No, denial is the epitome of reactionary which isn't necessarily interactive. If that qualifies as interactive gameplay then my creature's activated abilities being relevant to the board state is also the very definition of interaction
You'd think that people would actually have a grasp of english considering how wordy the game is
Alas... All these children thinking counterspells are the epitome of the game missed that era and like to try to act smart by singing it's praise...
What's more interactive to you? Action/Reaction or "My creature is larger than yours I win"?
Since each player draws a card at the beginning of their turn, and each player gets a second main phase after combat, the odds of combat happening when neither player has cards in hand is slim. Using that as in example of non-interaction is about as disingenuous as saying that removal is non-interactive because creatureless decks exist.
The argument I'm making is that the only thing making combat interactive is cards in hand, the board state itself isn't interactive.
The easiest way to illustrate this is the "no cards in hand" scenario. That, however, isn't the main argument.
This seems like a strange point to make. "If you remove the rest of the gameplay, this portion of gameplay is not interactive." Combat is what informs nearly every decision in the game (especially in limited) which makes it inherently interactive.
Just for argument's sake, however, even if both players have no hand, combat is still plenty interactive. I disagree with the assertion that there's only one 'correct' way to handle combat math, because, again, the rest of the game informs the interaction. In one board state it may make sense to chump block until I can draw answers because I'm relatively low on life and my opponent is playing red, so I don't want to be in range if he rips a brimstone volley off the top. If the board state is the same, but my opponent is in blue, I'm less worried about him having that extra reach this turn. Maybe this is game 2 and I managed to mill my opponent out last game, so I've seen his entire deck. I know he has no real threats left, so maybe I triple block to deal with the one on the board. Even though I 3-for-1 myself, it helps we slow my clock and potentially stabilize.
Combat informs and is informed by, recursively, the rest of the game. Trying to separate it from that mechanism is meaningless.
This is a fundamentally flawed approach to the idea of combat, as it assumes that no creatures in combat have activated abilities, and that the only form of interaction comes from cards in your/your opponent's hand.
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Ironically, I'd actually call heavy removal fairly uninteractive.
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Likewise, counterspells are also rather uninteractive...
Activated abilities of creatures, or whatever permanents may be on the board in general, doesn't make combat more or less interactive. The point is that for any given board state there's generally speaking only one (good) line of play. If neither player has any cards in hand said line of play tends to be obvious, because there's no way of interacting with the board and you're not playing around anything.
A complex board state, lots of creatures with various activated abilities for example, can make it more difficult to figure out the correct play. It doesn't, however, make combat any more interactive.
Removal, and counterspells, on the other hand are the very definition of interaction. They are interacting with the board and/or opponent, changing the board state and course of the game. Blue mages may be the only ones interacting with the spells on the stack on a regular basis but that doesn't make countermagic non-interactive.
I strongly disagree with your opinion that the only real form of interaction comes from cards in your hand. I believe that it stems from the fact that you are using a fundamentally different definition of interactivity than I am. I am using the dictionary.com definition for interactivity, which defines the term as "(of two or more persons, forces, etc) acting upon or in close relation with each other; interacting": by this definition, activated abilities absolutely count as interaction. As an example, imagine a scenario where you have a creature that can give one of your creatures deathtouch, and I have a creature that can give one of my creatures +2/+2, and both of our creatures are 3/3. I attack, you block, I activate my ability to pump my creature, and you respond by activating your ability to give your creature deathtouch. Under the dictionary.com definition of interactivity, this definitely counts as interaction: I am using my ability to boost my creature so that I survive combat, while you are interacting with my ability by giving your creature deathtouch to ensure a trade.
I would agree that removal and counterspells are another version, another example, of interaction, but they are by no means the only version/example of interaction. Interacting with the board/the opponent and changing the board state/the course of the game are things that creamytures can do as well; for that matter, they don't even need to be creatures with activated abilities. Playing a creature by necessity interacts with the board, attacking and getting through interacts with the opponent via dealing damage, growing your army changes the board state, and casting a strong creature that can kill all of your opponent's creatures, or that can't be blocked by any of your opponent's creatures, can certainly change the course of the game. So, for all of the things you have mentioned, not only can creatures do all of them, you don't even need creatures with interactive activated abilities to fulfill the conditions! Removal certainly helps, but in the end, if I created a creature that was a 1/1 for 1B that had "sacrifice this creature: destroy target non-Black creature," then apart from being a creature, how would that be any different from a Doom Blade that you could (possibly) see coming? It would almost certainly be worse than Doom Blade, as Doom Blade can be cast on the opponent's turn, while a creature without Flash can only be cast on your turn. However, in and of itself, if the ability is the same as Doom Blade's ability, it should not magically be non-interactive simply because it's a creature.
Finally, as for counterspells being non-interactive, the fact that only Blue mages can interact with the stack does remove a lot of the interactivity of the system. Counterspells technically fall under the definition of interaction, because you are attempting to change the board state via playing a creature, and I am countering your plan by playing a counterspell on the creature to stop it from entering the field and changing the board state. However, because only Blue mages can meaningfully interact with this ability, it significantly cheapens the interaction. The primary reason for my argument is that while countering a spell is, by definition, interacting with the game state, countering spells as a mechanic does not allow the other player to meaningfully react, cheapening the encounter. To explain, currently there are many mechanics for protecting your creatures while they are on the field. When your opponent Doom Blade's your creature, there are many responses: you can give the creature Protection from Black (making Doom Blade fail), you can give your creature Hexproof, you can blink it, if it has a sacrifice ability (or something else you control has a sacrifice a creature mechanic) then you can sacrifice it in response to the Doom Blade, you can bounce it back to your hand, you can give it Indestructible, etc. If the removal spell is damage-based rather than straight removal, you can also give the creature +X/+X to let it survive the spell. The bottom line is, you can interact with the kill spell in many ways, and if you are clever and have the right cards/abilities then you can force the removal spell to fail. For counterspells, on the other hand, there are only three mechanics in place for stopping a card from being countered: the card can have Split Second, the card can have 'cannot be countered,' or you can have counterspells of your own. For two of those mechanics (Split Second and 'can't be countered'), the mechanic is inherently non-interactive: Split Second makes it so that no spells or activated abilities except for mana abilities can be played, while "can't be countered" simply makes the card un-counterable. Neither ability allows for any kind of interaction with the spell until it hits the field. Finally, countering the spell requires Blue magic, restricting all other builds from using it. Because of this, there are, with only a few exceptions, no ways for a non-Blue mage to deal with a creature/spell being countered, while there are multiple ways for any kind of player to deal with a creature/permanent being removed via kill/damage-based removal. Because of this, only counterspells interact with counterspells, while all kinds of spells and abilities interact with kill/damage-based removal, making counterspells inherently less interactive than kill spells. As for kill spells themselves, it could easily be argued that they are, in fact, less interactive than creatures: after all, a deck that plays few-to-no creatures makes kill spells, for the most part, dead cards that do nothing and can't be cast. In other words, kill spells are only interactive some of the time (i.e whenever there are creatures on the field), whereas creatures are always interactive no matter what.
Finally, in your latest post up till now, you wrote "Sure, a more complex board state will make it more difficult to see what the correct line of play is but it doesn't mean it's more interactive. Once you've identified the correct line of play, which may often be doing nothing at all, the rest is basically scripted." The problem with this line of reasoning is that it discounts the possibility of a misplay. Players are human, and people make mistakes; even at a competitive, professional level like Pro Tours, games can still come down to mistaken plays and judgmental errors. Because of this, the more complex the board state is, the more difficult it is to determine the optimal play, and as a result, the likelihood of misplays or sub-optimal play increases. As a result, it is fully possible that neither player will determine the correct line of play, or that one will choose the incorrect play and the other will punish him/her for it. If both players were robots designed to analyze the board state and choose the correct action 100% of the time, then the rest of the game would be scripted, but since both players are human, the game is only scripted if neither player ever makes a single mistake, which is a fairly rare occurrence. Also, the line of reasoning is flawed because it discounts the possibility of new cards, as even in the unlikely scenario of both players being out of cards and playing based on the board state, there is always the possibility of one player getting a strong top-deck and fundamentally changing the nature of the board state, further throwing the combat into confusion and allowing for new mistakes.
Says a lot about my casualness when the new (?) Juggernaut art has me all giddy. I've been away from Magic for a little bit, but this looks great for a core set. I'll try a pre-release or two.
This is a fundamentally flawed approach to the idea of combat, as it assumes that no creatures in combat have activated abilities, and that the only form of interaction comes from cards in your/your opponent's hand.
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Ironically, I'd actually call heavy removal fairly uninteractive.
...
Likewise, counterspells are also rather uninteractive...
Activated abilities of creatures, or whatever permanents may be on the board in general, doesn't make combat more or less interactive. The point is that for any given board state there's generally speaking only one (good) line of play. If neither player has any cards in hand said line of play tends to be obvious, because there's no way of interacting with the board and you're not playing around anything.
A complex board state, lots of creatures with various activated abilities for example, can make it more difficult to figure out the correct play. It doesn't, however, make combat any more interactive.
Removal, and counterspells, on the other hand are the very definition of interaction. They are interacting with the board and/or opponent, changing the board state and course of the game. Blue mages may be the only ones interacting with the spells on the stack on a regular basis but that doesn't make countermagic non-interactive.
Do you also consider a game like Chess or Checkers to be non-interactive, because "you can figure out the correct line of play by looking at the board long enough"?
We've reached the point where people no longer bother reading what's been posted before and are disagreeing with minutae only tangentially related to my actual argument - just to have something to disagree with.
So I'll close shop before the really harsh fallacies starts cropping up.
I'll leave with one final note: The main disagreement here does, as DiscipleOferebos notes, stem from a different interpretation of what interactivity means in the context of the game. The difference doesn't lie in the dictionary definition however, but rather the fact that whereas most other posters here see interactivity in a static game state I don't.
You may well be, as Yeef notes, playing an identical board state differently depending upon what opponent you're facing - or am expecting to face - but I disagree with that being interactive. As do I with the idea that complex board states are more interactive, despite agreeing that such a board state makes misplays more likely.
This is because, for every given board state, I see only the beginning and the end - the journey is irrelevant. Without unknowns thrown into the equation, cards in hand as it relates to Magic, there's no variance and no interaction. Essentially it's just a set of IF statements that all lead to the same conclusion, ie. the game plays itself.
So yes, there's a disagreement here but it's not what's commonly assumed.
Carry on.
I suppose then it's best that we end the discussion here, as we are operating on fundamentally different interpretations of interactivity, and neither of us will convince the other. That said, I will restate randomdragon's post from above, where he asks: do you also consider a game like Chess or Checkers to be non-interactive, because "you can figure out the correct line of play by looking at the board long enough?" Frankly, your opinion truly baffles me, as I've never though of variance being necessary for interaction. As for unknowns in the equation, there are two unknowns that you have missed in your argument: the opponent's plays/strategy and topdecks. The opponent may use his field differently than you'd expect, causing you to have to re-evaluate your strategy. Also, top-decks always induce some variance into the game, because you always draw one card, and that card could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Anyway, taking your position into consideration, I'd recommend ignoring Standard and Limited for the most part, and focus mainly on Legacy and Vintage, with maybe a bit of Modern (I don't know much about Modern's meta since I don't have a deck). If the only truly relevant part of interaction is having unknowns in play, you should focus on a game type that doesn't have much of a chance of getting rid of all of your cards. For the most part, in Legacy, most decks have ways to draw more cards or manipulate the deck, while in Vintage most games simply don't last long enough for your hand to deplete. Anyway, I guess that's gotta be it for our discussion. I find your argument to be really, really weird, but as long as it works for you, that's fine.
You can't view only a single combat phase when discussing interactivity. Let's assume that we're both playing decks of nothing but 24 lands, 12 Grizzly Bears, 12 Nessian Courser, and 12 Rumbling Baloth. We're both at 20 life with no cards in hand and 4 lands in play, and both graveyards are empty. I have 3 bears and you have 2 coursers. What's the optimal play? You could try to race, you could attack with one and leave the other back to block, or you could wait. If you do attack with one, do I take 3 or block with 2 bears? There isn't a correct answer like you assume.
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What's more interactive to you? Action/Reaction or "My creature is larger than yours I win"?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Just for argument's sake, however, even if both players have no hand, combat is still plenty interactive. I disagree with the assertion that there's only one 'correct' way to handle combat math, because, again, the rest of the game informs the interaction. In one board state it may make sense to chump block until I can draw answers because I'm relatively low on life and my opponent is playing red, so I don't want to be in range if he rips a brimstone volley off the top. If the board state is the same, but my opponent is in blue, I'm less worried about him having that extra reach this turn. Maybe this is game 2 and I managed to mill my opponent out last game, so I've seen his entire deck. I know he has no real threats left, so maybe I triple block to deal with the one on the board. Even though I 3-for-1 myself, it helps we slow my clock and potentially stabilize.
Combat informs and is informed by, recursively, the rest of the game. Trying to separate it from that mechanism is meaningless.
I strongly disagree with your opinion that the only real form of interaction comes from cards in your hand. I believe that it stems from the fact that you are using a fundamentally different definition of interactivity than I am. I am using the dictionary.com definition for interactivity, which defines the term as "(of two or more persons, forces, etc) acting upon or in close relation with each other; interacting": by this definition, activated abilities absolutely count as interaction. As an example, imagine a scenario where you have a creature that can give one of your creatures deathtouch, and I have a creature that can give one of my creatures +2/+2, and both of our creatures are 3/3. I attack, you block, I activate my ability to pump my creature, and you respond by activating your ability to give your creature deathtouch. Under the dictionary.com definition of interactivity, this definitely counts as interaction: I am using my ability to boost my creature so that I survive combat, while you are interacting with my ability by giving your creature deathtouch to ensure a trade.
I would agree that removal and counterspells are another version, another example, of interaction, but they are by no means the only version/example of interaction. Interacting with the board/the opponent and changing the board state/the course of the game are things that creamytures can do as well; for that matter, they don't even need to be creatures with activated abilities. Playing a creature by necessity interacts with the board, attacking and getting through interacts with the opponent via dealing damage, growing your army changes the board state, and casting a strong creature that can kill all of your opponent's creatures, or that can't be blocked by any of your opponent's creatures, can certainly change the course of the game. So, for all of the things you have mentioned, not only can creatures do all of them, you don't even need creatures with interactive activated abilities to fulfill the conditions! Removal certainly helps, but in the end, if I created a creature that was a 1/1 for 1B that had "sacrifice this creature: destroy target non-Black creature," then apart from being a creature, how would that be any different from a Doom Blade that you could (possibly) see coming? It would almost certainly be worse than Doom Blade, as Doom Blade can be cast on the opponent's turn, while a creature without Flash can only be cast on your turn. However, in and of itself, if the ability is the same as Doom Blade's ability, it should not magically be non-interactive simply because it's a creature.
Finally, as for counterspells being non-interactive, the fact that only Blue mages can interact with the stack does remove a lot of the interactivity of the system. Counterspells technically fall under the definition of interaction, because you are attempting to change the board state via playing a creature, and I am countering your plan by playing a counterspell on the creature to stop it from entering the field and changing the board state. However, because only Blue mages can meaningfully interact with this ability, it significantly cheapens the interaction. The primary reason for my argument is that while countering a spell is, by definition, interacting with the game state, countering spells as a mechanic does not allow the other player to meaningfully react, cheapening the encounter. To explain, currently there are many mechanics for protecting your creatures while they are on the field. When your opponent Doom Blade's your creature, there are many responses: you can give the creature Protection from Black (making Doom Blade fail), you can give your creature Hexproof, you can blink it, if it has a sacrifice ability (or something else you control has a sacrifice a creature mechanic) then you can sacrifice it in response to the Doom Blade, you can bounce it back to your hand, you can give it Indestructible, etc. If the removal spell is damage-based rather than straight removal, you can also give the creature +X/+X to let it survive the spell. The bottom line is, you can interact with the kill spell in many ways, and if you are clever and have the right cards/abilities then you can force the removal spell to fail. For counterspells, on the other hand, there are only three mechanics in place for stopping a card from being countered: the card can have Split Second, the card can have 'cannot be countered,' or you can have counterspells of your own. For two of those mechanics (Split Second and 'can't be countered'), the mechanic is inherently non-interactive: Split Second makes it so that no spells or activated abilities except for mana abilities can be played, while "can't be countered" simply makes the card un-counterable. Neither ability allows for any kind of interaction with the spell until it hits the field. Finally, countering the spell requires Blue magic, restricting all other builds from using it. Because of this, there are, with only a few exceptions, no ways for a non-Blue mage to deal with a creature/spell being countered, while there are multiple ways for any kind of player to deal with a creature/permanent being removed via kill/damage-based removal. Because of this, only counterspells interact with counterspells, while all kinds of spells and abilities interact with kill/damage-based removal, making counterspells inherently less interactive than kill spells. As for kill spells themselves, it could easily be argued that they are, in fact, less interactive than creatures: after all, a deck that plays few-to-no creatures makes kill spells, for the most part, dead cards that do nothing and can't be cast. In other words, kill spells are only interactive some of the time (i.e whenever there are creatures on the field), whereas creatures are always interactive no matter what.
Finally, in your latest post up till now, you wrote "Sure, a more complex board state will make it more difficult to see what the correct line of play is but it doesn't mean it's more interactive. Once you've identified the correct line of play, which may often be doing nothing at all, the rest is basically scripted." The problem with this line of reasoning is that it discounts the possibility of a misplay. Players are human, and people make mistakes; even at a competitive, professional level like Pro Tours, games can still come down to mistaken plays and judgmental errors. Because of this, the more complex the board state is, the more difficult it is to determine the optimal play, and as a result, the likelihood of misplays or sub-optimal play increases. As a result, it is fully possible that neither player will determine the correct line of play, or that one will choose the incorrect play and the other will punish him/her for it. If both players were robots designed to analyze the board state and choose the correct action 100% of the time, then the rest of the game would be scripted, but since both players are human, the game is only scripted if neither player ever makes a single mistake, which is a fairly rare occurrence. Also, the line of reasoning is flawed because it discounts the possibility of new cards, as even in the unlikely scenario of both players being out of cards and playing based on the board state, there is always the possibility of one player getting a strong top-deck and fundamentally changing the nature of the board state, further throwing the combat into confusion and allowing for new mistakes.
meat's Trade Corner
Do you also consider a game like Chess or Checkers to be non-interactive, because "you can figure out the correct line of play by looking at the board long enough"?
I suppose then it's best that we end the discussion here, as we are operating on fundamentally different interpretations of interactivity, and neither of us will convince the other. That said, I will restate randomdragon's post from above, where he asks: do you also consider a game like Chess or Checkers to be non-interactive, because "you can figure out the correct line of play by looking at the board long enough?" Frankly, your opinion truly baffles me, as I've never though of variance being necessary for interaction. As for unknowns in the equation, there are two unknowns that you have missed in your argument: the opponent's plays/strategy and topdecks. The opponent may use his field differently than you'd expect, causing you to have to re-evaluate your strategy. Also, top-decks always induce some variance into the game, because you always draw one card, and that card could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Anyway, taking your position into consideration, I'd recommend ignoring Standard and Limited for the most part, and focus mainly on Legacy and Vintage, with maybe a bit of Modern (I don't know much about Modern's meta since I don't have a deck). If the only truly relevant part of interaction is having unknowns in play, you should focus on a game type that doesn't have much of a chance of getting rid of all of your cards. For the most part, in Legacy, most decks have ways to draw more cards or manipulate the deck, while in Vintage most games simply don't last long enough for your hand to deplete. Anyway, I guess that's gotta be it for our discussion. I find your argument to be really, really weird, but as long as it works for you, that's fine.
You have no clue what you are talking about, that much is clear