Highest Peak
Land - Mountain Homeland (Before the game begins you may exile one homeland from your library. If you do, when you draw your starting hand you draw one fewer card, then place the exiled card into your hand.)
Deepest Wood
Land - Forest Homeland
Furthest Isle
Land - Island Homeland
Darkest Moor
Land - Swamp Homeland
Brightest Field
Land - Plains Homeland
Alternately, "When you mulligan, you may search your library and exile one homeland. If you do, draw two fewer cards with your new hand instead of one, then place the exiled card into your hand."
This only adds consistency and reduces the risk of the mulligan, whose purpose is already to mitigate mana issues. It also only works prior to the first turn!
Mana screw is a game-long phenomenon. If you really want to address it effectively and without bizarro shenanigans like this, study clash, scry, cycling.
Imagine if one out of every twenty games of Command & Conquer, you started without a base, and thus couldn't make new buildings or units, and that you had maybe a 40% chance every minute that your base would finally show up. Or if in Street Fighter, every once in a while your character was paralyzed and had a 40% chance of shaking free every 10 seconds.
That would be a sign of flawed game design, because it punishes one side too drastically with pure random chance.
Likewise, mana screw is a flaw in the design of Magic. The game shouldn't let you start playing at such a massive disadvantage. Yes, this is a change in some of the basic assumptions of the game, and it would probably change how people build their decks' mana bases. But there has to be a way to make it so you can have 100% certainty of starting with at least a few lands in your hand.
I think the idea is sound, as you can only search for one homeland at the start of the game it doesn't create a massive advantage. For the cost of the consistency though, I'd probably have the land come in tapped. You're assured that turn 1 mana drop, but you don't get to use it right away. Also, the come-in-tapped mechanic would almost be required to prevent older formats that only need 1 mana turn one from completely abusing these cards.
Alternatively, you could word the card as a sort of Serum Powder, letting you keep that one card if you drew it, then mulligan as normal with the rest of the cards in your hand. This has the advantage of not being perfect smoothing, while still increasing consistency, and could probably be printed without needing to come in tapped like the others.
I'd just hate telling the other player that I am using homelands. It'd be a pain.
Ever considered Simian Spirit Guide as a way to fix mana screw? Of course you wouldn't make them as broken as Simian Spirit guide, but you could key word an ability that was similar.
Something like: Firestarter - Exile this card from your hand: Add R to your mana pool. You may only use one Firestarter ability per turn.
You could adapt it for each colour. Eg Waterstarter - Exile this card from your hand: Add U to your mana pool. You may only use one Waterstarter ability per turn.
etc.
However, Landcycling is a really good way to fix mana issues. Make some 1 CMC creatures with a 0 cost land cycling ability.
Strictlly better than basic lands, so no. There is no reason to NOT run these if you have any sort of basic land in the deck. Why run mountains when you can run highest peak?
Guaranteed land in the opening hand also breaks the game. For example, you can play elves with one of these in the deck and no other lands. Fairly sure belcher would have a field day. AT the very least, these should come into play tapped.
That would be a sign of flawed game design, because it punishes one side too drastically with pure random chance.
Only because those games were designed not to have such a random event in the first place.
Imagine poker where you can pick to start with one card, or roullete where the ball is glued to the wheel.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I disagree. Mana screw is a flaw, and I would have absolutely no problem if everyone used these. More accurately, I'd prefer if WotC just changed the rules so you could start with any number of basic lands in your opening hand.
And Belcher? Ban the thing. Get rid of a few degenerate cards and let the game adapt to an environment where your threats and responses are still random, but your ability to at least play the game is not random.
We don't need a cycle of lands that can automatically Land Grant for themselves. Chance is part of the game. There will be times when you either don't draw enough land or draw too much land. If you are consistently not drawing enough, then you need to add more lands, cycling, scry, cantrips, etc.
I came up with an artifact that was based on another Wizards TCG, Hecatomb. If I remember correctly, that game lets you choose to play any nonland spells as lands that tap for the color that they were.
Energy Converter 2
Artifact T, Exile a nonland card from your hand: Put a land token onto the battlefield. It has “T: Add to your mana pool one mana of any type that shares a color with the exiled card.”
You could just use the exiled card as the token to keep track of what lands you have that tap for what color.
What other methods do you have in mind to avoid mana screw on the first few turns? I'm fine with people having trouble fixing their mana if they're playing multiple colors, but I don't see how the game is improved by having a chance that you'll just be unable to play, even after multiple mulligans.
What other methods do you have in mind to avoid mana screw on the first few turns? I'm fine with people having trouble fixing their mana if they're playing multiple colors, but I don't see how the game is improved by having a chance that you'll just be unable to play, even after multiple mulligans.
To sum up why mana screw is good: it adds some luck to the game. Luck is needed to make this game more exciting and well received by a larger audience. If everyone had mana every game, it would be boring and predictable. But with how it is, it's exciting and a new game every time you sit down to play. Sure, there is a very very small chance that you'll not see a land in three or more mulligans (arbitrary number), but that's extremely rare, and is just something you have to deal with.
With Magic the way it is, it gives anyone a chance to win. That's exciting, and pulls in new players. The fact that someone can sit down to play their first game and have a chance of winning against a skilled player/pro (even if that chance is slim) is something that is good for the game.
You should check out some articles about this by Mark Rosewater (lead designer for Magic for the last... many years). Richard Garfield (creator of Magic) also has a good video on luck in games on youtube somewhere that was recorded on last year's Magic Cruise, if I recall correctly. These -among many other things- explain the reasoning for why luck and variance is good for the game.
Lots of relevant ideas have been posted in this thread alone.
The critical issue here is that the system basically works, and the "you can't play at all" event is a very extreme outlier — if you can't play anything by turn 3, it means you've seen at least 9 cards (if you didn't mulligan) and possibly a lot more than that, and every hand you've seen in that sequence has been a bad one.
Good deckbuilding strategy includes accounting for these possibilities and handling them, and more than one mana screw/mana flood mechanic has been printed, as well as several things that address the volatility of opening hands:
On land screw:
- Spirit Guides
- Leylines
- Chancellors
- spells with non-mana alternate casting costs such as Shoals
- Moxes
On mana flood:
- Cycling lands
- Eggs
On bad hands in general
- The Serum Powder mechanic
On draw improvement
- Oracle of Mul Daya
- Scry
- cantrips
- Any repeatable spell mechanic
The game has a probabilistic nature because of shuffling and random draw; because of the basic division between resources and stuff-you-can-do-with-them, sometimes you'll get a hand that's predominantly one or the other, but you can't remove the highly unlikely outliers without removing the beneficial game interactions that happen in between.
This can explain mana much better than I can hope to.
To be honest, I don't find mana screw a huge problem. Mana screw is an easily fixable problem, the real problem is that players don't want to sacrifice power for consistency. As such, they have to balance how much they care about their mana.
I'm not going to say mana screw is 100% good for the game, it's not, but it's also not 100% bad. You shouldn't try to "fix" it, you should just try to alleviate it as much as possible and in a way that doesn't completely destroy the game.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
It was at that moment that I realized: I'm kinda just making these things up. We can just write the rules the way we want them to work. People will have fun, and people will get it.
This is a relevant design I've had knocking around for a while:
Manashaper's Icon2
Artifact (U) T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
Basic landcycling 2
So its either colorless acceleration or colour fixing.
The problem is you want to play spells that do things, but you can't do that without also playing lands and other mana sources which don't usually do anything on their own. Mana-screw happens when you either draw too little mana and can't play the spells that you draw, or when you draw too much mana and don't draw any spells to play. Landcycling, as it has been used, works really well for fixing mana-screw because it allows one card to be both an early-game mana source or a late-game spell/creature. A mana stone with basic landcycling is just early-game mana or early-game mana. That answers color-screw, a related but slightly different topic for multicolor decks, but doesn't really do anything to fix mana-screw.
There was a game out there that had the rule that any card could be played face down as a mana source. And so you're curve always happened steadily. That's clearly the solution to this... if you view this as a problem.
That would be Duel Masters/Kaijudo, also made by WotC. (I mean, there's probably a bunch of others too.)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
It was at that moment that I realized: I'm kinda just making these things up. We can just write the rules the way we want them to work. People will have fun, and people will get it.
As an experiment you could try changing the game rules:
As your land play for the turn, you may do one of the following:
- Play a land (with existing rules)
- Play a card from your hand into the resource zone.
The resource zone is a new zone with special rules. The resource zone is inside the battlefield, so any spells or abilities that affect the battlefield also affect the resource zone.
Playing a card into the resource zone is like a land play — it can't be countered and you can only do it on your turn. It has no cost.
Any card that is in the resource zone has its colors and name, and is a land instead of any other types. It has, "Put this card on the bottom of your library: Add one mana of any of this card's colors to your mana pool."
Example:
You play a Bloodbraid Elf into the resource zone. You control another Bloodbraid Elf that's on the battlefield.
Your BBE in the resource zone is a land named Bloodbraid Elf with, "Put Bloodbraid Elf on the bottom of your library: Add or to your mana pool."
Your opponent casts Maelstrom Pulse on your BBE that's a creature. Both your BBEs are destroyed.
I predict that this will make games a lot less interesting and opening turns a lot faster and more efficient. It has to tuck or exile or something so that it doesn't enable Eldrazi silliness or reanimator strategies. But it will let you occasionally fix your mana or play a low drop when you previously couldn't.
well, well, well.
For my opinion on this subject make me cringe, because all the time it very hard for me to not flip the table if I get 4-5 land draws in a row or 4-5 nonland draws in a row when I need the later in a competitive format, I am a skillfull player I don't think I put too less or too much land in my deck (normally in limited). I stopped playing competitive because I don't like the fact that who is just the luckiest to get his better card first, that is not skill...
When I play with one of my friend I really like variant where you dont play any land card in a center deck full of random highlander cards and each card can be played as a facedown land giving any colors, its all about card management and resort way less on random of the mana
I think I would like a land similar to
[name]
Land
put a card from your hand on the bottom of you library, t: add any color mana to your mana pool
sacrifice ~, t: draw a card, use this only if you control 6 or more lands
Land - Mountain Homeland
(Before the game begins you may exile one homeland from your library. If you do, when you draw your starting hand you draw one fewer card, then place the exiled card into your hand.)
Deepest Wood
Land - Forest Homeland
Furthest Isle
Land - Island Homeland
Darkest Moor
Land - Swamp Homeland
Brightest Field
Land - Plains Homeland
Alternately, "When you mulligan, you may search your library and exile one homeland. If you do, draw two fewer cards with your new hand instead of one, then place the exiled card into your hand."
Mana screw is a game-long phenomenon. If you really want to address it effectively and without bizarro shenanigans like this, study clash, scry, cycling.
That would be a sign of flawed game design, because it punishes one side too drastically with pure random chance.
Likewise, mana screw is a flaw in the design of Magic. The game shouldn't let you start playing at such a massive disadvantage. Yes, this is a change in some of the basic assumptions of the game, and it would probably change how people build their decks' mana bases. But there has to be a way to make it so you can have 100% certainty of starting with at least a few lands in your hand.
Alternatively, you could word the card as a sort of Serum Powder, letting you keep that one card if you drew it, then mulligan as normal with the rest of the cards in your hand. This has the advantage of not being perfect smoothing, while still increasing consistency, and could probably be printed without needing to come in tapped like the others.
~B~Mono-Black Mage for Life~B~
Legacy;
UB Reanimator U/
EDH:
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen B
Ever considered Simian Spirit Guide as a way to fix mana screw? Of course you wouldn't make them as broken as Simian Spirit guide, but you could key word an ability that was similar.
Something like:
Firestarter - Exile this card from your hand: Add R to your mana pool. You may only use one Firestarter ability per turn.
You could adapt it for each colour. Eg
Waterstarter - Exile this card from your hand: Add U to your mana pool. You may only use one Waterstarter ability per turn.
etc.
However, Landcycling is a really good way to fix mana issues. Make some 1 CMC creatures with a 0 cost land cycling ability.
Pretty much sums up why I like green so much
On the internet, everywhere is Soviet Russia[/QUOTE]
Guaranteed land in the opening hand also breaks the game. For example, you can play elves with one of these in the deck and no other lands. Fairly sure belcher would have a field day. AT the very least, these should come into play tapped.
Only because those games were designed not to have such a random event in the first place.
Imagine poker where you can pick to start with one card, or roullete where the ball is glued to the wheel.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
And Belcher? Ban the thing. Get rid of a few degenerate cards and let the game adapt to an environment where your threats and responses are still random, but your ability to at least play the game is not random.
Removing it completely might be like removing dice rolls from snakes and ladders or something. (S&L 2013 @ EVO: get hype)
Art is life itself.
Energy Converter 2
Artifact
T, Exile a nonland card from your hand: Put a land token onto the battlefield. It has “T: Add to your mana pool one mana of any type that shares a color with the exiled card.”
You could just use the exiled card as the token to keep track of what lands you have that tap for what color.
To sum up why mana screw is good: it adds some luck to the game. Luck is needed to make this game more exciting and well received by a larger audience. If everyone had mana every game, it would be boring and predictable. But with how it is, it's exciting and a new game every time you sit down to play. Sure, there is a very very small chance that you'll not see a land in three or more mulligans (arbitrary number), but that's extremely rare, and is just something you have to deal with.
With Magic the way it is, it gives anyone a chance to win. That's exciting, and pulls in new players. The fact that someone can sit down to play their first game and have a chance of winning against a skilled player/pro (even if that chance is slim) is something that is good for the game.
You should check out some articles about this by Mark Rosewater (lead designer for Magic for the last... many years). Richard Garfield (creator of Magic) also has a good video on luck in games on youtube somewhere that was recorded on last year's Magic Cruise, if I recall correctly. These -among many other things- explain the reasoning for why luck and variance is good for the game.
The critical issue here is that the system basically works, and the "you can't play at all" event is a very extreme outlier — if you can't play anything by turn 3, it means you've seen at least 9 cards (if you didn't mulligan) and possibly a lot more than that, and every hand you've seen in that sequence has been a bad one.
Good deckbuilding strategy includes accounting for these possibilities and handling them, and more than one mana screw/mana flood mechanic has been printed, as well as several things that address the volatility of opening hands:
On land screw:
- Spirit Guides
- Leylines
- Chancellors
- spells with non-mana alternate casting costs such as Shoals
- Moxes
On mana flood:
- Cycling lands
- Eggs
On bad hands in general
- The Serum Powder mechanic
On draw improvement
- Oracle of Mul Daya
- Scry
- cantrips
- Any repeatable spell mechanic
The game has a probabilistic nature because of shuffling and random draw; because of the basic division between resources and stuff-you-can-do-with-them, sometimes you'll get a hand that's predominantly one or the other, but you can't remove the highly unlikely outliers without removing the beneficial game interactions that happen in between.
Manashaper's Icon 2
Artifact (U)
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
Basic landcycling 2
So its either colorless acceleration or colour fixing.
GWU Rafiq
RWB Zurgo
WBG Ghave
WUB Oloro
WBR Kaalia (Archived)
My Blog, currently working on series about my custom set Cazia.
Steam Trades - I play Dota 2, CS:GO, TF2, and trade cards heavily. Add me if you like.
To be honest, I don't find mana screw a huge problem. Mana screw is an easily fixable problem, the real problem is that players don't want to sacrifice power for consistency. As such, they have to balance how much they care about their mana.
I'm not going to say mana screw is 100% good for the game, it's not, but it's also not 100% bad. You shouldn't try to "fix" it, you should just try to alleviate it as much as possible and in a way that doesn't completely destroy the game.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Comic Book Set
Archester: Frontier of Steam (A steampunk set!)
A Good Place to Start Designing
The problem is you want to play spells that do things, but you can't do that without also playing lands and other mana sources which don't usually do anything on their own. Mana-screw happens when you either draw too little mana and can't play the spells that you draw, or when you draw too much mana and don't draw any spells to play. Landcycling, as it has been used, works really well for fixing mana-screw because it allows one card to be both an early-game mana source or a late-game spell/creature. A mana stone with basic landcycling is just early-game mana or early-game mana. That answers color-screw, a related but slightly different topic for multicolor decks, but doesn't really do anything to fix mana-screw.
GWU Rafiq
RWB Zurgo
WBG Ghave
WUB Oloro
WBR Kaalia (Archived)
My Blog, currently working on series about my custom set Cazia.
Steam Trades - I play Dota 2, CS:GO, TF2, and trade cards heavily. Add me if you like.
GWU Rafiq
RWB Zurgo
WBG Ghave
WUB Oloro
WBR Kaalia (Archived)
My Blog, currently working on series about my custom set Cazia.
Steam Trades - I play Dota 2, CS:GO, TF2, and trade cards heavily. Add me if you like.
That would be Duel Masters/Kaijudo, also made by WotC. (I mean, there's probably a bunch of others too.)
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Comic Book Set
Archester: Frontier of Steam (A steampunk set!)
A Good Place to Start Designing
- Play a land (with existing rules)
- Play a card from your hand into the resource zone.
The resource zone is a new zone with special rules. The resource zone is inside the battlefield, so any spells or abilities that affect the battlefield also affect the resource zone.
Playing a card into the resource zone is like a land play — it can't be countered and you can only do it on your turn. It has no cost.
Any card that is in the resource zone has its colors and name, and is a land instead of any other types. It has, "Put this card on the bottom of your library: Add one mana of any of this card's colors to your mana pool."
Example:
You play a Bloodbraid Elf into the resource zone. You control another Bloodbraid Elf that's on the battlefield.
Your BBE in the resource zone is a land named Bloodbraid Elf with, "Put Bloodbraid Elf on the bottom of your library: Add or to your mana pool."
Your opponent casts Maelstrom Pulse on your BBE that's a creature. Both your BBEs are destroyed.
For my opinion on this subject make me cringe, because all the time it very hard for me to not flip the table if I get 4-5 land draws in a row or 4-5 nonland draws in a row when I need the later in a competitive format, I am a skillfull player I don't think I put too less or too much land in my deck (normally in limited). I stopped playing competitive because I don't like the fact that who is just the luckiest to get his better card first, that is not skill...
When I play with one of my friend I really like variant where you dont play any land card in a center deck full of random highlander cards and each card can be played as a facedown land giving any colors, its all about card management and resort way less on random of the mana
I think I would like a land similar to
[name]
Land
put a card from your hand on the bottom of you library, t: add any color mana to your mana pool
sacrifice ~, t: draw a card, use this only if you control 6 or more lands