Do you seriously think that they are getting rid of 4 mechanics, 2 of which have no issues whatsoever?
"Getting rid" is misleading. We're talking about removing evergreen status from mechanics, not eliminating them from the game of Magic.
And when it comes to removing evergreen status... hopefully they hit more than 4 mechanics, honestly.
I don't know which "2" we're still talking about, exactly. But, trample and protection were previously de-evergreened in 8th Edition for being overly complex. They haven't stopped being overly complex. However, since they were de- and re-evergreened, WotC has come up with lots of great alternatives that weren't present back in 8th Edition. So if we're talking about protection and trample, I think it's time to go back and do the job right.
To be clear, I love protection and trample and want to see them stay a part of the game. Just not the evergreen part.
Do you seriously think that they are getting rid of 4 mechanics, 2 of which have no issues whatsoever?
"Getting rid" is misleading. We're talking about removing evergreen status from mechanics, not eliminating them from the game of Magic.
And when it comes to removing evergreen status... hopefully they hit more than 4 mechanics, honestly.
I don't know which "2" we're still talking about, exactly. But, trample and protection were previously de-evergreened in 8th Edition for being overly complex. They haven't stopped being overly complex. However, since they were de- and re-evergreened, WotC has come up with lots of great alternatives that weren't present back in 8th Edition. So if we're talking about protection and trample, I think it's time to go back and do the job right.
To be clear, I love protection and trample and want to see them stay a part of the game. Just not the evergreen part.
Why do you want more than 4 mechanics to be no longer evergreen? And what is wrong with First Strike?
Everyone that thinks Trample, pretty much the mainstay mechanic of Green, is losing its Evergreen status, I have a wonderful bridge I'd like to sell you.
Things change.
When there's a reason to change things.
What makes Trample the problem child, when a lot of the issue comes with interactions with other mechanics. Why is it more of a problem then, say, Deathtouch? Which you seem to have no issue with. Also if you are so sure Trample and First Strike are out, what would you replace them with. The reason Trample was brought back was, without it, Green couldn't stick damage. Which no amount of fight triggers will fix.
Technically, a renamed Bushido could drop First Strike in White, but it doesn't fit the flavor of Red.
wow. was there no trample in 8th edition? Those must have been dark days. Dark days indeed. Thank goodness I didn't play then. That + a change of card-frame might have been too much for all the whisky in Scotland to put right.
Could they do a sort of variation on evergreen though? I mean, perhaps trample is in this category, where it is something that is needed in every expert set but it is somewhat complex so there is an argument to leave it out of the core sets.
So evergreen wrt. expert expansions, but not with regards to core sets?
Protection and regeneration can be a little tricky, but if you can understand how planeswalkers work then you can understand how protection/regeneration work. But trample? It is just subtraction. You just take the total damage, subtract away the lethal damage, and the remainder hits the player. The only thing tricky that ever happens with trample is if deathtouch gets involved.
All this talk of dumbing the game down is really demeaning to new players. So they're new to the game? We all were once. That doesn't mean that we need to treat them like they have some learning disability and hide all the "hard" mechanics like "Trample" that force them to do a little bit of subtraction.
Personally I think there is a strong argument for trample remaining in every core set because it helps new players get in the habit of declaring multiple creatures as blockers in combat. Many new players forget that they can block with multiple creatures or have a hard time imagining a scenario where they would want to block with multiple creatures. But novice players also tend to be overly protective of their life points. The threat of trample preventing a single creature from protecting their life total is a common scenario where a new player may want to block with multiple creatures. As they mature as players, they will start looking at double-blocking as more of a means to influence the boardstate in their favor rather than simply a way to protect their life total, but it is good to have trample around as a simple and common example of when to double-block so that they can remember that double-blocking is even an option.
Protection and regeneration can be a little tricky, but if you can understand how planeswalkers work then you can understand how protection/regeneration work.
The issue with Protection, in particular, isn't complexity it's poor design. Bad design irritates new players, things shouldn't seem arbitrary (and Protection actually is).
Anyway, trample isn't going anywhere. It serves a useful function. It has good flavor. Its easy to use. It teaches the players several things about the game.
All this talk of dumbing the game down is really demeaning to new players. So they're new to the game? We all were once. That doesn't mean that we need to treat them like they have some learning disability and hide all the "hard" mechanics like "Trample" that force them to do a little bit of subtraction.
The question is not, "Do you understand how trample works?"
The question is, "Who DIDN'T understand how trample works, and now does not play Magic?"
If you're on mtgsalvation, I'm pretty sure that you understand how trample works. So, there's no use in asking the first question here, because your sampling frame guarantees that you'll get close to a 100% positive response rate. On the other hand, there's no point in asking the second question here, either, because you don't have access to that population here. WotC does have access to those people, there are a nonzero number of those people, and WotC would like to reduce that number to zero, or as close as possible.
Again, I think that people are misunderstanding the discussion. We are talking about de-evergreening mechanics, not removing them from the game of Magic. You don't enroll a freshman in a senior-level course. You wait until they have acquired the tools to succeed in that course. Evergreen mechanics are the "Magic 101" mechanics, which should be suitable for all players. It's not dumbing anything down, it's just putting your house in order.
"What mechanic would you replace Trample with that is flavorful for green, effective for landing damage, and less complicated than trample?"
And before you suggest anything like a keyworded Champion of Lambholt, Super Trample (Thorn Elemental) or any other Evasive ability, evasion isn't green's flavor.
And before you suggest anything like a keyworded Champion of Lambholt, Super Trample (Thorn Elemental) or any other Evasive ability, evasion isn't green's flavor.
OK, you called me on it before I said it. Now I'm going to say it.
Trample is not NWO-friendly; evasion abilities are. That's because evasion abilities tend to eat up many fewer complexity points. And, they arguably add as much or more strategic depth to the game than trample.
And green has been doing evasion abilities sincetheverybeginning. It's very much green's flavor.
Realize the most likely mechanic being dropped this go round is Intimidate. For different reasons than Fear (Intimidate's predecessor), but the same reason Landwalk has fallen out of favor. And Overpower falls into this too.
Landwalk and Intimidate are very non-interactive, as they require a certain deckbuild to match it, but are suppose to be common enough (as keywords) to match the needs of Core sets and Standard expansions (as opposed to 'can't be blocked' templates, which are singular effects and not being keyworded for that reason).
Let's look at the most present evasion keyword, Flying. White and Blue have a lot of ways to stick flying, but at the same time that means they have a lot of ways to defend against Flying (as they, well, control a lion's share of fliers). Black and Red have big flying, but not as much in the smaller flyers, Black has a few bats/vamps, and red has phoenix creatures. But those two have the best creature spot removal. So they are pretty okay on preventing a Flyer from landing in on them early/mid game. That leaves Green, which for a while had no way to deal with flying, it has next to no effective flyers, and had to rely (only) on flying hate killspells. This was rubbish, it didn't work, they added Reach.
This means that all colors have an answer to flying in enough bulk they should never find themselves completely shut down by it. You can't come up with the same answer to Intimidate or Landwalk, and Overrun would be more of this problem. As it shuts out a lot of ways these colors interact with Trample.
White hits Trample with a swarm of small things.
Blue usually has a few big butted zero power blockers each block.
Black has deathtouch trades to exploit.
Red uses a combo of a blocker and a burn spell/firebreathing to get the job done with it's outclassed.
Non-interactive unblockable is not an answer to a problem, it's a problem being resolved.
The other issue is, to make a keyword evergreen, it has to sit in more than one color, which they fixed with Vigilance in M13, and are working on with Reach I think this core. Which is why Fear got axed for Intimidate. Overrun would, I suppose fit in Red, but it would also make Red's firebreathing too effective if you have Overrun meaning it isn't a trade, it's just a point for mana burnspell on legs.
Modifying power is something that every color can do at common in a Core Set. Red, green, and white can boost it. Blue and black can reduce it. Power is one of the most interactive values in the game, especially in Limited.
There's no way trample goes. The only reason we didn't see as much of it in Theros block is that they wanted Nylea to feel like more of an essential card. It's intuitive, flavorful, and gives green an answer to the token hordes it otherwise just gets hosed by. Replacing that with a "can't be blocked" mechanic counteracts what new players and green mages want to do: have big creatures fight each other!
The one thing that MaRo's talked about cutting down on is evasion abilities: for instance, right now blue's creature keywords are all about avoiding combat. Given that we know landwalk is still in the set and MaRo still wants to cut down on complexity, that seems to leave potential de-evergreened keywords as:
1. Hexproof- Widely reviled, and according to MaRo, a "problem child" for development. Cautiously used in Theros; visible experiments with less frustrating versions of it.
2. Protection- Comes with completely unintuitive rules baggage. Also has been cut back lately, and has been the source of some very frustrating cards over the years (True-Name Nemesis). Could be moved out of blue.
3. Regeneration- More rules baggage. A "regeneration shield" isn't intuitive at all, nor is having to tap it afterwards. Still has flavor justification and isn't problematic developmentally.
4. Intimidate- Doesn't seem to have caught on the same way that Fear did flavor-wise, but seems pretty harmless otherwise.
TheTennesseeFireman... hey, at least you and I are mostly agreed.
I would be sad to see hexproof get kicked out of the evergreen suite. I think it just suffered from some development missteps. Stuff like Aven Fleetwing probably should not be Core Set common, because it flusters opponents in both the spot-removal front and the combat front. On the other hand, stuff like Sacred Wolf is great, because it forces creature trades.
If protection and hexproof got the chop, it would imply big changes for the kind of removal we see in Core Sets.
Except that's the same interaction with trample, without the ability for the Green player to chain in another pump spell to prevent the blocks from being declared.
Plus you're now required to mainboard pump and drain spells out of fear of what would be taking over as the mainstay mechanic of green.
A mainstay green mechanic that removes creature vs. creature interaction on its face. Let's just look at Green's keywords:
Deathtouch (Creature on Creature interaction), Flash (generally works into creature creature interaction, but is the exception here), Reach (talked about this, also it's a creature on creature interaction keyword), Regeneration (generally forces more creature on creature interaction, not less), Hexproof (makes creature on creature more likely), Trample (creature on creature interaction), fight (creature on creature).
Even dropped keyword Rampage was all about Creature on Creature interaction. And Provoke? And 'must be blocked' decoy effects. Green's keywords don't deal in creatures avoiding other creatures. Avoiding creatures isn't mainstay green, it's very hipster green.
Avoiding creatures isn't mainstay green, it's very hipster green.
Can I sig that? I'm sigging that.
I feel like we've gotten to the point in Magic where there is room in each color for more than one strategy. Although I do very much like mosh pit green or whatever you want to call the "make creatures hit each other" green.
There is, but Trample is so... key, to how Green works replacing it with something that removes interaction is a huuuuge step backwards. The occasional hipster green unblockable is there to take advantage of Green's love for pump spells, to basically make a psuedo-voltron. It isn't very plentiful, and mostly there as an alternative if you get stonewalled by something that can keep your big Greens from swinging through.
That doesn't make it a good replacement for 'the thing Green is given at every rarity (and isn't reach).' Which is where the issues come up. As a replacement for Intimidate, yes, that'd be fine minus how Intimidate falls color wheel wise (Primary Black, Tertiary Red/Green) as Overrun is more interactive than Intimidate.
Trample is not NWO-friendly; evasion abilities are. That's because evasion abilities tend to eat up many fewer complexity points. And, they arguably add as much or more strategic depth to the game than trample.
I don't quite get the point you're trying to make here.
I'm not sure how complex it is to explain trample.
"All excess damage dealt to blocking creatures by a creature with trample will be dealt to the attacked target (player or planeswalker)."
The tricky part is indeed deathtouch but here I again fail to see how tough it is to explain that:
"A creature with deathtouch will deal lethal damage by a single point of damage per blocking creature. If that creature has trample the excess damage... and so forth".
And THEN suggest to make a rather complex mechanic in "overpower".
"This creature cannot be blocked by creatures whose power is below this creature."
- "What happens when I start using buffers? If I attack with a 1/1 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk and my opponent blocks with a 2/2 bear-creature, then I buff up my Skulk with a Giant Growth. Does that mean that he's unblocked again?"
I'd say "overpower" is a lot more complex in the sense that you need a lot of knowledge about the attack-steps to fully understand it AND green is a patron of instant-speed buffers so this problematic is likely to arise more times than Trample + Deathtouch.
Trample requires a bit headwrapping around what "excess damage" is. "Overpower" would require a lot of knowledge about the turn-order itself.
edit: @T Fireman: I don't think regeneration is directly unintuitive. Making it a "shield" might be unintuitive in the way that regeneration feels like a reactive action and not a proactive action.
However it also makes sense to prepare the regeneration as otherwise the creature would die and a dead creature cannot regeneration, then we're into reanimation.
Also it's quite handy that Regeneration can be activated as a shield - for instance casting Wrap in Vigor in response to an opponent's Doom Blade means that the rest of your crew is safe from additional destruction-effects.
As for the tapping, that makes perfect sense. If a creature has just been Doom Blade'd and is regenerating from that severe attack which would otherwise kill it, it wouldn't have the strength to keep up the assault/defense and thus is removed from combat to regenerate and replenish.
Regeneration should just go back to its pre-M10 rules (i.e. the old rule). It plays like a special action like morph with a specific time window.
Each time a target creature with regeneration is dealt lethal damage or is destroyed, pay the regeneration cost to remove all damage counters on it or negate the destroy effect. This is a replacement effect. As a consequence of using regeneration, tap the creature if applicable.
Flavor-wise, regeneration in fantasy literature I've read happens in these situations: the regeneration target is near death or when the regeneration target sustains lethal or non-lethal damage. I've never seen regerenation treated as a shield. Any shields I've read about were treated as a separate defense to be overcome by the assailant.
Regeneration should just go back to its pre-M10 rules (i.e. the old rule). It plays like a special action like morph with a specific time window.
Each time a target creature with regeneration is dealt lethal damage or is destroyed, pay the regeneration cost to remove all damage counters on it or negate the destroy effect. This is a replacement effect. As a consequence of using regeneration, tap the creature if applicable.
Flavor-wise, regeneration in fantasy literature I've read happens in these situations: the regeneration target is near death or when the regeneration target sustains lethal or non-lethal damage. I've never seen regerenation treated as a shield. Any shields I've read about were treated as a separate defense to be overcome by the assailant.
Do you mean pre-sixth edition rules? Regeneration has been a "shield" for way longer than M10...
Also your proposal breaks anything that has something like "Regenerate target creature".
Regeneration should just go back to its pre-M10 rules (i.e. the old rule). It plays like a special action like morph with a specific time window.
Each time a target creature with regeneration is dealt lethal damage or is destroyed, pay the regeneration cost to remove all damage counters on it or negate the destroy effect. This is a replacement effect. As a consequence of using regeneration, tap the creature if applicable.
Flavor-wise, regeneration in fantasy literature I've read happens in these situations: the regeneration target is near death or when the regeneration target sustains lethal or non-lethal damage. I've never seen regerenation treated as a shield. Any shields I've read about were treated as a separate defense to be overcome by the assailant.
Do you mean pre-sixth edition rules? Regeneration has been a "shield" for way longer than M10...
Hmm, I must be confused then. I thought the "old" rule had been up to M10, and not retired since sixth edition. Oops.
Also your proposal breaks anything that has something like "Regenerate target creature".
Are you referring to instant cards or instant-speed abilities on permanents that confer regeneration (i.e. Reknit)? I lumped regeneration in the same mechanic as mana abilities (the old "interrupt" mechanic), because creatures have mana abilities, but you can tap them as a special action ("special action" may be the wrong word here) to generate mana you need to cast spells. In the old rules (pre-sixth), I always used regeneration at the moment that a creatures takes lethal damage or is destroyed. With the old rules, the player had to keep mana in reserve in case they needed to regenerate, but they couldn't just create a "shield" by expending mana in advance. The old rule just made the timing of using regeneration closer to how the ability is often depicted in fantasy literature and science fiction.
Do you seriously think that they are getting rid of 4 mechanics, 2 of which have no issues whatsoever?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
And when it comes to removing evergreen status... hopefully they hit more than 4 mechanics, honestly.
I don't know which "2" we're still talking about, exactly. But, trample and protection were previously de-evergreened in 8th Edition for being overly complex. They haven't stopped being overly complex. However, since they were de- and re-evergreened, WotC has come up with lots of great alternatives that weren't present back in 8th Edition. So if we're talking about protection and trample, I think it's time to go back and do the job right.
To be clear, I love protection and trample and want to see them stay a part of the game. Just not the evergreen part.
Why do you want more than 4 mechanics to be no longer evergreen? And what is wrong with First Strike?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
What makes Trample the problem child, when a lot of the issue comes with interactions with other mechanics. Why is it more of a problem then, say, Deathtouch? Which you seem to have no issue with. Also if you are so sure Trample and First Strike are out, what would you replace them with. The reason Trample was brought back was, without it, Green couldn't stick damage. Which no amount of fight triggers will fix.
Technically, a renamed Bushido could drop First Strike in White, but it doesn't fit the flavor of Red.
Could they do a sort of variation on evergreen though? I mean, perhaps trample is in this category, where it is something that is needed in every expert set but it is somewhat complex so there is an argument to leave it out of the core sets.
So evergreen wrt. expert expansions, but not with regards to core sets?
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Protection and regeneration can be a little tricky, but if you can understand how planeswalkers work then you can understand how protection/regeneration work. But trample? It is just subtraction. You just take the total damage, subtract away the lethal damage, and the remainder hits the player. The only thing tricky that ever happens with trample is if deathtouch gets involved.
All this talk of dumbing the game down is really demeaning to new players. So they're new to the game? We all were once. That doesn't mean that we need to treat them like they have some learning disability and hide all the "hard" mechanics like "Trample" that force them to do a little bit of subtraction.
Personally I think there is a strong argument for trample remaining in every core set because it helps new players get in the habit of declaring multiple creatures as blockers in combat. Many new players forget that they can block with multiple creatures or have a hard time imagining a scenario where they would want to block with multiple creatures. But novice players also tend to be overly protective of their life points. The threat of trample preventing a single creature from protecting their life total is a common scenario where a new player may want to block with multiple creatures. As they mature as players, they will start looking at double-blocking as more of a means to influence the boardstate in their favor rather than simply a way to protect their life total, but it is good to have trample around as a simple and common example of when to double-block so that they can remember that double-blocking is even an option.
The issue with Protection, in particular, isn't complexity it's poor design. Bad design irritates new players, things shouldn't seem arbitrary (and Protection actually is).
Anyway, trample isn't going anywhere. It serves a useful function. It has good flavor. Its easy to use. It teaches the players several things about the game.
The question is, "Who DIDN'T understand how trample works, and now does not play Magic?"
If you're on mtgsalvation, I'm pretty sure that you understand how trample works. So, there's no use in asking the first question here, because your sampling frame guarantees that you'll get close to a 100% positive response rate. On the other hand, there's no point in asking the second question here, either, because you don't have access to that population here. WotC does have access to those people, there are a nonzero number of those people, and WotC would like to reduce that number to zero, or as close as possible.
Again, I think that people are misunderstanding the discussion. We are talking about de-evergreening mechanics, not removing them from the game of Magic. You don't enroll a freshman in a senior-level course. You wait until they have acquired the tools to succeed in that course. Evergreen mechanics are the "Magic 101" mechanics, which should be suitable for all players. It's not dumbing anything down, it's just putting your house in order.
"What mechanic would you replace Trample with that is flavorful for green, effective for landing damage, and less complicated than trample?"
And before you suggest anything like a keyworded Champion of Lambholt, Super Trample (Thorn Elemental) or any other Evasive ability, evasion isn't green's flavor.
Keyworded Champion of Lambholt, i.e. "overpower."
Trample is not NWO-friendly; evasion abilities are. That's because evasion abilities tend to eat up many fewer complexity points. And, they arguably add as much or more strategic depth to the game than trample.
And green has been doing evasion abilities since the very beginning. It's very much green's flavor.
Landwalk and Intimidate are very non-interactive, as they require a certain deckbuild to match it, but are suppose to be common enough (as keywords) to match the needs of Core sets and Standard expansions (as opposed to 'can't be blocked' templates, which are singular effects and not being keyworded for that reason).
Let's look at the most present evasion keyword, Flying. White and Blue have a lot of ways to stick flying, but at the same time that means they have a lot of ways to defend against Flying (as they, well, control a lion's share of fliers). Black and Red have big flying, but not as much in the smaller flyers, Black has a few bats/vamps, and red has phoenix creatures. But those two have the best creature spot removal. So they are pretty okay on preventing a Flyer from landing in on them early/mid game. That leaves Green, which for a while had no way to deal with flying, it has next to no effective flyers, and had to rely (only) on flying hate killspells. This was rubbish, it didn't work, they added Reach.
This means that all colors have an answer to flying in enough bulk they should never find themselves completely shut down by it. You can't come up with the same answer to Intimidate or Landwalk, and Overrun would be more of this problem. As it shuts out a lot of ways these colors interact with Trample.
White hits Trample with a swarm of small things.
Blue usually has a few big butted zero power blockers each block.
Black has deathtouch trades to exploit.
Red uses a combo of a blocker and a burn spell/firebreathing to get the job done with it's outclassed.
Non-interactive unblockable is not an answer to a problem, it's a problem being resolved.
The other issue is, to make a keyword evergreen, it has to sit in more than one color, which they fixed with Vigilance in M13, and are working on with Reach I think this core. Which is why Fear got axed for Intimidate. Overrun would, I suppose fit in Red, but it would also make Red's firebreathing too effective if you have Overrun meaning it isn't a trade, it's just a point for mana burnspell on legs.
Modifying power is something that every color can do at common in a Core Set. Red, green, and white can boost it. Blue and black can reduce it. Power is one of the most interactive values in the game, especially in Limited.
The one thing that MaRo's talked about cutting down on is evasion abilities: for instance, right now blue's creature keywords are all about avoiding combat. Given that we know landwalk is still in the set and MaRo still wants to cut down on complexity, that seems to leave potential de-evergreened keywords as:
1. Hexproof- Widely reviled, and according to MaRo, a "problem child" for development. Cautiously used in Theros; visible experiments with less frustrating versions of it.
2. Protection- Comes with completely unintuitive rules baggage. Also has been cut back lately, and has been the source of some very frustrating cards over the years (True-Name Nemesis). Could be moved out of blue.
3. Regeneration- More rules baggage. A "regeneration shield" isn't intuitive at all, nor is having to tap it afterwards. Still has flavor justification and isn't problematic developmentally.
4. Intimidate- Doesn't seem to have caught on the same way that Fear did flavor-wise, but seems pretty harmless otherwise.
Cubetutor Link
I would be sad to see hexproof get kicked out of the evergreen suite. I think it just suffered from some development missteps. Stuff like Aven Fleetwing probably should not be Core Set common, because it flusters opponents in both the spot-removal front and the combat front. On the other hand, stuff like Sacred Wolf is great, because it forces creature trades.
If protection and hexproof got the chop, it would imply big changes for the kind of removal we see in Core Sets.
Plus you're now required to mainboard pump and drain spells out of fear of what would be taking over as the mainstay mechanic of green.
A mainstay green mechanic that removes creature vs. creature interaction on its face. Let's just look at Green's keywords:
Deathtouch (Creature on Creature interaction), Flash (generally works into creature creature interaction, but is the exception here), Reach (talked about this, also it's a creature on creature interaction keyword), Regeneration (generally forces more creature on creature interaction, not less), Hexproof (makes creature on creature more likely), Trample (creature on creature interaction), fight (creature on creature).
Even dropped keyword Rampage was all about Creature on Creature interaction. And Provoke? And 'must be blocked' decoy effects. Green's keywords don't deal in creatures avoiding other creatures. Avoiding creatures isn't mainstay green, it's very hipster green.
I feel like we've gotten to the point in Magic where there is room in each color for more than one strategy. Although I do very much like mosh pit green or whatever you want to call the "make creatures hit each other" green.
That doesn't make it a good replacement for 'the thing Green is given at every rarity (and isn't reach).' Which is where the issues come up. As a replacement for Intimidate, yes, that'd be fine minus how Intimidate falls color wheel wise (Primary Black, Tertiary Red/Green) as Overrun is more interactive than Intimidate.
I'm not sure how complex it is to explain trample.
"All excess damage dealt to blocking creatures by a creature with trample will be dealt to the attacked target (player or planeswalker)."
The tricky part is indeed deathtouch but here I again fail to see how tough it is to explain that:
"A creature with deathtouch will deal lethal damage by a single point of damage per blocking creature. If that creature has trample the excess damage... and so forth".
And THEN suggest to make a rather complex mechanic in "overpower".
"This creature cannot be blocked by creatures whose power is below this creature."
- "What happens when I start using buffers? If I attack with a 1/1 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk and my opponent blocks with a 2/2 bear-creature, then I buff up my Skulk with a Giant Growth. Does that mean that he's unblocked again?"
I'd say "overpower" is a lot more complex in the sense that you need a lot of knowledge about the attack-steps to fully understand it AND green is a patron of instant-speed buffers so this problematic is likely to arise more times than Trample + Deathtouch.
Trample requires a bit headwrapping around what "excess damage" is. "Overpower" would require a lot of knowledge about the turn-order itself.
edit: @T Fireman: I don't think regeneration is directly unintuitive. Making it a "shield" might be unintuitive in the way that regeneration feels like a reactive action and not a proactive action.
However it also makes sense to prepare the regeneration as otherwise the creature would die and a dead creature cannot regeneration, then we're into reanimation.
Also it's quite handy that Regeneration can be activated as a shield - for instance casting Wrap in Vigor in response to an opponent's Doom Blade means that the rest of your crew is safe from additional destruction-effects.
As for the tapping, that makes perfect sense. If a creature has just been Doom Blade'd and is regenerating from that severe attack which would otherwise kill it, it wouldn't have the strength to keep up the assault/defense and thus is removed from combat to regenerate and replenish.
Each time a target creature with regeneration is dealt lethal damage or is destroyed, pay the regeneration cost to remove all damage counters on it or negate the destroy effect. This is a replacement effect. As a consequence of using regeneration, tap the creature if applicable.
Flavor-wise, regeneration in fantasy literature I've read happens in these situations: the regeneration target is near death or when the regeneration target sustains lethal or non-lethal damage. I've never seen regerenation treated as a shield. Any shields I've read about were treated as a separate defense to be overcome by the assailant.
Do you mean pre-sixth edition rules? Regeneration has been a "shield" for way longer than M10...
Also your proposal breaks anything that has something like "Regenerate target creature".
I saw and still see it as a clunky and whacky mechanic. I wouldn't mind a bit if we saw that get an update.
Break it how?
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Hmm, I must be confused then. I thought the "old" rule had been up to M10, and not retired since sixth edition. Oops.
Are you referring to instant cards or instant-speed abilities on permanents that confer regeneration (i.e. Reknit)? I lumped regeneration in the same mechanic as mana abilities (the old "interrupt" mechanic), because creatures have mana abilities, but you can tap them as a special action ("special action" may be the wrong word here) to generate mana you need to cast spells. In the old rules (pre-sixth), I always used regeneration at the moment that a creatures takes lethal damage or is destroyed. With the old rules, the player had to keep mana in reserve in case they needed to regenerate, but they couldn't just create a "shield" by expending mana in advance. The old rule just made the timing of using regeneration closer to how the ability is often depicted in fantasy literature and science fiction.
Reknit doesn't grant regeneration, it puts up a regeneration shield (which is outrageously confusing wording and I'm glad we see so little of).
That's under current rules. Then, I have no idea what randomdragoon is referring to then.