I am so glad that most of you guys don't have time machines.
I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
I might also suggest to WoTC to get ahead of the Chronicles debacle by publishing their reprint policy prior to the release of that set.
In hindsight, I would have told my 8 year old self to take care of all those damn alpha/beta cards he had. I'm not even kidding you, but I had a beta Black Lotus when I was a dumb kid, and that thing was beat to hell, stuff spilled on it, etc etc. I think I threw it out eventually because it wasn't a "cool dragon" just a "dumb flower".
As soon as the very *idea* of a reserved list comes about in a staff meeting at WotC I would pull out a megaphone and scream "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" loudly enough for the entire building to hear. If I hypothetically could not stop the reserved list then it becomes INCREDIBLY simple and by that I mean put every single good to broken card in chronicles/power 9, all 10 duals, candelabra of tawnos, mishra's workshop, bazaar of baghdad, etc. etc. in the set and prevent the reserved list from including anything in sets printed after chronicles.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
In hindsight, I would have told my 8 year old self to take care of all those damn alpha/beta cards he had. I'm not even kidding you, but I had a beta Black Lotus when I was a dumb kid, and that thing was beat to hell, stuff spilled on it, etc etc. I think I threw it out eventually because it wasn't a "cool dragon" just a "dumb flower".
I think that seems to be the consensus of a lot of people who played back then since they had no idea their cards would be worth anything in 20 years
I am so glad that most of you guys don't have time machines.
I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
I might also suggest to WoTC to get ahead of the Chronicles debacle by publishing their reprint policy prior to the release of that set.
This. Most suggestions in this topic are "I'm an entrenched Magic player and I don't understand why there would be any benefit to ________, since I'm already playing!" or card price arguments or people who don't understand limited.
To address what I think the TC was actually going for, I probably would have introduced things like Chandra's +0 ability earlier so that Red always had a type of card draw, and I would have never printed some of the early blue cards that made Blue so necessary in Vintage/Legacy (although, I don't know what exactly to go after, so maybe that's not the best suggestion).
I am so glad that most of you guys don't have time machines.
Indeed.
I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
While this would be a good piece of advice, the problem I have with this and a number of other suggestions is that they were things that were fixed later on. Yes, they incorrectly thought "well, this Ancestral Recall is a rare, so it's okay" but they soon afterwards realized rarity wasn't enough to balance a card and started taking that into account. This is why I suggested a way to stop mana flood and mana screw: That would be something that had to be done at the very start of the game, because once the game came out it became such an entrenched part of it you can't get rid of it anymore even though it's one of the most frustrating things in the game.
I might also suggest to WoTC to get ahead of the Chronicles debacle by publishing their reprint policy prior to the release of that set.
Thank you, a fix for the Reserved List that wasn't just "I would have them not make it." That's sort of dancing around the problem which was that there was such an uproar that it was sort of necessary to do something like that to not lose player confidence. Maybe something else could have been done in its place, but just saying "I'd make it so they didn't do it!" is not an actual solution, it's just nixing one solution to a problem while providing no alternate solution. At least your solution is something that might prevent it from being an issue in the first place.
Congratulations! You have a time machine. For some reason you decide to use it to make one change to an old Magic set, using what you know about the game now. For example, you could go back to Torment/Judgement and use the Banishing Light wording right from the get go, removing the ability to exploit the stack to make "jailor" cards into permanent removal. Or you could rework Annihilator to exile cards so that ROE Eldrazi function with BFZ Processors.
What would you do?
I'm going to try to stick to these instructions as much as possible: make one change to one set. I'd somehow turn Humility into less of rules nightmare or just eliminate the card entirely.
If I could change more than one set, I'd add subtypes like "Fire" to Fireball and company for more design space (protection from fire, etc.).If I were changing WotC business strategy, I wouldn't just remove the reserved list, I'd have them print everything for as dirt cheap as possible. If I were changing the rules, I'd leave mana burn and players not losing from being at 0 or less life until the end of phase/step.
1. Never print a non-legendary land above uncommon (so all present rare two-colour lands are uncommon).
Just this one for me. I don't mind spending money on this hobby, but it's a real fun sucker when the cards that cost you the most are the ones that are the least exciting.
I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
While this would be a good piece of advice, the problem I have with this and a number of other suggestions is that they were things that were fixed later on. Yes, they incorrectly thought "well, this Ancestral Recall is a rare, so it's okay" but they soon afterwards realized rarity wasn't enough to balance a card and started taking that into account. This is why I suggested a way to stop mana flood and mana screw: That would be something that had to be done at the very start of the game, because once the game came out it became such an entrenched part of it you can't get rid of it anymore even though it's one of the most frustrating things in the game.
It's an interesting thought, however, ultimately now you're talking about a game which isn't magic. Richard Garfield, in talks and interviews, has responded to this idea saying that it wouldn't improve the game. He said that he had tried building variants and they were ultimately less interesting. And it isn't hard to understand why.
Pure consistency is the antithesis to diversified deck design. While you feel like it might be more interesting and give you more options, really it would create for very repetitive games.
As a thought experiment - think about how that plays out. Lets imagine we just use existing deck construction rules, and we divide up the deck into a deck of lands an a deck of non-lands. You still have to play 60 total cards. So in most cases you'll have a deck of 24 lands, and a deck of 36 cards. You'll draw lands for your starting hand based on what your early curve is at, and how many colors you're playing. If you're playing 1 color, every game you will draw 1 land and 6 cards, because that is the best possible hand to take. It gives you an insane amount of card selection and no risk at getting mana starved. If you're playing more colors, and there's specific turn one plays you want to hit, you might pick up 2 or 3 lands to make sure you hit your colors. But that will still be a fixed decision that someone will figure out the best configuration for that each player will do. No real extra decision making. Less skill than determining when to take a mulligan currently.
But now imagine you are building a deck in this environment. Are you playing combo? Why not run 50 lands and a 10 card deck? If you basically don't need search, combo decks get pretty insane. Actually, almost any deck gets pretty crazy when it can reduce the number of spells that much. But now the environment can respond to that by playing ultra consistent control decks - play only 8 lands in your land deck (never miss a land drop) and just shut everything down for your opponent until their small spell deck is depleted and now you have as long as you want to win the game. Then, of course, agro can run just 3-5 lands, have access to 5 colors in those lands and play ALL of the best creatures from every color and pretty much eliminate any kind of semblance of color pie.
While all of these looks like more options, it actually reduces deck diversity. The fact that your average Hearthstone deck has twice as many unique cards as a magic deck means you get FEWER unique decks, because decks end up needing to run the same cards to fill out their deck because the card pool isn't deep enough yet (especially when looking at card power level). Two deck magic would create the same problem. The most stable and smallest number of cards combo would be THE combo deck. The control deck would play ALL the control, and any finisher. The agro deck would play all the stickiest and most efficient creatures from all colors. There probably wouldn't be a tempo deck because it wouldn't be focused enough to compete.
Now, I'm not saying a game couldn't be designed with that as its resource system, Hearthstone is basically this. But it wouldn't be Magic anymore. You'd have to redesign, or at least reconsider every card ever made with respect to its power level in this environment. It would be a different game, and it probably wouldn't be as good. Richard Garfield, specifically, believes it isn't.
Mana problems suck while playing the game, but there are ways to mitigate it with different deck construction. Dealing with those challenges are core to the game experience, and eliminating them - while it might seem like it would be great - would dilute the number of unique game experiences and homogenize deck design to where the game would become boring.
This. Most suggestions in this topic are "I'm an entrenched Magic player and I don't understand why there would be any benefit to ________, since I'm already playing!" or card price arguments or people who don't understand limited.
Eh, give us a little credit. I for one did consider these responses when posting.
As for 'I'm an entrenched Magic player and I don't understand,' I'm assuming you are referring to the comments about New World Order, which is of course designed to facilitate new players' learning. The New World Order is a reasonable approach for a company - especially for a company - to take, I simply believe it creates a lesser experience once one is playing. This is somewhat of a mage response, but ultimately you're correct that I do favour existing players over new players in terms of gameplay. This derives from my personal taste in games, which is, briefly, 'the more complex the better,' and from the fact I do not mind taking the time to learn the rules for a new game thoroughly: your preferences may differ, and that's fine, but it doesn't follow to suggest that the other is uncomprehending - merely that (s)he follows a different metric of evaluation.
As for card price arguments, well, yes, of course.
As for limited, first, please note I very deliberately did not say I wanted it to become less of a concern for development (not that this is what you were saying), merely that I wanted to see it developed at a higher power level (think Modern Masters draft). Secondly, you are correct that I don't play limited often (though I do play it), thus perhaps I 'don't understand' it. I would actually be interested in hearing an argument as to why high-powered limited environments don't function, and am open to reevaluating my suggestions in light of a compelling one. If you're interested, feel free to PM me with such an argument or link to one here (I'm assuming we don't want to gum up the thread). In the absence of such an argument, however, I don't see a clear conceptual reason why a draft with more powerful cards would not function.
Anyway, you're right that we seem to have gone for more 'big-picture' amendments in this thread. I have been thinking of some smaller-scale ones in the interim to fit the spirit of the thread. While this is still more sweeping than a single card, mine is 'drop the wither effect from infect in Scars of Mirrodin block'.
I completely, and respectfully, disagree with any criticism of the "NWO." Moving complex cards away from common doesn't prevent them from existing - and it places no burden on development. It merely makes them more rare. More complex certainly does NOT mean more powerful either. Rift Bolt is more complex than Lightning Bolt but its certainly not more powerful. If you want more cards like Phantasmal Mount, I can sort of understand that, but I don't see how making them uncommon/rare is causing anyone grief. Unless you're playing pauper or something, and get excited by magnifying glass cards.
I've been playing for over 20 years now, and I prefer to not see the majority of cards require me to break out my reading glasses. Let commons have complex interactions, sure, but less complex text. Which, I think, they are doing well.
Wanting to see cards "developed at a higher power level" is bad for the game as a whole. A limited environment that is as powerful as a constructed environment could not function - the lack of consistency creates a lower power level by default. Secondarily, even if every creature was above curve - then there would be little to know skill in, you know, card selection - which is the point of limited. Knowing the right cards to pick, and how to build them into an effective deck, requires skilled card evaluation. However, if you make every card powerful, you remove that skill from being necessary - and then you've just neutered the complexity of that puzzle. Building a deck then becomes "pick cards on curve, put in the right mix of lands." I'm being reductive, yes, but not unfair to the concept. Also, increasing the power level of limited increases the negative impact of mana flood or screw because it speeds the game up (from a turns perspective). That doesn't reward skill either. So at that point you've ruined the skill required in deck building, and decreased the effect of skill on winning or losing a not insignificant portion of games.
Power creep is bad for the game on many levels, and so an oscillating power curve is, one of, the best ways to handle it. Ir's not actually power level which is fun anyway. It's complex and engaging environments. Some people prefer the environment to change frequently, and some prefer they change more slowly. The smaller the format (in terms of available card choices), the more dynamic it is. The larger the format, the more stable it is. We need formats of all kinds to appeal to different players. However, if you (even slightly) were to increase power level every set, then ALL environments would become dynamic (because more powerful cards are constantly being released). If this is what you want? Play standard. Lightning Bolt or Shock can be of a similar power level in different environments if they kill the same percentage of constructed playable creatures. No one can help you with shock making you feel less powerful except you though.
One simple thing no one mentioned is that I would make the card back more appealing. I find the actual design rudimentary, especially the 5 colored circles which are not big enough and somewhat not ideally placed on the card.
I completely, and respectfully, disagree with any criticism of the "NWO." Moving complex cards away from common doesn't prevent them from existing - and it places no burden on development. It merely makes them more rare. More complex certainly does NOT mean more powerful either. Rift Bolt is more complex than Lightning Bolt but its certainly not more powerful. If you want more cards like Phantasmal Mount, I can sort of understand that, but I don't see how making them uncommon/rare is causing anyone grief. Unless you're playing pauper or something, and get excited by magnifying glass cards.
I've been playing for over 20 years now, and I prefer to not see the majority of cards require me to break out my reading glasses. Let commons have complex interactions, sure, but less complex text. Which, I think, they are doing well.
Wanting to see cards "developed at a higher power level" is bad for the game as a whole. A limited environment that is as powerful as a constructed environment could not function - the lack of consistency creates a lower power level by default. Secondarily, even if every creature was above curve - then there would be little to know skill in, you know, card selection - which is the point of limited. Knowing the right cards to pick, and how to build them into an effective deck, requires skilled card evaluation. However, if you make every card powerful, you remove that skill from being necessary - and then you've just neutered the complexity of that puzzle. Building a deck then becomes "pick cards on curve, put in the right mix of lands." I'm being reductive, yes, but not unfair to the concept. Also, increasing the power level of limited increases the negative impact of mana flood or screw because it speeds the game up (from a turns perspective). That doesn't reward skill either. So at that point you've ruined the skill required in deck building, and decreased the effect of skill on winning or losing a not insignificant portion of games.
Power creep is bad for the game on many levels, and so an oscillating power curve is, one of, the best ways to handle it. Ir's not actually power level which is fun anyway. It's complex and engaging environments. Some people prefer the environment to change frequently, and some prefer they change more slowly. The smaller the format (in terms of available card choices), the more dynamic it is. The larger the format, the more stable it is. We need formats of all kinds to appeal to different players. However, if you (even slightly) were to increase power level every set, then ALL environments would become dynamic (because more powerful cards are constantly being released). If this is what you want? Play standard. Lightning Bolt or Shock can be of a similar power level in different environments if they kill the same percentage of constructed playable creatures. No one can help you with shock making you feel less powerful except you though.
This might be news to you, but reprints of powerful cards is not logically incompatible with an oscillating power curve and does not necessitate an unchanging Standard environment.
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Modern:UB Taking Turns Modern:URW Madcap Experiment Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
While this would be a good piece of advice, the problem I have with this and a number of other suggestions is that they were things that were fixed later on. Yes, they incorrectly thought "well, this Ancestral Recall is a rare, so it's okay" but they soon afterwards realized rarity wasn't enough to balance a card and started taking that into account. This is why I suggested a way to stop mana flood and mana screw: That would be something that had to be done at the very start of the game, because once the game came out it became such an entrenched part of it you can't get rid of it anymore even though it's one of the most frustrating things in the game.
It's an interesting thought, however, ultimately now you're talking about a game which isn't magic. Richard Garfield, in talks and interviews, has responded to this idea saying that it wouldn't improve the game.
Richard Garfield, on developing Jyhad:
"There were a lot of things I wanted to improve on or at least do differently in Jyhad. After all - Jyhad was my second TCG, and I wanted to prove that TCGs were a form of game as potentially diverse as board games. Here are some of the things I wanted to change. I wanted no land - I didn't like that Magic had about 40% boring resource cards in the deck."
Pure consistency is the antithesis to diversified deck design. While you feel like it might be more interesting and give you more options, really it would create for very repetitive games.
How? You still have considerable variance in what cards you actually draw.
As a thought experiment - think about how that plays out. Lets imagine we just use existing deck construction rules, and we divide up the deck into a deck of lands an a deck of non-lands. You still have to play 60 total cards. So in most cases you'll have a deck of 24 lands, and a deck of 36 cards. You'll draw lands for your starting hand based on what your early curve is at, and how many colors you're playing. If you're playing 1 color, every game you will draw 1 land and 6 cards, because that is the best possible hand to take. It gives you an insane amount of card selection and no risk at getting mana starved.
Yes, that's the point. That you don't get mana starved. Mana screw/starving is a terrible part of the game that just makes players lose games for no reason.
And you don't get an "insane amount of card selection." The nonland (and land) cards are still random. If you spread your manabase into too many colors, you risk getting the wrong kinds of lands, which is a fair price to pay.
If you're playing more colors, and there's specific turn one plays you want to hit, you might pick up 2 or 3 lands to make sure you hit your colors. But that will still be a fixed decision that someone will figure out the best configuration for that each player will do. No real extra decision making. Less skill than determining when to take a mulligan currently.
So, at worst, this makes it no worse than things currently are. There's hardly any skill in "I draw seven cards!" because that's what you're obligated to do.
I'm not sure how there's less skill. This prevents the dreaded all-land or no-land hands, which take zero skill to decide whether to mulligan. "Hrm, I have no lands in this hand. I wonder if I should mulligan it." Knowing the answer is yes (unless you're playing manaless dredge) is not skill.
But now imagine you are building a deck in this environment. Are you playing combo? Why not run 50 lands and a 10 card deck?
For the reasons I noted earlier. You would be required to have a minimum number of lands and a minimum number of nonlands (maybe 20 and 40?). In fact, the rest of your arguments largely are predicated on the idea that you don't have a minimum for both stacks, which this note completely addresses. I thought it was fairly obvious, but I guess I should have specified that in my original message.
I completely, and respectfully, disagree with any criticism of the "NWO." Moving complex cards away from common doesn't prevent them from existing - and it places no burden on development. It merely makes them more rare. More complex certainly does NOT mean more powerful either. Rift Bolt is more complex than Lightning Bolt but its certainly not more powerful. If you want more cards like Phantasmal Mount, I can sort of understand that, but I don't see how making them uncommon/rare is causing anyone grief. Unless you're playing pauper or something, and get excited by magnifying glass cards.
I've been playing for over 20 years now, and I prefer to not see the majority of cards require me to break out my reading glasses. Let commons have complex interactions, sure, but less complex text. Which, I think, they are doing well.
Wanting to see cards "developed at a higher power level" is bad for the game as a whole. A limited environment that is as powerful as a constructed environment could not function - the lack of consistency creates a lower power level by default. Secondarily, even if every creature was above curve - then there would be little to know skill in, you know, card selection - which is the point of limited. Knowing the right cards to pick, and how to build them into an effective deck, requires skilled card evaluation. However, if you make every card powerful, you remove that skill from being necessary - and then you've just neutered the complexity of that puzzle. Building a deck then becomes "pick cards on curve, put in the right mix of lands." I'm being reductive, yes, but not unfair to the concept. Also, increasing the power level of limited increases the negative impact of mana flood or screw because it speeds the game up (from a turns perspective). That doesn't reward skill either. So at that point you've ruined the skill required in deck building, and decreased the effect of skill on winning or losing a not insignificant portion of games.
Power creep is bad for the game on many levels, and so an oscillating power curve is, one of, the best ways to handle it. Ir's not actually power level which is fun anyway. It's complex and engaging environments. Some people prefer the environment to change frequently, and some prefer they change more slowly. The smaller the format (in terms of available card choices), the more dynamic it is. The larger the format, the more stable it is. We need formats of all kinds to appeal to different players. However, if you (even slightly) were to increase power level every set, then ALL environments would become dynamic (because more powerful cards are constantly being released). If this is what you want? Play standard. Lightning Bolt or Shock can be of a similar power level in different environments if they kill the same percentage of constructed playable creatures. No one can help you with shock making you feel less powerful except you though.
This might be news to you, but reprints of powerful cards is not logically incompatible with an oscillating power curve and does not necessitate an unchanging Standard environment.
I'm not sure how your statement relates to the post you quoted. I didn't say anything about reprints (or not reprinting cards). Reprinting cards is an excellent way to introduce powerful cards to a standard environment that doesn't introduce power creep to older environments.
I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
While this would be a good piece of advice, the problem I have with this and a number of other suggestions is that they were things that were fixed later on. Yes, they incorrectly thought "well, this Ancestral Recall is a rare, so it's okay" but they soon afterwards realized rarity wasn't enough to balance a card and started taking that into account. This is why I suggested a way to stop mana flood and mana screw: That would be something that had to be done at the very start of the game, because once the game came out it became such an entrenched part of it you can't get rid of it anymore even though it's one of the most frustrating things in the game.
It's an interesting thought, however, ultimately now you're talking about a game which isn't magic. Richard Garfield, in talks and interviews, has responded to this idea saying that it wouldn't improve the game.
Richard Garfield, on developing Jyhad:
"There were a lot of things I wanted to improve on or at least do differently in Jyhad. After all - Jyhad was my second TCG, and I wanted to prove that TCGs were a form of game as potentially diverse as board games. Here are some of the things I wanted to change. I wanted no land - I didn't like that Magic had about 40% boring resource cards in the deck."
Pure consistency is the antithesis to diversified deck design. While you feel like it might be more interesting and give you more options, really it would create for very repetitive games.
How? You still have considerable variance in what cards you actually draw.
Having considerable variance in the cards you draw wouldn't be pure consistency. The more consistent something is, the less variance there is. This is axiomatic. By giving significant control over the types of cards you draw, you are reducing variance in the game play.
As a thought experiment - think about how that plays out. Lets imagine we just use existing deck construction rules, and we divide up the deck into a deck of lands an a deck of non-lands. You still have to play 60 total cards. So in most cases you'll have a deck of 24 lands, and a deck of 36 cards. You'll draw lands for your starting hand based on what your early curve is at, and how many colors you're playing. If you're playing 1 color, every game you will draw 1 land and 6 cards, because that is the best possible hand to take. It gives you an insane amount of card selection and no risk at getting mana starved.
Yes, that's the point. That you don't get mana starved. Mana screw/starving is a terrible part of the game that just makes players lose games for no reason.
And you don't get an "insane amount of card selection." The nonland (and land) cards are still random. If you spread your manabase into too many colors, you risk getting the wrong kinds of lands, which is a fair price to pay.
Normally, a keepable hand is 4 spells and 3 lands (give or take). On the draw, in this format, you basically have 7 spells and 1 land. 75% more individual cards than you could keep normally. That's an insane amount of card selection - at least in my opinion. Nearly twice as many cards to choose from when deciding to cast something.
If you're playing more colors, and there's specific turn one plays you want to hit, you might pick up 2 or 3 lands to make sure you hit your colors. But that will still be a fixed decision that someone will figure out the best configuration for that each player will do. No real extra decision making. Less skill than determining when to take a mulligan currently.
So, at worst, this makes it no worse than things currently are. There's hardly any skill in "I draw seven cards!" because that's what you're obligated to do.
I'm not sure how there's less skill. This prevents the dreaded all-land or no-land hands, which take zero skill to decide whether to mulligan. "Hrm, I have no lands in this hand. I wonder if I should mulligan it." Knowing the answer is yes (unless you're playing manaless dredge) is not skill.
Mulligan rules have changed over time. The only original mulligans were all land or no land. If this system were in place from day one, then we wouldn't have mulligans. The design of the game would prevent the necessity of having one. So that takes the decision to mulligan or not - which is a higher skill decision - and removes it from the game. You can argue that it would have eventually came back - but you're talking about a developmental change on an alternate time-line game. I remember when tournament rules did not allow for mulligans, and it sucked. I remember when Paris was introduced (at Pro Tour Paris) because people didn't want to have to show their hand to their opponent (and thus sharing what their deck was). None of that would have been necessary. Yeah all/land no/land mulligans are not difficult to decide on (until you're down to 4 or 3 cards), but 2 landers? 4 landers? it can be tricky.
But now imagine you are building a deck in this environment. Are you playing combo? Why not run 50 lands and a 10 card deck?
For the reasons I noted earlier. You would be required to have a minimum number of lands and a minimum number of nonlands (maybe 20 and 40?). In fact, the rest of your arguments largely are predicated on the idea that you don't have a minimum for both stacks, which this note completely addresses. I thought it was fairly obvious, but I guess I should have specified that in my original message.
Even WITH 20 and 40, your decks are still hyper consistent. But explain why they would be 40 and 20? In Alpha/Beta, which is when you'd have to go to in order to institute this change, there were 5 basic lands, and 10 dual lands. When would you ever need 20 lands to play ANY deck in that era? Also, the minimum deck size in Alpha was 40, not 60. So its not unreasonable to assume smaller deck sizes. I didn't say their wasn't a minimum, I just went to some logical conclusions - though I imagine I might have skipped detailing some of the mental arithmetic required to get there - so I suppose I can understand some confusion on your part.
I completely, and respectfully, disagree with any criticism of the "NWO." Moving complex cards away from common doesn't prevent them from existing - and it places no burden on development. It merely makes them more rare. More complex certainly does NOT mean more powerful either. Rift Bolt is more complex than Lightning Bolt but its certainly not more powerful. If you want more cards like Phantasmal Mount, I can sort of understand that, but I don't see how making them uncommon/rare is causing anyone grief. Unless you're playing pauper or something, and get excited by magnifying glass cards.
I've been playing for over 20 years now, and I prefer to not see the majority of cards require me to break out my reading glasses. Let commons have complex interactions, sure, but less complex text. Which, I think, they are doing well.
Wanting to see cards "developed at a higher power level" is bad for the game as a whole. A limited environment that is as powerful as a constructed environment could not function - the lack of consistency creates a lower power level by default. Secondarily, even if every creature was above curve - then there would be little to know skill in, you know, card selection - which is the point of limited. Knowing the right cards to pick, and how to build them into an effective deck, requires skilled card evaluation. However, if you make every card powerful, you remove that skill from being necessary - and then you've just neutered the complexity of that puzzle. Building a deck then becomes "pick cards on curve, put in the right mix of lands." I'm being reductive, yes, but not unfair to the concept. Also, increasing the power level of limited increases the negative impact of mana flood or screw because it speeds the game up (from a turns perspective). That doesn't reward skill either. So at that point you've ruined the skill required in deck building, and decreased the effect of skill on winning or losing a not insignificant portion of games.
Power creep is bad for the game on many levels, and so an oscillating power curve is, one of, the best ways to handle it. Ir's not actually power level which is fun anyway. It's complex and engaging environments. Some people prefer the environment to change frequently, and some prefer they change more slowly. The smaller the format (in terms of available card choices), the more dynamic it is. The larger the format, the more stable it is. We need formats of all kinds to appeal to different players. However, if you (even slightly) were to increase power level every set, then ALL environments would become dynamic (because more powerful cards are constantly being released). If this is what you want? Play standard. Lightning Bolt or Shock can be of a similar power level in different environments if they kill the same percentage of constructed playable creatures. No one can help you with shock making you feel less powerful except you though.
This might be news to you, but reprints of powerful cards is not logically incompatible with an oscillating power curve and does not necessitate an unchanging Standard environment.
I'm not sure how your statement relates to the post you quoted. I didn't say anything about reprints (or not reprinting cards). Reprinting cards is an excellent way to introduce powerful cards to a standard environment that doesn't introduce power creep to older environments.
I apologize Yamahako. I've been reading lots of posts about reprints, proxies and power creep today and I incorrectly assumed your post was connected.
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I would go back with Wizards current market research concerning reprints. Hopefully this would keep Chronicles from happening, and thus the creation of RL.
The greedy streak in me would also gather 40 duals, a Tabernacles, a set of Power (including a Library), Force of Wills, and some Goyfs. You know, just in case my first plan didn't work so well.
Pure consistency is the antithesis to diversified deck design. While you feel like it might be more interesting and give you more options, really it would create for very repetitive games.
How? You still have considerable variance in what cards you actually draw.
Having considerable variance in the cards you draw wouldn't be pure consistency. The more consistent something is, the less variance there is. This is axiomatic. By giving significant control over the types of cards you draw, you are reducing variance in the game play.
Which is not a bad thing. I'd say there's too much variance in the game, a big part of that being mana screw and mana flood. A decrease, but one that still maintains a good amount of variance so games play out differently, would be a good thing.
As a thought experiment - think about how that plays out. Lets imagine we just use existing deck construction rules, and we divide up the deck into a deck of lands an a deck of non-lands. You still have to play 60 total cards. So in most cases you'll have a deck of 24 lands, and a deck of 36 cards. You'll draw lands for your starting hand based on what your early curve is at, and how many colors you're playing. If you're playing 1 color, every game you will draw 1 land and 6 cards, because that is the best possible hand to take. It gives you an insane amount of card selection and no risk at getting mana starved.
Yes, that's the point. That you don't get mana starved. Mana screw/starving is a terrible part of the game that just makes players lose games for no reason.
And you don't get an "insane amount of card selection." The nonland (and land) cards are still random. If you spread your manabase into too many colors, you risk getting the wrong kinds of lands, which is a fair price to pay. You do make your claim based on playing 1 color, but playing 1 color would still have the same disadvantage it has today: You only get access to cards of that color.
Normally, a keepable hand is 4 spells and 3 lands (give or take). On the draw, in this format, you basically have 7 spells and 1 land. 75% more individual cards than you could keep normally. That's an insane amount of card selection - at least in my opinion. Nearly twice as many cards to choose from when deciding to cast something.
So you have more choices, which is good.
Mulligan rules have changed over time. The only original mulligans were all land or no land. If this system were in place from day one, then we wouldn't have mulligans. The design of the game would prevent the necessity of having one. So that takes the decision to mulligan or not - which is a higher skill decision - and removes it from the game.
It really isn't that much of a higher skill decision. Most of the time you mulligan it's because the hand you had was unkeepable anyway. And even the more "skill"-based mulligans amount to nothing more than ultimately rolling a dice with the new one and hoping it's a higher score than your previous one.
And to be honest, losing mulliganing would be a small price to pay, particularly considering mulliganing only got created as a way to try to compensate for the flaw of mana screw and mana flood.
But now imagine you are building a deck in this environment. Are you playing combo? Why not run 50 lands and a 10 card deck?
For the reasons I noted earlier. You would be required to have a minimum number of lands and a minimum number of nonlands (maybe 20 and 40?). In fact, the rest of your arguments largely are predicated on the idea that you don't have a minimum for both stacks, which this note completely addresses. I thought it was fairly obvious, but I guess I should have specified that in my original message.
Even WITH 20 and 40, your decks are still hyper consistent.
They would be more consistent, but not "hyper" consistent. The card you draw is still random, after all. All it means is that you wouldn't get stuck drawing lands when you don't want them, but whether the specific card drawn is the card you want is still random.
But explain why they would be 40 and 20?
Those were random numbers I threw out based on the number of lands and nonlands people usually do play. Some level of tweaking may be necessary. Of course, another possibility would be to simply reduce the number of a card you can play from 4 to 3 to compensate. At any rate, nitpicking the numbers is evading the argument.
In Alpha/Beta, which is when you'd have to go to in order to institute this change, there were 5 basic lands, and 10 dual lands. When would you ever need 20 lands to play ANY deck in that era? Also, the minimum deck size in Alpha was 40, not 60.
I'm not even sure what you're trying to ask for here. When would you need 20 lands? Because that would fill out the land requirement. One might as well ask when you'd need 60 cards in a deck... you don't need it for your deck to be good, your deck would be much better if it were something like 20 cards, but the rules say you need so many cards so you play that many.
And the requirement of playing a certain number of lands is you're not guaranteed to draw the specific land you want, so there is still a risk to going into multiple colors, much as there is now, both in the possibility of not drawing the right land and also having to deal with the drawbacks of those dual lands (which, admittedly, barely existed back then).
I'm definitely with the "Do whatever it takes to get the reserved list to not happen" people. I have no problems with collectors in this game (after all, most of us are collectors to some degree, even if it's just to play a deck we want), but my idea of collectible is rare and unusual printings, art, etc. To steer Magic's collectible status more in the direction of stuff like Phyrexian Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and less in the direction of the best lands in the game never getting a reprint.
I'm not going to spend 42 minutes watching that video. Tell me where the pertinent portion is.
The entire video is Richard Garfield talking about the importance of randomness in game design, and then answering questions by other designers. It goes into specific details about why the mana system in magic is integral to its success and some of the other ideas tried and why they didn't work as well. The main lecture is about how luck and skill work together to make great games. It's basically Richard Garfield explaining our specific debate.
If you're not interested in the video, discussing this is with you probably not worth my time. You appear to be more interested in "being right," then trying to understand more about game design, and that's totally fine. Nothing is stopping you from playing Magic the way you are describing. Convince your friends to do it with you, and come up with a specific rule set and make your own variant. The best way to understand is to test and try it. Have fun!
I completely, and respectfully, disagree with any criticism of the "NWO."
Yamahako, I really appreciated your well-reasoned post. Naturally, I do likewise respectfully disagree on at least some points (and I fear a couple of my statements may have been slightly misconstrued). I will endeavour to respond to you fully as soon as possible, though if it's all right I think I'll do it by PM, as this thread seems to have progressed along a different trajectory since my last post.
The entire video is Richard Garfield talking about the importance of randomness in game design, and then answering questions by other designers. It goes into specific details about why the mana system in magic is integral to its success and some of the other ideas tried and why they didn't work as well. The main lecture is about how luck and skill work together to make great games. It's basically Richard Garfield explaining our specific debate.
This is the video where you claim he says this change wouldn't improve the game. Here's what he says (and I may have gotten a few words wrong):
"In Magic, the distribution you got your mana, was something I definitely thought about as 'this is a way to introduce luck into the game' and that no matter how good your deck is, if you don't draw the right mana you might end up losing. And so in this way, I envisioned that a person who was not so good could occasionally beat someone who was good, and in this way you would have a broader audience. Now, I will say, though, that this works very well in a lot of cases, like in the middle of the game if you need particular mana, that worked pretty well. Where it perhaps didn't work so well was that in the beginning of the game where you needed specific mana and you would get very frustrated because you couldn't do anything. Then it felt not as good and that's why in a game like Magic there was these rules introduced to allow you to toss in your hand or your second hand sometimes and get a new one because your first hand wasn't good enough. So that's an example of perhaps I put luck in the game, part of it worked well and there were certain circumstances where it didn't work so well."
How you get the claim that it wouldn't improve the game to implement my suggestion from that is beyond me, as he does note there are issues with it. Heck, even when saying when it was good, he's referring not to getting mana flooded or mana screwed, but about the kind of mana (i.e. color). Even if you assume he misphrased that and did mean the issue of getting mana or not getting it, but even then, when the argument for it is that it lets weaker players beat stronger ones, I can't help but feel that's a rather poor reason, particularly for a game that's supposed to be competitive (which they presumably didn't take into account when originally developing the game).
But even ignoring that being a dubious reason and assuming he wasn't just talking about mana color and assuming that Richard Garfield saying something about this inherently makes it true, ultimately his statement does not actually support what you said. He notes it has some positives and some negatives, but doesn't say that there was no better way to set it up.
If you're not interested in the video, discussing this is with you probably not worth my time. You appear to be more interested in "being right," then trying to understand more about game design, and that's totally fine.
You appear to be more interested in "being right" than actually making a good game.
See how easy it is to turn that around? A vague statement like that doesn't mean anything.
Nothing is stopping you from playing Magic the way you are describing.
Except the game itself. Because they started out with the mana system the way it is, the game evolved around it, which is why if they tried to implement it now, it would screw things up horribly. But if they did this at the start, cards could be designed with the knowledge of this, so you wouldn't end up with the problem we have now where it's not possible to implement it without rebooting the game.
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I would simply tell Richard Garfield: "This game will be way bigger than you think. You may want to rethink some power levels on some of your cards as well as the quantity you are expecting people to accumulate."
I might also suggest to WoTC to get ahead of the Chronicles debacle by publishing their reprint policy prior to the release of that set.
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I think that seems to be the consensus of a lot of people who played back then since they had no idea their cards would be worth anything in 20 years
-Damage would use the stack
-No mythic rarity
-No NWO
I cannot believe that Magic is in a current state of existence where Rampant Growth is deemed too powerful, along with Volcanic Hammer and Wrath of God.
This. Most suggestions in this topic are "I'm an entrenched Magic player and I don't understand why there would be any benefit to ________, since I'm already playing!" or card price arguments or people who don't understand limited.
To address what I think the TC was actually going for, I probably would have introduced things like Chandra's +0 ability earlier so that Red always had a type of card draw, and I would have never printed some of the early blue cards that made Blue so necessary in Vintage/Legacy (although, I don't know what exactly to go after, so maybe that's not the best suggestion).
While this would be a good piece of advice, the problem I have with this and a number of other suggestions is that they were things that were fixed later on. Yes, they incorrectly thought "well, this Ancestral Recall is a rare, so it's okay" but they soon afterwards realized rarity wasn't enough to balance a card and started taking that into account. This is why I suggested a way to stop mana flood and mana screw: That would be something that had to be done at the very start of the game, because once the game came out it became such an entrenched part of it you can't get rid of it anymore even though it's one of the most frustrating things in the game.
Thank you, a fix for the Reserved List that wasn't just "I would have them not make it." That's sort of dancing around the problem which was that there was such an uproar that it was sort of necessary to do something like that to not lose player confidence. Maybe something else could have been done in its place, but just saying "I'd make it so they didn't do it!" is not an actual solution, it's just nixing one solution to a problem while providing no alternate solution. At least your solution is something that might prevent it from being an issue in the first place.
Bribe the person who nixed Banding.
I'm going to try to stick to these instructions as much as possible: make one change to one set. I'd somehow turn Humility into less of rules nightmare or just eliminate the card entirely.
If I could change more than one set, I'd add subtypes like "Fire" to Fireball and company for more design space (protection from fire, etc.).If I were changing WotC business strategy, I wouldn't just remove the reserved list, I'd have them print everything for as dirt cheap as possible. If I were changing the rules, I'd leave mana burn and players not losing from being at 0 or less life until the end of phase/step.
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It's an interesting thought, however, ultimately now you're talking about a game which isn't magic. Richard Garfield, in talks and interviews, has responded to this idea saying that it wouldn't improve the game. He said that he had tried building variants and they were ultimately less interesting. And it isn't hard to understand why.
Pure consistency is the antithesis to diversified deck design. While you feel like it might be more interesting and give you more options, really it would create for very repetitive games.
As a thought experiment - think about how that plays out. Lets imagine we just use existing deck construction rules, and we divide up the deck into a deck of lands an a deck of non-lands. You still have to play 60 total cards. So in most cases you'll have a deck of 24 lands, and a deck of 36 cards. You'll draw lands for your starting hand based on what your early curve is at, and how many colors you're playing. If you're playing 1 color, every game you will draw 1 land and 6 cards, because that is the best possible hand to take. It gives you an insane amount of card selection and no risk at getting mana starved. If you're playing more colors, and there's specific turn one plays you want to hit, you might pick up 2 or 3 lands to make sure you hit your colors. But that will still be a fixed decision that someone will figure out the best configuration for that each player will do. No real extra decision making. Less skill than determining when to take a mulligan currently.
But now imagine you are building a deck in this environment. Are you playing combo? Why not run 50 lands and a 10 card deck? If you basically don't need search, combo decks get pretty insane. Actually, almost any deck gets pretty crazy when it can reduce the number of spells that much. But now the environment can respond to that by playing ultra consistent control decks - play only 8 lands in your land deck (never miss a land drop) and just shut everything down for your opponent until their small spell deck is depleted and now you have as long as you want to win the game. Then, of course, agro can run just 3-5 lands, have access to 5 colors in those lands and play ALL of the best creatures from every color and pretty much eliminate any kind of semblance of color pie.
While all of these looks like more options, it actually reduces deck diversity. The fact that your average Hearthstone deck has twice as many unique cards as a magic deck means you get FEWER unique decks, because decks end up needing to run the same cards to fill out their deck because the card pool isn't deep enough yet (especially when looking at card power level). Two deck magic would create the same problem. The most stable and smallest number of cards combo would be THE combo deck. The control deck would play ALL the control, and any finisher. The agro deck would play all the stickiest and most efficient creatures from all colors. There probably wouldn't be a tempo deck because it wouldn't be focused enough to compete.
Now, I'm not saying a game couldn't be designed with that as its resource system, Hearthstone is basically this. But it wouldn't be Magic anymore. You'd have to redesign, or at least reconsider every card ever made with respect to its power level in this environment. It would be a different game, and it probably wouldn't be as good. Richard Garfield, specifically, believes it isn't.
Mana problems suck while playing the game, but there are ways to mitigate it with different deck construction. Dealing with those challenges are core to the game experience, and eliminating them - while it might seem like it would be great - would dilute the number of unique game experiences and homogenize deck design to where the game would become boring.
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Eh, give us a little credit. I for one did consider these responses when posting.
As for 'I'm an entrenched Magic player and I don't understand,' I'm assuming you are referring to the comments about New World Order, which is of course designed to facilitate new players' learning. The New World Order is a reasonable approach for a company - especially for a company - to take, I simply believe it creates a lesser experience once one is playing. This is somewhat of a mage response, but ultimately you're correct that I do favour existing players over new players in terms of gameplay. This derives from my personal taste in games, which is, briefly, 'the more complex the better,' and from the fact I do not mind taking the time to learn the rules for a new game thoroughly: your preferences may differ, and that's fine, but it doesn't follow to suggest that the other is uncomprehending - merely that (s)he follows a different metric of evaluation.
As for card price arguments, well, yes, of course.
As for limited, first, please note I very deliberately did not say I wanted it to become less of a concern for development (not that this is what you were saying), merely that I wanted to see it developed at a higher power level (think Modern Masters draft). Secondly, you are correct that I don't play limited often (though I do play it), thus perhaps I 'don't understand' it. I would actually be interested in hearing an argument as to why high-powered limited environments don't function, and am open to reevaluating my suggestions in light of a compelling one. If you're interested, feel free to PM me with such an argument or link to one here (I'm assuming we don't want to gum up the thread). In the absence of such an argument, however, I don't see a clear conceptual reason why a draft with more powerful cards would not function.
Anyway, you're right that we seem to have gone for more 'big-picture' amendments in this thread. I have been thinking of some smaller-scale ones in the interim to fit the spirit of the thread. While this is still more sweeping than a single card, mine is 'drop the wither effect from infect in Scars of Mirrodin block'.
I've been playing for over 20 years now, and I prefer to not see the majority of cards require me to break out my reading glasses. Let commons have complex interactions, sure, but less complex text. Which, I think, they are doing well.
Wanting to see cards "developed at a higher power level" is bad for the game as a whole. A limited environment that is as powerful as a constructed environment could not function - the lack of consistency creates a lower power level by default. Secondarily, even if every creature was above curve - then there would be little to know skill in, you know, card selection - which is the point of limited. Knowing the right cards to pick, and how to build them into an effective deck, requires skilled card evaluation. However, if you make every card powerful, you remove that skill from being necessary - and then you've just neutered the complexity of that puzzle. Building a deck then becomes "pick cards on curve, put in the right mix of lands." I'm being reductive, yes, but not unfair to the concept. Also, increasing the power level of limited increases the negative impact of mana flood or screw because it speeds the game up (from a turns perspective). That doesn't reward skill either. So at that point you've ruined the skill required in deck building, and decreased the effect of skill on winning or losing a not insignificant portion of games.
Power creep is bad for the game on many levels, and so an oscillating power curve is, one of, the best ways to handle it. Ir's not actually power level which is fun anyway. It's complex and engaging environments. Some people prefer the environment to change frequently, and some prefer they change more slowly. The smaller the format (in terms of available card choices), the more dynamic it is. The larger the format, the more stable it is. We need formats of all kinds to appeal to different players. However, if you (even slightly) were to increase power level every set, then ALL environments would become dynamic (because more powerful cards are constantly being released). If this is what you want? Play standard. Lightning Bolt or Shock can be of a similar power level in different environments if they kill the same percentage of constructed playable creatures. No one can help you with shock making you feel less powerful except you though.
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This might be news to you, but reprints of powerful cards is not logically incompatible with an oscillating power curve and does not necessitate an unchanging Standard environment.
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"There were a lot of things I wanted to improve on or at least do differently in Jyhad. After all - Jyhad was my second TCG, and I wanted to prove that TCGs were a form of game as potentially diverse as board games. Here are some of the things I wanted to change. I wanted no land - I didn't like that Magic had about 40% boring resource cards in the deck."
How? You still have considerable variance in what cards you actually draw.
Yes, that's the point. That you don't get mana starved. Mana screw/starving is a terrible part of the game that just makes players lose games for no reason.
And you don't get an "insane amount of card selection." The nonland (and land) cards are still random. If you spread your manabase into too many colors, you risk getting the wrong kinds of lands, which is a fair price to pay.
So, at worst, this makes it no worse than things currently are. There's hardly any skill in "I draw seven cards!" because that's what you're obligated to do.
I'm not sure how there's less skill. This prevents the dreaded all-land or no-land hands, which take zero skill to decide whether to mulligan. "Hrm, I have no lands in this hand. I wonder if I should mulligan it." Knowing the answer is yes (unless you're playing manaless dredge) is not skill.
For the reasons I noted earlier. You would be required to have a minimum number of lands and a minimum number of nonlands (maybe 20 and 40?). In fact, the rest of your arguments largely are predicated on the idea that you don't have a minimum for both stacks, which this note completely addresses. I thought it was fairly obvious, but I guess I should have specified that in my original message.
I'm not sure how your statement relates to the post you quoted. I didn't say anything about reprints (or not reprinting cards). Reprinting cards is an excellent way to introduce powerful cards to a standard environment that doesn't introduce power creep to older environments.
Check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av5Hf7uOu-o - especially the Q and A
Having considerable variance in the cards you draw wouldn't be pure consistency. The more consistent something is, the less variance there is. This is axiomatic. By giving significant control over the types of cards you draw, you are reducing variance in the game play.
Normally, a keepable hand is 4 spells and 3 lands (give or take). On the draw, in this format, you basically have 7 spells and 1 land. 75% more individual cards than you could keep normally. That's an insane amount of card selection - at least in my opinion. Nearly twice as many cards to choose from when deciding to cast something.
Mulligan rules have changed over time. The only original mulligans were all land or no land. If this system were in place from day one, then we wouldn't have mulligans. The design of the game would prevent the necessity of having one. So that takes the decision to mulligan or not - which is a higher skill decision - and removes it from the game. You can argue that it would have eventually came back - but you're talking about a developmental change on an alternate time-line game. I remember when tournament rules did not allow for mulligans, and it sucked. I remember when Paris was introduced (at Pro Tour Paris) because people didn't want to have to show their hand to their opponent (and thus sharing what their deck was). None of that would have been necessary. Yeah all/land no/land mulligans are not difficult to decide on (until you're down to 4 or 3 cards), but 2 landers? 4 landers? it can be tricky.
Even WITH 20 and 40, your decks are still hyper consistent. But explain why they would be 40 and 20? In Alpha/Beta, which is when you'd have to go to in order to institute this change, there were 5 basic lands, and 10 dual lands. When would you ever need 20 lands to play ANY deck in that era? Also, the minimum deck size in Alpha was 40, not 60. So its not unreasonable to assume smaller deck sizes. I didn't say their wasn't a minimum, I just went to some logical conclusions - though I imagine I might have skipped detailing some of the mental arithmetic required to get there - so I suppose I can understand some confusion on your part.
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I apologize Yamahako. I've been reading lots of posts about reprints, proxies and power creep today and I incorrectly assumed your post was connected.
Modern: URW Madcap Experiment
Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
My EDH Commanders:
Aminatou, The Fateshifter UBW
Azami, Lady of Scrolls U
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed B
Edric, Spymaster of Trest UG
Glissa, the Traitor BG
Arcum Dagsson U
The greedy streak in me would also gather 40 duals, a Tabernacles, a set of Power (including a Library), Force of Wills, and some Goyfs. You know, just in case my first plan didn't work so well.
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Which is not a bad thing. I'd say there's too much variance in the game, a big part of that being mana screw and mana flood. A decrease, but one that still maintains a good amount of variance so games play out differently, would be a good thing.
Yes, that's the point. That you don't get mana starved. Mana screw/starving is a terrible part of the game that just makes players lose games for no reason.
And you don't get an "insane amount of card selection." The nonland (and land) cards are still random. If you spread your manabase into too many colors, you risk getting the wrong kinds of lands, which is a fair price to pay. You do make your claim based on playing 1 color, but playing 1 color would still have the same disadvantage it has today: You only get access to cards of that color.
So you have more choices, which is good.
It really isn't that much of a higher skill decision. Most of the time you mulligan it's because the hand you had was unkeepable anyway. And even the more "skill"-based mulligans amount to nothing more than ultimately rolling a dice with the new one and hoping it's a higher score than your previous one.
And to be honest, losing mulliganing would be a small price to pay, particularly considering mulliganing only got created as a way to try to compensate for the flaw of mana screw and mana flood.
They would be more consistent, but not "hyper" consistent. The card you draw is still random, after all. All it means is that you wouldn't get stuck drawing lands when you don't want them, but whether the specific card drawn is the card you want is still random.
Those were random numbers I threw out based on the number of lands and nonlands people usually do play. Some level of tweaking may be necessary. Of course, another possibility would be to simply reduce the number of a card you can play from 4 to 3 to compensate. At any rate, nitpicking the numbers is evading the argument.
I'm not even sure what you're trying to ask for here. When would you need 20 lands? Because that would fill out the land requirement. One might as well ask when you'd need 60 cards in a deck... you don't need it for your deck to be good, your deck would be much better if it were something like 20 cards, but the rules say you need so many cards so you play that many.
And the requirement of playing a certain number of lands is you're not guaranteed to draw the specific land you want, so there is still a risk to going into multiple colors, much as there is now, both in the possibility of not drawing the right land and also having to deal with the drawbacks of those dual lands (which, admittedly, barely existed back then).
I'm definitely with the "Do whatever it takes to get the reserved list to not happen" people. I have no problems with collectors in this game (after all, most of us are collectors to some degree, even if it's just to play a deck we want), but my idea of collectible is rare and unusual printings, art, etc. To steer Magic's collectible status more in the direction of stuff like Phyrexian Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and less in the direction of the best lands in the game never getting a reprint.
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GYisan, The Wanderer BardG: Gradus Ad Elfball.
Duel EDH: Yisan & Titania.
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The entire video is Richard Garfield talking about the importance of randomness in game design, and then answering questions by other designers. It goes into specific details about why the mana system in magic is integral to its success and some of the other ideas tried and why they didn't work as well. The main lecture is about how luck and skill work together to make great games. It's basically Richard Garfield explaining our specific debate.
If you're not interested in the video, discussing this is with you probably not worth my time. You appear to be more interested in "being right," then trying to understand more about game design, and that's totally fine. Nothing is stopping you from playing Magic the way you are describing. Convince your friends to do it with you, and come up with a specific rule set and make your own variant. The best way to understand is to test and try it. Have fun!
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hu9uNBSUt92PwGhvexYlwFvsh6_SJBlEEIUV3H9_XyU/edit?usp=sharing
Yamahako, I really appreciated your well-reasoned post. Naturally, I do likewise respectfully disagree on at least some points (and I fear a couple of my statements may have been slightly misconstrued). I will endeavour to respond to you fully as soon as possible, though if it's all right I think I'll do it by PM, as this thread seems to have progressed along a different trajectory since my last post.
"In Magic, the distribution you got your mana, was something I definitely thought about as 'this is a way to introduce luck into the game' and that no matter how good your deck is, if you don't draw the right mana you might end up losing. And so in this way, I envisioned that a person who was not so good could occasionally beat someone who was good, and in this way you would have a broader audience. Now, I will say, though, that this works very well in a lot of cases, like in the middle of the game if you need particular mana, that worked pretty well. Where it perhaps didn't work so well was that in the beginning of the game where you needed specific mana and you would get very frustrated because you couldn't do anything. Then it felt not as good and that's why in a game like Magic there was these rules introduced to allow you to toss in your hand or your second hand sometimes and get a new one because your first hand wasn't good enough. So that's an example of perhaps I put luck in the game, part of it worked well and there were certain circumstances where it didn't work so well."
How you get the claim that it wouldn't improve the game to implement my suggestion from that is beyond me, as he does note there are issues with it. Heck, even when saying when it was good, he's referring not to getting mana flooded or mana screwed, but about the kind of mana (i.e. color). Even if you assume he misphrased that and did mean the issue of getting mana or not getting it, but even then, when the argument for it is that it lets weaker players beat stronger ones, I can't help but feel that's a rather poor reason, particularly for a game that's supposed to be competitive (which they presumably didn't take into account when originally developing the game).
But even ignoring that being a dubious reason and assuming he wasn't just talking about mana color and assuming that Richard Garfield saying something about this inherently makes it true, ultimately his statement does not actually support what you said. He notes it has some positives and some negatives, but doesn't say that there was no better way to set it up.
You appear to be more interested in "being right" than actually making a good game.
See how easy it is to turn that around? A vague statement like that doesn't mean anything.
Except the game itself. Because they started out with the mana system the way it is, the game evolved around it, which is why if they tried to implement it now, it would screw things up horribly. But if they did this at the start, cards could be designed with the knowledge of this, so you wouldn't end up with the problem we have now where it's not possible to implement it without rebooting the game.