There are seeds for the protection and regeneration changes in M14. Just look at Fiendslayer Paladin and Tenacious Dead. I think this is what "protection" and "regeneration" will look like in the future.
I am also thoroughly in the "get rid of hexproof, bring back shroud" camp.
I also wouldn't mind seeing scry become an evergreen keyword. As many were saying before that evergreen keywords have to be do well in block, well I feel that scry was a success in Theros. Additionally, there are several cards that scry without having the keyword scry on them. Darksteel Pendant is the one that makes the least sense, since it was in the block with scry any way. (I realize that Darksteel came out before Fifth Dawn, where scry was first introduced, but still.)
It also bugs me that protection is stronger against some colors than against others. White, black and, to a lesser extent, blue can play mass removal, which works. Red's mass removal however does not work, because it's damage based. Green is screwed anyway, because it's removal is pretty much exclusively creature-based. Blue can also just counter creatures with protection from blue, since protection only works on the battlefield, and black has sacrifice effects.
Just imagine:
Green: "Bwahaha, this card is the bane of blue! Prepare to get crushed beneath its trampling hooves!"
Blue: "Counterspell."
Green: "What. Never mind, I drew another one."
Blue: "Float mana, Upheaval, drop protection from green creature."
Green: "Aw come on! How is that fair? I am never going to beat that card!"
Red: "Hehe, Stormbreath Dragon is pretty savage, amirite?"
White: "Ouch, take 4. Ok, time to Day of Judgment,"
Red: "Oookay, well played I guess..."
White: "Kor Firewalker."
Red: "Groan..."
So, you don't like the fact that the different colors have different strengths and weaknesses? How does red's mass removal not work? I have never seen a red mass damage spell "not work" unless it was countered, and there are plenty of red cards that go against blue. and defense grid is a card. Maybe people should learn how to play around things, this is supposed to be a strategy game, not a I want to resolve everything in my deck unopposed or I'll cry like a baby game.
In the above examples: seed timesavage summoning autumn's veil [card]mistcutter hydra[/card, are all cards.
In the red example there are plenty of creatures that have pro white, and plenty of red enchantments that do damage when a white spell is cast etc. Also, learn to not over extend into a DOJ. Kor Firewalker gains them 1 life per spell, so, out damage him?
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It also bugs me that protection is stronger against some colors than against others. White, black and, to a lesser extent, blue can play mass removal, which works. Red's mass removal however does not work, because it's damage based. Green is screwed anyway, because it's removal is pretty much exclusively creature-based. Blue can also just counter creatures with protection from blue, since protection only works on the battlefield, and black has sacrifice effects.
Just imagine:
Green: "Bwahaha, this card is the bane of blue! Prepare to get crushed beneath its trampling hooves!"
Blue: "Counterspell."
Green: "What. Never mind, I drew another one."
Blue: "Float mana, Upheaval, drop protection from green creature."
Green: "Aw come on! How is that fair? I am never going to beat that card!"
Red: "Hehe, Stormbreath Dragon is pretty savage, amirite?"
White: "Ouch, take 4. Ok, time to Day of Judgment,"
Red: "Oookay, well played I guess..."
White: "Kor Firewalker."
Red: "Groan..."
So, you don't like the fact that the different colors have different strengths and weaknesses? How does red's mass removal not work? I have never seen a red mass damage spell "not work" unless it was countered, and there are plenty of red cards that go against blue. and defense grid is a card. Maybe people should learn how to play around things, this is supposed to be a strategy game, not a I want to resolve everything in my deck unopposed or I'll cry like a baby game.
In the above examples: seed timesavage summoning autumn's veil [card]mistcutter hydra[/card, are all cards.
In the red example there are plenty of creatures that have pro white, and plenty of red enchantments that do damage when a white spell is cast etc. Also, learn to not over extend into a DOJ. Kor Firewalker gains them 1 life per spell, so, out damage him?
Red'smass removal doesn't work against creatures with protection from red because protection stops damage.
Regenerate could become: "[COST}: CARDNAME gains indestructible until end of turn."
When thinking about UR mechanics and expanding red's piece of the colour pie, this came to me: "Springback (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, untap it.)" I would of course have to replace vigilance, which is a more fun mechanic overall, but I thought it could be nice.
Or even this for UR (though more for red): Warp (This creature gets +1/+1 during your turn.)
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When reviewing custom cards / sets, I look for (a) flavour, (b) function, and (c) cohesiveness, generally through a risk focus.
Protection also makes no sense. Not only is the global effect thing strange, but it doesn't make sense that the creature can't be blocked. Sure, it might have some kind of invincibility aura for things of that color, but considering it can block things of that color, it obviously has no problem picking a fight with them. It doesn't really make sense that the thing can't be targeted either. Even if your fireball bounces off, you'd think you could still lob one at it. The damage part doesn't even make sense, either when it comes to global effects. Protection didn't even make sense in Alpha with white knight and black knight. Really? The two knights can't fight ever? That's about as sensible as not being able to clone legendary creatures. (that would need a complicated rules workaround, though)
Global effects is a powerbalance feature to prevent it from being unmanageable, otherwise protection (from certain colors, like White and Black) is impossible to overcome. Targetting is there to prevent even more butthurt players because making it illegal to throw all your mana into a fireball on a pro-red creature means that the event doesn't happen, instead of your Fireball being wasted and in an action you cannot take back. And there is a functional difference between a creature walking through an army to get at the enemy planeswalker (attacking), and the same creature walling another creature from coming through (blocking).
Flavor does need to be marshaled by function time to time. Protection is one of them.
While RU has no current evergreen mechanic, there are several historical examples.
'Can't be blocked'. Red and Blue get the most straight-up 'you can't block me' as opposed to things like Flying. They could split this with Blue getting blanket 'cannot be blocked' (as they have in the past) while Red gets a slightly more restricted version 'Can't be blocked except by red or artifact creatures' (oh hey Intimidate).
'switch power and toughness' and '+/- -/+' gains are overwhelmingly R/u. Frostburn Weird is the most recent example of this.
Looting is also a U/r ability that can be placed on creatures, in slightly different form.
There's also the fact that they don't want to evergreen spell mechanics naturally causes an issue with the colors biggest on Sorceries/Instants (U/R).
It also bugs me that protection is stronger against some colors than against others. White, black and, to a lesser extent, blue can play mass removal, which works. Red's mass removal however does not work, because it's damage based. Green is screwed anyway, because it's removal is pretty much exclusively creature-based. Blue can also just counter creatures with protection from blue, since protection only works on the battlefield, and black has sacrifice effects.
Just imagine:
Green: "Bwahaha, this card is the bane of blue! Prepare to get crushed beneath its trampling hooves!"
Blue: "Counterspell."
Green: "What. Never mind, I drew another one."
Blue: "Float mana, Upheaval, drop protection from green creature."
Green: "Aw come on! How is that fair? I am never going to beat that card!"
Red: "Hehe, Stormbreath Dragon is pretty savage, amirite?"
White: "Ouch, take 4. Ok, time to Day of Judgment,"
Red: "Oookay, well played I guess..."
White: "Kor Firewalker."
Red: "Groan..."
So, you don't like the fact that the different colors have different strengths and weaknesses?
I love the fact that different colors have different strengths and weaknesses. I dislike that protection as an evergreen mechanic hurts some colors significantly more than others"
Quote from ThanoStar »
How does red's mass removal not work?
It doesn't work against protection from red, because it is damaged based, except for the occasional, and mostly inefficient, Flowstone Slide effect.
Quote from ThanoStar »
I have never seen a red mass damage spell "not work" unless it was countered, and there are plenty of red cards that go against blue. and defense grid is a card. Maybe people should learn how to play around things, this is supposed to be a strategy game, not a I want to resolve everything in my deck unopposed or I'll cry like a baby game.
I love counterspells, that is not the problem. It was just an example of blue having a tool against protection from green that green does not have. That is of course the reason protection from blue is often paired with the "can't be countered" clause, but that feels contrived to me. This might be a personal thing though.
Those are answers to counterspells, which I am fine with. They are not answers to protection from red/green cards. My point still is that counterspells provide blue with an answer to protection from blue effects, whereas red and green have (almost) no cards that can interact with protection from their colors.
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In the red example there are plenty of creatures that have pro white, and plenty of red enchantments that do damage when a white spell is cast etc. Also, learn to not over extend into a DOJ. Kor Firewalker gains them 1 life per spell, so, out damage him?
That is the only thing red and green can do against protection from their colors: try to race. Which once again helps to illustrate the fact that protection is more effective against those colors than against white, blue and black. It also helps to illustrate how protection is a non interactive mechanic, since you just have to "ignore" the creature with protection and hope that you can race it. In my humble opinion, that kind of Magic is not the interesting kind of Magic. I much rather play interactive back-and-forth games. Games where control decks have to get more imaginative in their choice of finishers than dropping a large protection creature as their hard-to-remove threat. Games where red aggro isn't a dog to white aggro because there happens to be a protection from red bear that just wrecks every game.
Anyway, I think Magic would be more interesting if protection went the way of the dodo.
When I started playing (back in Revised) I thought Banding, Protection, and Regeneration were stupidly complicated. Banding, thankfully, is gone. I'd be happy to see Protection and Regeneration head the same way.
The brainspace for "regeneration taps creatures and removes them from combat" could very easily be taken up by something more interesting. Similarly, protection staples a lot of effects together for a very non-interactive result.
I'm surprised no one has talked about it yet although I don't think it will be done but possibly Mill could be keyworded? Everyone casually says it anyway, it'll save card space, and it's similar to the "Dies" text change they did pre-Innistrad.
Breaking news.
There will be no Tibalt, Tamiyo, Tezzeret, Garruk, Chandra, Liliana, mini-Jace, big-Jace, Garruk again, or Sarkhan in Theros either.
There will also be no Black Lotus.
That wouldn't do the same thing though, as "destroyed" has a very specific meaning in Magic. With that wording you'd be unable to save a creaure from burn or combat damage, as neither "destroys" the creature
Lethal damage does not cause the creature to be destroyed?
Regeneration - COST (If this creature would die, you may pay COST. If you do, tap it and remove all damage from it instead.)
I think it would be better to say "If this creature would be destroyed.."
That wouldn't do the same thing though, as "destroyed" has a very specific meaning in Magic. With that wording you'd be unable to save a creaure from burn or combat damage, as neither "destroys" the creature.
It would do the same thing. You are correct that destroy has a very specific meaning. It refers to any game object leaving the battlefield due to an effect that specifically says destroy or Lethal damage, which is defined as any amount of damage equal to the creatures current toughness or any non-zero amount of damage dealt by a source with deathtouch.
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protection and regenerate never seemed that complicated to me, are people getting stupider or something?
The overlying argument isn't if Protection and Regenerate are easy to understand once you read the rules, but if they're intuitive. If you give a group of new players a card with Flying, they'll have at least a general idea what the card does. Now give those new players cards with Protection and Regenerate. What those players would initially think those cards do almost never line up with what those cards actually do.
Protection is an intuitive mess. The name sounds purely defensive, yet it promotes equally offensive plays with its "can't be blocked" rule. There's also the old Shroud issue where players want to cast buff spells on their Protected creatures but can't. And, of course, there's the Day of Judgment vs Protection "conundrum".
Regenerate, IMO, is more intuitive, but its biggest problem is its timing. Most newer players would want to activate Regenerate AFTER their creature would be destroyed, not before.
Personally, Protection needs to get the ax while all Regenerate needs is a new name to match its timing. I wouldn't mind seeing the Protection mechanic being used, though I definitely don't like it being keyworded and evergreen.
Regenerate could become: "[COST}: CARDNAME gains indestructible until end of turn."
When thinking about UR mechanics and expanding red's piece of the colour pie, this came to me: "Springback (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, untap it.)" I would of course have to replace vigilance, which is a more fun mechanic overall, but I thought it could be nice.
Or even this for UR (though more for red): Warp (This creature gets +1/+1 during your turn.)
Untapping creatures doesn't sound like a R thing to me.
I think the "Curiosity" ability isn't a good candidate for an evergreen keyword, since it is rather rare. Flat out drawing a card is just too good to put it onto multiple creatures in a single set, not to mention common ones. It is also blue/green, a color combination which already shares flash and hexproof/shroud. For a blue/red evergreen mechanic, some kind of looting would work though. "Scouting (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to an opponent, draw a card, then discard a card.)" could be primarily in blue and secondary in red. Drawing before discarding makes it more blue, since red's looting usually works the other way around, but it would still be ok in red. Especially since you need to attack with the creature, which is more red than blue.
I could see Regenerate being replaced or tweaked to be a replacement effect that allows you to pay a cost just before the creature would die. Functionally identical, easier to understand. It'd still need reminder text on core set cards, though.
It wouldn't be functionally identical. The big difference would be that you could then regenerate a sacrifice. The other notable differences being that the creature doesn't tap (so if you try to kill a regenerating blocker, it could still be available to block) and that it isn't removed from combat (which seems marginal..first strike interactions I guess).
You're right. I actually forgot that my wording would work with sacrifice. Should be "Regeneration - COST (If this creature would be destroyed, you may pay COST. If you do, tap it and remove all damage from it instead.)" so that it would only work with destroy effects and lethal damage rather than with all kinds of dying. Not removing the creature from combat seems to be worth it, since it makes the mechanic shorter and easier to remember without affecting most situations. I did keep the tapping part though, since that is quite important at times.
I could see Regenerate being replaced or tweaked to be a replacement effect that allows you to pay a cost just before the creature would die. Functionally identical, easier to understand. It'd still need reminder text on core set cards, though.
It wouldn't be functionally identical. The big difference would be that you could then regenerate a sacrifice. The other notable differences being that the creature doesn't tap (so if you try to kill a regenerating blocker, it could still be available to block) and that it isn't removed from combat (which seems marginal..first strike interactions I guess).
You're right. I actually forgot that my wording would work with sacrifice. Should be "Regeneration - COST (If this creature would be destroyed, you may pay COST. If you do, tap it and remove all damage from it instead.)" so that it would only work with destroy effects and lethal damage rather than with all kinds of dying. Not removing the creature from combat seems to be worth it, since it makes the mechanic shorter and easier to remember without affecting most situations. I did keep the tapping part though, since that is quite important at times.
That was actually my quote that KBH quoted.
The thing is, not removing the creature from combat after regen would affect any scenario where first strike and double strike are also involved.
That was actually my quote that KBH quoted.
The thing is, not removing the creature from combat after regen would affect any scenario where first strike and double strike are also involved.
Whoops. Sorry.
Yes, it would make regeneration much stronger against first strike and double strike, but would it create any actual rules problems?
I suspect the truth is more like "No more evergreen keywords; anything is fair game in any set" because that gives them more design flexibility.
They still can return keywords in any set - even core sets. What would be the point then?
Evergreen keywords are not restrictive, they are the exact opposite of what you suggest: Evergreen mechanics are free-to-use in any set without previous examination.
The point is that if you want to have, say, Scry lands in your next core set, you have to have Scry on other cards as well, and you might not want that. Or maybe I want to staple Undying onto a creature in Journey Into Nyx; why can't I do that for just one card, instead of having to say, "Well, now it's a set mechanic; we gotta feature it"? No, designating certain mechanics evergreen and others not doesn't make evergreen mechanics easier to use; it makes non-evergreen mechanics hard to use.
Are you seriously expecting flying to be no longer evergreen?
I seriously expect that one day the concept of evergreen is dispensed with. Nothing prevents them from doing a set without Flying (and making it evergreen doesn't mean it has to be in every set, anyway).
^Having access to a butt-ton of keywords in a single set drastically increases the learning curve for newer Magic players. MaRo has repeatedly said how the Time Spiral block did as you're suggesting and the new player count stagnated as a result. Also, if all keywords are open season and can show up here and there, I feel that just muddles the identity of each sets.
I strongly suspect Landwalk is on the way out. Zero Theros cards have landwalk of any kind. By comparison, Regeneration and Protection, the two other bad evergreen mechanics, appear on 9 and 7 cards, respectively.
Protection and Regeneration represent the worst kind of complexity the game can have - things that are dense knots of rules, complicated totally disproportionate to the value they add to the game. There are probably a small number of players who like the idea of winning because they understand the rules better, rather than because they're making superior choices, but that's increasingly a thing of the past.
I doubt they'll evergreen Cycling or Kicker. Maro has said that they don't need evergreen spell mechanics every time it's come up on Blogatog.
Finally, people need to understand that occasionally pruning back bad complexity isn't dumbing the game down; it's simply slowing down the rate at which the game gets more complex. It also allows them to spend complexity in more efficient ways; if you get rid of a clunker keyword, you can put something better in its place - or maybe more than one something, if it's a superclunker like protection or regeneration.
I don't speak up in the rumor mill very frequently, but this really piqued my interest, so I thought I'd chime in after reading the whole thread.
First, the general consensus that landwalk is probably on its way out seems pretty spot on. It doesn't technically make flavor sense (lands are mana bonds, blah blah blah) and having a whole keyword to a bizarrely restrictive and hose-y form of unblockability doesn't seem worth it.
Protection is a bit complicated, to say the least, but I don't think it'll leave the game, though I'm open to Wizards proving me wrong. It seems like a useful, resonant tool for certain cards, and there's nothing stopping them from using it parallel to more restrictive versions of the ability, a la Fiendslayer Paladin. Personally, I'd be a little hurt if it left the game wholesale, but it wouldn't be the end of the world by any stretch.
Now for the bit that got me excited enough to post here: regeneration. I personally love regeneration as a mechanic and have huge nostalgia for it as it was a key player in my first ever magic deck, but it's sort of a problem-child mechanic since it can be easy to assume it doesn't do all the things it does. A lot of the posters here either think it should go (that would suck for me, but whatever, I'd still keep playing) or that it should be changed/functionally replaced. There've been some pretty cool suggestions in this thread, but so far they've all come with some baggage that, while not stopping them from being okay replacements, should definitely be addressed. The first thing that I noticed was that everyone redesigned it as a creature keyword, when it isn't; regeneration is an action word like fight or clash. Making it a creature keyword makes it messier— not bad necessarily, just messier— to have a noncreature spell use it (think of how Death Ward or Wrap in Vigor would look with several of the suggested mechanics).
The second point of controversy over many of these new regeneration mechanics are in their presentation on the cards they'd be on. The ones I've read theorized here are generally formatted something like this: Regenerate N. This format probably looks very normal, after all, most of the mechanics in Magic use this very format. There are a couple that don't, though, and those are what are being talked about here— evergreen keywords. Not one evergreen mechanic in Magic has a rider following they keyword itself, be it a scaling number or a cost. This isn't inherently a problem, but it would make regeneration stand out from the other evergreens, which could be said is aesthetically unpleasing and possibly too visually complicated for what an evergreen should be.
Thinking about why I started writing this post, I realized there's more I have to say on both the protection/regeneration issues and the broader topic of the thread itself, but this is turning out to be quite the wall of text, so I'll cut it off here. Oh, and thank you to anyone who actually reads this whole thing, I realize this is a lot.
Edit: And to the people talking about the version of regeneration that wouldn't remove the creature from combat being more powerful to first and double strikers, it's technically only better against first strike, while being worse against double strike. You'd have to regenerate twice to keep your creature around as the normal combat damage part would kill it again. That's actually one of the bonuses to being removed from combat.
I am also thoroughly in the "get rid of hexproof, bring back shroud" camp.
I also wouldn't mind seeing scry become an evergreen keyword. As many were saying before that evergreen keywords have to be do well in block, well I feel that scry was a success in Theros. Additionally, there are several cards that scry without having the keyword scry on them. Darksteel Pendant is the one that makes the least sense, since it was in the block with scry any way. (I realize that Darksteel came out before Fifth Dawn, where scry was first introduced, but still.)
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I think it would be better to say "If this creature would be destroyed.."
So, you don't like the fact that the different colors have different strengths and weaknesses? How does red's mass removal not work? I have never seen a red mass damage spell "not work" unless it was countered, and there are plenty of red cards that go against blue. and defense grid is a card. Maybe people should learn how to play around things, this is supposed to be a strategy game, not a I want to resolve everything in my deck unopposed or I'll cry like a baby game.
In the above examples: seed time savage summoning autumn's veil [card]mistcutter hydra[/card, are all cards.
In the red example there are plenty of creatures that have pro white, and plenty of red enchantments that do damage when a white spell is cast etc. Also, learn to not over extend into a DOJ. Kor Firewalker gains them 1 life per spell, so, out damage him?
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Red'smass removal doesn't work against creatures with protection from red because protection stops damage.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
When thinking about UR mechanics and expanding red's piece of the colour pie, this came to me: "Springback (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, untap it.)" I would of course have to replace vigilance, which is a more fun mechanic overall, but I thought it could be nice.
Or even this for UR (though more for red): Warp (This creature gets +1/+1 during your turn.)
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Global effects is a powerbalance feature to prevent it from being unmanageable, otherwise protection (from certain colors, like White and Black) is impossible to overcome. Targetting is there to prevent even more butthurt players because making it illegal to throw all your mana into a fireball on a pro-red creature means that the event doesn't happen, instead of your Fireball being wasted and in an action you cannot take back. And there is a functional difference between a creature walking through an army to get at the enemy planeswalker (attacking), and the same creature walling another creature from coming through (blocking).
Flavor does need to be marshaled by function time to time. Protection is one of them.
'Can't be blocked'. Red and Blue get the most straight-up 'you can't block me' as opposed to things like Flying. They could split this with Blue getting blanket 'cannot be blocked' (as they have in the past) while Red gets a slightly more restricted version 'Can't be blocked except by red or artifact creatures' (oh hey Intimidate).
'switch power and toughness' and '+/- -/+' gains are overwhelmingly R/u. Frostburn Weird is the most recent example of this.
Looting is also a U/r ability that can be placed on creatures, in slightly different form.
There's also the fact that they don't want to evergreen spell mechanics naturally causes an issue with the colors biggest on Sorceries/Instants (U/R).
I love the fact that different colors have different strengths and weaknesses. I dislike that protection as an evergreen mechanic hurts some colors significantly more than others"
It doesn't work against protection from red, because it is damaged based, except for the occasional, and mostly inefficient, Flowstone Slide effect.
I love counterspells, that is not the problem. It was just an example of blue having a tool against protection from green that green does not have. That is of course the reason protection from blue is often paired with the "can't be countered" clause, but that feels contrived to me. This might be a personal thing though.
Those are answers to counterspells, which I am fine with. They are not answers to protection from red/green cards. My point still is that counterspells provide blue with an answer to protection from blue effects, whereas red and green have (almost) no cards that can interact with protection from their colors.
That is the only thing red and green can do against protection from their colors: try to race. Which once again helps to illustrate the fact that protection is more effective against those colors than against white, blue and black. It also helps to illustrate how protection is a non interactive mechanic, since you just have to "ignore" the creature with protection and hope that you can race it. In my humble opinion, that kind of Magic is not the interesting kind of Magic. I much rather play interactive back-and-forth games. Games where control decks have to get more imaginative in their choice of finishers than dropping a large protection creature as their hard-to-remove threat. Games where red aggro isn't a dog to white aggro because there happens to be a protection from red bear that just wrecks every game.
Anyway, I think Magic would be more interesting if protection went the way of the dodo.
The brainspace for "regeneration taps creatures and removes them from combat" could very easily be taken up by something more interesting. Similarly, protection staples a lot of effects together for a very non-interactive result.
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Lethal damage does not cause the creature to be destroyed?
It would do the same thing. You are correct that destroy has a very specific meaning. It refers to any game object leaving the battlefield due to an effect that specifically says destroy or Lethal damage, which is defined as any amount of damage equal to the creatures current toughness or any non-zero amount of damage dealt by a source with deathtouch.
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Protection is an intuitive mess. The name sounds purely defensive, yet it promotes equally offensive plays with its "can't be blocked" rule. There's also the old Shroud issue where players want to cast buff spells on their Protected creatures but can't. And, of course, there's the Day of Judgment vs Protection "conundrum".
Regenerate, IMO, is more intuitive, but its biggest problem is its timing. Most newer players would want to activate Regenerate AFTER their creature would be destroyed, not before.
Personally, Protection needs to get the ax while all Regenerate needs is a new name to match its timing. I wouldn't mind seeing the Protection mechanic being used, though I definitely don't like it being keyworded and evergreen.
Untapping creatures doesn't sound like a R thing to me.
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You're right. I actually forgot that my wording would work with sacrifice. Should be "Regeneration - COST (If this creature would be destroyed, you may pay COST. If you do, tap it and remove all damage from it instead.)" so that it would only work with destroy effects and lethal damage rather than with all kinds of dying. Not removing the creature from combat seems to be worth it, since it makes the mechanic shorter and easier to remember without affecting most situations. I did keep the tapping part though, since that is quite important at times.
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That was actually my quote that KBH quoted.
The thing is, not removing the creature from combat after regen would affect any scenario where first strike and double strike are also involved.
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U Merfolk
R Goblins
Commander
RB Grenzo, Dungeon Warden
R Feldon of the Third Path
Yes, it would make regeneration much stronger against first strike and double strike, but would it create any actual rules problems?
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
The point is that if you want to have, say, Scry lands in your next core set, you have to have Scry on other cards as well, and you might not want that. Or maybe I want to staple Undying onto a creature in Journey Into Nyx; why can't I do that for just one card, instead of having to say, "Well, now it's a set mechanic; we gotta feature it"? No, designating certain mechanics evergreen and others not doesn't make evergreen mechanics easier to use; it makes non-evergreen mechanics hard to use.
I seriously expect that one day the concept of evergreen is dispensed with. Nothing prevents them from doing a set without Flying (and making it evergreen doesn't mean it has to be in every set, anyway).
Protection and Regeneration represent the worst kind of complexity the game can have - things that are dense knots of rules, complicated totally disproportionate to the value they add to the game. There are probably a small number of players who like the idea of winning because they understand the rules better, rather than because they're making superior choices, but that's increasingly a thing of the past.
I doubt they'll evergreen Cycling or Kicker. Maro has said that they don't need evergreen spell mechanics every time it's come up on Blogatog.
Finally, people need to understand that occasionally pruning back bad complexity isn't dumbing the game down; it's simply slowing down the rate at which the game gets more complex. It also allows them to spend complexity in more efficient ways; if you get rid of a clunker keyword, you can put something better in its place - or maybe more than one something, if it's a superclunker like protection or regeneration.
First, the general consensus that landwalk is probably on its way out seems pretty spot on. It doesn't technically make flavor sense (lands are mana bonds, blah blah blah) and having a whole keyword to a bizarrely restrictive and hose-y form of unblockability doesn't seem worth it.
Protection is a bit complicated, to say the least, but I don't think it'll leave the game, though I'm open to Wizards proving me wrong. It seems like a useful, resonant tool for certain cards, and there's nothing stopping them from using it parallel to more restrictive versions of the ability, a la Fiendslayer Paladin. Personally, I'd be a little hurt if it left the game wholesale, but it wouldn't be the end of the world by any stretch.
Now for the bit that got me excited enough to post here: regeneration. I personally love regeneration as a mechanic and have huge nostalgia for it as it was a key player in my first ever magic deck, but it's sort of a problem-child mechanic since it can be easy to assume it doesn't do all the things it does. A lot of the posters here either think it should go (that would suck for me, but whatever, I'd still keep playing) or that it should be changed/functionally replaced. There've been some pretty cool suggestions in this thread, but so far they've all come with some baggage that, while not stopping them from being okay replacements, should definitely be addressed. The first thing that I noticed was that everyone redesigned it as a creature keyword, when it isn't; regeneration is an action word like fight or clash. Making it a creature keyword makes it messier— not bad necessarily, just messier— to have a noncreature spell use it (think of how Death Ward or Wrap in Vigor would look with several of the suggested mechanics).
The second point of controversy over many of these new regeneration mechanics are in their presentation on the cards they'd be on. The ones I've read theorized here are generally formatted something like this: Regenerate N. This format probably looks very normal, after all, most of the mechanics in Magic use this very format. There are a couple that don't, though, and those are what are being talked about here— evergreen keywords. Not one evergreen mechanic in Magic has a rider following they keyword itself, be it a scaling number or a cost. This isn't inherently a problem, but it would make regeneration stand out from the other evergreens, which could be said is aesthetically unpleasing and possibly too visually complicated for what an evergreen should be.
Thinking about why I started writing this post, I realized there's more I have to say on both the protection/regeneration issues and the broader topic of the thread itself, but this is turning out to be quite the wall of text, so I'll cut it off here. Oh, and thank you to anyone who actually reads this whole thing, I realize this is a lot.
Edit: And to the people talking about the version of regeneration that wouldn't remove the creature from combat being more powerful to first and double strikers, it's technically only better against first strike, while being worse against double strike. You'd have to regenerate twice to keep your creature around as the normal combat damage part would kill it again. That's actually one of the bonuses to being removed from combat.