It just seems the WOTC is getting worse and better with formatting at the same time.
Devoted Crop-Mate
2W
Creature - Human Warrior
You may exert Devoted Crop-Mate as it attacks. When you do, return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. (An exerted creature won't untap during your next untap step.)
Shouldn't it be IF you do, do X.
Not to mention their constant back and forth with lords. Its either
Ability X. Other creatures you control have ability X
or
Creatures you control have Ability X
with the latter being much cleaner. And the new parallel lives color shifted is worded completely differently to do the same thing.
The cycling matters cards say when you cycle or discard another card.
two problems with this.
1. Cycling requires you discard a card, therefor the ability couldve been worded when you discard another card.
2. Another card ALWAYS refers to a card that isnt the card the text is written on, so another doesn't need to be there either
Whenever you discard a card do X. done.
Not to mention SO MUCH USELESS TEXT
Exert - Do X(you may Exert a creature as it attack, it doesnt untap......)
Pretty much every ability can be shorted. Landfall - gain 3 life(landfall is triggered when a land enters......) thus allowing less cluttered cards and more flavor text. as well as reminder text vanishing on rares and above.
It just seems to me that for a company that spends years on cards, they should be able to make the cards simplified to read.
Also, I see the irony in my own formatting. but I do not format things for a living.
In magic terms, "if" represents a replacement effect (event X doesn't happen, instead Y does). "when" is a triggered effect (even X happens, then event Y happens).
Devoted cropmate CANNOT be an "if" because you are not replacing any event. If you insist of changing the "when" to if, then the most likely event being replaced is the attack (the attack doesn't happen), which makes no sense because exert happens when you attack. Exert is very clearly "event X, then event Y", rather than "no event X, instead Y", so "when" is the correct wording.
Maybe you should provide examples for the rest of your post.
What? "If" most certainly does not mean a replacement effect. The first "if" to "may" that pops up is Akuta, Born of Ash, which is exactly the wording OP is asking why Exert doesn't use. Go down further and you get Blight Herder, which again has the same wording as Akuta. Neither Akuta or Blight Herder replace any events.
I agree that the new wording for cards that care about discarding cards is asinine.
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Oh, what's that you say, Karn? You remove poison counters? You should tell that to Mr. Rosewater.
What? "If" most certainly does not mean a replacement effect. The first "if" to "may" that pops up is Akuta, Born of Ash, which is exactly the wording OP is asking why Exert doesn't use. Go down further and you get Blight Herder, which again has the same wording as Akuta. Neither Akuta or Blight Herder replace any events.
I agree that the new wording for cards that care about discarding cards is asinine.
Those are already nested within triggers though. So, there is a trigger that is occurring that then checks to see if you did something. Those just use "if" in the traditional English sense.
Exert however has you make a choice as you are attacking which means there is no trigger. If the wording was "As you attack, Exert. If you do, <do something>" there would be no trigger and there would be nothing to respond to. It also means that Devoted Crop-Mate wouldn't work as it requires a target. Targets are chosen when an ability or spell is put onto the stack. Without a trigger in there somewhere, nothing is put onto the stack and no target can be chosen (or, most importantly, responded to).
Wizards has said a number of times that they included "...cycle or discard..." in the text of cards that care about cards being discarded for clarity's sake. The templating isn't there because the rules require it; it is there to make it easy to recognize that cycling would trigger those abilities. They did a bit on internal testing and found this way works best and, frankly, 2 extra words hardly seems worth complaining about.
As for shortening abilities to use keywords, they have already said they don't do that for keywords or ability words outside the current block. That is why Landfall is not seen outside Zendikar and Metalcraft is not seen outside Mirrodin/New Phyrexia. Unless the block as a whole uses those keywords, they are not going to use them on 1 or 2 cards that are similar or the same. They found that one of the biggest issues (complexity-wise) of Time Spiral was the amount of keywords making it confusing to keep up with what everything did.
And, they have changed their templating from "All things get <something>" "This has <something>" and "All other things has <something>". They did this a while back and I am not sure that they have reverted to the "old" templating since. This again was for clarity's sake as it made sure people knew the card affected itself.
Now I'm confused. All I was saying was that "if" doesn't mean something is a replacement effect. Then you said there wasn't a trigger. Then you said there had to be a trigger or nothing would go on the stack.
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Oh, what's that you say, Karn? You remove poison counters? You should tell that to Mr. Rosewater.
Generally speaking, anything that says "if...instead" is a replacement effect. I agree that not every instance of the word "if" represents a replacement effect and the two examples you provided just word the word "if" within a trigger. But, the wording the OP is suggesting is a replacement effect and, thus, wouldn't work at all.
The current wording of Exert produces a trigger. OP's suggestion doesn't. And, for this to work, a trigger is needed.
Declaring attackers is a Turn-Based Action. which is not a good time to be resolving abilities. all such business is handled as triggered abilities and put on the stack to be resolved one by one in an orderly fashion.
Not to mention their constant back and forth with lords. Its either
Ability X. Other creatures you control have ability X
or
Creatures you control have Ability X
with the latter being much cleaner.
While I agree the latter is cleaner, Wizards has decided that the former is clearer, especially for new players. Also, the two effects are not completely the same. For example, "Trample, other ____ creatures you control have trample" is searchable by Mwonvuli Beast Tracker, while "____ creatures you control have trample" is not. Additionally, if the lord gains or loses the quality that's being used to decide what gets the bonus, that will change whether the lord gets the bonus for the second wording, but not the first. (As a practical example, consider what happens when Death Baron becomes a skeleton.)
And the new parallel lives color shifted is worded completely differently to do the same thing.
Here's the difference between the two:
If an effect would putcreate one or more tokens onto the battlefield under your control, it putscreates twice that many of those tokens onto the battlefield instead.
Putting creature tokens onto the battlefield was replaced with creating creature tokens in Kaladesh. The difference in text is only because a set between the two cards' printings added an applicable keyword action to the game's lexicon.
The cycling matters cards say when you cycle or discard another card.
two problems with this.
1. Cycling requires you discard a card, therefor the ability couldve been worded when you discard another card.
2. Another card ALWAYS refers to a card that isnt the card the text is written on, so another doesn't need to be there either
Whenever you discard a card do X. done.
Not to mention SO MUCH USELESS TEXT
This is mostly for clarity, again, just like the issue with lords. Wizards wants to make it clear that these effects work for both cycling and for non-cycling discarding. They also want to make it clear that cycling the card with the cycling-matters ability doesn't give you the trigger, hence "another".
Pretty much every ability can be shorted. Landfall - gain 3 life(landfall is triggered when a land enters......) thus allowing less cluttered cards and more flavor text. as well as reminder text vanishing on rares and above.
Landfall is not a keyword, it is an ability word and has no rules meaning. that's why it's always in italics, just like reminder text and flavor text. Ability words simply tie a mechanic together.
If landfall were to gain rules meaning in the future, it's more likely to get upgraded to a keyword action (like "destroy") rather than a keyword (like "equip"). In that case "Landfall -- Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control..." would become something like "Whenever you landfall..."
You may exert Devoted Crop-Mate as it attacks. When you do, return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. (An exerted creature won't untap during your next untap step.)
OP was asking was why it isn't:
You may exert Devoted Crop-Mate as it attacks. If you do, return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. (An exerted creature won't untap during your next untap step.)
I don't see how changing "when" to "if" there turns it into a replacement effect.
We're asking why it's worded "when" there when it's usually worded "if".
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Oh, what's that you say, Karn? You remove poison counters? You should tell that to Mr. Rosewater.
You're currently mixing up two different uses of 'if' in Magic.
There's the if associated with replacement effects, which usually shows up at the beginning of the sentence. Usually formatted 'If an event would happen, do something different instead' (example: Parallel Lives)
Then, there's the intervening if that shows up on conditional triggers, which is formatted like this:
'When an event happens, if condition is true, do the following' (example: Renegade Rallier)
Exert is not a triggered ability, so it can't use the intervening if templating. That's probably why they decided to go for the 'when'.
we already explained in many different ways why exerted abilities cannot be ifs. Because it's not the right time for resolving exert clauses. Moreover if you're exerting a bunch of creatures at the same time, it would get chaotic to try to resolve them all at once. that's why we have stack and triggered abilities, to maintain order and to allow players to respond.
Devoted Crop-Mate
2W
Creature - Human Warrior
You may exert Devoted Crop-Mate as it attacks. When you do, return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. (An exerted creature won't untap during your next untap step.)
Shouldn't it be IF you do, do X.
Not to mention their constant back and forth with lords. Its either
Ability X. Other creatures you control have ability X
or
Creatures you control have Ability X
with the latter being much cleaner. And the new parallel lives color shifted is worded completely differently to do the same thing.
The cycling matters cards say when you cycle or discard another card.
two problems with this.
1. Cycling requires you discard a card, therefor the ability couldve been worded when you discard another card.
2. Another card ALWAYS refers to a card that isnt the card the text is written on, so another doesn't need to be there either
Whenever you discard a card do X. done.
Not to mention SO MUCH USELESS TEXT
Exert - Do X(you may Exert a creature as it attack, it doesnt untap......)
Pretty much every ability can be shorted. Landfall - gain 3 life(landfall is triggered when a land enters......) thus allowing less cluttered cards and more flavor text. as well as reminder text vanishing on rares and above.
It just seems to me that for a company that spends years on cards, they should be able to make the cards simplified to read.
Also, I see the irony in my own formatting. but I do not format things for a living.
Devoted cropmate CANNOT be an "if" because you are not replacing any event. If you insist of changing the "when" to if, then the most likely event being replaced is the attack (the attack doesn't happen), which makes no sense because exert happens when you attack. Exert is very clearly "event X, then event Y", rather than "no event X, instead Y", so "when" is the correct wording.
Maybe you should provide examples for the rest of your post.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I agree that the new wording for cards that care about discarding cards is asinine.
Exert however has you make a choice as you are attacking which means there is no trigger. If the wording was "As you attack, Exert. If you do, <do something>" there would be no trigger and there would be nothing to respond to. It also means that Devoted Crop-Mate wouldn't work as it requires a target. Targets are chosen when an ability or spell is put onto the stack. Without a trigger in there somewhere, nothing is put onto the stack and no target can be chosen (or, most importantly, responded to).
Wizards has said a number of times that they included "...cycle or discard..." in the text of cards that care about cards being discarded for clarity's sake. The templating isn't there because the rules require it; it is there to make it easy to recognize that cycling would trigger those abilities. They did a bit on internal testing and found this way works best and, frankly, 2 extra words hardly seems worth complaining about.
As for shortening abilities to use keywords, they have already said they don't do that for keywords or ability words outside the current block. That is why Landfall is not seen outside Zendikar and Metalcraft is not seen outside Mirrodin/New Phyrexia. Unless the block as a whole uses those keywords, they are not going to use them on 1 or 2 cards that are similar or the same. They found that one of the biggest issues (complexity-wise) of Time Spiral was the amount of keywords making it confusing to keep up with what everything did.
And, they have changed their templating from "All things get <something>" "This has <something>" and "All other things has <something>". They did this a while back and I am not sure that they have reverted to the "old" templating since. This again was for clarity's sake as it made sure people knew the card affected itself.
The current wording of Exert produces a trigger. OP's suggestion doesn't. And, for this to work, a trigger is needed.
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Here's the difference between the two:
putcreate one or more tokensonto the battlefieldunder your control, itputscreates twice that many of those tokens onto the battlefield instead.This is mostly for clarity, again, just like the issue with lords. Wizards wants to make it clear that these effects work for both cycling and for non-cycling discarding. They also want to make it clear that cycling the card with the cycling-matters ability doesn't give you the trigger, hence "another".
Landfall is not a keyword, it is an ability word and has no rules meaning. that's why it's always in italics, just like reminder text and flavor text. Ability words simply tie a mechanic together.
If landfall were to gain rules meaning in the future, it's more likely to get upgraded to a keyword action (like "destroy") rather than a keyword (like "equip"). In that case "Landfall -- Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control..." would become something like "Whenever you landfall..."
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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You may exert Devoted Crop-Mate as it attacks. When you do, return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. (An exerted creature won't untap during your next untap step.)
OP was asking was why it isn't:
You may exert Devoted Crop-Mate as it attacks. If you do, return target creature card with converted mana cost 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. (An exerted creature won't untap during your next untap step.)
I don't see how changing "when" to "if" there turns it into a replacement effect.
We're asking why it's worded "when" there when it's usually worded "if".
There's the if associated with replacement effects, which usually shows up at the beginning of the sentence. Usually formatted 'If an event would happen, do something different instead' (example: Parallel Lives)
Then, there's the intervening if that shows up on conditional triggers, which is formatted like this:
'When an event happens, if condition is true, do the following' (example: Renegade Rallier)
Exert is not a triggered ability, so it can't use the intervening if templating. That's probably why they decided to go for the 'when'.
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