I know we've had discussions on trying to justify our previous legend rule as something short of an identity crisis or termination of a contract, but what do y'all make of the update? Any other player can have the same creature or planeswalker out, but you can only keep one at a time.
I'm confused. And I'm not sure there's literature on this yet.
I'd agree with you. I'd accept being able to replace your own legend/planewalker with a new one, provided they still blow up when an opponent drops a copy. It makes sense enough and feathers won't be ruffled.
I like the way that legends and planeswalkers under one player's control can replace themselves now rather than popping. Makes Cascade slightly less troublesome, and it makes sense that if a player calls for Ajani to wear his angry hat, he can leave his nurse cap behind.
I can understand multiple legends as each player putting their own ideas of the legend into the spell. Still feels a bit odd but whatever.
My problem is that each player having one copy of a particular planeswalker feels really odd. Particularly Gideon Jura punching himself in the face.
Oh yes. Especially Gideon. I can almost accept the idea that these legends now share a contract with multiple people at once, but even that idea falls apart when they'll ultimately punch themselves in the face.
Someone had suggested that games are now a battle between parallel multiverses just shatters anything meaningful, in my opinion.
Get over it and quit trying to justify the change by over-thinking a change that was made for the game play aspect. That would be my advice.
I'm as much of a Vorthos as anyone else frequenting the Storyline forums, but I have the senses to know that there at times has to be a separation of lore and story sensibility for the sake of better gameplay. It's something I'm quite familiar with as a Warcraft fan who has had to deal with the story being largely driven there by how Blizzard can make it interact with the MMO world it's told through, now. This is very much the same case as that, and I applaud Wizards for taking the necessary step because despite all the knee-jerk reactions, gameplay-wise it made little sense that players could just drop legendaries and planeswalkers to purposely make another copy go poof instead of actually playing the card as it was intended.
The new Legend Rule does make sense flavorwise, but it takes us back towards Pre-revisionist magic. Rather than summoning the Legend, you're summoning a copy. There's no reason why multiple people can't summon their own copies. My assumption before was the 'intrinsic' nature of a legends was such that, when stretched to being in two places at once, both spells failed. Now they're just unique enough that a Playerwalker can only maintain one. As far as 'walkers go, it makes more sense for some than for others. Any 'Walker with a mercenary bent should be willing to play both sides. The more 'upstanding' ones have issues though.
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The legend rule didn't make sense flavourwise from the moment they decided that we don't actualy summon the creatures, but create some kind of copy of them. So I don't realy mind the lengendary change. I agree that the flavour of the planeswalkers is weird (except in the case of Bolas and a couple of others, I can see them fighting on both sides and thus weaken their enemies, although they are probably too smart to be so open about it).
You realize if you drop a Bolas while someone else already has one, you're going to tell Bolas to immediately KILL HIMSELF, right?
Get over it and quit trying to justify the change by over-thinking a change that was made for the game play aspect. That would be my advice.
I'm as much of a Vorthos as anyone else frequenting the Storyline forums, but I have the senses to know that there at times has to be a separation of lore and story sensibility for the sake of better gameplay. It's something I'm quite familiar with as a Warcraft fan who has had to deal with the story being largely driven there by how Blizzard can make it interact with the MMO world it's told through, now. This is very much the same case as that, and I applaud Wizards for taking the necessary step because despite all the knee-jerk reactions, gameplay-wise it made little sense that players could just drop legendaries and planeswalkers to purposely make another copy go poof instead of actually playing the card as it was intended.
I wouldn't be so sure that it IS better gameplay. It's the continuation of dumbing down the game that things like hexproof have pushed.
Under the old rules: Mannichi, the Fevered Dream sees himself and both blow up. Mannichi also spontaneously combusts when he sees monsters disguised as himself.
Under the new rules: Mannichi, the Fevered Dream happily coexists with himself. He also doesn't spontaneously combust when he sees monsters disguised as himself.
In both sets of rules, he can still hold five swords of X and Y and wear both Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves at the same time.
I don't really like the rules change for gameplay reasons, but complaining about flavor when neither rule made sense from a flavor perspective is just being rather late about the whole thing.
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The wedding is over. Now it's time for the honeymoon.
Dropping a Jitte to kill an opposing Jitte is not really a play that requires a lot of smarts. Using it to grind out an advantage is.
Two planeswalkers of the same type facing each other is rewarding to the better player. Both planeswalkers blowing up isn't.
In short, there are reasons to dislike this change, but the old "dumbing down the game"-argument doesn't hold any water. You don't really think using a clone to kill a legend requieres any intelligence? But using your own copy to eek out an advantage does.
It means there is no risk involved with playing those legends or walkers. It means that you no longer have to weigh that possibility.
That created a situation where you had to think ahead to what your opponent could do and make those calls. It required strategy. There's still strategy and risk involved, but there's considerably less of it if you feel like playing those cards.
s for the topic, since it is already established that time travel happens and characters already were facing themselves (Nicol Bolas, Karn) it's not that much of a stretch. And in my opinion it never was, if you compare it to a bird attacking with a sword..
Time Travel actually DOESN'T happen without fracturing the very firmament of spacetime. The only thing that could even survive that travel without being torn apart in the first place was silver. Even that had those aforementioned consequences.
Applying this rule to planeswalkers is admittedly rather..... troublesome.
But as for applying it to legendary, well, quoth Warmachine/Hordes rulebook (imperfect quoting): In the midst of battle, who knows who is the real deal? Everyone can be impostors, one can claim he's the real legend while someone else across the field says nooo you're not
I'm with Xenphire. Legendary permanents are kind of flavourfully flawed by their very existence. Why can I copy a Llanowar Elf, but when I copy a planeswalker, suddenly one/both of them blow up?
Having that said, I do think it would be more intuitive and make a lot of sense, if token of legendary permanents wouldn't count towards the amount of a specific legendary card.
I wouldn't be so sure that it IS better gameplay. It's the continuation of dumbing down the game that things like hexproof have pushed.
If only half of the "wizards is dumbing down the game" nay sayings were actually true, then by now we'd play Ugg, and not Magic. Really, saying that Magic gets dumbed down with a change they make really just means you don't like the change for emotional/nostalgic reasons and don't have any arguments against it.
Like what we have done after The Mending and with the Neo Slivers.
We can argue all day long but in the end we are like those scavengers in the deepest darkest parts of the ocean waiting for a Huge Whale to go down and die on us.
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I'm with Xenphire. Legendary permanents are kind of flavourfully flawed by their very existence. Why can I copy a Llanowar Elf, but when I copy a planeswalker, suddenly one/both of them blow up?
Having that said, I do think it would be more intuitive and make a lot of sense, if token of legendary permanents wouldn't count towards the amount of a specific legendary card.
If only half of the "wizards is dumbing down the game" nay sayings were actually true, then by now we'd play Ugg, and not Magic. Really, saying that Magic gets dumbed down with a change they make really just means you don't like the change for emotional/nostalgic reasons and don't have any arguments against it.
It also means that you no longer have a no-brainer answer to an opposing Planeswalker. Realizing that the best way to deal with JTMS is (probably) to play your own doesn't require a lot of smarts. It will change decks and the game itself, and we will see if that is a net positive, but I'd say the complexity has gone up. But at this point that's probably a subjective view.
Idk.. The new planeswalker unique rule means there's only 2 ways to kill a planeswalker: 1. Dreadbore, Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and other cards that directly kill 'walkers (of which there are indecently few), and 2. Actually attacking it (which is in line with the creature-dependence of the last few sets). Before, there was a third way to kill 'walkers, that is, playing your own copy of it. I fail to see how removing an option for interaction with planeswalkers isn't dumbing down the game..
In any case, (on to the flavor bit) quantum theory tells us that any unique item (or creature or planeswalker) can only ever exist in one place at any given time. To do violence to this rather intuitive concept means to make impossible the suspension of disbelief in the face of so glaring an ontological crisis. It is a violence against logic that can only be patched up with the wan bleat of "It's a fantasy game, so we can say what we want."
Time Travel actually DOESN'T happen without fracturing the very firmament of spacetime. The only thing that could even survive that travel without being torn apart in the first place was silver. Even that had those aforementioned consequences.
As I see it, you are not actually summoning the legend and/or planeswalker out of the past, but rather a "temporal copy" for lack of a better word. The same as with every other creature. The only difference is since you are calling a copy of a specific individual it is more strenuous on you, which is why you can only keep one copy of an individual at a time (except with shenanigans such as with Mirror Gallery). It is the simplest solution to explain this change.
Or, if you'd rather go the comic book route, simply see it as alternate universe versions of the legends/planeswalkers you summon. It happens all the time in comic books where the hero has to go up against a clone or alternate universe counterpart. >.<
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
The Legend rule change is fine with me, canon- and fanon-wise, because we've long held that you don't summon the actual creature, but an aetheric construct shaped by your memories of that creature. Why shouldn't we both be able to shape mana into Thalia?
As to why we can't have two of a legend ourselves, it goes back to some pre-Rev trivia: If you summon a legendary creature, it doesn't know it's a copy. (This is the whole gambit that Lim-Dul pulled on Jodah back in the day--he wasn't actually a copy, but he was told he was.) So, if you pull another one on your side, one of the copies comes to the realization of that it's not real, and the spell holding it together is broken. But if your legendary creature sees another copy on the other side of the battlefield, it "knows" it would never side with the other team and therefore assumes the other one is a fake. You don't damage the legend's worldview, the spell remains intact, everyone gets a Bosh.
The new 'walker rule is far more difficult to justify flavorwise.
My new headcanon for 'walker cards: you cast Jace Berelen, a spell that asks Jace to come lend you a hand and to bring his lower-level stuff. I cast Jace, the Mindslayer, a spell that asks Jace to come lend me a hand, but to bring out the heavy artillery. We don't have two Jaces--we have one Jace, who's playing both sides of the field.
Note that you can't use Jace's abilities on my turns--because at that point, Jace is working for me, under the terms of my agreement with him.
It's not perfect, but I work with what I have. It does give most planewalkers and extra level in jerkitude, since they're now fence-sitting scum, and it causes issues with the corner case of Garruk, the Veil-Cursed being active at the same time as a non-insane Garruk (see also Sarkhan the Mad and Sarkhan Vol), but I do NOT want to get into making construct-copies of 'walkers. That's pushing it too far and cheapens their power further.
Now, you know what would be the perfect explanation for both of these changes? Clockworking.
You beat me to the joke because I got distracted by in the lab!
Seriously, though, I am very concerned that's the explanation they're going to go with. It fits too well. Between the 'walker change and the Slivers In Name Only, M14 is going down as a massive Vorthos-fail for me.
It looks like its cone off as whiny, but I'm more so concerned on how this change can be consolidated an compromised to make sense. Magic has always been weird with occasional flavor fails, but at least there's an attempt to allow for cohesion.
So far I like the Aether construct theory for legends, where the opponent has the same copy, both so sure the other is simply an imposter. Since they are copies that must be for the most part unique to the controller, the mana that gives them shape can be reconstituted again, effectively renewing them. (Yeva now has grandeur: flicker itself).
Planeswalkers on the other hand just lend a hand and swear no true loyalty to anyone. (Which is kinda flavorful. Pay your price and you get what you pay for.)
Changes with PW rule leading to PW leads to bunch of strange cases like Gideon beating himself, damage dealt to player by Chandra being redirected to Chandra, Elspeth 1 "throwing" guy at herself. Level of insanity significantly rose.
damage dealt to player by Chandra being redirected to Chandra,
This is easy.
"Hey Chandra, I want you to help me."
"Ok, babycakes. What you want me do?"
"Eh, let's ditch our hands and draw three new cards."
"K!"
"Yo, Chandra honey, I need a hand here."
"Ok sweet thing, what you want me do?"
"Smack him in the face with a fireball. Oh, then redirect damage to Chandra."
"See this guy? He's smart. He lets me throw fire. And you! You let this happen to me! I'm staying on this side from now on."
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"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
Under the old rules: Mannichi, the Fevered Dream sees himself and both blow up. Mannichi also spontaneously combusts when he sees monsters disguised as himself.
Under the new rules: Mannichi, the Fevered Dream happily coexists with himself. He also doesn't spontaneously combust when he sees monsters disguised as himself.
In both sets of rules, he can still hold five swords of X and Y and wear both Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves at the same time.
I don't really like the rules change for gameplay reasons, but complaining about flavor when neither rule made sense from a flavor perspective is just being rather late about the whole thing.
Under the new rules, if I control Mannichi and then cast a Clone that transforms into Mannichi, Mannichi still combusts, doesn't he? That actually makes less sense, IMO, since Mannichi dies if a monster fighting on his side transforms into him, but doesn't if it the monster who transforms into him is fighting on the opposite side.
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I'm confused. And I'm not sure there's literature on this yet.
I don't even know what else to say about it. There IS no way to reconcile this satisfactorily.
I can understand multiple legends as each player putting their own ideas of the legend into the spell. Still feels a bit odd but whatever.
My problem is that each player having one copy of a particular planeswalker feels really odd. Particularly Gideon Jura punching himself in the face.
Art is life itself.
Someone had suggested that games are now a battle between parallel multiverses just shatters anything meaningful, in my opinion.
But the Planeswalker rule really pisses me off and I didn't realize it until now.
I'm as much of a Vorthos as anyone else frequenting the Storyline forums, but I have the senses to know that there at times has to be a separation of lore and story sensibility for the sake of better gameplay. It's something I'm quite familiar with as a Warcraft fan who has had to deal with the story being largely driven there by how Blizzard can make it interact with the MMO world it's told through, now. This is very much the same case as that, and I applaud Wizards for taking the necessary step because despite all the knee-jerk reactions, gameplay-wise it made little sense that players could just drop legendaries and planeswalkers to purposely make another copy go poof instead of actually playing the card as it was intended.
(Also known as Xenphire)
Cōnservātum album delenda est.
You realize if you drop a Bolas while someone else already has one, you're going to tell Bolas to immediately KILL HIMSELF, right?
I wouldn't be so sure that it IS better gameplay. It's the continuation of dumbing down the game that things like hexproof have pushed.
Under the new rules: Mannichi, the Fevered Dream happily coexists with himself. He also doesn't spontaneously combust when he sees monsters disguised as himself.
In both sets of rules, he can still hold five swords of X and Y and wear both Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves at the same time.
I don't really like the rules change for gameplay reasons, but complaining about flavor when neither rule made sense from a flavor perspective is just being rather late about the whole thing.
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It means there is no risk involved with playing those legends or walkers. It means that you no longer have to weigh that possibility.
That created a situation where you had to think ahead to what your opponent could do and make those calls. It required strategy. There's still strategy and risk involved, but there's considerably less of it if you feel like playing those cards.
Time Travel actually DOESN'T happen without fracturing the very firmament of spacetime. The only thing that could even survive that travel without being torn apart in the first place was silver. Even that had those aforementioned consequences.
But as for applying it to legendary, well, quoth Warmachine/Hordes rulebook (imperfect quoting): In the midst of battle, who knows who is the real deal? Everyone can be impostors, one can claim he's the real legend while someone else across the field says nooo you're not
But ok, I'll shut up now
Having that said, I do think it would be more intuitive and make a lot of sense, if token of legendary permanents wouldn't count towards the amount of a specific legendary card.
If only half of the "wizards is dumbing down the game" nay sayings were actually true, then by now we'd play Ugg, and not Magic. Really, saying that Magic gets dumbed down with a change they make really just means you don't like the change for emotional/nostalgic reasons and don't have any arguments against it.
Nothing.
Like what we have done after The Mending and with the Neo Slivers.
We can argue all day long but in the end we are like those scavengers in the deepest darkest parts of the ocean waiting for a Huge Whale to go down and die on us.
Serra Stan - Angel Enthusiast - Garruk and Tyvar thirsty follower - Flavor and Art Enthusiast
Clockworking
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Idk.. The new planeswalker unique rule means there's only 2 ways to kill a planeswalker: 1. Dreadbore, Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and other cards that directly kill 'walkers (of which there are indecently few), and 2. Actually attacking it (which is in line with the creature-dependence of the last few sets). Before, there was a third way to kill 'walkers, that is, playing your own copy of it. I fail to see how removing an option for interaction with planeswalkers isn't dumbing down the game..
In any case, (on to the flavor bit) quantum theory tells us that any unique item (or creature or planeswalker) can only ever exist in one place at any given time. To do violence to this rather intuitive concept means to make impossible the suspension of disbelief in the face of so glaring an ontological crisis. It is a violence against logic that can only be patched up with the wan bleat of "It's a fantasy game, so we can say what we want."
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Cast Through Time, Stitch in Time, Time Ebb, Time Elemental, Time Reversal, Time Sieve, Time Spiral, Time Stretch, Time Walk, Time Warp, Timesifter, Timetwister, Temporal Adept, Temporal Cascade, Temporal Manipulation, and Temporal Mastery kinda proves that wrong. It's Story Line and Game Play segregation.
As I see it, you are not actually summoning the legend and/or planeswalker out of the past, but rather a "temporal copy" for lack of a better word. The same as with every other creature. The only difference is since you are calling a copy of a specific individual it is more strenuous on you, which is why you can only keep one copy of an individual at a time (except with shenanigans such as with Mirror Gallery). It is the simplest solution to explain this change.
Or, if you'd rather go the comic book route, simply see it as alternate universe versions of the legends/planeswalkers you summon. It happens all the time in comic books where the hero has to go up against a clone or alternate universe counterpart. >.<
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The Legend rule change is fine with me, canon- and fanon-wise, because we've long held that you don't summon the actual creature, but an aetheric construct shaped by your memories of that creature. Why shouldn't we both be able to shape mana into Thalia?
As to why we can't have two of a legend ourselves, it goes back to some pre-Rev trivia: If you summon a legendary creature, it doesn't know it's a copy. (This is the whole gambit that Lim-Dul pulled on Jodah back in the day--he wasn't actually a copy, but he was told he was.) So, if you pull another one on your side, one of the copies comes to the realization of that it's not real, and the spell holding it together is broken. But if your legendary creature sees another copy on the other side of the battlefield, it "knows" it would never side with the other team and therefore assumes the other one is a fake. You don't damage the legend's worldview, the spell remains intact, everyone gets a Bosh.
The new 'walker rule is far more difficult to justify flavorwise.
My new headcanon for 'walker cards: you cast Jace Berelen, a spell that asks Jace to come lend you a hand and to bring his lower-level stuff. I cast Jace, the Mindslayer, a spell that asks Jace to come lend me a hand, but to bring out the heavy artillery. We don't have two Jaces--we have one Jace, who's playing both sides of the field.
Note that you can't use Jace's abilities on my turns--because at that point, Jace is working for me, under the terms of my agreement with him.
It's not perfect, but I work with what I have. It does give most planewalkers and extra level in jerkitude, since they're now fence-sitting scum, and it causes issues with the corner case of Garruk, the Veil-Cursed being active at the same time as a non-insane Garruk (see also Sarkhan the Mad and Sarkhan Vol), but I do NOT want to get into making construct-copies of 'walkers. That's pushing it too far and cheapens their power further.
You beat me to the joke because I got distracted by in the lab!
Seriously, though, I am very concerned that's the explanation they're going to go with. It fits too well. Between the 'walker change and the Slivers In Name Only, M14 is going down as a massive Vorthos-fail for me.
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So far I like the Aether construct theory for legends, where the opponent has the same copy, both so sure the other is simply an imposter. Since they are copies that must be for the most part unique to the controller, the mana that gives them shape can be reconstituted again, effectively renewing them. (Yeva now has grandeur: flicker itself).
Planeswalkers on the other hand just lend a hand and swear no true loyalty to anyone. (Which is kinda flavorful. Pay your price and you get what you pay for.)
And Gideon gleefully punches himself in the face.
"Don't you see? By serving him, you were furthering the cause of injustice!"
"You...you're right! *WHAM*"
Next turn
"You fool! He is the unjust one!"
"How? How could I have been so blind? *WHAM*"
This is easy.
"Hey Chandra, I want you to help me."
"Ok, babycakes. What you want me do?"
"Eh, let's ditch our hands and draw three new cards."
"K!"
"Yo, Chandra honey, I need a hand here."
"Ok sweet thing, what you want me do?"
"Smack him in the face with a fireball. Oh, then redirect damage to Chandra."
"See this guy? He's smart. He lets me throw fire. And you! You let this happen to me! I'm staying on this side from now on."
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
Under the new rules, if I control Mannichi and then cast a Clone that transforms into Mannichi, Mannichi still combusts, doesn't he? That actually makes less sense, IMO, since Mannichi dies if a monster fighting on his side transforms into him, but doesn't if it the monster who transforms into him is fighting on the opposite side.