If a Rigger you control would assemble a Contraption, it assembles two Contraptions instead.
Under those new rules, new Doubling Season wording would be:
If an effect you control would create a token, it creates twice that many of those tokens.
This...this is a very deliberate Contraption setup.
This is what I was thinking.
One of my Contraption brainstorming sessions involved changing the token-generating template to "assemble," i.e. "Put X Contraption artifact tokens onto the battlefield" becomes "Assemble X Contraption artifact tokens."
My guess is that Contraptions will be a mechanic in Æther Revolt rather than Kaladesh, and "create" will refer to generating creature tokens while "assemble" refers to generating Contraption artifact tokens.
This hypothesis would make Second Harvest rather awkward, though.
(What if you have Contraption tokens when you cast Second Harvest? How are you "creating" something that SHOULD, from a rules standpoint, be "assembled?")
It could be a "super" word like play that works for lands and spells.
Create is a good word to actually "create" any form of token on the battlefield.
A card isnt "created" its played, a spell is cast and uses the stack, tokens are created.
Seems fairly intuitive to me if they go with that line.
I like how they have time to shorten things like "put X token(s) into play" into "create X token(s)" and yet still haven't keyworded or made something to shorten mill yet.
"Create" has inherent meaning to new players because it's more or less used in the same way as the word in English. "Mill" or any replacement for it would just become a new jargon term that new players have to learn. They don't make milling cards often enough that the space saving would matter. Token generation DOES need the space savings and they do token generation multiple times per set.
I'm not saying token generating should deserve its own word, but mill has been around forever and many sets have seen many cards with it on it. Fight is only seen about 2 cards a set, and barely that sometimes, just like mill and yet "fight" exists. When you can turn....
"Target player/opponent puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard" into....
"Target player/opponent Mills X"...
....that saves quite a bit of space on a mechanic that is used frequently.
At the cost of contributing to what is according to WotC's market research and theorising, and I think we can probably agree, magic's biggest limitation- barrier to entry.
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
I like how they have time to shorten things like "put X token(s) into play" into "create X token(s)" and yet still haven't keyworded or made something to shorten mill yet.
"Create" has inherent meaning to new players because it's more or less used in the same way as the word in English. "Mill" or any replacement for it would just become a new jargon term that new players have to learn. They don't make milling cards often enough that the space saving would matter. Token generation DOES need the space savings and they do token generation multiple times per set.
I'm not saying token generating doesn't deserve its own word, but mill has been around forever and many sets have seen many cards with it on it. Fight is only seen about 2 cards a set, and barely that sometimes, just like mill and yet "fight" exists. When you can turn....
"Target player/opponent puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard" into....
"Target player/opponent Mills X"...
....that saves quite a bit of space on a mechanic that is used frequently.
Except fight makes sense if you aren't familiar with Magic jargon. Both creatures do damage to each other. Sounds like a fight to me. On the other hand, what is "milling" to a new player? It's jargon, milling is a reference to Millstone and without that context "Mill 2" is pure nonsense. Lifelink is intuitive. Fight, Deathtouch, etc. are intuitive. MTG templating needs to be intuitive, not based around jargon.
I like how they have time to shorten things like "put X token(s) into play" into "create X token(s)" and yet still haven't keyworded or made something to shorten mill yet.
"Create" has inherent meaning to new players because it's more or less used in the same way as the word in English. "Mill" or any replacement for it would just become a new jargon term that new players have to learn. They don't make milling cards often enough that the space saving would matter. Token generation DOES need the space savings and they do token generation multiple times per set.
I'm not saying token generating doesn't deserve its own word, but mill has been around forever and many sets have seen many cards with it on it. Fight is only seen about 2 cards a set, and barely that sometimes, just like mill and yet "fight" exists. When you can turn....
"Target player/opponent puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard" into....
"Target player/opponent Mills X"...
....that saves quite a bit of space on a mechanic that is used frequently.
Except fight makes sense if you aren't familiar with Magic jargon. Both creatures do damage to each other. Sounds like a fight to me. On the other hand, what is "milling" to a new player? It's jargon, milling is a reference to Millstone and without that context "Mill 2" is pure nonsense. Lifelink is intuitive. Fight, Deathtouch, etc. are intuitive. MTG templating needs to be intuitive, not based around jargon.
They can call it whatever, but the act of "milling" should probably have been keyworded or something by now. My point with fight was that it shows up about as much as mill does right now and wasn't all that common when it was coined and yet mill has yet to get the same treatment even though it has been around much longer and shows up frequently.
If you want an intuitive actionword, why not use "Burn"?
"Target player burns the top two cards of his or her library." Seems fairly self-explanatory (not totally, but about as much as Haste is).
Besides the fact that burn is already slang for a completely different thing, in a (mostly) different color? Red doesn't really mill, but it does have a lot of burn spells.
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But that's exactly why it's intuitive. Red has "burn" spells because they burn a players health, blue burns a players deck.
No really, its not intuitive at all.
Mill is a slang word that works for anybody that knows the slang word, it could be a keyword, but its not intuitive as the word "mill" really only comes from the original card MillStone, and if you dont know that it is completly not intuitive.
Theres simply not a good word for the "mill" effect that works for a newbie player.
The problem is even a newbie will not give it a special name, until they learn "mill" and just keep using it.
The first few don't seem too complicated- an activated ability isn't combat damage, fight isn't combat damage, the first striker would have been one of the creatures that marked the combat damage that was lethal on it even if it died a step later in the same combat. Wither and infect seems where it would get more complicated. Unless there was a specific exemption for the comp rules, since its not marking damage, the infector wouldn't be one of the creatures dealing the lethal damage and wouldn't be slaying it. Being indestructible, it wouldn't die to lethal damage but to having 0 toughness and wouldn't count as slain. Same with the state-based legend rule
I think a better critical example would be "What if a creature with 5 toughness is dealt 4 combat damage, then three steps later is hit by afflict"?
In that case, the damage wasn't lethal when it was first marked, but later became lethal when its toughness was lowered. This would still count as being killed by the creatures who hit it earlier, by that definition. Or how about "If a 4 toughness creature is lightning bolted, then blocked by eager cadet"? Then it has 1 combat damage and 3 non-combat damage marked on it for lethal. If the inverse isn't to work (combat first, dies to lightning bolt later), then what has to matter is the order they are dealt, and we'd have to look at timestamps of what occured last. So that would restrict it to "Alice is killed by Bob if Alice is dealt lethal damage when state based actions are first checked after combat damage is dealt and Bob dealt any of the combat damage marked on Alice". Then lowering its toughness or bolting it ex post factor wouldn't work, but first strikers who dealt part of the damage would still count.
It would take some real examination to make it workable
...But now you're adding a lot of complexity to an already very complex game. And for what? Making the flavor fit a bit better? The only improvement between the current rules and your rules proposal is the elimination of weird corner cases like a Sengir Vampire getting stronger from drinking the blood of a creature it stopped fighting a while ago. But this is MtG, where Snakes wear boots, things made of ice can be frozen solid, and neck injuries will kill a headless horseman. Imperfect flavor is the price we pay to keep the rules of the game from becoming a jumbled mess.
Again though, I'd point to haste being a prime example. "Haste" doesn't exactly scream "not affected by summoning sickness".
Everyone already uses Mill once they learn what it's slang for, why not just give it a keyword?
Except that haste totally does scream "not affected by summoning sickness."
From Merriam-Webster:
1. rapidity of motion
2. rash or headlong action
3. undue eagerness to act
That seems pretty in-line with what the keyword actually does.
Mill has more than a few obstacles in the way of becoming an action word (not a keyword). First, as noted, Wizards will never use slang terms in card text, regardless of how widespread they are. That's why they didn't call hexproof trollshroud. Second, Wizards isn't exactly in a rush to key/action word every single recurring mechanic in the game. Sometimes, it's more convenient for cards to just tell players what they do instead of making them memorize new terms. That's the given explanation for why "tap ~, it doesn't untap during its owner's next untap step" hasn't officially been named yet. Some mechanics need the shorter terms, such as complex mechanics (trample, first strike, protection, regenerate, etc.) and mechanics frequently granted by spells and abilities, but everything else is a tossup that falls to the whims of the design team.
Again though, I'd point to haste being a prime example. "Haste" doesn't exactly scream "not affected by summoning sickness".
Everyone already uses Mill once they learn what it's slang for, why not just give it a keyword?
Except that haste totally does scream "not affected by summoning sickness."
From Merriam-Webster:
1. rapidity of motion
2. rash or headlong action
3. undue eagerness to act
That seems pretty in-line with what the keyword actually does.
In-line? Yes? Intuitive? No. Haste could just as easily mean "Must attack each turn if able" for the exact same reasons.
I think you'll be alone on this one. Haste has been universally represented as a buff in gaming since original Dungeons and Dragons. You and your friends happened to misread a card.
In-line? Yes? Intuitive? No. Haste could just as easily mean "Must attack each turn if able" for the exact same reasons.
I think you're the first person I've ever seen who has done that, especially since "must attack" hasn't been keyworded yet. Your confusion resulted entirely from your failure to distinguish rules text from reminder text, so I can't even fathom why you decided to blame your misunderstanding on the name of the mechanic. While I bolded the third definition, since it pertains the most to what the keyword actually does, the first one is by far and wide the most well-known outside of the context of MTG. The relationship between the word "haste" and its mechanic isn't even in the same class as the relationship between the word "mill" and the mechanic players connect to it.
I'm not saying token generating doesn't deserve its own word, but mill has been around forever and many sets have seen many cards with it on it. Fight is only seen about 2 cards a set, and barely that sometimes, just like mill and yet "fight" exists. When you can turn....
"Target player/opponent puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard" into....
"Target player/opponent Mills X"...
....that saves quite a bit of space on a mechanic that is used frequently.
As others have mentioned, "fight" as a keyword action is intuitive enough to get a pass. When new players read "fight" their natural assumptions about what is going to happen are generally going to be on the right track. "Fight" was keyworded to give a standard template to green effects that had existed previously and to give green access to removal in limited more in line with its color pie.
Milling is just not a core part of the game. If development wanted to make a viable mill deck for standard at every rotation, you can bet they'd keyword it because it would start showing up on relevant cards (and within other mechanics) with high frequency. If milling were somehow inherently creature-dependent, then it would be keyworded because creatures are where they run out of space most often, which is why creature keywords are the most numerous group of evergeen keywords.
The main barriers to milling getting keyworded:
• It needs to have a name / template that is intuitive for new players.
• It needs to save space where saving space matters.
• Milling needs to actually be relevant every set.
Developmentally, this is unviable. Milling as developed presently is, at best, a niche strategy every few years in limited. They would have to radically dial up the power and frequency of mill cards to have them show up in standard for more than a block. Milling is cute and interesting when it's niche and rare, but it's just not a fun mechanic when it's pushed all the time.
Self-mill has proven to be far more developmentally safe, Dredge aside, but it needs even more cards to make it actually matter. Often the 'mill' cards themselves aren't even templated as actual milling: Forbidden Alchemy / Satyr Wayfinder
The first few don't seem too complicated- an activated ability isn't combat damage, fight isn't combat damage, the first striker would have been one of the creatures that marked the combat damage that was lethal on it even if it died a step later in the same combat. Wither and infect seems where it would get more complicated. Unless there was a specific exemption for the comp rules, since its not marking damage, the infector wouldn't be one of the creatures dealing the lethal damage and wouldn't be slaying it. Being indestructible, it wouldn't die to lethal damage but to having 0 toughness and wouldn't count as slain. Same with the state-based legend rule
I think a better critical example would be "What if a creature with 5 toughness is dealt 4 combat damage, then three steps later is hit by afflict"?
In that case, the damage wasn't lethal when it was first marked, but later became lethal when its toughness was lowered. This would still count as being killed by the creatures who hit it earlier, by that definition. Or how about "If a 4 toughness creature is lightning bolted, then blocked by eager cadet"? Then it has 1 combat damage and 3 non-combat damage marked on it for lethal. If the inverse isn't to work (combat first, dies to lightning bolt later), then what has to matter is the order they are dealt, and we'd have to look at timestamps of what occured last. So that would restrict it to "Alice is killed by Bob if Alice is dealt lethal damage when state based actions are first checked after combat damage is dealt and Bob dealt any of the combat damage marked on Alice". Then lowering its toughness or bolting it ex post factor wouldn't work, but first strikers who dealt part of the damage would still count.
It would take some real examination to make it workable
...But now you're adding a lot of complexity to an already very complex game. And for what? Making the flavor fit a bit better? The only improvement between the current rules and your rules proposal is the elimination of weird corner cases like a Sengir Vampire getting stronger from drinking the blood of a creature it stopped fighting a while ago. But this is MtG, where Snakes wear boots, things made of ice can be frozen solid, and neck injuries will kill a headless horseman. Imperfect flavor is the price we pay to keep the rules of the game from becoming a jumbled mess.
The problem is this game has forced into a creature-centric mold, but combat is still handled fairly clumsily by the rules. Is the conga line and lethal damage marking any less complex? Right now the only way to refer to creatures killing each other is via delayed triggers that might activate several steps later when they get lightning bolted or sacrificed. An elegant solution could have creatures killing creatures be as simple as saying "When Neosengir Vampire slays a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on Neosengir Vampire". As far as the rules complexity itself, it could stay intuitive. Say the implementation was "Alice slays Bob when Alice marks combat damage on Bob and Bob dies to lethal combat damage the next time state based actions are checked". At first glance it might seem like a mouthful, but it would be intuitive enough. If you deal damage and the enemy dies, its slain. If it dies in a later step to a bolt or putrefy or tragic slip, not slain. If it took a first striker and regular striker double blocking, only the latter slew it.
I'm not concerned much with the flavor, I'm concerned more with the deficiency of the existing templates for dealing with what should be a fairly basic action in this game. The game is all about creatures turning sideways, wizards has made that very intentional push of the metagame, at least for standard and modern, yet how those creatures actually interact with each other is limited by the existing rules.
Milling is just not a core part of the game. If development wanted to make a viable mill deck for standard at every rotation, you can bet they'd keyword it because it would start showing up on relevant cards (and within other mechanics) with high frequency. If milling were somehow inherently creature-dependent, then it would be keyworded because creatures are where they run out of space most often, which is why creature keywords are the most numerous group of evergeen keywords.
Fight really isn't a core part of the game either, it's only been around since Innistrad, and doesn't show up all that often.
Since fight came out in Innistrad, the term not the mechanic, there has been......
In SoI block fight and mill show up 4 times.
In BFZ block fight shows up 2 times and, not counting Ingest, mill shows up 5 times, sure its exile and doesn't count towards the normal mill discussion, but it is "milling". Counting Ingest there are much more.
In Khans block there are 9 cards with fight and 5 mill cards.
In Theros block there are 4 cards with fight and 10 mill cards, 11 if you count Pyxis of Pandemonium.
In RTR block there are 6 cards with fight and 24 mill cards, although many aren't the traditional "mill x"
In INN block there are 4 cards with fight and 17 mill cards.
Now none of the mill cards are counting self mill, but do count cards that affect both players, but if self mill was there it would be much more. Now tell me why fight is more relevant than mill again, because only one block since the term fight has been out has it had more cards than mill. If we were to go farther back I'm sure that mill shows up far more than fight ever has.
Mill clearly shows up far more often and yet doesn't have its own term, so really the only thing that is stopping it is WoTC not having a proper term for it.
The main barriers to milling getting keyworded:
• It needs to have a name / template that is intuitive for new players.
• It needs to save space where saving space matters.
• Milling needs to actually be relevant every set.
Alright, let's forget about what they call it, because if the name is all that is needed then we agree that mill could be keyworded, but I will say that "hexproof" isn't all that intuitive either, as many don't know what the word hex means, but people still grasp that idea quickly. Keywording mill would save a ton of space, as keywording it, like in the example I gave, would save 11 words, but it would probably save 8-10, even changing "his or her", which shows up twice on every mill card into "their" so it reads "Target opponent/player puts the top X cards of their library into their graveyard" would cut out 4 words worth of text, allowing larger font on those cards or flavor text.
Fight isn't "relevant" in the sets it is in mostly, just like mill they are just cards most sets have.
Developmentally, this is unviable. Milling as developed presently is, at best, a niche strategy every few years in limited. They would have to radically dial up the power and frequency of mill cards to have them show up in standard for more than a block. Milling is cute and interesting when it's niche and rare, but it's just not a fun mechanic when it's pushed all the time.
Sure mill is niche, but that doesn't mean it should have a keyword.
The main barriers to milling getting keyworded:
- It needs to have a name / template that is intuitive for new players.
- It needs to save space where saving space matters.
- Milling needs to actually be relevant every set.
I'm of the opinion that putting more constrains on the amount of text card can have results in better/more streamlined card design. While templating for this promo complies with second rule it voilates the first one. "Create" obscures the information that it will trigger enter the battlefield effects. I'm not convinced that the amout of space this saves is worth potential problems it will cause for new players. By the same token "mill" is not as descriptive for new players as "put into graveyard from library".
Is the conga line and lethal damage marking any less complex?
I'd say they are. Also, your proposed rules wouldn't be replacing the conga line and lethal damage marking, they'd be adding to it. Making combat on the whole more complex.
Right now the only way to refer to creatures killing each other is via delayed triggers that might activate several steps later when they get lightning bolted or sacrificed.
And? You can still do all the mechanics you're proposing under the current rules, so long as you're willing to accept some flavor weirdness.
An elegant solution could have creatures killing creatures be as simple as saying "When Neosengir Vampire slays a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on Neosengir Vampire". As far as the rules complexity itself, it could stay intuitive. Say the implementation was "Alice slays Bob when Alice marks combat damage on Bob and Bob dies to lethal combat damage the next time state based actions are checked". At first glance it might seem like a mouthful, but it would be intuitive enough.
Just because rules seem intuitive, doesn't mean there isn't complexity there. I can't tell you how many newbies I've seen read the card Humility for the first time, and they immediately intuit what it does, and cannot fathom how it could be a rules nightmare, until you point out something like Opalescence.
Others in this thread have already pointed out situations where your rules add complexity. Common situations, too, not just unique individual card interations.
Regarding the "creature kills creature" point...
Supposing you have this scenario:
You are blocking a Erebos, god of the dead with 2 Manor Gargoyles, they deal 8 damage to the indestructible creature, then you make it lose indestructible by some means (like activating bonds of mortality).
The creature still has 8 damage on it and dies.
Who killed it?
Or any case in which I block a creature with multiple ceatures. Who gets the killing blow?
Do I have to stack the order in which creatures deal the damage even if it is actually dealt all at the same time?
What about sacrificing a creature to play an ability cost of another creature? In the game you are using a creature to kill another creature, so would it count as a "kill trigger"?
Or if one of the two creatures I'm blocking with has deathtouch and the other does not, but the damage is actually enough to be lethal anyway?
It is just a mess and much more complex than handling the odd and rare delayed trigger and in some cases even counterintuitive.
One could make it work by saying that the last creature to deal damage (or the creature that deals lethal damage in blocking order) gets the "kill" and nobody gets the kill if the creature is sacrificed. It is pretty complicated, but there are ways to make it work without changing rules.
Edit: Another possibility is giving all creatures that dealt damage equal credit for "killing" a single creature. But that would probably not be ideal.
Fight really isn't a core part of the game either, it's only been around since Innistrad, and doesn't show up all that often.
Since fight came out in Innistrad, the term not the mechanic, there has been......
In SoI block fight and mill show up 4 times.
In BFZ block fight shows up 2 times and, not counting Ingest, mill shows up 5 times, sure its exile and doesn't count towards the normal mill discussion, but it is "milling". Counting Ingest there are much more.
In Khans block there are 9 cards with fight and 5 mill cards.
In Theros block there are 4 cards with fight and 10 mill cards, 11 if you count Pyxis of Pandemonium.
In RTR block there are 6 cards with fight and 24 mill cards, although many aren't the traditional "mill x"
In INN block there are 4 cards with fight and 17 mill cards.
The draft environments since Innistrad when fight was created: Prey Upon (multiple times, included a core set), Hunt the Weak (including multiple core sets), Pit Fight, Savage Punch, Epic Confrontation, Time to Feed, Wild Instincts
These cards are all a core part of their respective limited environments. Fight show ups on a highly played common just about every limited environment and they're all relatively high pick common removal spells.
In all of these same sets, milling plays a negligible part of the game. Milling an opponent to death is the very rare exception, irrespective of the number of actual cards printed with mill-like effects. Fight simply is more relevant to Magic because removal is a key component of limited games, milling is not.
Again, if development were to push milling to be a relevant archetype with regularity, it would make more sense than present to keyword it. They won't push it to that degree and for good reason.
...I will say that "hexproof" isn't all that intuitive either...
I will grant you that it's far, far worse in terms of intuitiveness than flying or fight. I would put it on roughly level terms with trample as neither indicate what sort of game mechanics are involved. Not all keywords can be as intuitive as flying, however in this case it doesn't matter. Hexproof is a creature keyword. Creature cards have by far the most constraints on their textbox so keywords that are intended to appear on creature cards get the most leeway.
Hexproof, as a creature keyword, was keyworded to save space. The intuitiveness of it was not the primary goal, although it remains important. Hexproof has to fit on one line on a random rare creature that has a bunch of other lines of text, typically a rare creature in a cycle of rare creatures.
Keywording mill would save a ton of space
I don't disagree with you. It would save space. Nobody disagrees that keywording it would save space.
The disagreement is whether the space saved on those cards worth having to teach every new player yet another piece of game jargon. If there were a term that would make good intuitive sense for a freshly starting player to instantly just get what the term meant, R&D would be far more amenable to keywording it.
Fight isn't "relevant" in the sets it is in mostly, just like mill they are just cards most sets have.
Fight shows up on high pick commons with high regularity. Specifically: green removal spells. Fight is far more relevant to modern magic in a way that milling does not even approach. When evaluating cards for a new draft environment, the green fight spell is one of the cards people look for.
"The mill deck" does not exist in most draft environments. Far more often is there an uncommon (like Manic Scribe) capable of milling an opponent's deck if given time. In that case, it's a control deck with a finisher that just happens to mill the opponent. And even if you count those, they are still printed rarely. Far more rarely than a first-pickable fight card.
Being niche doesn't disqualify something from having a keyword, no, but it certainly imposes far more conditions on whether it should have one.
I'm not going to post anything else on the matter, but I will say this: I would personally like mill to have a keyword, though there are plenty of good reasons why it shouldn't, particularly without a good keyword. Magic isn't really the game where milling matters so it doesn't really bother me that it's not. Milling is at such a low threshold of relevance that a bad keyword is worse than no keyword.
Yet it would still be a major change of the rules for practically no gain at all as the delayed triggers are already a thing and take even less effort remembering.
It isn't no gain as there is some new design space, but likely not enough to be worth the complexity.
I have verymuch enjoyed reading this thread. I'm a mill player so shortening the text on my cards and allowing them to do other cool things is just dandy.
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The disagreement is whether the space saved on those cards worth having to teach every new player yet another piece of game jargon. If there were a term that would make good intuitive sense for a freshly starting player to instantly just get what the term meant, R&D would be far more amenable to keywording it.
Fight isn't "relevant" in the sets it is in mostly, just like mill they are just cards most sets have.
Fight shows up on high pick commons with high regularity. Specifically: green removal spells. Fight is far more relevant to modern magic in a way that milling does not even approach. When evaluating cards for a new draft environment, the green fight spell is one of the cards people look for.
Are we really worried about new players so much with new keywords or mechanic when each new set brings with it two or three, or more, new keywords, keyword actions, or ability words that every player has to understand when they jump into the game, among all of the evergreen mechanics there are. Another keyword won't make some go "well this is one too many" and quit. I think you are underestimating new players.
Edit: Another possibility is giving all creatures that dealt damage equal credit for "killing" a single creature. But that would probably not be ideal.
Which means that 'Kill' would just be a shorthand for the current wording "When this creature dies, each creature that damaged it this turn <does something>"
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"The mill deck" does not exist in most draft environments. Far more often is there an uncommon (like Manic Scribe) capable of milling an opponent's deck if given time. In that case, it's a control deck with a finisher that just happens to mill the opponent. And even if you count those, they are still printed rarely. Far more rarely than a first-pickable fight card.
I think that would be another benefit to keywording it - it would make it easier for new players to spot the strategy. It would also make the cards a helluva lot easier to search for on gatherer.
Keywording it might make them more willing to do "Mill 1" in more places - such as "Whenever this creature attacks, defending player Mills 1" (I KNOW Mill is not a good word for this, just using it for example).
By the way - Manic Scribe is a perfect example of why such a basic action needs to be keyworded. I see that card and I simply don't want to look at it for the wall of text.
Imagine if it said;
When Manic Scribe enters the battlefield, each opponent <keyword> 3.
Delirium — At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, if there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard, that player <keyword> 3.
You've just saved 26 words and turned a wall-of-text into something easier on the eyes (And may even have had room for a short flavour text)
It could be a "super" word like play that works for lands and spells.
Create is a good word to actually "create" any form of token on the battlefield.
A card isnt "created" its played, a spell is cast and uses the stack, tokens are created.
Seems fairly intuitive to me if they go with that line.
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This... is actually a very good point, yeah!
Except fight makes sense if you aren't familiar with Magic jargon. Both creatures do damage to each other. Sounds like a fight to me. On the other hand, what is "milling" to a new player? It's jargon, milling is a reference to Millstone and without that context "Mill 2" is pure nonsense. Lifelink is intuitive. Fight, Deathtouch, etc. are intuitive. MTG templating needs to be intuitive, not based around jargon.
They can call it whatever, but the act of "milling" should probably have been keyworded or something by now. My point with fight was that it shows up about as much as mill does right now and wasn't all that common when it was coined and yet mill has yet to get the same treatment even though it has been around much longer and shows up frequently.
Besides the fact that burn is already slang for a completely different thing, in a (mostly) different color? Red doesn't really mill, but it does have a lot of burn spells.
No really, its not intuitive at all.
Mill is a slang word that works for anybody that knows the slang word, it could be a keyword, but its not intuitive as the word "mill" really only comes from the original card MillStone, and if you dont know that it is completly not intuitive.
Theres simply not a good word for the "mill" effect that works for a newbie player.
The problem is even a newbie will not give it a special name, until they learn "mill" and just keep using it.
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Except that haste totally does scream "not affected by summoning sickness."
From Merriam-Webster:
1. rapidity of motion
2. rash or headlong action
3. undue eagerness to act
That seems pretty in-line with what the keyword actually does.
Mill has more than a few obstacles in the way of becoming an action word (not a keyword). First, as noted, Wizards will never use slang terms in card text, regardless of how widespread they are. That's why they didn't call hexproof trollshroud. Second, Wizards isn't exactly in a rush to key/action word every single recurring mechanic in the game. Sometimes, it's more convenient for cards to just tell players what they do instead of making them memorize new terms. That's the given explanation for why "tap ~, it doesn't untap during its owner's next untap step" hasn't officially been named yet. Some mechanics need the shorter terms, such as complex mechanics (trample, first strike, protection, regenerate, etc.) and mechanics frequently granted by spells and abilities, but everything else is a tossup that falls to the whims of the design team.
I think you'll be alone on this one. Haste has been universally represented as a buff in gaming since original Dungeons and Dragons. You and your friends happened to misread a card.
I think you're the first person I've ever seen who has done that, especially since "must attack" hasn't been keyworded yet. Your confusion resulted entirely from your failure to distinguish rules text from reminder text, so I can't even fathom why you decided to blame your misunderstanding on the name of the mechanic. While I bolded the third definition, since it pertains the most to what the keyword actually does, the first one is by far and wide the most well-known outside of the context of MTG. The relationship between the word "haste" and its mechanic isn't even in the same class as the relationship between the word "mill" and the mechanic players connect to it.
Milling is just not a core part of the game. If development wanted to make a viable mill deck for standard at every rotation, you can bet they'd keyword it because it would start showing up on relevant cards (and within other mechanics) with high frequency. If milling were somehow inherently creature-dependent, then it would be keyworded because creatures are where they run out of space most often, which is why creature keywords are the most numerous group of evergeen keywords.
The main barriers to milling getting keyworded:
• It needs to have a name / template that is intuitive for new players.
• It needs to save space where saving space matters.
• Milling needs to actually be relevant every set.
Developmentally, this is unviable. Milling as developed presently is, at best, a niche strategy every few years in limited. They would have to radically dial up the power and frequency of mill cards to have them show up in standard for more than a block. Milling is cute and interesting when it's niche and rare, but it's just not a fun mechanic when it's pushed all the time.
Self-mill has proven to be far more developmentally safe, Dredge aside, but it needs even more cards to make it actually matter. Often the 'mill' cards themselves aren't even templated as actual milling: Forbidden Alchemy / Satyr Wayfinder
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
The problem is this game has forced into a creature-centric mold, but combat is still handled fairly clumsily by the rules. Is the conga line and lethal damage marking any less complex? Right now the only way to refer to creatures killing each other is via delayed triggers that might activate several steps later when they get lightning bolted or sacrificed. An elegant solution could have creatures killing creatures be as simple as saying "When Neosengir Vampire slays a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on Neosengir Vampire". As far as the rules complexity itself, it could stay intuitive. Say the implementation was "Alice slays Bob when Alice marks combat damage on Bob and Bob dies to lethal combat damage the next time state based actions are checked". At first glance it might seem like a mouthful, but it would be intuitive enough. If you deal damage and the enemy dies, its slain. If it dies in a later step to a bolt or putrefy or tragic slip, not slain. If it took a first striker and regular striker double blocking, only the latter slew it.
I'm not concerned much with the flavor, I'm concerned more with the deficiency of the existing templates for dealing with what should be a fairly basic action in this game. The game is all about creatures turning sideways, wizards has made that very intentional push of the metagame, at least for standard and modern, yet how those creatures actually interact with each other is limited by the existing rules.
Fight really isn't a core part of the game either, it's only been around since Innistrad, and doesn't show up all that often.
Since fight came out in Innistrad, the term not the mechanic, there has been......
In SoI block fight and mill show up 4 times.
In BFZ block fight shows up 2 times and, not counting Ingest, mill shows up 5 times, sure its exile and doesn't count towards the normal mill discussion, but it is "milling". Counting Ingest there are much more.
In Khans block there are 9 cards with fight and 5 mill cards.
In Theros block there are 4 cards with fight and 10 mill cards, 11 if you count Pyxis of Pandemonium.
In RTR block there are 6 cards with fight and 24 mill cards, although many aren't the traditional "mill x"
In INN block there are 4 cards with fight and 17 mill cards.
Now none of the mill cards are counting self mill, but do count cards that affect both players, but if self mill was there it would be much more. Now tell me why fight is more relevant than mill again, because only one block since the term fight has been out has it had more cards than mill. If we were to go farther back I'm sure that mill shows up far more than fight ever has.
Mill clearly shows up far more often and yet doesn't have its own term, so really the only thing that is stopping it is WoTC not having a proper term for it.
Alright, let's forget about what they call it, because if the name is all that is needed then we agree that mill could be keyworded, but I will say that "hexproof" isn't all that intuitive either, as many don't know what the word hex means, but people still grasp that idea quickly. Keywording mill would save a ton of space, as keywording it, like in the example I gave, would save 11 words, but it would probably save 8-10, even changing "his or her", which shows up twice on every mill card into "their" so it reads "Target opponent/player puts the top X cards of their library into their graveyard" would cut out 4 words worth of text, allowing larger font on those cards or flavor text.
Fight isn't "relevant" in the sets it is in mostly, just like mill they are just cards most sets have.
Sure mill is niche, but that doesn't mean it should have a keyword.
I'm of the opinion that putting more constrains on the amount of text card can have results in better/more streamlined card design. While templating for this promo complies with second rule it voilates the first one. "Create" obscures the information that it will trigger enter the battlefield effects. I'm not convinced that the amout of space this saves is worth potential problems it will cause for new players. By the same token "mill" is not as descriptive for new players as "put into graveyard from library".
And? You can still do all the mechanics you're proposing under the current rules, so long as you're willing to accept some flavor weirdness.
Just because rules seem intuitive, doesn't mean there isn't complexity there. I can't tell you how many newbies I've seen read the card Humility for the first time, and they immediately intuit what it does, and cannot fathom how it could be a rules nightmare, until you point out something like Opalescence.
Others in this thread have already pointed out situations where your rules add complexity. Common situations, too, not just unique individual card interations.
Edit: Another possibility is giving all creatures that dealt damage equal credit for "killing" a single creature. But that would probably not be ideal.
Prey Upon (multiple times, included a core set), Hunt the Weak (including multiple core sets), Pit Fight, Savage Punch, Epic Confrontation, Time to Feed, Wild Instincts
These cards are all a core part of their respective limited environments. Fight show ups on a highly played common just about every limited environment and they're all relatively high pick common removal spells.
In all of these same sets, milling plays a negligible part of the game. Milling an opponent to death is the very rare exception, irrespective of the number of actual cards printed with mill-like effects. Fight simply is more relevant to Magic because removal is a key component of limited games, milling is not.
Again, if development were to push milling to be a relevant archetype with regularity, it would make more sense than present to keyword it. They won't push it to that degree and for good reason.
I will grant you that it's far, far worse in terms of intuitiveness than flying or fight. I would put it on roughly level terms with trample as neither indicate what sort of game mechanics are involved. Not all keywords can be as intuitive as flying, however in this case it doesn't matter. Hexproof is a creature keyword. Creature cards have by far the most constraints on their textbox so keywords that are intended to appear on creature cards get the most leeway.
Hexproof, as a creature keyword, was keyworded to save space. The intuitiveness of it was not the primary goal, although it remains important. Hexproof has to fit on one line on a random rare creature that has a bunch of other lines of text, typically a rare creature in a cycle of rare creatures. I don't disagree with you. It would save space. Nobody disagrees that keywording it would save space.
The disagreement is whether the space saved on those cards worth having to teach every new player yet another piece of game jargon. If there were a term that would make good intuitive sense for a freshly starting player to instantly just get what the term meant, R&D would be far more amenable to keywording it. Fight shows up on high pick commons with high regularity. Specifically: green removal spells. Fight is far more relevant to modern magic in a way that milling does not even approach. When evaluating cards for a new draft environment, the green fight spell is one of the cards people look for.
"The mill deck" does not exist in most draft environments. Far more often is there an uncommon (like Manic Scribe) capable of milling an opponent's deck if given time. In that case, it's a control deck with a finisher that just happens to mill the opponent. And even if you count those, they are still printed rarely. Far more rarely than a first-pickable fight card.
Being niche doesn't disqualify something from having a keyword, no, but it certainly imposes far more conditions on whether it should have one.
I'm not going to post anything else on the matter, but I will say this: I would personally like mill to have a keyword, though there are plenty of good reasons why it shouldn't, particularly without a good keyword. Magic isn't really the game where milling matters so it doesn't really bother me that it's not. Milling is at such a low threshold of relevance that a bad keyword is worse than no keyword.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
I have verymuch enjoyed reading this thread. I'm a mill player so shortening the text on my cards and allowing them to do other cool things is just dandy.
Selling some cards I don't want.
Generally less than tcg mid.
Are we really worried about new players so much with new keywords or mechanic when each new set brings with it two or three, or more, new keywords, keyword actions, or ability words that every player has to understand when they jump into the game, among all of the evergreen mechanics there are. Another keyword won't make some go "well this is one too many" and quit. I think you are underestimating new players.
Which means that 'Kill' would just be a shorthand for the current wording "When this creature dies, each creature that damaged it this turn <does something>"
And then there is Startled Awake and Fleeting Memories - all from the SAME SET as the card you just listed.
I think that would be another benefit to keywording it - it would make it easier for new players to spot the strategy. It would also make the cards a helluva lot easier to search for on gatherer.
Keywording it might make them more willing to do "Mill 1" in more places - such as "Whenever this creature attacks, defending player Mills 1" (I KNOW Mill is not a good word for this, just using it for example).
By the way - Manic Scribe is a perfect example of why such a basic action needs to be keyworded. I see that card and I simply don't want to look at it for the wall of text.
Imagine if it said;
When Manic Scribe enters the battlefield, each opponent <keyword> 3.
Delirium — At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, if there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard, that player <keyword> 3.
You've just saved 26 words and turned a wall-of-text into something easier on the eyes (And may even have had room for a short flavour text)