to the mana burn. It's not fun but it's a challenging part of the game you have to consider.
HOWEVER, considering the subject of my post, what if the excess mana can be stored for future turns to help power out bigger spells? I never thought a 7 casting cost spell with 3 different colors would ever be useful but look at Cruel Ultimatum! Who knows what the future sets will bring and what fundamental changes may be coming in the next 5-10 years.
There is no doubt that getting rid of mana burn will change the game. I'm not sure that it will be for the worse.
The 6th edition rules drastically changed how combat damage and the stack operated, and I think that change turned out pretty well. Sure, some cards played differently after the 6th edition rules and people grumbled and complained about that, but things are a lot easier to understand now. I don't really see too much of a difference between that situation and the mana burn situation.
I totally agree with this guy. Mana burn is crucial and to be honest, I really think this is just a rumor. Surely Wizards knows how important mana-burn is. That's like taking away summoning sickness to make the game faster.
See GP Sendai, for example Mike Long:
http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=GPSEN01\550t8decks
Surprisingly Gush + Mongrel is even good enough in T1 -- where Doug Linn, JP Meyer, and Co. used it to win in a fully powered metagame with props to Wild Mongrel for "randomly winning games".
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/7090_Why_I_Will_Never_Trust_J...
Again I'm not suggesting that Gush + Wild Mongrel is as good as Gush + Tog or Gush + Orb, but it doesn't have to be.
Also a look through the thread you linked from PDC shows discussion of legality of Gush/Daze and a few mentions of Gush/Daze in MUC but I once again find nothing with regard to U/G.
At first, I was skeptical of the new name changes. After reading your reply though, I started thinking about it different and I totally agree. Most adults are into fantasy and role-playing... most kids are. If Wizards tries to rope in adults to learn their game and spend their check on cards, Magic will die. Now talking a kid into spending his/her allowance on something like Magic... totally different. If different words appeal to a new crowd, who cares?!? It's still the same game. Let Wizards do their maketing thing. I'm sure they pay people good money that really know about marketing (and hopefully have knowledge of the game) to come up with these ideas.
My one bone though is that I feel like they have too many key-words these days. I mean, it's dandy on the core set but I think they should put certain restraints on certain key-word mechanics. As hard as it is for a veteran of Magic to imagine, most people would need to carry around a pocket-dictionary to memorize all of Wizard's key-words.
And what ever happened to the little books they put in starters? Those were a great idea. Even if they don't want to put them in all starters, they need to have a little more literacy aimed at newer players than just the fold-up paper they give you. I mean, who wants to pull out a freakin road map every time you get confused about tapping? It's inconvinient and embarassing for the newer players. Nobody wants a giant target on them shouting "HEY! I'm a new guy!"
I would hardly consider instant errata a good thing. I'm going to cringe every time I see a Phyrexian Dreadnought that reads "When Phyrexian Dreadnought enters the battlefield..." or a Swords to Plowshares that reads "Exile target creature...". Paper players get the option to simply ignore the changes while online players have them forced down their throat.
I've been playing since sixth edition and never been one to think the sky is falling but I think mana burn is crucial. If you played md5 you know that mana burn can actually win you the game
I can see where some people think that the names are 'bad' or juvenile or what have you. But really, this game is still a game that is targeted to the 13+ market, grabbing a new generation of young players is probably a good thing in the long run.
I think that Magic has matured over the years, along with a lot of its player base. However, a lot of its playerbase started at the young age that WotC is now once again targeting with these changes.
After reading a lot of the feedback on the official mtg.com forums, it seems like a lot of today's players started playing young. But now we need new young players, and we need to grab them with things they think make sense or that they can wrap their heads around.
All in all, the changes are aimed at bringing in fresh, young players. Something that benefits all of us for a good long while.
Just a different perspective for those who feel that youth-ifying the game is a bad thing. It's actually a way to keep the game alive and growing for the future. I expect that it will go through a similar maturity cycle over the next 10 years again.
Thanks for the kind words whiffy! We are still trying to find the right balance between 'too much commentary' and 'just enough commentary'. :) I think we're getting closer to the sweet spot each week.
Also, thanks for the details on the Planeswalkers in Classic. They are a solid card type when the game doesn't end on turn 2 (I'm looking at YOU Necro decks). I expect that we'll see some of them sneak back in after the necro decks are hobbled again.
It's too bad that this turned out to be a 'how many people can i ask to vote for me', because i really liked the idea of this contest. I'm happy my deck, #9, made it into the voting and hope people pick it up and play with it a little bit, it's a lot of fun. I personally am not going to be telling anyone to go and vote for my deck, since i feel like that's against the spirit of the contest.