If cloning is the root cause of this problem in EDH, why not change the rule so that each player can control only one of any legend or PW? It maintains the flavor in some respects, makes the games less swingy, prevents EDH mirrors from devolving into state-based legendary death wars, and stops an opponent's clone from killing your guys with state-based rules.
If clones in general are the problem, WotC could just Errata clones to say they keep their original name AND take on the name of the copied card for all checks except state-based effects, OR they don't copy the Legendary super-type...so that way they won't legend rule eachother out.
Think about it from a flavor perspective. Cards are a player's memories of the multiverse. Player A summons Avacyn. Player A can't summon another Avacyn because player A knows there is only one Avacyn in the multiverse. If player A clones Avacyn, there will be two Avacyns - an original and a clone - rather than the clone and the original magically disappearing for no reason. If Player B clones your Avacyn, you will still have your original Avacyn, and he will have a creature that is effectively Avacyn, but you know its just a clone. Then Player B plays his own Avacyn, as he knows her from his memories of the multiverse. He can't play another copy of Avacyn, because he knows he's already summoned the one from his multiverse. There are now FOUR Avacyns on the table, and not a single intuitive flavor violation has occurred.
How does summoning a creature/legendary/walker actually work from a flavor perspective?
I can't imagine that you are physically plucking that creature or planeswalker from their home doing whatever they were doing and jamming it onto the battlefield. For example, Avacyn and Griselbrand are doing battle. Player A summons Avacyn on a far away plane in the heat of battle. Is Griselbrand then left to just plunder and wreak havoc on Innistrad unopposed while Avacyn is off being invincible for Player A?! Can JTMS be summoned while on the toilet and appear on the battlefield horrified and confused with his pants around his ankles? The interpretation of spells and creatures as a player's knowledge or memories makes much more sense when you consider that the characters you're summoning have their own 'lives' so to speak.
2. Mulligans
I like the current rule as is, but if I had to change it, I'd do 7-6-5-(5)-3-2-1. Mulling to 4 cards is usually a mistake, so this slight change, will give you an extra chance at an acceptable hand if the previous few aren't keepable while still punishing you if your deck construction is bad or if you're purposefully gaming the system.
3. CMC
Its a long phrase - converted mana cost - but the only way to shorten it would be to effectively 'keyword' it. Total Cost might work, as many have suggested. Equivalent Cost might work too. But its probably a crapshoot anyways; saving a handful of letter-spaces per replacement on a card won't be very useful unless the phrase 'CMC' is repeated 4-5 times on a card with a relatively long rules text.
1) 'Legendary' (the super-type) is not a copyable attribute. Current Legend Rule stays.
2) 7-7-6-6-5-5-4-4 etc sounds good.
3) 'equal to its mixed cost?'
On Maro's blog, fringe issues with Magic are brought up, and Maro states he's willing to read possible solutions. This thread is for discussing solutions to these issues.
Please DO NOT use this thread to post "Magic should do X, Y and Z". Thank You.
Today, Maro noted some issues he's taking ideas on:
1) Legendary Rule; how to make it better, without functional errata. This is mainly relevant to EDH players.
2) Mulligan Rule; how to improve it. Must be suitable for competitive play.
3) Shorten the magic lingo of "converted mana cost", must remain intuitive for new players.
Feel free to bring up other issues Maro has raised that he wants solved.
I'll chime in.
1> Legendary rule, regarding EDH: I think the rule is as good as it is going to be. One of the suggestions of making commanderness uncopiable so everyone could have a copy, well, player A might want to copy their own commander....I think it would require too much errata.
2> Mulligan rule: All of the suggestions thus far benefit more aggressive (shaky) mana bases. And has also stated benefits that person looking for more "bombocombo" hands. I get it, we have all lost to mana screw/flood. However, we have also all won because our opponent was mana screwed/flooded.
You could have different styles of mulligans.
For example: Player doesn't like their hand, so they have to mulligan. They choose mulligan 1, or mulligan 2.
Mulligan 1 rules are the existing mulligan rules.
Mulligan 2 rules are, keep 3 cards, set aside 4 cards, and draw 3 cards. Then shuffle the set aside cards and the remainder of your library. You get 1 shot at it, and you get to only keep 3 cards, and the next 3 cards.
With the 2 different mulligan types, it allows someone who has pretty much drawn a garbage hand to do the normal mulligan. And it allows the person who drew "something" to keep at least those "somethings" in hand.
Shrug. Colours have weaknesses. I'm tired of entitled blue players expecting to be the exception. So what if they can't answer problem generals? Any deck not running blue can't answer instants or sorceries, period. Having less ways to get rid of hexproof stuff seems like a high class problem by comparison, especially since Wizards seems to have wised up and stopped printing hexproof on everything under the sun.
Except of you are playing white, or black or red, (mana tith, Dashed hopes, Molten influence) so what your saying is GREEN can't answer universal instants? thats your problem?
Shrug. Colours have weaknesses. I'm tired of entitled blue players expecting to be the exception. So what if they can't answer problem generals? Any deck not running blue can't answer instants or sorceries, period. Having less ways to get rid of hexproof stuff seems like a high class problem by comparison, especially since Wizards seems to have wised up and stopped printing hexproof on everything under the sun.
The issue with people relying on clones to deal with problem generals is that they also always have the answer to non-problem generals. In games with lots of clone effects running around, commanders are simply not a factor. That's a bigger problem, IMO, than Spike building an obnoxious Sigarda deck.
Colors do have weaknesses. One of blues weaknesses is that it's horrific at being aggressive and proactive. It has better answers than other colors because it needs them to do it's thing. How many aggressive blue decks/creatures have ever existed? Delver and merfolk, and both also have to play answers.
blue's weakness is needing to have answers and often to have them at the right time (ie countermagic). Without that ability blue is very bad.
From what MaRo has written in the past, I think his problem with the Legend rule isn't the EDH stuff, it's more that (1)drawing dead cards is bad and (2)he wants "special and significant" characters in the multiverse to have a mechanic that can be attractive, not one that's all downside
1) Legendary Rule; how to make it better, without functional errata. This is mainly relevant to EDH players.
How I tend to play is if two people have the same general, you treat them as having different names. Any player casting a clone or non-general copy of the card specifies which player's general they are copying, then apply legendary rule as before.
That said, I kinda like the idea of making "legendary" a non-copyable attribute (there is precedence in that "basic" is non-copyable). It never really sat well with me that clone == legendary kill spell.
2) Mulligan Rule; how to improve it. Must be suitable for competitive play.
I think it would be a very worthwhile experiment to try a draw poker style mulligan, where you have the option to replace any number of cards in your hand with new draws.
Though, what to do with the rejected cards is tricky. You can't just discard them because the graveyard is a resource. Shuffling them back in would mean that people have to shuffle/present TWICE every game. Putting them on the bottom of your library might be feasible, but it does reduce the randomness of it, something some decks might be able to exploit.
3) Shorten the magic lingo of "converted mana cost", must remain intuitive for new players.
I've never really understood why it's not just called "mana cost". The context is pretty much always clear when the game wants a single number.
706.2. When copying an object, the copy acquires the copiable values of the original object’s characteristics and, for an object on the stack, choices made when casting or activating it (mode, targets, the value of X, whether it was kicked, how it will affect multiple targets, and so on). The "copiable values" are the values derived from the text printed on the object (that text being name, mana cost, color indicator, card type, subtype, supertype, expansion symbol, rules text, power, toughness, and/or loyalty), as modified by other copy effects, by “as . . . enters the battlefield” and "as . . . is turned face up" abilities that set characteristics, and by abilities that caused the object to be face down. Other effects (including type-changing and text-changing effects), status, and counters are not copied.
Yeah, remove supertype from that list and all your "legend rule" problems will be over. So what if you wouldn't be able to make copies of Snow permanents, I feel that the pros outway the cons.
I've never really understood why it's not just called "mana cost". The context is pretty much always clear when the game wants a single number.
Because lots of cards care about the mana cost of a card INCLUDING color. I don't WANT you to be able to Snapcast a Cryptic Command off of a Mind Stone and a Mana Vault
I think the CMC thing is easiest... just use "cost" in any context which is referring to a number.
Fling deals damage equal to its cost. Well, it cost GG3. Can Fling deal GG3 damage? Clearly not, so it deals 5 damage.
Draw cards equal to its cost. Can you draw GG3 cards? No. Draw 5 cards.
Put +1/+1 counters equal to its cost. Can you put GG3 counters? No. Put 5 +1/+1 counters.
For mulligans, I think the real problem is that the way that mulligans affect a format like Legacy vs the way they affect a format like draft are SOOOOO very different. I think the best solution would just be to split them. In constructed, keep things as is. In limited, give everyone a free mulligan to 7. Maybe encourages the 16 land deck over the 17 land deck, but that's a world away from the kind of abuse that you could do in Legacy with more lenient mulligans, and mana screw hits limited much harder than constructed, in general. For all casual formats, let the players decide themselves.
Another possibility no one has mentioned is to have both the old-style mulligans (all/no land) AND paris mulligans, although that does seem to be a boon for decks like belcher that run basically no lands.
Mulligans take time and by making Mulligans less oppressive it will mean more wait times.
Here's my suggestion as it will help smooth draws and cut down on mulligan time:
After drawing your cards you may exile X cards from your hand to draw X-1 cards.
1) Legendary Rule; how to make it better, without functional errata. This is mainly relevant to EDH players.
2) Mulligan Rule; how to improve it. Must be suitable for competitive play.
3) Shorten the magic lingo of "converted mana cost", must remain intuitive for new players.
Feel free to bring up other issues Maro has raised that he wants solved.
1. Legendary Rule: Multiple copies of the same Commander can be in play (and can be Cloned, etc.) without the copies going away, but the Commanders and all copies lose all abilities while there is more than one in play.
2. Mulligan: It is fine. Build better decks. Mulling at the same number multiple times will be a bookkeeping nightmare, and will cause MAJOR cheating.
what is the problem with the legendary rule? to me, is perfectly good now
Maro had an article detailing it.
1) It creates dead draws (when a legend is already in play)
2) It encourages people to run legends as removal (as evidenced by jitte and a couple of other tournament-level legends)
Two other issues, but those are the ones that stuck on my mind.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Mulligan rule should be 7-6-6-5-4-... It would make the opening hand less luck based, and prevent games where you lose because you had to mulligan to 4 etc.
yeah this seems good. my playgroup does this for drafts at the moment anyway, so we don't have as many games ruined by land flood/screw
as far as the legend rule goes, i think having the legendary flavor outweighs the downside of the legend rule
Maro had an article detailing it.
1) It creates dead draws (when a legend is already in play)
2) It encourages people to run legends as removal (as evidenced by jitte and a couple of other tournament-level legends)
Two other issues, but those are the ones that stuck on my mind.
That's strange. In that case, wouldn't planeswalkers have the exact same problems but worse?
I kind've like the ideas that the legend rule works pretty much the same way, but that clones can't kill legends. Then again it would make Sakashima and Lazav a lot less special...
I wouldn't worry about any issues with the legendary rule and Commander. Wizards isn't in charge of the format, and the people that are can change the rules if they feel like it, can't they?
As for the dead draw problem, just add a rule to the type such as "If CARDNAME is in play, you may exile CARDNAME from your hand and draw a card." Sort of like a more permanent cycling.
If that's your opinion about Magic, you probably shouldn't post in this thread, since that's not the topic and there already are a lot of threads for the likes of you to complain in.
Why is "things are fine as is" not considered a valid position? People who validate the M10 changes point to Magic's current success as evidence that the changes were right. Can others not point to Magic's current success as evidence that more change is wrong?
Is there never a point where too much change is wrong?
"A rich man thinks all other people are rich, and an intelligent man thinks all other people are similarly gifted. Both are always terribly shocked when they discover the truth of the world. You, my dear brother, are a pious man." - Strahd von Zarovich
As for the dead draw problem, just add a rule to the type such as "If CARDNAME is in play, you may exile CARDNAME from your hand and draw a card." Sort of like a more permanent cycling.
Except that does not solve the problem of people running copies of Legendaries as removal.
Has the following 'fix' to the legend rule been considered? Instead of "two legends with the same name die", it could be "two legends with the same name controlled by the SAME player die". This fixes the clone issue but stays true to the basic principal of you summoning legendary stuff only once. If it has been thought about, what's the flaws with this idea?
Maintain the legend rule as it is. Its worked fine for over a decade.
You can't really use "total mana" or anything other than converted mana cost, because of the different colours involved. Converted mana is not that difficult a concept for beginners, don't worry about it.
If cloning is the root cause of this problem in EDH, why not change the rule so that each player can control only one of any legend or PW? It maintains the flavor in some respects, makes the games less swingy, prevents EDH mirrors from devolving into state-based legendary death wars, and stops an opponent's clone from killing your guys with state-based rules.
If clones in general are the problem, WotC could just Errata clones to say they keep their original name AND take on the name of the copied card for all checks except state-based effects, OR they don't copy the Legendary super-type...so that way they won't legend rule eachother out.
Think about it from a flavor perspective. Cards are a player's memories of the multiverse. Player A summons Avacyn. Player A can't summon another Avacyn because player A knows there is only one Avacyn in the multiverse. If player A clones Avacyn, there will be two Avacyns - an original and a clone - rather than the clone and the original magically disappearing for no reason. If Player B clones your Avacyn, you will still have your original Avacyn, and he will have a creature that is effectively Avacyn, but you know its just a clone. Then Player B plays his own Avacyn, as he knows her from his memories of the multiverse. He can't play another copy of Avacyn, because he knows he's already summoned the one from his multiverse. There are now FOUR Avacyns on the table, and not a single intuitive flavor violation has occurred.
I can't imagine that you are physically plucking that creature or planeswalker from their home doing whatever they were doing and jamming it onto the battlefield. For example, Avacyn and Griselbrand are doing battle. Player A summons Avacyn on a far away plane in the heat of battle. Is Griselbrand then left to just plunder and wreak havoc on Innistrad unopposed while Avacyn is off being invincible for Player A?! Can JTMS be summoned while on the toilet and appear on the battlefield horrified and confused with his pants around his ankles? The interpretation of spells and creatures as a player's knowledge or memories makes much more sense when you consider that the characters you're summoning have their own 'lives' so to speak.
2. Mulligans
I like the current rule as is, but if I had to change it, I'd do 7-6-5-(5)-3-2-1. Mulling to 4 cards is usually a mistake, so this slight change, will give you an extra chance at an acceptable hand if the previous few aren't keepable while still punishing you if your deck construction is bad or if you're purposefully gaming the system.
3. CMC
Its a long phrase - converted mana cost - but the only way to shorten it would be to effectively 'keyword' it. Total Cost might work, as many have suggested. Equivalent Cost might work too. But its probably a crapshoot anyways; saving a handful of letter-spaces per replacement on a card won't be very useful unless the phrase 'CMC' is repeated 4-5 times on a card with a relatively long rules text.
Speculate less. Test more.
So far I like;
1) 'Legendary' (the super-type) is not a copyable attribute. Current Legend Rule stays.
2) 7-7-6-6-5-5-4-4 etc sounds good.
3) 'equal to its mixed cost?'
I'll chime in.
1> Legendary rule, regarding EDH: I think the rule is as good as it is going to be. One of the suggestions of making commanderness uncopiable so everyone could have a copy, well, player A might want to copy their own commander....I think it would require too much errata.
2> Mulligan rule: All of the suggestions thus far benefit more aggressive (shaky) mana bases. And has also stated benefits that person looking for more "bombocombo" hands. I get it, we have all lost to mana screw/flood. However, we have also all won because our opponent was mana screwed/flooded.
You could have different styles of mulligans.
For example: Player doesn't like their hand, so they have to mulligan. They choose mulligan 1, or mulligan 2.
Mulligan 1 rules are the existing mulligan rules.
Mulligan 2 rules are, keep 3 cards, set aside 4 cards, and draw 3 cards. Then shuffle the set aside cards and the remainder of your library. You get 1 shot at it, and you get to only keep 3 cards, and the next 3 cards.
With the 2 different mulligan types, it allows someone who has pretty much drawn a garbage hand to do the normal mulligan. And it allows the person who drew "something" to keep at least those "somethings" in hand.
3> Mana Tally or Mana Count?
Except of you are playing white, or black or red, (mana tith, Dashed hopes, Molten influence) so what your saying is GREEN can't answer universal instants? thats your problem?
Cards that have the "commander" quality ignores the legendary rule.
If you play a clone on my commander, your clone with die by my commander will live. You can still get the ETB or Die effect of that commander.
Mulligan
I do agree I with the 7-6-6-5-5-4-4-3-3-2-2-1-1-0 Approach, but it might give combo decks in legacy too much of an edge though.
May be we can have different mulligan rules for different formats? (just like in commander, your first mulligan is free)
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Colors do have weaknesses. One of blues weaknesses is that it's horrific at being aggressive and proactive. It has better answers than other colors because it needs them to do it's thing. How many aggressive blue decks/creatures have ever existed? Delver and merfolk, and both also have to play answers.
blue's weakness is needing to have answers and often to have them at the right time (ie countermagic). Without that ability blue is very bad.
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How I tend to play is if two people have the same general, you treat them as having different names. Any player casting a clone or non-general copy of the card specifies which player's general they are copying, then apply legendary rule as before.
That said, I kinda like the idea of making "legendary" a non-copyable attribute (there is precedence in that "basic" is non-copyable). It never really sat well with me that clone == legendary kill spell.
I think it would be a very worthwhile experiment to try a draw poker style mulligan, where you have the option to replace any number of cards in your hand with new draws.
Though, what to do with the rejected cards is tricky. You can't just discard them because the graveyard is a resource. Shuffling them back in would mean that people have to shuffle/present TWICE every game. Putting them on the bottom of your library might be feasible, but it does reduce the randomness of it, something some decks might be able to exploit.
I've never really understood why it's not just called "mana cost". The context is pretty much always clear when the game wants a single number.
Yeah, remove supertype from that list and all your "legend rule" problems will be over. So what if you wouldn't be able to make copies of Snow permanents, I feel that the pros outway the cons.
Because lots of cards care about the mana cost of a card INCLUDING color. I don't WANT you to be able to Snapcast a Cryptic Command off of a Mind Stone and a Mana Vault
Fling deals damage equal to its cost. Well, it cost GG3. Can Fling deal GG3 damage? Clearly not, so it deals 5 damage.
Draw cards equal to its cost. Can you draw GG3 cards? No. Draw 5 cards.
Put +1/+1 counters equal to its cost. Can you put GG3 counters? No. Put 5 +1/+1 counters.
For mulligans, I think the real problem is that the way that mulligans affect a format like Legacy vs the way they affect a format like draft are SOOOOO very different. I think the best solution would just be to split them. In constructed, keep things as is. In limited, give everyone a free mulligan to 7. Maybe encourages the 16 land deck over the 17 land deck, but that's a world away from the kind of abuse that you could do in Legacy with more lenient mulligans, and mana screw hits limited much harder than constructed, in general. For all casual formats, let the players decide themselves.
Another possibility no one has mentioned is to have both the old-style mulligans (all/no land) AND paris mulligans, although that does seem to be a boon for decks like belcher that run basically no lands.
Here's my suggestion as it will help smooth draws and cut down on mulligan time:
After drawing your cards you may exile X cards from your hand to draw X-1 cards.
-The current Legend Rule is pretty solid, maybe something like both legends tap and stay tapped until the both go away?
-Mulligan by half a card each time (7,6,6,5,5,4,4 etc).
-Total Mana Cost.
1. Legendary Rule: Multiple copies of the same Commander can be in play (and can be Cloned, etc.) without the copies going away, but the Commanders and all copies lose all abilities while there is more than one in play.
2. Mulligan: It is fine. Build better decks. Mulling at the same number multiple times will be a bookkeeping nightmare, and will cause MAJOR cheating.
3 CMC: No idea.
I like this one. Maybe "Mana Value" instead or else Ashling's Prerogative would get a little weird in Oracle
Maro had an article detailing it.
1) It creates dead draws (when a legend is already in play)
2) It encourages people to run legends as removal (as evidenced by jitte and a couple of other tournament-level legends)
Two other issues, but those are the ones that stuck on my mind.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
yeah this seems good. my playgroup does this for drafts at the moment anyway, so we don't have as many games ruined by land flood/screw
as far as the legend rule goes, i think having the legendary flavor outweighs the downside of the legend rule
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That's strange. In that case, wouldn't planeswalkers have the exact same problems but worse?
I kind've like the ideas that the legend rule works pretty much the same way, but that clones can't kill legends. Then again it would make Sakashima and Lazav a lot less special...
edit: oh right because thats one of the issues design has lately.
As for the dead draw problem, just add a rule to the type such as "If CARDNAME is in play, you may exile CARDNAME from your hand and draw a card." Sort of like a more permanent cycling.
Why is "things are fine as is" not considered a valid position? People who validate the M10 changes point to Magic's current success as evidence that the changes were right. Can others not point to Magic's current success as evidence that more change is wrong?
Is there never a point where too much change is wrong?
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Is that really a problem?
Running a card that's bad for your deck to deal with a problem card seems like a really awful strategy.
I'm more concerned with the people running clones as removal TBH.
You can't really use "total mana" or anything other than converted mana cost, because of the different colours involved. Converted mana is not that difficult a concept for beginners, don't worry about it.