Once again, I have been thinking about a simple rule alteration to reduce the frequency of mana screw and mana flood. If you are a competitive player or someone who thinks Magic’s mana system is perfect the way it is, then this won’t appeal to you. I think most other people will like it. It’s obvious to me that most players are peeved when they don’t get to participate in the game due to bad luck. Furthermore, if you search the forums for “mana screw”, you will find many other people have similarly made proposals for house rules to remedy mana problems. Although the motivation of these proposals is something I fully agree with, I think most of these proposals are too game-warping and potentially exploitable in constructed formats. Finally, search for footage of the epic game 5 of the final match in Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica.
Reducing the prevalence of mana screw reduces variance and luck in the game. I acknowledge that the random mana system gives a novice player a better chance of defeating an expert player, and I also acknowledge that nobody enjoys playing a game that they have no chance of winning. But since different decks have favorable and unfavorable matchups, and since bomb rares exist in limited formats, I dispute the notion that the only way a novice can defeat an expert is via mana screw. Since I have observed both novices and experts become frustrated with mana screw, I think this house rule will be appreciated by most people who try it. I also don’t think it can be exploited in constructed formats, but would like to be shown otherwise.
This house rule, or any house rule for that matter, isn’t as good a method for addressing mana gripes as printing staple-grade cards that increase mana-quantity consistency. WotC has often printed rare multilands (dual lands, pain lands, fetch lands, shock lands, fast lands, check lands, filter lands, etc.) that have always been Standard staples because they profoundly increase mana-color consistency. But whereas these rare multilands were always staples, the vast majority of cards featuring mana-consistency bolstering mechanics such as cycling, buyback, spellshapers, and retrace have been too weak to play outside of draft. I have created two separate sets of cards that ameliorate mana-quantity problems, but that’s a separate topic. This is a just simple rule change for casual players.
504. Draw Step
504.1. First, the active player draws a card. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack.
504.1. First, the active player chooses one – Draw or Baseball. If an effect would prevent the active player from drawing a card during the draw step as normal, they can’t choose Baseball. If the active player doesn’t specify Baseball, they are assumed to have chosen Draw.
504.1a. Draw: Draw a card. This is a turn-based action that doesn’t use the stack.
504.1b. Baseball: Look at the top three cards of your library. Put two of those cards on the bottom of your library in any order, then draw a card and reveal it. If you reveal a nonland card or an ineligible land card, exile it. This is a turn-based action that doesn’t use the stack.
702.51c. A player can't use a Dredge ability during the Baseball procedure.
Ineligible land cards: (remember that ineligible cards aren’t banned)
Legacy/Vintage: Since I lack experience in such formats, I have no list of ineligible lands to propose. I also think players who play in these tournaments are generally too hardcore to be interested in house rules, anyway. Folks who play Old School 93/94 and/or Premodern, however, might feel like creating a list of ineligible cards.
When you use the Baseball option, you generally double your chances of drawing a land that turn, albeit at the risk of not drawing a card at all. For example, consider a typical 40-card draft deck with 17 lands – you have a 42.5% chance of topdecking a land if you draw a card, but you have an 82.1% chance of getting a land if you choose Baseball. Consider a typical 60-card Standard deck with 24 lands – you have a 40% chance of topdecking a land, but you have a 79.1% chance of getting a land with Baseball. Not getting a land with the Baseball option is painful, but it’s still usually better than choosing to simply Draw because you “dig” deeper into your deck for that land you desperately need.
Here are a few of my speculations about the implications of the Baseball rule.
Draft speculations:
1. Players will want to play fewer lands. The default number of lands will no longer be 16-17, it will be 13.
2. Because players will play fewer lands, mana flood will occur a little less frequently.
3. Because you can Baseball to dig deeper into your deck for the lands you need to cast your spells, playing a 3-color deck will be a little less risky.
4. Because you will want to play fewer lands, you will need more playable cards from your picks. But this shouldn’t be a problem because the Baseball rule makes drafting a 3-color deck less risky. This also means that you won’t as often have to forego a superior pick in favor of an inferior pick, just because the superior pick isn’t in your 2 colors.
5. Utility lands that are designed to protect against mana problems won’t be picked quite as highly.
Standard Constructed speculations:
1. Players will include fewer lands in their decks. The default number of lands will no longer be 24, it will be 20.
2. Standard legal multilands will be very slightly less desirable because they often enter play tapped, whereas basic lands don’t. Since you can “dig” for whatever color of mana you are missing with the Baseball option, you will be more likely to fix your colors with basic lands. It might no longer be correct to automatically include a full set of Overgrown Tombs and Woodlands Cemeteries in your Golgari deck, for example.
3. Cards that smooth out your mana and function as “mana-sinks” will be very slightly less desirable, but many of these cards will certainly remain playable. In Standard, popular examples of such cards are Treasure Map, Azor’s Gateway, and Tormenting Voice.
4. The explore mechanic will be very slightly weaker, because I think it’s usually better to get a land than a +1/+1 counter when a creature explores. But some creatures with explore will remain good enough to include in Standard decks, nevertheless.
5. A few cards will become a little better due to less land in your deck, such as Vance’s Blasting Cannons, Twilight Prophet, Precognition Field.
Modern speculations:
1. Since fetchlands aren’t eligible, there will be a little less shuffling of libraries! I made fetchlands ineligible because they are by far the best multilands, and they also fuel mechanics such as delve, revolt, and landfall.
2. Urzatron decks won’t benefit from the Baseball rule as much as other Modern decks. And that’s fine and dandy.
Is this option a draw? How does it work with Underworld Dreams? What about Chains of Mephistopheles? What about dredge? Can I look at the top 3, see that there is a land, and then decide to dredge instead of drawing it? How do you feel about this invalidating the advantage of Memory Lapse, Hinder, Submerge and other similar cards? Can I use this to prevent myself from drawing the last card in my library because it's not a land? Is powering up Grenzo, Dungeon Warden intentional? Can I look, see that there is a land, and put it on the bottom of my library? If not, does Obstinate Familiar allow me to do this? Can I Plagiarize this effect? Does it get by Possessed Portal? What happens if I have Thought Reflection, zur's wierding or Uba Mask in play?
These are good questions, which make me double-check the wording of my opening post.
Q1. Is this option a draw?
A1. Yes.
Q2. How does it work with Underworld Dreams?
A2. You will still take a point of damage with Baseball.
Q3. What about Chains of Mephistopheles?
A3. You can successfully use the Baseball option with Chains of Mephistopheles on the battlefield because the Baseball option substitutes for the standard drawing of a card as the draw step begins.
Q4. What about dredge? Can I look at the top 3, see that there is a land, and then decide to dredge instead of drawing it?
A4. You can't use Baseball and Dredge at the same time; you need to specify whether you will Draw, Baseball, or Dredge before you touch the top of your library.
Q5. How do you feel about this invalidating the advantage of Memory Lapse, Hinder, Submerge and other similar cards?
A5. I feel bad about making cards like Memory Lapse slightly worse. But I don't think most spells that put cards on top of an opponent's library are profoundly worse, because most of the time the opponent would rather re-draw whatever card was put on top of their library than get a land.
Q6. Can I use this to prevent myself from drawing the last card in my library because it's not a land?
A6. No, you can't use the Baseball option to protect yourself from library depletion because if you don't reveal an eligible land, you have to exile the card as your draw it. This exile-a-card part of the rule was deliberately intended to prevent a player from immunizing themselves from "Millstone" strategies.
Q7. Is powering up Grenzo, Dungeon Warden intentional?
A7. Uh-oh, I didn't know about Grenzo! He would need errata such as, "As long as Grenzo is your commander, you can't use Baseball option." If he were to get out of hand in Legacy, he could be banned.
Q8. Can I look, see that there is a land, and put it on the bottom of my library?
A8. Yes, but remember that if you don't reveal a land, you have to exile the card you draw as you draw it.
Q9. If not, does Obstinate Familiar allow me to do this?
A9. Anything that would prevent you from drawing a card prevents you from using the Baseball option.
Q10. Can I Plagiarize this effect?
A10. Yes, and you will draw a card off Plagiarize regardless of whether your opponent keeps or exiles the card they reveal.
Q11. Does it get by Possessed Portal?
A11. No, as with the Obstinate Familiar question, you can't use Baseball if you are prevented from drawing a card.
Q12. What happens if I have Thought Reflection?
A12. You will draw an additional card, even if you reveal and draw (and exile) a nonland or ineligible land.
Q13. Zur's Weirding?
A13. A player may use Zur's Weirding's effect to force an opponent to discard a land revealed and drawn with Baseball.
Q14. Uba Mask?
A14. If the active player reveals an eligible land with Baseball, they exile that land with Uba Mask and may play it this turn. If the active player reveals an spell card or ineligible land with Baseball, they MAY choose to exile that card with Uba Mask and play/cast it this turn.
First, I would reword the rule to treat it as a replacement effect which may replaces the first card you draw on your turn. This would eliminate the need for the first two rules. Second, saying "Draw it" isn't good wording. Specify that the other cards go on the bottom first and you then draw a card. Third, exiling the card never causes you to lose the game. With the current wording I can choose baseball with zero cards in my library for as long as I want. You'll need a separate sentence specifying this, or a minimum number of cards in library, similar to how dredge reads.
I still think this completely breaks decks and lets many decks become even more greedy with mana. Burn could probably drop down to 15 lands and be fine. Decks that run 30+ lands also break as they no longer need to run mirri's guile or sylvan library to pick which ones they want. They constantly see which lands are going to the bottom, so they know what to tutor for. Conversely, this is a huge nerf to tron as they don't get any consistency increase, I'm assuming you would do the same to mud in legacy or shop in vintage. Setting up a pre-defined banlist on a mechanic is questionable at best.
Your suggestion to put cards on the bottom, then draw is better. I have altered the rules in the opening post to use it. I suppose if you have fewer than 3 cards in your library, you look at as many as possible before drawing. There is no longer any way to abuse Baseball to avoid losing to library depletion.
Burn can certainly drop to 15 lands. Even with 15 lands, if the Burn player plays first and uses Baseball on turns #2 and #3, they will have accessed on average 2.92 lands by turn 3, but in doing so they will miss out on an average of 0.83 cards by doing so (if my calculations are correct). But playing a low land count is something all aggressive decks can attempt, not just Burn. Even non-aggressive decks will play a lower land count than they would normally. This isn't necessarily bad, but it is certainly different.
I agree that the Baseball rule doesn't benefit Tron like it does other Modern decks. But I don't think Tron becomes unplayable. With the Tron deck made weaker, fewer people will use Ghost Quarter, Field of Ruin, and Damping Sphere. So it will balance out.
Regarding Legacy/Vintage, I wrote previously, "Since I lack experience in such formats, I have no list of ineligible lands to propose. I also think players who play in these tournaments are generally too hardcore to be interested in house rules, anyway." But I'm sure a Vintage/Legacy list of ineligible lands would include lands that produce more than one mana, which would hurt decks using cards like Cloudpost, Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Mishra's Workshop, Gaea's Cradle.
Any house rule will warp an established metagame. With the Baseball rule this is profoundly more true for Legacy/Vintage than Standard or Draft. But some of the fun of house rules is figuring out how to exploit them. If you think Burn is disproportionately powered-up, then play Burn or a deck that beats Burn.
Also remember that no additional cards are banned. But a few land cards are prohibited from being "found" with Baseball.
I suppose if you have fewer than 3 cards in your library, you look at as many as possible before drawing. There is no longer any way to abuse Baseball to avoid losing to library depletion.
You should only allow Baseball if you have a certain number of cards in library. Even if you have 3 cards left, you have just stacked your next 2 draws in the order you want. With 6 cards, if you baseball 2 times in a row you stack the rest of your library. Getting to both dig 3 and choose the order of the cards is too powerful for a small library.
Suggestion: You may only Baseball if your library is at least half its starting size (20 in Limited, 30 in Constructed).
That not only avoids the situations where Baseball stops you from drawing to death, but also prevents abuse from library stacking. Besides, you don't really need Baseball beyond the first few turns. You just need it in the first few turns to hit your first land drops consistently.
Burn can certainly drop to 15 lands. But playing a low land count is something all aggressive decks can attempt, not just Burn.
I assume Burn was brought up because Burn is just more abusive about it. The biggest drawback of Burn is that you can manaflood or lose to manascrew. When you remove that variance, it becomes a combo deck that basically always wins the game on turn 3-4. That invalidates slower decks.
Maybe there should be a gentleman's agreement not to play Burn in this metagame. The point of the house rule is to make random kitchen table creature decks more consistent, not increase Burn's goldfish rate.
Regarding Legacy/Vintage, I wrote previously, "Since I lack experience in such formats, I have no list of ineligible lands to propose. I also think players who play in these tournaments are generally too hardcore to be interested in house rules, anyway."
There's a far bigger problem than just considering what lands to make eligible. You just made Brainstorm, already the best card in Legacy, even more broken. Interactions with Sylvan Library and Ponder are also goofy. Thank goodness Sensei's Divining Top is banned.
Ineligible lands should start with: Strip Mine, Mishra's Workshop, Tolarian Academy, Bazaar of Baghdad, Library of Alexandria, Gaea's Cradle, Karakas, Dark Depths, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Serra's Sanctum, Wasteland. Most others should be OK. Actually even Wasteland might be fair, since the opponent can find new land as easily as you can find new Wastelands, and Wasteland even gets slightly worse when its much harder to get manascrewed.
Isn't this just going to shift the problem around? "Ooh, now I can cut half my lands! Wait... I'm still getting manascrewed? I'm so unlucky!"
Why are fetchlands "ineligible"? They're fair Magic cards. Is it because they're expensive? This rule is basically a soft ban on fetches, since they can now be removed from decks "for free" anyway.
This rule makes it easier to get your early land drops with Baseball. And if makes it harder to mana flood because you can now include fewer lands in your deck without having such a high probability of being mana-screwed early. It is still possible to get screwed/flooded, but the frequency of either is significantly reduced with this house rule.
I just think fetchlands are too good, and they power up strategies like delve, landfall, and revolt. They are so good that they are sometimes warranted in mono-colored decks.
You should only allow Baseball if you have a certain number of cards in library. Even if you have 3 cards left, you have just stacked your next 2 draws in the order you want. With 6 cards, if you baseball 2 times in a row you stack the rest of your library. Getting to both dig 3 and choose the order of the cards is too powerful for a small library.
Suggestion: You may only Baseball if your library is at least half its starting size (20 in Limited, 30 in Constructed).
That not only avoids the situations where Baseball stops you from drawing to death, but also prevents abuse from library stacking. Besides, you don't really need Baseball beyond the first few turns. You just need it in the first few turns to hit your first land drops consistently.
I assume Burn was brought up because Burn is just more abusive about it. The biggest drawback of Burn is that you can manaflood or lose to manascrew. When you remove that variance, it becomes a combo deck that basically always wins the game on turn 3-4. That invalidates slower decks.
Maybe there should be a gentleman's agreement not to play Burn in this metagame. The point of the house rule is to make random kitchen table creature decks more consistent, not increase Burn's goldfish rate.
There's a far bigger problem than just considering what lands to make eligible. You just made Brainstorm, already the best card in Legacy, even more broken. Interactions with Sylvan Library and Ponder are also goofy. Thank goodness Sensei's Divining Top is banned.
Ineligible lands should start with: Strip Mine, Mishra's Workshop, Tolarian Academy, Bazaar of Baghdad, Library of Alexandria, Gaea's Cradle, Karakas, Dark Depths, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Serra's Sanctum, Wasteland. Most others should be OK. Actually even Wasteland might be fair, since the opponent can find new land as easily as you can find new Wastelands, and Wasteland even gets slightly worse when its much harder to get manascrewed.
I don't think it's worth using Baseball to "topdeck" lands in the late game when your library is thin is worth eventually being able to work off a stacked deck, but I could be wrong. Another alternative is to allow each player just 3 "at-bats" with Baseball per game.
I agree fully with your assessment of Burn archetype abusing this a little more than other archetypes. Other decks benefit as well, but straight Burn-your-face-with-LavaSpike, Rift Bolt, Lightning Bolt, etc. might get a little too much of a boost.
Banning Brainstorm would probably destroy cause rioting. Ick. But I like your suggested list, but think Wasteland would be fine to get with Baseball. But again, Legacy wasn't what I really was considering much when writing this rule.
Q9. If not, does Obstinate Familiar allow me to do this?
A9. Anything that would prevent you from drawing a card prevents you from using the Baseball option.
Q10. Can I Plagiarize this effect?
A10. Yes, and you will draw a card off Plagiarize regardless of whether your opponent keeps or exiles the card they reveal.
Q11. Does it get by Possessed Portal?
A11. No, as with the Obstinate Familiar question, you can't use Baseball if you are prevented from drawing a card.
Your answers to Questions 9 and 11 don't fit with the way the cards are worded. Nothing about those effects actually say "You can't draw cards" (like Maralen of the Mornsong does). Instead, they create a replacement effect that replaces the draw with nothing. These are two very different effects (though the result is often the same). While the rule does say you can't choose Baseball if something prevents a card draw, that doesn't explain what happens when something "replaces" a card draw. For example, what if Abundance is on the field? Since this replaces a card draw just like the Familiar and Portal do, what happens? It would be expected that these 3 cards function the same way because they do (effectively) the same thing: replace the card draw with something else. So, either Familiar, Portal, or Abundance can apply with Baseball or Baseball cannot be chosen with any of them. The problem then becomes how would the game really know that someone wants to choose to use Abundance before they get to the point of actually applying the replacement effect? The others are more straightforward as they are not optional but their interaction with other replacement effects like Abundance means the question remains.
As for Question 10, if the card draw is replaced (again, part of the discussion for questions 9 and 11) it never happens. There doesn't seem to be a situation where the player drawing would reveal the card since they never actually drew the card. With a Plagiarize effect active, they would simply look at the top 3, put 2 on the bottom, and do nothing. This interaction also calls into question the validity of saying Portal and Familiar don't apply if Plagiarize still does.
I don't think it's worth using Baseball to "topdeck" lands in the late game when your library is thin is worth eventually being able to work off a stacked deck, but I could be wrong. Another alternative is to allow each player just 3 "at-bats" with Baseball per game.
Most decks wouldn't want to do this to marginally increase their draw chances much later in the game. The problem is the other decks. The few decks that would actually choose to Baseball lategame are probably doing it to abuse the library stacking for unfair reasons. For example, cards like Impulse, Fact or Fiction, Lim-Dul's Vault, Stinkweed Imp or Bloodbraid Elf let you burn through your library more quickly than normal, so the order of cards near the bottom could actually matter. Decks like Lands.dec (at least 50% lands) would choose Baseball every turn to just pick the best land in the top 3 instead of drawing naturally. There are also decks like Stasis, where you can gain a lot of power by consistently drawing several Islands in a row (while ticking up a planeswalker or something).
Being able to Baseball lategame doesn't really do anything to improve mana consistency and make the game more "fun", but it does open up weird ways to abuse the rules. That's why I think you should place restrictions on it. You could limit it based on library size, turn number, or a finite number of "at-bats" per game. That preserves the spirit of the rule - to use sparingly to avoid manascrew, and not to warp the rules of the game in unfair ways.
As a general rule, variance is a crucial part of the game. Mana screw/flood happens, it is never fun, but is a fundamental part of the game. I feel like messing with the core mechanics of the game can only have negative consequences. Also, this busts almost anything that deals with the top of the library.
My playgroup house rule is to allow each player a free mulligan in either of two situations:
1) The player has no land in his opening hand (hand must be revealed)
2) The player actually doesn't want to keep his opening hand.
The "no-lander" mulligan will never reduce the number of cards you draw for your opening hand.
ie: I draw my opening hand and have no land. I free-mulligan and get another 7 cards no-lander. I am still allowed to mulligan to 7 cards.
For the "regular" mulligan, the first one is free, but you will draw one less card for each subsequent mulligan, unless you mulligan into a no-lander (where you can reveal and get to mulligan to the same number of cards).
i.e: I decide to mulligan my first opening hand. I draw 7 new cards, and decide to mulligan to 6. I draw 6 new cards and get no land. I can then use a "no-lander" free mulligan.
Any kind of combo deck playing few to no lands (such as dredge or belcher) is banned from our playgroup, so no one can really abuse these house rules to get perfect hands.
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Reducing the prevalence of mana screw reduces variance and luck in the game. I acknowledge that the random mana system gives a novice player a better chance of defeating an expert player, and I also acknowledge that nobody enjoys playing a game that they have no chance of winning. But since different decks have favorable and unfavorable matchups, and since bomb rares exist in limited formats, I dispute the notion that the only way a novice can defeat an expert is via mana screw. Since I have observed both novices and experts become frustrated with mana screw, I think this house rule will be appreciated by most people who try it. I also don’t think it can be exploited in constructed formats, but would like to be shown otherwise.
This house rule, or any house rule for that matter, isn’t as good a method for addressing mana gripes as printing staple-grade cards that increase mana-quantity consistency. WotC has often printed rare multilands (dual lands, pain lands, fetch lands, shock lands, fast lands, check lands, filter lands, etc.) that have always been Standard staples because they profoundly increase mana-color consistency. But whereas these rare multilands were always staples, the vast majority of cards featuring mana-consistency bolstering mechanics such as cycling, buyback, spellshapers, and retrace have been too weak to play outside of draft. I have created two separate sets of cards that ameliorate mana-quantity problems, but that’s a separate topic. This is a just simple rule change for casual players.
504. Draw Step
504.1. First, the active player draws a card. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack.
504.1. First, the active player chooses one – Draw or Baseball. If an effect would prevent the active player from drawing a card during the draw step as normal, they can’t choose Baseball. If the active player doesn’t specify Baseball, they are assumed to have chosen Draw.
504.1a. Draw: Draw a card. This is a turn-based action that doesn’t use the stack.
504.1b. Baseball: Look at the top three cards of your library. Put two of those cards on the bottom of your library in any order, then draw a card and reveal it. If you reveal a nonland card or an ineligible land card, exile it. This is a turn-based action that doesn’t use the stack.
702.51c. A player can't use a Dredge ability during the Baseball procedure.
Ineligible land cards: (remember that ineligible cards aren’t banned)
Draft/Sealed: None.
Standard: None.
Commander: None.
Modern: Blinkmoth Nexus, Cavern of Souls, Eldrazi Temple, Fetchlands (Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, Bloodstained Mire, Wooded Foothills, Windswept Heath, Marsh Flats, Scalding Tarn, Verdant Catacombs, Arid Mesa, Misty Rainforest), Inkmoth Nexus, Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant, Urza’s Tower, Valakut the Molten Pinnacle. (Any other suggestions, folks?)
Legacy/Vintage: Since I lack experience in such formats, I have no list of ineligible lands to propose. I also think players who play in these tournaments are generally too hardcore to be interested in house rules, anyway. Folks who play Old School 93/94 and/or Premodern, however, might feel like creating a list of ineligible cards.
When you use the Baseball option, you generally double your chances of drawing a land that turn, albeit at the risk of not drawing a card at all. For example, consider a typical 40-card draft deck with 17 lands – you have a 42.5% chance of topdecking a land if you draw a card, but you have an 82.1% chance of getting a land if you choose Baseball. Consider a typical 60-card Standard deck with 24 lands – you have a 40% chance of topdecking a land, but you have a 79.1% chance of getting a land with Baseball. Not getting a land with the Baseball option is painful, but it’s still usually better than choosing to simply Draw because you “dig” deeper into your deck for that land you desperately need.
Here are a few of my speculations about the implications of the Baseball rule.
Draft speculations:
1. Players will want to play fewer lands. The default number of lands will no longer be 16-17, it will be 13.
2. Because players will play fewer lands, mana flood will occur a little less frequently.
3. Because you can Baseball to dig deeper into your deck for the lands you need to cast your spells, playing a 3-color deck will be a little less risky.
4. Because you will want to play fewer lands, you will need more playable cards from your picks. But this shouldn’t be a problem because the Baseball rule makes drafting a 3-color deck less risky. This also means that you won’t as often have to forego a superior pick in favor of an inferior pick, just because the superior pick isn’t in your 2 colors.
5. Utility lands that are designed to protect against mana problems won’t be picked quite as highly.
Standard Constructed speculations:
1. Players will include fewer lands in their decks. The default number of lands will no longer be 24, it will be 20.
2. Standard legal multilands will be very slightly less desirable because they often enter play tapped, whereas basic lands don’t. Since you can “dig” for whatever color of mana you are missing with the Baseball option, you will be more likely to fix your colors with basic lands. It might no longer be correct to automatically include a full set of Overgrown Tombs and Woodlands Cemeteries in your Golgari deck, for example.
3. Cards that smooth out your mana and function as “mana-sinks” will be very slightly less desirable, but many of these cards will certainly remain playable. In Standard, popular examples of such cards are Treasure Map, Azor’s Gateway, and Tormenting Voice.
4. The explore mechanic will be very slightly weaker, because I think it’s usually better to get a land than a +1/+1 counter when a creature explores. But some creatures with explore will remain good enough to include in Standard decks, nevertheless.
5. A few cards will become a little better due to less land in your deck, such as Vance’s Blasting Cannons, Twilight Prophet, Precognition Field.
Modern speculations:
1. Since fetchlands aren’t eligible, there will be a little less shuffling of libraries! I made fetchlands ineligible because they are by far the best multilands, and they also fuel mechanics such as delve, revolt, and landfall.
2. Urzatron decks won’t benefit from the Baseball rule as much as other Modern decks. And that’s fine and dandy.
Q1. Is this option a draw?
A1. Yes.
Q2. How does it work with Underworld Dreams?
A2. You will still take a point of damage with Baseball.
Q3. What about Chains of Mephistopheles?
A3. You can successfully use the Baseball option with Chains of Mephistopheles on the battlefield because the Baseball option substitutes for the standard drawing of a card as the draw step begins.
Q4. What about dredge? Can I look at the top 3, see that there is a land, and then decide to dredge instead of drawing it?
A4. You can't use Baseball and Dredge at the same time; you need to specify whether you will Draw, Baseball, or Dredge before you touch the top of your library.
Q5. How do you feel about this invalidating the advantage of Memory Lapse, Hinder, Submerge and other similar cards?
A5. I feel bad about making cards like Memory Lapse slightly worse. But I don't think most spells that put cards on top of an opponent's library are profoundly worse, because most of the time the opponent would rather re-draw whatever card was put on top of their library than get a land.
Q6. Can I use this to prevent myself from drawing the last card in my library because it's not a land?
A6. No, you can't use the Baseball option to protect yourself from library depletion because if you don't reveal an eligible land, you have to exile the card as your draw it. This exile-a-card part of the rule was deliberately intended to prevent a player from immunizing themselves from "Millstone" strategies.
Q7. Is powering up Grenzo, Dungeon Warden intentional?
A7. Uh-oh, I didn't know about Grenzo! He would need errata such as, "As long as Grenzo is your commander, you can't use Baseball option." If he were to get out of hand in Legacy, he could be banned.
Q8. Can I look, see that there is a land, and put it on the bottom of my library?
A8. Yes, but remember that if you don't reveal a land, you have to exile the card you draw as you draw it.
Q9. If not, does Obstinate Familiar allow me to do this?
A9. Anything that would prevent you from drawing a card prevents you from using the Baseball option.
Q10. Can I Plagiarize this effect?
A10. Yes, and you will draw a card off Plagiarize regardless of whether your opponent keeps or exiles the card they reveal.
Q11. Does it get by Possessed Portal?
A11. No, as with the Obstinate Familiar question, you can't use Baseball if you are prevented from drawing a card.
Q12. What happens if I have Thought Reflection?
A12. You will draw an additional card, even if you reveal and draw (and exile) a nonland or ineligible land.
Q13. Zur's Weirding?
A13. A player may use Zur's Weirding's effect to force an opponent to discard a land revealed and drawn with Baseball.
Q14. Uba Mask?
A14. If the active player reveals an eligible land with Baseball, they exile that land with Uba Mask and may play it this turn. If the active player reveals an spell card or ineligible land with Baseball, they MAY choose to exile that card with Uba Mask and play/cast it this turn.
I still think this completely breaks decks and lets many decks become even more greedy with mana. Burn could probably drop down to 15 lands and be fine. Decks that run 30+ lands also break as they no longer need to run mirri's guile or sylvan library to pick which ones they want. They constantly see which lands are going to the bottom, so they know what to tutor for. Conversely, this is a huge nerf to tron as they don't get any consistency increase, I'm assuming you would do the same to mud in legacy or shop in vintage. Setting up a pre-defined banlist on a mechanic is questionable at best.
Burn can certainly drop to 15 lands. Even with 15 lands, if the Burn player plays first and uses Baseball on turns #2 and #3, they will have accessed on average 2.92 lands by turn 3, but in doing so they will miss out on an average of 0.83 cards by doing so (if my calculations are correct). But playing a low land count is something all aggressive decks can attempt, not just Burn. Even non-aggressive decks will play a lower land count than they would normally. This isn't necessarily bad, but it is certainly different.
I agree that the Baseball rule doesn't benefit Tron like it does other Modern decks. But I don't think Tron becomes unplayable. With the Tron deck made weaker, fewer people will use Ghost Quarter, Field of Ruin, and Damping Sphere. So it will balance out.
Regarding Legacy/Vintage, I wrote previously, "Since I lack experience in such formats, I have no list of ineligible lands to propose. I also think players who play in these tournaments are generally too hardcore to be interested in house rules, anyway." But I'm sure a Vintage/Legacy list of ineligible lands would include lands that produce more than one mana, which would hurt decks using cards like Cloudpost, Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Mishra's Workshop, Gaea's Cradle.
Any house rule will warp an established metagame. With the Baseball rule this is profoundly more true for Legacy/Vintage than Standard or Draft. But some of the fun of house rules is figuring out how to exploit them. If you think Burn is disproportionately powered-up, then play Burn or a deck that beats Burn.
Also remember that no additional cards are banned. But a few land cards are prohibited from being "found" with Baseball.
You should only allow Baseball if you have a certain number of cards in library. Even if you have 3 cards left, you have just stacked your next 2 draws in the order you want. With 6 cards, if you baseball 2 times in a row you stack the rest of your library. Getting to both dig 3 and choose the order of the cards is too powerful for a small library.
Suggestion: You may only Baseball if your library is at least half its starting size (20 in Limited, 30 in Constructed).
That not only avoids the situations where Baseball stops you from drawing to death, but also prevents abuse from library stacking. Besides, you don't really need Baseball beyond the first few turns. You just need it in the first few turns to hit your first land drops consistently.
I assume Burn was brought up because Burn is just more abusive about it. The biggest drawback of Burn is that you can manaflood or lose to manascrew. When you remove that variance, it becomes a combo deck that basically always wins the game on turn 3-4. That invalidates slower decks.
Maybe there should be a gentleman's agreement not to play Burn in this metagame. The point of the house rule is to make random kitchen table creature decks more consistent, not increase Burn's goldfish rate.
There's a far bigger problem than just considering what lands to make eligible. You just made Brainstorm, already the best card in Legacy, even more broken. Interactions with Sylvan Library and Ponder are also goofy. Thank goodness Sensei's Divining Top is banned.
Ineligible lands should start with: Strip Mine, Mishra's Workshop, Tolarian Academy, Bazaar of Baghdad, Library of Alexandria, Gaea's Cradle, Karakas, Dark Depths, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Serra's Sanctum, Wasteland. Most others should be OK. Actually even Wasteland might be fair, since the opponent can find new land as easily as you can find new Wastelands, and Wasteland even gets slightly worse when its much harder to get manascrewed.
This rule makes it easier to get your early land drops with Baseball. And if makes it harder to mana flood because you can now include fewer lands in your deck without having such a high probability of being mana-screwed early. It is still possible to get screwed/flooded, but the frequency of either is significantly reduced with this house rule.
I just think fetchlands are too good, and they power up strategies like delve, landfall, and revolt. They are so good that they are sometimes warranted in mono-colored decks.
I don't think it's worth using Baseball to "topdeck" lands in the late game when your library is thin is worth eventually being able to work off a stacked deck, but I could be wrong. Another alternative is to allow each player just 3 "at-bats" with Baseball per game.
I agree fully with your assessment of Burn archetype abusing this a little more than other archetypes. Other decks benefit as well, but straight Burn-your-face-with-LavaSpike, Rift Bolt, Lightning Bolt, etc. might get a little too much of a boost.
Banning Brainstorm would probably destroy cause rioting. Ick. But I like your suggested list, but think Wasteland would be fine to get with Baseball. But again, Legacy wasn't what I really was considering much when writing this rule.
Your answers to Questions 9 and 11 don't fit with the way the cards are worded. Nothing about those effects actually say "You can't draw cards" (like Maralen of the Mornsong does). Instead, they create a replacement effect that replaces the draw with nothing. These are two very different effects (though the result is often the same). While the rule does say you can't choose Baseball if something prevents a card draw, that doesn't explain what happens when something "replaces" a card draw. For example, what if Abundance is on the field? Since this replaces a card draw just like the Familiar and Portal do, what happens? It would be expected that these 3 cards function the same way because they do (effectively) the same thing: replace the card draw with something else. So, either Familiar, Portal, or Abundance can apply with Baseball or Baseball cannot be chosen with any of them. The problem then becomes how would the game really know that someone wants to choose to use Abundance before they get to the point of actually applying the replacement effect? The others are more straightforward as they are not optional but their interaction with other replacement effects like Abundance means the question remains.
As for Question 10, if the card draw is replaced (again, part of the discussion for questions 9 and 11) it never happens. There doesn't seem to be a situation where the player drawing would reveal the card since they never actually drew the card. With a Plagiarize effect active, they would simply look at the top 3, put 2 on the bottom, and do nothing. This interaction also calls into question the validity of saying Portal and Familiar don't apply if Plagiarize still does.
Most decks wouldn't want to do this to marginally increase their draw chances much later in the game. The problem is the other decks. The few decks that would actually choose to Baseball lategame are probably doing it to abuse the library stacking for unfair reasons. For example, cards like Impulse, Fact or Fiction, Lim-Dul's Vault, Stinkweed Imp or Bloodbraid Elf let you burn through your library more quickly than normal, so the order of cards near the bottom could actually matter. Decks like Lands.dec (at least 50% lands) would choose Baseball every turn to just pick the best land in the top 3 instead of drawing naturally. There are also decks like Stasis, where you can gain a lot of power by consistently drawing several Islands in a row (while ticking up a planeswalker or something).
Being able to Baseball lategame doesn't really do anything to improve mana consistency and make the game more "fun", but it does open up weird ways to abuse the rules. That's why I think you should place restrictions on it. You could limit it based on library size, turn number, or a finite number of "at-bats" per game. That preserves the spirit of the rule - to use sparingly to avoid manascrew, and not to warp the rules of the game in unfair ways.
1) The player has no land in his opening hand (hand must be revealed)
2) The player actually doesn't want to keep his opening hand.
The "no-lander" mulligan will never reduce the number of cards you draw for your opening hand.
ie: I draw my opening hand and have no land. I free-mulligan and get another 7 cards no-lander. I am still allowed to mulligan to 7 cards.
For the "regular" mulligan, the first one is free, but you will draw one less card for each subsequent mulligan, unless you mulligan into a no-lander (where you can reveal and get to mulligan to the same number of cards).
i.e: I decide to mulligan my first opening hand. I draw 7 new cards, and decide to mulligan to 6. I draw 6 new cards and get no land. I can then use a "no-lander" free mulligan.
Any kind of combo deck playing few to no lands (such as dredge or belcher) is banned from our playgroup, so no one can really abuse these house rules to get perfect hands.