Its a perfectly good rules change, I appreciate when they make decisions like this that will have some negative impacts but help make the game intuitive without dumbing it down. Split cards were just wonky in mana costs before and the combos only existed because of the rules quirks. Its sad to lose them, but it also greatly restricted what kinds of split cards and free/recurred spells they could print
No, they're not "dumbing" the game down. The point of CMC is to give every card a singular numerical value that can be referenced by other cards. This new rules means that split cards have exactly 1 CMC in every zone. This makes the rules more logically consistent. It dumbs nothing down. Casting a spell to put a 15/15 flying anihalator 6 into play on turn 3 isn't "smart." Neat, maybe, not not "smart."
And how many other split cards create combos as degenerating as your example? There's Expertise-Bird deck but that isn't nearly as devastating as Breaking // Entering which fetches Emrakul or Griselbrand. If Breaking // Entering is your main concern here, and its respective combos are so dominating that most players in the environment play nothing but B/E decks, then banning the card is considerably simpler than creating a new rule that affects all other split cards, which also indirectly tone down other "neat" combos you could do via the differential cc, just to stop one card. Do you have other examples?
it has nothing to do with "casuals" it has to do with logical, streamlined rules. The ENTIRE point of CMC is to give every card a singular numerical value that can be referenced by other cards. The old rule gave split cards 3 unique cmc's, the new rule gives them one. This is a completely logical rule change and fits with the goal of What CMC is supposed to be.
I sympathize with those who like jamming emrakul into play on turned 3 and modern, and I'm sorry it ruins your combo. But for the love of God don't be so disingenuous to say that this change was to appease the "casuals" because they're "too dumb."
Except they still have three different CMCs. They have one CMC off of the stack, but when you cast it, the card has the cmc of whatever mode you're casting. You can still spell snare a beck, you just can't inquisition it out of someone's hand, despite the fact that Beck's cmc is 2, it's treated as cmc 8 because it's part of a split card.
The ENTIRE point of a split card is that they function as different cards. They're designed to LOOK like two different cards in one. If you show a split card to someone who's never seen a split card and ask them what's the CMC of beck//call, they'll almost always throw two different numbers at you, 2 and 6. If they wanted to simplify the rules that's what they'd change the rule to. That the CMC is always treated as a 2 drop or a 6 drop (except when fused). They could have even changed the ruling so that if a card specifies a cmc requirement, you're locked into that part of the split card. That would have made more sense and I would have begrudingly accepted it. Instead, they changed the ruling on split cards in the least intuitive, awkward way possible and called us all idiots while they did it.
The ENTIRE point of a split card is that they function as different cards. They're designed to LOOK like two different cards in one. If you show a split card to someone who's never seen a split card and ask them what's the CMC of beck//call, they'll almost always throw two different numbers at you, 2 and 6. If they wanted to simplify the rules that's what they'd change the rule to. That the CMC is always treated as a 2 drop or a 6 drop (except when fused). They could have even changed the ruling so that if a card specifies a cmc requirement, you're locked into that part of the split card. That would have made more sense and I would have begrudingly accepted it. Instead, they changed the ruling on split cards in the least intuitive, awkward way possible and called us all idiots while they did it.
I feel the same. It doesn't remove the awkwardness, it just moves it elsewhere WHILE removing the interesting and fun interactions. The unintuitive part was being able to target/cast the part of the card excluded by the constraints of the effects that care for it, and not the total mana cost.
All the 'scorned Johnny' talk is some wolf in sheep's clothing business. People don't choose decks like this for the love of having an interactive, challenging match against an opponent. They do it to feel clever and score cheesy wins against unaware opponents at an FNM.
Wanna know what does dumb the game down? When strategies like this enter the collective common knowledge of competitive play and every game against these kinds of decks just feels like going through the motions because the gameplay is so linear.
Design intention should count for something, and it hurts the spirit of the game when there's rules incentive to overlook split cards unless a rules exploit can yield a busted payoff. It's arguably clever for those who make the initial discovery that a part of the game is broken, but once the cat's out of the bag, it's just a broken part of the game.
There's nothing wrong with unintuitive interactions being patched up in a game. This is damage on the stack all over again.
The complaint with removing damage on the stack was that it dumbed down the game.
Honest critical examination however showed damage over time itself dumbed down the game.
It limited choices and removed consequences. It gave situations where a player got to have their cake, and eat it too.
For instance, a Sakura-Tribe Elder would be able to block a Dark Confidant, trade with that Dark Confidant and fetch you that land.
It wasn't intuitive that you could do that, but once you knew, there was no reason not to.
Now you have a meaningful decision to make - trade creatures? Or chump block and get the land?
This split card cmc rule streamlining is very similar in spirit - though it applies mostly to deckbuilding.
For instance, prior to this streamlining - there's not much reason to put Boom/Bust in a deck if you're not going to exploit Boom's 2cmc somehow.
In a competitive sense, why play it clean when you can play it dirty? What's the point?
It also makes any split card that isn't a combination of two lopsided cmcs like 2 and 5 much less appealing. "Oh? I can't cascade/expertise-cheat the heavy side? Meh."
That mindset suggests that for these cards to improve, Wizards needs to release more cards to cheat them in with. Which only exasperates the problem.
Following this new streamlining, we all get to take a fresh look at split cards. In the long run this will lead to greater deckbuilding variety, not less, albeit more subtle. We kill a few obnoxious archetypes to give more options across the board.
It's generally much more preferable to have more streamlined rules. Even at GPs you get people asking rules clarifications for this sort of stuff, and it slows games (and tournaments) down.
Keep in mind tournament attendance isn't just made up of grinders - there's people who might main a deck they have blinged out and only have time to play a fraction out of the year.
Decks like Bird Brain and Khari Zev Breaking are just the sort that go from cute to busted meta-warping overnight if the right releases come out.
Now if they'll just do something about the zero cmc suspend cards. However, the rules are clean enough and there's only a handful of them. So we'll just see individual bans if anything.
I'd think twice about investing in a Living End deck if you don't already have most pieces. Amonkhet block could give it quite a shot in the arm.
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
This reminds me of losing damage on the stack. Everyone complained about how it dumb downed the game because "What competitive player didn't understand the rules?" and "Now Mogg Fanatic is terrible.".
In reality, the card having a single CMC when not on the stack makes LOGICAL sense and removes unnecessary rules baggage to split cards.
The ENTIRE point of a split card is that they function as different cards. They're designed to LOOK like two different cards in one. If you show a split card to someone who's never seen a split card and ask them what's the CMC of beck//call, they'll almost always throw two different numbers at you, 2 and 6. If they wanted to simplify the rules that's what they'd change the rule to. That the CMC is always treated as a 2 drop or a 6 drop (except when fused). They could have even changed the ruling so that if a card specifies a cmc requirement, you're locked into that part of the split card. That would have made more sense and I would have begrudingly accepted it. Instead, they changed the ruling on split cards in the least intuitive, awkward way possible and called us all idiots while they did it.
I feel the same. It doesn't remove the awkwardness, it just moves it elsewhere WHILE removing the interesting and fun interactions. The unintuitive part was being able to target/cast the part of the card excluded by the constraints of the effects that care for it, and not the total mana cost.
This is mostly what they did honestly. They just moved tbe awkwardness elsewhere. Stuffing 2 cards into one is always going to be weird. In fact it should be quirky. Removing that kind of just literally means they just stuffed 2 cards into 1... why bother?
The rule change means that at any given time they only have 1 CMC. Yes, in different zones, at mutually exclusive times, they can have different CMCs. Similar to the way X-spells have worked for a long time. Under the old rules they had multiple CMCs at the same time.
Again, a single card can now only have a single CMC at any given time. Which is the whole point of CMC.
I guess reasonable people can disagree, but from a purely logical rules-ey standpoint this new rule is much more sensible, in my opinion.
Yup, I'm glad this rule makes sense now. My brother explained the old interaction to me and I was like: what? You select Beck with Brain in a Jar, but then you play the other side because why not.
Made no sense to me, and was just exploiting an unintended consequence of a rule. Nothing clever or fun about it. Just stupid, unintuitive and borderline cheating on newer/inexperienced players.
While on the topic, I dislike split cards in general, partially for rules quirks, and partially for the unappealing visual. And the most recent ones, turning one card on its side... hideous...
Never made logical sense to me that Counterbalance could count Wear//Tear as a 1 or a 2 when revealed from the library, but if Dark Confidant hit it, it was always a 3. Fixing this rule makes these interactions more intuitive going forward while simultaneously eliminating an undesired interaction or two. Win all around.
I guess reasonable people can disagree, but from a purely logical rules-ey standpoint this new rule is much more sensible, in my opinion.
From a purely "logical rules-ey standpoint" both the old rule and the new rule are fine.
From a purely intuitive standpoint both rules have their own issues with the new version having a benefit that it avoids seemingly contradictory answers due to effects being written in terms that assume a single converted mana cost. (A main example where the new ruling can trip up people is that Fire//Ice no longer has converted mana cost 3 or less despite each half being converted mana cost 2.)
From a gameplay standpoint the old rules created a method to circumvent mana cost and created a crass disparity between split cards with two halves having a similar converted mana cost and those varying the mana cost a lot. This change should have been applied starting with fuse cards.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
This is not a dumbing-down. This is a change that makes sense.
I get that in Modern you're likelier to succeed by playing cheaty strategies, but I think this time common sense prevails. Common sense should always prevail.
While I'm not in favor of Wizards over-dumbing the game, one must understand that a game with simpler rules means it's easily grokable, easy to entice. Compare soccer to cricket, tell me who has more fans. It's the game with easier rules.
I just find it funny that players playing cheaty strats are getting "cheated" back. Just the funny side of things. No harm intended.
I swear they have set themself the challenge of making the dragon maze set worth nothing. First reprint voice next make the fuse cards unplayable again.
Nobody should have a problem with the reprint of cards. Especially Voice and its ilk. It just happens that DGM was a terrible set. Blame R&D for that, not the rules and how common folk would have interpreted them.
This isn't about appealing to casuals or dumming down the game. This is about closing a loophole in some poorly written rules that allowed people to abuse cards in a way that they were never designed to be used. If you build a deck around something this obviously broken you need to expect to have some element of your deck banned or swept up in an errata.
This isn't about appealing to casuals or dumming down the game. This is about closing a loophole in some poorly written rules that allowed people to abuse cards in a way that they were never designed to be used. If you build a deck around something this obviously broken you need to expect to have some element of your deck banned or swept up in an errata.
So much this.
The original ruling was an complete mistake and should never have happened in the first place. It's about time they errata this and fix it properly.
Wizards should have been profesinal enough to keep internal communications to a high enough standar that this does not happen.
To quote their article on aether revolt in modern;
"
When we created this cycle, it was quickly pointed out that there would be some risks in Modern for the same reason that cascade is "broken"—the ability to cast the Time Spiral no-mana-cost cards (Restore Balance, Ancestral Visions, Living End, and Wheel of Fate) from your hand. This was certainly a concern and a thing we needed to think about, but we decided it would likely not be a huge risk in Modern. The thing is, unlike cascade, you actually need to draw the card rather than just have the card in your deck. There are some advantages; the Living End deck doesn't play any other cards below three mana so that it can reliably cascade into it. At the same time, I think that most of those decks are more fun if they actually need to draw the cards before they cast them for "free." It allows for discard to interact with them and for the risk of dead draws.
The nice thing about the Expertise cycle is that it dodges many of the pitfalls of other "free" mechanics (like cascade) since you actually have to draw the card, and we were able to modulate the mana cost and the extra card in a more fair way. Cards like Bloodbraid Elf would have been much more reasonable if the card came from your hand and you didn't end up gaining the mana efficiency while also being naturally up a card. I am hopeful that the Expertise cycle will lead to a lot of big and splashy turns that are more cool than just grinding out card advantage."
And how many other split cards create combos as degenerating as your example? There's Expertise-Bird deck but that isn't nearly as devastating as Breaking // Entering which fetches Emrakul or Griselbrand. If Breaking // Entering is your main concern here, and its respective combos are so dominating that most players in the environment play nothing but B/E decks, then banning the card is considerably simpler than creating a new rule that affects all other split cards, which also indirectly tone down other "neat" combos you could do via the differential cc, just to stop one card. Do you have other examples?
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
There was no real incentive to go over these rules until they made new split cards I suppose.
Good change: makes the rules more intuitive and pisses off the faux "good" players on this site.
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Except they still have three different CMCs. They have one CMC off of the stack, but when you cast it, the card has the cmc of whatever mode you're casting. You can still spell snare a beck, you just can't inquisition it out of someone's hand, despite the fact that Beck's cmc is 2, it's treated as cmc 8 because it's part of a split card.
The ENTIRE point of a split card is that they function as different cards. They're designed to LOOK like two different cards in one. If you show a split card to someone who's never seen a split card and ask them what's the CMC of beck//call, they'll almost always throw two different numbers at you, 2 and 6. If they wanted to simplify the rules that's what they'd change the rule to. That the CMC is always treated as a 2 drop or a 6 drop (except when fused). They could have even changed the ruling so that if a card specifies a cmc requirement, you're locked into that part of the split card. That would have made more sense and I would have begrudingly accepted it. Instead, they changed the ruling on split cards in the least intuitive, awkward way possible and called us all idiots while they did it.
Looks like it
But starting tomorrow we will hit quite a bit more from the other sites.
Magic is giving cards to spoil to several different sources.
I feel the same. It doesn't remove the awkwardness, it just moves it elsewhere WHILE removing the interesting and fun interactions. The unintuitive part was being able to target/cast the part of the card excluded by the constraints of the effects that care for it, and not the total mana cost.
All the 'scorned Johnny' talk is some wolf in sheep's clothing business. People don't choose decks like this for the love of having an interactive, challenging match against an opponent. They do it to feel clever and score cheesy wins against unaware opponents at an FNM.
Wanna know what does dumb the game down? When strategies like this enter the collective common knowledge of competitive play and every game against these kinds of decks just feels like going through the motions because the gameplay is so linear.
Design intention should count for something, and it hurts the spirit of the game when there's rules incentive to overlook split cards unless a rules exploit can yield a busted payoff. It's arguably clever for those who make the initial discovery that a part of the game is broken, but once the cat's out of the bag, it's just a broken part of the game.
There's nothing wrong with unintuitive interactions being patched up in a game. This is damage on the stack all over again.
The complaint with removing damage on the stack was that it dumbed down the game.
Honest critical examination however showed damage over time itself dumbed down the game.
It limited choices and removed consequences. It gave situations where a player got to have their cake, and eat it too.
For instance, a Sakura-Tribe Elder would be able to block a Dark Confidant, trade with that Dark Confidant and fetch you that land.
It wasn't intuitive that you could do that, but once you knew, there was no reason not to.
Now you have a meaningful decision to make - trade creatures? Or chump block and get the land?
This split card cmc rule streamlining is very similar in spirit - though it applies mostly to deckbuilding.
For instance, prior to this streamlining - there's not much reason to put Boom/Bust in a deck if you're not going to exploit Boom's 2cmc somehow.
In a competitive sense, why play it clean when you can play it dirty? What's the point?
It also makes any split card that isn't a combination of two lopsided cmcs like 2 and 5 much less appealing. "Oh? I can't cascade/expertise-cheat the heavy side? Meh."
That mindset suggests that for these cards to improve, Wizards needs to release more cards to cheat them in with. Which only exasperates the problem.
Following this new streamlining, we all get to take a fresh look at split cards. In the long run this will lead to greater deckbuilding variety, not less, albeit more subtle. We kill a few obnoxious archetypes to give more options across the board.
It's generally much more preferable to have more streamlined rules. Even at GPs you get people asking rules clarifications for this sort of stuff, and it slows games (and tournaments) down.
Keep in mind tournament attendance isn't just made up of grinders - there's people who might main a deck they have blinged out and only have time to play a fraction out of the year.
Decks like Bird Brain and Khari Zev Breaking are just the sort that go from cute to busted meta-warping overnight if the right releases come out.
Now if they'll just do something about the zero cmc suspend cards. However, the rules are clean enough and there's only a handful of them. So we'll just see individual bans if anything.
I'd think twice about investing in a Living End deck if you don't already have most pieces. Amonkhet block could give it quite a shot in the arm.
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10/10, I tapped.
In reality, the card having a single CMC when not on the stack makes LOGICAL sense and removes unnecessary rules baggage to split cards.
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This is mostly what they did honestly. They just moved tbe awkwardness elsewhere. Stuffing 2 cards into one is always going to be weird. In fact it should be quirky. Removing that kind of just literally means they just stuffed 2 cards into 1... why bother?
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Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
Just like Insectile Aberration having a CMC of 0 making no real sense, the original ruling made no sense and needed changing.
Again, a single card can now only have a single CMC at any given time. Which is the whole point of CMC.
I guess reasonable people can disagree, but from a purely logical rules-ey standpoint this new rule is much more sensible, in my opinion.
Made no sense to me, and was just exploiting an unintended consequence of a rule. Nothing clever or fun about it. Just stupid, unintuitive and borderline cheating on newer/inexperienced players.
While on the topic, I dislike split cards in general, partially for rules quirks, and partially for the unappealing visual. And the most recent ones, turning one card on its side... hideous...
UBDragonlord Silumgar WGKarametra, God of Harvests
BRUNekusar, the Mindrazer BGMazirek, Kraul Death Priest
URMelek, Izzet Paragon UGPrime Speaker Zegana
WUHanna, Ship's Navigator BWUSydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Queen RBBladewing the Risen
WBKarlov of the Ghost Council RGXenagos, God of Revels
GFreyalise, Llanowar's Fury RWAurelia, the Warleader
RIb Halfheart, Goblin Tactician BDrana, Liberator of Malakir
UAzami, Lady of Scrolls WNahiri, the Lithomancer
WBGDoran, the Siege Tower CEmrakul, the Promised End
From a purely "logical rules-ey standpoint" both the old rule and the new rule are fine.
From a purely intuitive standpoint both rules have their own issues with the new version having a benefit that it avoids seemingly contradictory answers due to effects being written in terms that assume a single converted mana cost. (A main example where the new ruling can trip up people is that Fire//Ice no longer has converted mana cost 3 or less despite each half being converted mana cost 2.)
From a gameplay standpoint the old rules created a method to circumvent mana cost and created a crass disparity between split cards with two halves having a similar converted mana cost and those varying the mana cost a lot. This change should have been applied starting with fuse cards.
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I get that in Modern you're likelier to succeed by playing cheaty strategies, but I think this time common sense prevails. Common sense should always prevail.
While I'm not in favor of Wizards over-dumbing the game, one must understand that a game with simpler rules means it's easily grokable, easy to entice. Compare soccer to cricket, tell me who has more fans. It's the game with easier rules.
I just find it funny that players playing cheaty strats are getting "cheated" back. Just the funny side of things. No harm intended.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
So much this.
The original ruling was an complete mistake and should never have happened in the first place. It's about time they errata this and fix it properly.
To quote their article on aether revolt in modern;
"
When we created this cycle, it was quickly pointed out that there would be some risks in Modern for the same reason that cascade is "broken"—the ability to cast the Time Spiral no-mana-cost cards (Restore Balance, Ancestral Visions, Living End, and Wheel of Fate) from your hand. This was certainly a concern and a thing we needed to think about, but we decided it would likely not be a huge risk in Modern. The thing is, unlike cascade, you actually need to draw the card rather than just have the card in your deck. There are some advantages; the Living End deck doesn't play any other cards below three mana so that it can reliably cascade into it. At the same time, I think that most of those decks are more fun if they actually need to draw the cards before they cast them for "free." It allows for discard to interact with them and for the risk of dead draws.
The nice thing about the Expertise cycle is that it dodges many of the pitfalls of other "free" mechanics (like cascade) since you actually have to draw the card, and we were able to modulate the mana cost and the extra card in a more fair way. Cards like Bloodbraid Elf would have been much more reasonable if the card came from your hand and you didn't end up gaining the mana efficiency while also being naturally up a card. I am hopeful that the Expertise cycle will lead to a lot of big and splashy turns that are more cool than just grinding out card advantage."
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/aiming-modern-2017-01-20
Why did they not change the rule before we bought the damn cards and got emotionally invested in them?