Magic 2.1 - Any time you are allowed to play a land (or put it into play from any zone), you may choose a card in your hand (or in that zone), reveal it, and randomly choose one of its colors. Then, you exile that card (or put it into the command zone, just to be safe) and replace it with a basic land producing mana of the chosen color.
The random selection is similar to the Dakkon Blackblade Vanguard, see comment #4. However, the whole point of M2.0 is to lower the luck factor. I'm not sure how much of an impact this rule would have on playing multicolored cards overall but I think it would make drafts of Alara or Shadowmoor block, or Ravnica with DGM rather problematic.
I mean, if you were able to convert any card into basic lands, you would be able to build decks that are 80% or more spells. The power level of the above cards suddenly skyrockets.
Interesting~ Wanna know what's funny about this? Wizard already used the same principle in another game called duel masters. The game doe snot have nigh as much depth as magic and due to rather limited hand cards, it just does not work out as well~ However, in duel masters, every card can be placed in the mana zone to produce mana.
Not sure if this is even the first one. I learned that principle from the Call of Cthulhu LCG and I know many other modern games follow it, include the Lord of the Rings.
Personally, I do not think that land cards are a "bad" thing - at least, if mana would work the way it actually should. THat means: If statistics were guaranteed, things would work out. For example: 20 land cards/60 card deck. Statistically, every third card you draw should be a land. However, that works only in theory. In practice, sometimes you get screwed or flooded. No matter how perfect your mana curve and ratio is, luck decides it all. Even in heavily mana generating decks, you can just get screwed~ Sometimes, you just draw the absolutely wrong cards~ You get manaflooded and continue to draw all of your 4 birds out of your deck, for example.
As I prefer to use multicolored decks, I also often encounter color screw. Color screw can be pretty much nullified in magic by using fetch/shock /whaterever lands - but they are just too damn expensive... And that even though they only decrease the luck factor in magic. Heck, all of them(except old doppel-lands) even have some kind of disadvantage(Paying Life/Harder to search, due to them being non-basic/If *condition* is not fulfilled, it comes into play tapped etc. etc.). These expensive lands are just annoying to me... I need them only to decrease luck-factor after all.
Well, yes. My whole beef with Magic and lands is that it unnecessarily forbids players to play the game. Of course, your deck is randomized and there is always color screw but, as this thread has shown, mana screw and mana flood are quite easily avoidable.
One thing lands are good for in magic: Limiting. Due to the land-system, you cannot play virtually any card out there in any deck, because you probably will not splash a little black in a blue-green deck. The black card may be good in your deck and fit in well, but it is just not worth using due to not wishing to pull out black mana or something or rely on your birds of paradise too much. In another game, Yu-Gi-Oh, the main problem in terms of balance is: There is practically no ressource and you can play virtually any card in any deck.
There is more than one way to curb the mana problems without removing the lands completely, look up the "Magic wildcards" above.
There was also an official one - the mulligan rule. That rule was not in Magic from the start and I call it a rough patch on what I think is a major desing flaw in the game.
Your idea of removing the lands completely is interesting, but that are many many cards which are based on land cards. Effects like "Reveal from your deck until you find a land" would need to be removed or revised. These effects work out well right now, because pretty much every deck is sure to have a good number of land cards - for every other type of card, one cannot be sure. There are creatureless decks as there are spellless decks.
Just think about how many cards got screwed after damage on stack was abolished. Or consider mana burn, or the latest change to the legend rule. With your logic, Wizards or casual players like me would be unable to improve the game rules in any way, just to preserve rather fringe strategies such as revealing lands from a library.
There is also a certain flaw with your idea: To me, it does not seem that card costs were created with the mindset "You draw one mana every turn". To actually lay out mana every turn, you have to be either very lucky OR have a deck that supports this through card draw/Manasearch. In your version, one can actually play one mana every turn easily, if one wishes to do so. In fact, for some decks of mine, one mana per turn would be quite powerful - for example my black/white deck. Black/White does not have much to speed up it'S early game, be it through draw or managenerators. One either relies on small creatures with low cost or relies on control and/or lifegain(My deck, for example, relies on strong control and lifegain to survive until it has it's 4-5 mana, where it starts to get powerful).
In any case, it is also annoying that artifacts are "underpowered" in your aversion - but I guess you do not like that yourself. One idea I'd have, to make them more powerful, would be: If you play an artifact as a land, you can reveal a card from your hand and choose a color that this card has. The "land" can produce one of that cards' colors. One would take a disadvantage in(Revealing a card), to have more proper mana.
The goal of M2.0, M1.5, or the wildcards is not to fix the mana problems in Magic without touching anything else. The goal of these variants is to remove said problems first, and deal with unintended consequences later. What you do above is to use an example as a proof, which is not adequate. If you benefit from the M2.0 rule in your B/W deck, chances are that your opponent does too in their deck. If everyone started to play M2.0 today, the metagame would definitely change. I just don't see it as a problem - metagame changes every time Wizards implement a major rules update or even when a new block is released.
Regarding the artifacts, they are still universal cards that do have a disadvantage using the M2.0 rule. Your idea to improve it also makes sense, you trade something for having a mana you need, I like it.
Also, one thing I've been hearing from other opponents of M2.0 is that the luck factor of any kind does not matter at all because statistically it always evens out for everyone over time... Yeah but that only applies if you play with a single deck over and over. I'm talking Limited here - drafting cubes, seal decks etc. Imagine that you draft an excellent pool at FNM where you only play 3 matches; and then you get screwed two times by your own deck. You just wasted the whole evening, the game rules screwed you over, you had no fun and maybe you'll skip the next FNM, but most importantly, unless you are very dedicated to keep the deck and find someone else with a comparable one, preferably from the same draft, you will not see your drafted pool perform in a proper game. This is simply not something I'd expect any game to do to me...
Another probable "flaw"~ In your idea, one has a bigger space for deck construction, however, that effect is counter-acted by the fact, that each card must probably double as a land. The problem, however, is: The options are quite a bit greater. Lets say you draw statistically exactly as much lands as you should(every third card, for the sake of argument). You start with 7 cards, two of them being "useless ressources" in the form of lands. So you in fact only start with 5 "real" cards, limiting your possibilities a bit, albeit not shrinking them to nothingness or even near it.
In your idea, one effectively starts with 7 "real" cards and 7 "useless ressources" at the same time, increasing your options GREATLY, especially because you will keep on to draw a real and a ressource every turn. I think that this amount of possibilities would make many many things too easy to pull off. If you, however, reduce the amount of starting cards, one will always encounter a severe lack of option, as you still need ressources(Duel masters has exactly this effect, for example).
The whole point of M2.0 is to lower the luck factor and increase the skill factor so I don't see the number of options going up as a bad thing. The game is 20 years old, after all. But I like your idea to lower the starting/maximum hand size under the M2.0 rule to maybe make a game faster.
In any case, I have thought myself about mechanics to prevent mana screw/flood and have come to different results as you. The mechanics I now propose are not "perfect" I guess, but if you like the ideas, I would love it if you could give me some advice to refine them a bit.
1. You can mulligan freely if you have 1 or less or 5 or more lands on your hand. This is a rule I always enforce if I play casually and it helps by a damn lot.
Yup, I know this one too. BTW, M2.0 by itself does not eliminate mulligans and if you play M1.0 with wildcards, this rule would help even then.
2. Once every third turn, you can reveal your hand to your opponent. If you have no land-cards on your hand, your can discard a card at random to search your deck for a basic land card and put it into your hand. This can only be used if you have not played any card on this turn and only directly after your drawstep. Also, this ability cannot be used if you have 2 or less cards in your hand.
I tested this rule out quite a bit, albeit only with myself. I like it very much, as it works well against screw. Why every third turn? Because one land every third turn is the magic "average" and I find it rather appropriate like that. One has a certain disadvantage, as one discards a card at random and needs to show the hand to the opponent, however, I'd say this disadvantage is gladly taken for extra mana once you need it. The "cannot be used if 2 or less handcards"-rule simply prevents abuse a tad. It may however make discard quite a bit stronger~ But I'd like to hear an opinion on this one.
Seems to me that here you complicate things a little too much. This rule is arbitral and counter-intuitive, definitely compared to Magic wildcards above. Counting turns, discarding at random, remembering further limitations... this is not keeping it simple IMHO.
3. Fetch-Lands, Shock-Lands and the like should not cost even near as much >___<. Really, that is just too stupid~ I tested it with proxies, and the disadvantages they have can be really noticable, but they only stop color-screw from happening~ Except for fetch-lands, as they decrease manaflood. But the combo of fetch+shockland has a really noticable disadvantage - 3 life lost is definetely a good bit. Especially in a disadvantageous position, these 3 life could lose you the game.
4. Once you draw the obligatory card at the beginning of your turn, you may choose to reveal it. The land is then discarded and another card from your hand, chosen at random, is shuffled into your deck. Afterwards you reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a non-land card. Draw that non-land card and shuffle all others into your deck.
This rule prevents manaflood pretty well and ensures you to draw a non-land card. I do not find it really abusable, due to losing a random card from your hand and it also have the disadvantage of the opponent knowing the card you drew.
This seems way too complicated. Just cycle away a land from your hand and be done with it
I mean, if you were able to convert any card into basic lands, you would be able to build decks that are 80% or more spells. The power level of the above cards suddenly skyrockets.
As I've already alluded to, switching to M2.0 everywhere overnight would completely rewrite the metagame. True, it would be easier to ramp into big spells such as those mentioned but remember, all other decks would also become much faster and consistent and I can't really predict which strategy would prevail in the new environment.
But, if these spells really turned out to be overpowered in M2.0, we could always ban them or restrict them as they are very few.
Also, M2.0 is a new experimental format primarily focused on Limited. You can always tune your drafting cube to avoid potentially problematic spells.
The whole thing is the perception - Among all the possibilities, you can view M2.0 as a means to enhance the current rules for casual play, eliminating those pesky mana problems, or you can gauge such a variant as a kind of a threat to the status quo. But still, there are easy solutions: you can lower the size of starting/maximum had to 5 cards, decrease the size of a playset to 3 cards, etc.
Or, if you are really concerned with lands as an integral part of Magic, you can start with the wildcards, see comment 23.
if I were going to do a magic 2.0, I would probably do it like this:
Follow normal deck construction rules, maybe cut the minimum deck sizes to 45 for constructed, 30 for limited to account for the lesser number of lands that would be played.
Before the start of the game, place 5 decks (one of each basic land type) in the command zone. The size of these decks is irrelevant, they should be large enough so that they never run out during the course of the game.
Whenever a player would draw a card, they may choose to draw from one of the basic land decks instead. As an additional cost to do so they must either reveal a card from their hand or choose a nonland permanent they control which shares colour identity with the basic land deck they wish to draw from.
(reference commander rules for colour identity if you're not familiar with it.)
If an effect instructs a player to search their deck they may search any of the basic land decks in addition to their own.
We discussed something similar earlier in the thread, this is also akin to the M1.5 variant, see comment #10. IMO, setting up 6 libraries before each game seems a little impractical. But if these are meant to be in the middle of the table and service at least 4 players at the same time, it might work for some groups.
The system requires some adjustment to deal with stuff like mind funeral and charbelcher (but pretty much any magic 2.0 system does), I would reccomend setting "until a land is revealed" abilities to a maximum of 3 cards per land that is supposed to be revealed.
Have you ever played VS System? It has a similar resource system to this, which is part of the reason I like it so much. The cool part about that game, though, is that you could play Plot Twists (Basically Spells) that you have set as a resource (and they would continue to be a resource later in the game).
@Charmer: First off, I am not an enemy of M2.0 ^^" I just pointed some things out.
No problem, that's not an issue for me. Maybe I'd focus on whether you have actually tried playing M2.0 or are judging it from afar.
While it is true that my opponent also benefits from drawing more mana probably, it's the cards themselves that are the problem.
The more mana a card costs, the more "Powerful" it is - this is sort of the foundation of balance in magic - nothing balances things just as mana.
But the growth in strength is not linear, it's, more or less, exponential:
1-3 mana cards grow somewhat linear in their strength. 4 mana cards, however, are already a good bit stronger than 3 mana cards.
First, just calling something "exponential" doesn't make it so. Please, try to back that up.
Second, if you draw and play your mana to your content, you will be playing 4-mana spells consistently on turn 4 in M1.0 or M2.0. M2.0 just blocks those dead moments when you cannot play anything because of mana.
And third, the consistency in getting mana when you need it is absolutely symmetrical. With M2.0, metagame would change and the balance would shift but... so what?
M2.0 is different from M1.0, that is the point of it.
And the problem arises with 6+ mana cards, simply because many of them are VERY strong. With M2.0 ramp decks would be incredibly powerful due to many 6+ mana cards would become way more viable in terms of use and would hit the table way too soon, oftentimes winning the game. For example, I use the Simic Sky Swallower in my simic-deck - and that card alone can often win me games, because it is hard to stop. Or something like Progenitus would also be way more viable.
This analysis seems very vague to me. How do you know, you wouldn't be overrun by a M2.0 weenie deck by the time you hit 7 mana for SSS? I'm quite confident you would be, I have built some decks. I argue that _ALL_ cards are better in M2.0 due to its consistency, not just the ones you are trying to single out.
Therefore, I'd agree to tone things down a little, at least in Constructed, by lowering the size of opening/maximum hand and the playset size.
I do like the fact to have more and more possibilities - but many cards were pretty much designed to the current mana system - based on statistics, not luck. The proof in that is not the one example, it's the numerous examples.
More extreme examples would probably be eldrazi: It would be a lot easier to hard cast them and especially the legendary Eldrazi win you games single-handedly.
And it would also be a lot easier to disrupt your Eldrazi plan while hitting you with early beaters in M2.0. I don't see any evidence right now that fatties and ramp would automatically take over the constructed metagame with M2.0.
The thing is, I like your idea and I also acknowledge that a good number of cards would have to be dropped for the better of the game - however, I wouldn't like to see all the cards that would turn out to be OP to be dropped, simply because way too many cards would turn out to be OP.
What do you mean by "OP"? Anyway, if you don't like M2.0, that's okay, you can perhaps at least try the wildcards described in comment #23 as a minimalistic version that stems from M2.0.
In the end, I also think that it is definitely a design flaw. Deckbuilding is all about balancing a good deck out to decrease the luck-factor. Shocklands/fetchlands just serve this, too - and see how much they cost.
With a game like magic, as a creator, ones first and foremost should be: How can I decrease the luck factor? Because this is actually most important to make the game enjoyable.
Richard Garfield had a different idea with Magic, just watch the talk he had at ChannelFireball, it is linked in comment #8.
Have you ever played VS System? It has a similar resource system to this, which is part of the reason I like it so much. The cool part about that game, though, is that you could play Plot Twists (Basically Spells) that you have set as a resource (and they would continue to be a resource later in the game).
Never heard of VSS before but by the looks of it, it follows the pattern of many modern CCGs or LCGs - cards can be played as cards or used as resources...
In fact, I have yet to find a game that would have the "lands-in-Magic" type of limitation in its rules.
Never heard of VSS before but by the looks of it, it follows the pattern of many modern CCGs or LCGs - cards can be played as cards or used as resources...
In fact, I have yet to find a game that would have the "lands-in-Magic" type of limitation in its rules.
Thanks for the tip.
I think that The Spoils has resources similar to Magic.
I think that The Spoils has resources similar to Magic.
Oh cool, there's the Spoils, I didn't know that. I watched some tutorials and it was hilarious
Let's summarize:
the Spoils is basically a fixed version of Magic, developed with the biggest design flaws of Magic in mind, including the mana screw and mana flood, as its authors reportedly admitted. Hell, even Jon Finkel helped them with the development.
The Spoils was released more than 10 years after Magic.
Its tongue-in-cheek absurdist fantasy setting is hilarious too. Just look at the fan-service resource cards and compare them to "boring" basic lands. The added humor counts.
Now, it is true that the Spoils use separate resource cards and other cards. Let's take a look at how the Spoils deals with the mana stability and balance:
The mulligan rule is quite cool - you just tuck any number of cards from your hand to the bottom of your library and draw the same amount of cards - with no card loss. That's something I sometimes do while playing EDH; I throw away the whole hand to draw a new one since the reshuffling in EDH is a major pain.
You have starting resources - you never start a game with nothing, so that's definitely cool too.
Your resource pool is very flexible - you don't have to have an exact number of "colored" resources to pay requirements of each card, the resources are shared in this regard for all cards you play in a turn, thus curbing what we would call the color screw.
And now for the best parts - you can play any card face down as a resource. I didn't see that one coming That's the M2.0 rule right there. In effect, no mana screw in the Spoils.
In the Spoils, you use a faction card as your HQ or "dome"... It holds your hit points for the game, determines the number and "color" of your starting resources, and also has activated abilities - one of which allows you to draw cards for resources, thus effectively eliminating what we would call the mana flood.
There is also this "flip-out" ability, allowing you to "unmorph" a face-down resource into a regular "spell". Excellent.
So, as we can see, while the basic premise of separate resource cards is met in the Spoils, the way they are implemented is nothing as limiting as Magic, not by a long shot. I will have to look further to find a popular card game, which is built around a resource mechanic that regularly screws over the player, with no recourse. For me, the developers of the Spoils obviously learned the lesson and did it right.
Thank you, bone_doc, for bringing the Spoils to my attention. The only bad news for me is that I will have a hard time to persuade anyone to switch
@Lucy: As lazy as you claim to be, you sure write a lot of text Allow me some time to respond to it properly.
Oh cool, there's the Spoils, I didn't know that. I watched some tutorials and it was hilarious
You've probably found this by now, but if you're interested in playing the game, I think Team Covenant still sells starter decks and such: http://teamcovenant.com/
@Charmer: OP is a short for "overpowered"
I do think a weenie deck could still overrun a heavy maintenance deck - but that is not exactly my point. By drawing mana consistently, you will be able to get some powerful high cmc cards out rather quickly. Sure, balance would shift and such - but the degree in which it would shift is too much for cards with a high cost.
Again, you are singleing out just one category of cards that would be significatnly boosted in your opinion, probably because it was the first one that crossed your mind. From the top of my head, there is another significant group of cards: hosers and sideboard cards in general - with almost unlimited consistency, you could run them in your deck without fear and effectively disrupt the big spells you're talking about.
Without predicting the overall metagame, I see a balancing factor just in these two groups of cards, which would benefit from M2.0.
The base evidence is rather obvious:
Magic is, at this point, not designed that you drop one mana every turn - magic is designed that you usually drop one mana every third turn - if you put lots of more mana than 20 in your deck, you'll frequently get flooded and REALLY rely on luck.
So the foundation pretty much is: If you draw mana every turn while still not being flooded, a good number of cards would be OP.
Considering the opening hand (one you do not want to mulligan), you absolutely want to drop a land each turn in first 3 turns at the very least with almost any Magic deck. So, it's more like _drawing_ a land roughly every third rather than dropping it.
Looking at the history of the mulligan rule in Magic, the mana problems turned out to be an unintended consequence of the overall design, despite being so glaring in the hindsight. Taking that into consideration, I'd contest the idea that the fine tuning of the mana curve progression was even considered in the early stages of the Magic design. From what I've learned so far, it was a much bigger mess than I'd previously expect.
Don't forget, Magic was the first one in its category and this was bound to happen so that the later games could learn from mistakes in Magic's design and move the player experience forward (Call of Cthulhu, the Spoils, and many others). What got out of hand with Magic was its immense initial commercial success, which basically sealed the basic principles of its rules. IMO, that is why we are still stuck with basic lands today, to a degree. Another such issue is the 6th color - inconcievable for many Magic players while more recent games, often built around factions, are much more flexible in expanding its universe in this regard.
Plus, if you carefully tune some mana fixing and/or ramp to your deck, you are able to play 6-mana spells on turn 4 _very_ consistently even in M1.0. That is literally your plan when building such a deck. Unless, of course, your deck screws you over and you lose to blind bad luck. I'd even go as far as to say that while testing your deck in tournaments, the amount of bad luck you experience initially contributes a great deal to your decision whether to continue to tune the deck or dismantle it and "try your luck" with another archetype.
In effect, if your strategy really is to ramp into big spells quickly, M2.0 does very little to help you specifically as it provides great consistency for all strategies. For me, much bigger effect of M2.0 is the shift in responsibility - it really is much easier to make a mistake in M2.0 and you can't use mana problems as a convenient scapegoat to blame your loss on.
Don't get me wrong - this shifting the blame on the rules (in M1.0) was part of the design - R.Garfield explicitly admitted it. New players tend to be discouraged to play if they lose a game to a stronger opponent. But if the rules allow them to defeat a much more experienced player, it feels so empowering to them that they jump in the game and continue to play for... decades sometimes, right :)? Nevermind that the sense of victory by mana screw/flood is just an illusion, in this case designed to hook them up.
And that is part of the reason Magic is still so successful - humans are creatures of comfort and don't like to admit their mistakes - blind luck kind of absolves them. That is also why M2.0 is not for everyone. Some players simply don't want to think too much while playing...
Now for some examples:
It would be way easier to get a Platinum Angel off - you can easily protect it through a number of cards and you'll probably get it way sooner off than now. This makes this card, for example, OP.
Akroma would be another good example, that can single-handedly win you the game.
The Simic Sky Swallower is also a good example: Hard to destroy, hits heavy. THis could also win you the game.
Well, I content that comparatively these cards might seem overpowered. But as I've said, it's just a matter of perception. IMO, if these cards would start to dominate, they would also be played much more and soon, strategies to play around them would emerge. And for the worst offenders, we always have the banlist.
In other words, your perspective seems to be: M2.0 is kind of cool but I insist that by switching to it, next to no cards and mechanics will be affected to maintain the status quo.
My perspective is more like: Magic has some major design flaws, which ruin the fun for me and many other players. I believe that for players who have been playing Magic for many years, it's no longer worth it. Let's come with a variant to fix the issues and let's not worry too much if balance among existing cards shifts a little.
One would need to overhaul many many cards to actually make this system work as good as it should be.
This sounds like a conjecture to me. I see your point but I also think you're just projecting you "OP" argument. I content that M2.0 would rewrite the Constructed metagame but I don't see any indication as to why things wouldn't balance themselves out over time.
M2.0 works well with "normal" magic decks - which means: Decks that were designed to be played in M1.0 and were afterwards altered a tad to fit M2.0. It does, however, not work well anymore if the deck is constructed with the M2.0 rules in mind, as many cards simply become overpowered in M2.0 due to the shift of manacost-balancing.
You keep repeating that. But saying "many cards simply become overpowered" is not a persuasive argument. I understand that you feel that way and simply don't like the idea as you perceive it as too great a change. However, I am left unconvinced.
First: M2.0 is still mainly meant for Limited where it works just fine.
Second: In Constructed, I wouldn't mind one bit if, for example, everyone played a single Platinum Angel in their decks just because it's so good and "easy to cast". I also don't think cards such as SSS or Akroma would break the format. If you can suddenly play Akromas and Sky Swallowers in M2.0 because you have more space in your deck, others can just as easily play them too or get rid of them by playing Virulent Swipes, Avenging Arrows, sweepers, clones, counterspells etc. NOT. A. PROBLEM
Third: An official M2.0 Standard block would no doubt provide more effective disruption for big spells by maybe reintroducing land destruction, reprinting a card similar to Retribution of the Meek or whatever. Until that time, I wouldn't worry about Constructed at all. I'd simply continue testing and making notes for possible adjustments. Or play it non-rare, or as a highlander format, whatever suits you. The possibilities are endless.
Fourth: What do you think about the Magic wildcards variant described in comment #23 above?
Hi, I'm enjoying this whole Magic 2.0 discussion. My wife and I have only been playing Magic for a couple of months now, but it's becoming obvious that some significant proportion of our games are complete walk-overs, as one or other of us simply doesn't get started due to screwage.
I love the idea of being able to trade a non-land for a basic land, and vice versa, but I also appreciate the comments that the cards and game have been developed/tested/balanced in an environment where lumpy land distribution is part of the game's necessary randomness. This makes me wary of changes that would make it almost trivial to get one land on the table per turn for the first six turns. It might turn out to be a non-issue, but I'm naturally sceptical.
So... if the proposed free land/non-land exchange turns out to be TOO much, how about increasing the cost of each exchange as we go? For example, my first exchange would be 1-for-1, my second would be 2-for-1, etc. This would be simple to implement - it's a little reminiscent of the escalating cost for rolling the Planechase dice - and would effectively make exchanges much rarer. One or two exchanges per player per game, I imagine, but with the possibility that players could push it further. I prefer this kind of ramped cost to a simple 2-exchange limit, or similar, as it puts the tactical decisions in the players' hands.
Anyway, that's just a little twist I thought I'd throw into the mix. I haven't tested Magic 2.0, 1.5, or any other no-screw variant yet, but I'm keen to start. For now, my wife has been winning the screw-wars, so it might be difficult to persuade her ;-)
Hi, I'm enjoying this whole Magic 2.0 discussion. My wife and I have only been playing Magic for a couple of months now, but it's becoming obvious that some significant proportion of our games are complete walk-overs, as one or other of us simply doesn't get started due to screwage.
I love the idea of being able to trade a non-land for a basic land, and vice versa, but I also appreciate the comments that the cards and game have been developed/tested/balanced in an environment where lumpy land distribution is part of the game's necessary randomness. This makes me wary of changes that would make it almost trivial to get one land on the table per turn for the first six turns. It might turn out to be a non-issue, but I'm naturally sceptical.
Well, unless you aspire to attend a lot of competitive tournaments, I'm not sure the shift in balance matters a lot. If you're mainly playing for fun, the main concern should be, well, fun.
I'd like to emphasise yet again that M2.0 is mainly focused on Limited where consistent combos, ramp, or other strategies benefiting from the M2.0 rule are not a problem.
But from my limited testing of M2.0 Constructed, I almost never even got to have 6 lands in play. The format plays differently - you constantly need answers to what your opponent is doing. After your 3rd or 4th land, you need to make some tough decisions what card in hand to convert or if at all. Thus, I'm not sure if ramping is even a viable strategy in M2.0
Now when I think about it - if you have no basic lands in your deck and want to search for them, maybe it would make sense to flip cards from the top of your library instead of searching your deck for the least useful card of the right color in every situation. As soon as you flip a card that qualifies for the land type you're searching for, that card becomes a land.
It avoids searching the deck and might nerf one of your key cards if you ramp too much...
So... if the proposed free land/non-land exchange turns out to be TOO much, how about increasing the cost of each exchange as we go? For example, my first exchange would be 1-for-1, my second would be 2-for-1, etc. This would be simple to implement - it's a little reminiscent of the escalating cost for rolling the Planechase dice - and would effectively make exchanges much rarer. One or two exchanges per player per game, I imagine, but with the possibility that players could push it further. I prefer this kind of ramped cost to a simple 2-exchange limit, or similar, as it puts the tactical decisions in the players' hands.
If I understand it correctly, in this variant, you would still need lands in your deck to only convert cards for an increasing cost when absolutely necessary. I already thought of something similar - a minimalistic form of M2.0 that plays almost the same way as normal Magic but removes a lot mana problems: the Magic wildcards; please check http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=9883119#post9883119 in this thread
Anyway, that's just a little twist I thought I'd throw into the mix. I haven't tested Magic 2.0, 1.5, or any other no-screw variant yet, but I'm keen to start. For now, my wife has been winning the screw-wars, so it might be difficult to persuade her ;-)
I find it surprising that only one person has mentioned Wizard's other TCG that uses mana and the 5 colors of Magic, Kaijudo (a reimplementation of Duel Masters).
Although targeted at children originally, it is still a very strategic game.
In Kaijudo, you can play any card in your hand into your "Mana Zone". This gives you access to that color of mana to cast your creatures and spells. If you play a two color card into your "Mana Zone" you get access to both colors but it enters tapped. Once you have access to a color it doesn't matter how many cards of that color you want to play per turn.
The game does differ from Magic in a few ways:
1) The minimum deck size is 40 cards (since there are no resource cards.)
2) There is a maximum of 3 copies of each card allowed in your deck.
3) The starting hand size is 5 cards.
4) You decide if you'd like to play or draw after seeing your hand.
5) There are no mulligans.
6) You have no life total. Instead you deal 5 random cards off the top of your deck as "Shields", each creature that attacks you successfully breaks a shield, and that card goes to your hand. If you are successfully attacked when you have no shields, you lose.
7) Creature combat is very different (and outside the scope of this post)
8) You can't play spells on your opponent's turn (except Shield Blasts which are kind of like Miracles)
9) There are no mana symbols. Cards simply have a color or colors and an amount of mana they cost.
I'm sure there are other differences I've missed but those are the ones that are most relevant to what you are discussing.
I used to call Kaijudo, Magic Lite, but lately I've been calling it "Frustration Free" Magic.
If I were to try to eradicate "mana screw" from Magic I would start by adapting some Kaijudo rules.
Reducing the deck size to 40 and 3 ofs seems like a good place to start. Also I see no reason why a 5 card starting hand size would cause a problem here.
I would also add the "Mana Zone" to the official zones. that would solve a lot of the rules issues with having spells or creatures that weren't actually spells or creatures on the battlefield.
I would also have spells with 2 or more colors enter the Mana Zone tapped and spells with 3 or more colors not untap during their controllers next turn.
I would NOT use the color access rules however. I think managing your resources is still an important part of Magic.
Finally, as a comment on Basic Lands and cards that interact with them consider them optional! As the game evolves and the rules change some cards get better and some cards get worse. That's the nature of an ever evolving game like Magic. Even chess started out using dice to determine the pieces you could move!
Think of it like "Damage on the stack", in a world without Basic Lands, the cards that need them wouldn't exist, and in formats where they do, players would choose whether or not to use them.
I've been playing Magic for 20 years now (seriously) and ideas to get rid of Basic Lands or fix "mana screw" have been around the WHOLE time. I believe that eventually Basic Lands will go away someday if the game lasts long enough and I seriously look forward to it.
Also, don't be afraid to design your own cards for this "variant" of yours.
"A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness." - Wizards of the Coast Official Reprint Policy
I've just learned about the Duel Masters/Kaijudo thing recently and this made me realize how easy it is to fix the mana system of Magic. Converting cards to mana also offers great choices. I'm glad to find a thread about it on the great MTG Salvation forums. Channeling resolves the issue with bouncing lands back to hand, one less problem.
About limited: limited is very abuse-proof. It's about doing best with what you have, considering the rules. This means you can throw pretty much anything at limited and have a fun time in a great metagame. Magic 2.0 is no exception. I will focus on constructed since limited can handle itself. (Limited works, the end)
Landless Magic would change the game in a few ways: -Less luck. Considered a great thing by many, Mark Rosewater offer a different angle here. It's a matter of taste. I'd personally prefer lower luck then now.
-More choices. Also means more complexity and analysis. Also a matter of taste. More choices can be overwhelming and lead to a more involved game. This variant is then much less laid back then usual MtG. It's also more challenging and offer a higher skill cap. I like that. Normal MTG can be heavy at times but I think many could handle more, especially with less probability calculations. Hand size of 6 can help lower the complexity if needed.
-Different card value. If rules changes, many cards behave differently. Just look at the changes to combat damage, legend rules and mana burn. Just look at Ravenous Baloth. Cards have a certain balance and ideally you don't want to change this too much. Some card might have to get banned or houseruled but you want this to be isolated cases and not wildly all cards of a type for instance. There are many possibilities for multicolored card and artifact to prevent huge balance swings that would render a type useless or overpowered. This will be discussed further.
-Broken cards. Some cards especially care about out of play land cards. Playing without lands will break these cards. Many won't be playable anymore or will need a banhammer.
-Mana curve. Many comments point out that having a guaranteed land each turn makes high cost cards better. I would argue that having a guaranteed spell each turn makes weenies much better. Getting to 7 mana with 6 non-land cards to protect yourself from 2 creatures per turn from the opponent is close to impossible. I know, I play green ramp all the time and lose. Right now, the metagame favors midrange decks: too many land for big spell can leave you mana screwed and too few lands in aggro can make you mulligan to oblivion. It's hard to predict the outcome of landless magic but I think having control of your curve will make more deck idea viable.
-More space for spells and recycling . We need to keep the 4/60 or 3/40 ratio of copies per deck to make bombs not too likely to be drawn. This means that instead of playing 4 copies of 9 cards (36 spells) you have to play at least 15 different cards. This is significantly more. But you don't have to play all these new spells, a good portion of drawn card will be used as land. Since removing lands gives about 24 new card and a sideboard is made of 15 occasionally played cards, I suggest that the sideboard is eliminated and part of the main deck, still leaving 9 more cards to be played. Sideboard cards will be prime candidates as lands and 15 out of 60 is still fewer "dead" draws then usual. Aggro decks that don't play as many lands might want to include less then 15 matchup specific cards and control decks might play more. Overall, more flexibility. Keeping current sideboard rules is an option but you can see that cards with more specific uses more easily find home in landless deck, rendering them not as important to preserve an healthy metagame. As an added bonus, it leaves space for lands in a 75 cards box. Perfect!
-Mana Fixing/Color shortage. It's already easy enough to run decks with 3 colors of mana. More mana options (because old options still exist) will make it even easier. It'll only be a problem of priorities rather then waiting for the lucky draw. Mana fixing cards will lose value, but more importantly, gold cards will be even easier to play. 5 color control will probably be a force to fear but will still have to deal with some mana problems, which is only normal considering you aren't supposed to have access to every color.
BALANCE
The suggested rule is:
Each card in hand can be traded for basic land card of it's color at sorcery speed.
This makes colorless cards a bit better (colorless mana land), monocolored cards good (normal basic land) and multicolor cards even better ([U]choice [/U]of normal basic land).
You might see a trend here. Gold cards are easier to play, but also offer more mana options(++). Artifact card on the other hand have always been easy to play and give you bad mana options (--). Since we can't really change the part about how easy they are to play, let's change how they provide mana.
Better artifact option: Make artifacts give better, existing colorless lands. Lands that give 1 but also have an added perk such as: Shimmering Grotto (1,T: Any color), Henge of Ramos or School of the Unseen (2, T: Any color, worst), Archaeological Dig, Crystal Vein or Darksteel Citadel. Finding which one is right and preserve a balanced playstyle for artifacts is a matter of testing. Crystal Vein is my favorite since it's even more colorless. Make artifact give basic lands of the color of a card in hand and/or in play. This seems pretty good, gives you choices, almost always better then a monocolored card.
Worst gold card options: Random land among the colors. Still almost strictly better then monocolored. And I don't like random. Basic land comes into play tapped. You choose one of the color, but it ETB tapped. Can only work if gold cards are limited to channel a land and play it immediately, which is fine by me. Also means no searching of the library to put lands in hand, maybe even in play.
Channel //gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[%22enters%20the%20battlefield%20tapped.%22">&type=+[%22Land%22]&rarity=|[U]&set=|[%22invasion%22]"]Taplands or other not so good multilands. This is still pretty good. Too good. And you'd need to have all these types of land in your playkit.
Overall, I think the system can work pretty well by only breaking a few cards. The channeling rules for non-monocolor cards needs tweaking (playtest) and some additionnal rules will probably be needed for some mechanics and edge cases.
And I also thank crasher for summarizing mana issues in Kaijudo for everyone.
Seems like even Wizards themselves already fixed Magic's flaws in another game. Yet, as the Magic community gets bigger and bigger, so does the elephant in the room.
Recently, I browsed some of the Top 8 coverages from GPs. I noticed how the reporters painstakingly avoid using words like "(mana) screw" or "flood". Instead, they casually mention that "Fourth land never showed up..." or "XY missed his third land drop." Excellent way to condition readers to not question this whole business of top players randomly losing to mana after days and weeks of testing... But I digress.
I think it's time to summarize the main improvements to M2.0 that came from this thread and discussion:
1) Seems like in M2.0 Constructed at least, lowering the deck size to 40 or 50, lowering the playset size to 3, and lowering the max hand size to 5 or 6 has enough support among commenters and me to make it the next thing to update in the canonical M2.0 rules.
2) To make it intuitive and unobtrusive to play colorless cards in M2.0, we can use color identity of a card to determine its channeling options. This immediately takes care of most utility lands (New Benalia, Halimar Depths), many mana stones (signets, cluestones, talismans), etc.
For colorless cards that do not even have any color in their identity, I really like the idea of having to reveal another colored card in order to channel the colorless card. That would give even more flexibility to the player while allowing us to remove the pseudo-Barry's land construct of a colorless basic land from the rules that was there to work around the problem in the first place.
Plus, to make the whole improvement consistent, we could use color identity for all cards in M2.0. I wouldn't mind Urborg Elf to have a 3-way channeling option. Or even Paragon of the Amesha to give access to any basic land. See 3).
3) It is true that gold cards in M2.0 as it stands now are perhaps disproportionately too good, with all the advantages and no drawbacks. I like the idea to nerf them down as outlined above:
If you channel a 2-colored (meaning the color identity) card and want to play it the same turn, the land would come into play tapped.
If you channel a 3-or-more-colored card and want to play it the same turn, the land would come into play tapped and with a random type out of those allowed by the original card.
This adjustment would not only balance the power level of multicolored cards which generally provide more powerful effects and/or stats, but also slow down the game in general, which might be desirable as well, as almost unlimited flexibility of M2.0 favors weenie and agro strategies in general. But this needs some testing... I'm volunteering
4) Finally, searching lands and ramping should be still possible but the searching itself and especially shuffling is a pain and even more so in EDH/Commander. At the same time, thinning your deck selectively of unnecessary cards might be abusable and is an unintended consequence of channeling from library. Therefore, I propose to make it easier and more fair at the same time:
Instead of searching you library for lands, you would reveal cards from the top of your library, channeling the first card that matches the type that's being searched for. Then all other revealed cards would go to the bottom of your library.
This way, if you ramp too much, you'll be automatically revealing parts of your deck to your opponent, as well as risking to channel an important card unvoluntarily as a discouraging factor. But some testing is still in order here nonetheless.
1)Changing all the rules of card number/ratio/hand size is an other topic then landless. Going 3/40-50 doesn't make the transition easier since most will have playsets of 4 already in their decks. Doesn't really lower the complexity either. A lower hand size is related though since the game becomes more complex, but that's part of the goal. Deckbuilding rules that would make it easier is to have no sideboard, then you can use your deck+sb and add a few cards.
2)Color identity is a better rule in most cases I think. Showing a colored card for colorless seems to be the way to go too. This makes multicolor cards good enabler for artifacts though. You could just repeatedly use artifacts to get any land and not showing much. Maybe make channeling with artifacts follow the rules of the revealed card. That way if you want fast multicolor lands from artifacts you have to show a different monocolor each time. Using cards in play instead of revealing (if you want) needs to be tested too.
3)I like these multicolor channel rules. 3-5 color might be overkill since they are already not too easy to cast. I have no better idea though.
4)I also dislike selective removal. But, in normal MtG, when you search for a land card you usually are already removing a card you don't want to draw. And library ramping/fixing will be much less needed with 2.0 rules. It doesn't need to be nerfed further. If anything, both of these aspects cancel out nicely. If you don't like shuffling then that's an other topic, there is no additionnal shuffle in 2.0 so it is non-issue.
There are other issues that came to my attention. First, spell density is much greater in 2.0. Of course, the goal is to avoid mana flood, but is it really mana flood to have 3-4 lands. RedDeckWin doesn't need that many, and is REALLY strong, considering you can play 7-10 spells that deal 2-3 damage and win. Just look at starting hands with this. Having 2-3 lands guaranteed might be a bit too strong.
Also a made a list of cards that will or could be problematic, there aren't that many. I probably missed a few ones but I was pretty thorough.
Landmill (grind):
Balustrade Spy
Consuming Aberration
Destroy the Evidence
Mind Funeral
Mind Grind
Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
Undercity Informer
Cards that get broken good without lands:
Goblin Guide (2/2 haste that reveal all draws of opponent, for 1)
Grindstone (auto win vs mono color)
Trepanation Blade (+toomuch/+0)
Abundance (reorder library)
Chandra, Pyromaster
Domri Rade
Garruk, Caller of Beasts
Goblin Charbelcher
Rally the Horde
Seismic Assault (fixed with limited 1 per turn)
Land's Edge (same)
Lightning Storm
Manabond (fixed with limited 1 per turn)
Explorer's Scope (it can always be a land)
Into the Wilds (same)
Druidic Satchel (same)
Clear the Land(same)
Cards to check out, might be too good:
*Oona, Queen of the Fae (pretty much 6 to create 5 fairies vs mono, each turn)
*Epic Experiment
Duskmantle Seer
*Jace's Mindseeker
*Oracle of Mul Daya
Mindshrieker
Sanity Grinding
Undead Alchemist
*Delver of Secrets
Skyward Eye Prophets
Augur of Bolas
Avenging Druid (possible sick combo with Laboratory Maniac)
Hermit Druid (same as above)
Baneful Omen
Beast Hunt
Bioplasm
Bloodline Shaman
Brass Herald
Borborygmos Enraged (fixed with limited 1 per turn)
Brilliant Ultimatum
Call of the Wild
Call to the Kindred
Counterbalance
Descendants' Path
Enshrined Memories
Galvanoth
Genesis Wave
Lurking Predators
Sages of the Anima
Uncovered Clues
Vampire Nocturnus
Vigean Intuition
Zoologist
Trade Routes (not so good with 1 per turn)
Compulsive Research
Nantuko Cultivator (becomes pretty good with unlimited channeling)
Rise/Fall (becomes hymn to Tourach unless you channel preemptively)
Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant
Scorched Earth
Cards that change but are still mostly unplayable:
Cellar Door
Cerebral Eruption
Coerced Confession
Game Preserve
Helm of Obedience
Infernal Genesis
Ink Dissolver
Knowledge Pool
Paroxysm
Shapeshifter's Marrow
Thought Dissector
Aerial Caravan
Heed the Mists
Loafing Giant
Some cards such as Reweave would allow you to get that 1 and in your deck, but tutors are usually easier.
Many of these cards have problems with channeling from the top of the library into play. Maybe limit channeling to search effects.
Also some cards get really good when you channel lands as you see fit (good retrace, Manabond , etc). Maybe limit channel to the number of lands you can play each turn.
What if instead, the players had two decks, a "main" deck containing no mana and a "mana" deck containing nothing but. At the start of a player's turn, they choose which deck they want to draw from based on whether they need mana or not.
1)Changing all the rules of card number/ratio/hand size is an other topic then landless. Going 3/40-50 doesn't make the transition easier since most will have playsets of 4 already in their decks. Doesn't really lower the complexity either. A lower hand size is related though since the game becomes more complex, but that's part of the goal. Deckbuilding rules that would make it easier is to have no sideboard, then you can use your deck+sb and add a few cards.
Remember, M2.0 is not by definition landless - it allows lands but does not require them.
I think lowering these stats relates quite a bit to the spell density you mention below. For the sake of transition to the format alone, it might be a good idea to tackle the amount of new possibilities players suddenly get in M2.0.
For Constructed, the conversion of an existing deck is already covered in the OP but once you start building and testing brand new decks for M2.0, why not tweak the deck/playset/hand size to see what works best? I already started to build 50-card decks since 36+15 is the usual number of nonland cards used in a deck, including the SB.
2)Color identity is a better rule in most cases I think. Showing a colored card for colorless seems to be the way to go too. This makes multicolor cards good enabler for artifacts though. You could just repeatedly use artifacts to get any land and not showing much. Maybe make channeling with artifacts follow the rules of the revealed card. That way if you want fast multicolor lands from artifacts you have to show a different monocolor each time. Using cards in play instead of revealing (if you want) needs to be tested too.
If you want to channel a colorless card, the action should follow the same rules for the enabling card you reveal as if you were channeling the colored card. But channeling a card will only get you a basic land, there are no "fast multicolor lands". We should test if enabling cards should be revealed forever to make sure that you never use them for channeling again, though it should be possible to use a card with the same name as an enabling card later on.
Not sure about checking cards in play as there seems to be no trade off to the channeling.
Anyway, using enabling cards to channel colorless cards should be quite rare because even with artifacts in your deck, you need (mono)colored cards to get any mana at all, so usually you factor in advance to what extent a card will be used for channeling as opposed for casting a spell.
3)I like these multicolor channel rules. 3-5 color might be overkill since they are already not too easy to cast. I have no better idea though.
Thanks for leading me to that idea. With this setup, it seems that multicolored cards are balanced again - you won't probably want to build decks full of multicolored cards and having all lands you play come into play tapped. And the extra discouragement for cards of 3 or more colors ensures that you think twice before including them. Plus, if you play a 3-color card, you really should cast it for its abilities rather than use it to fix your mana.
4)I also dislike selective removal. But, in normal MtG, when you search for a land card you usually are already removing a card you don't want to draw. And library ramping/fixing will be much less needed with 2.0 rules. It doesn't need to be nerfed further. If anything, both of these aspects cancel out nicely. If you don't like shuffling then that's an other topic, there is no additionnal shuffle in 2.0 so it is non-issue.
This proposal is purely practical - from my earlier testing, players who searched for mana (in Limited or Constructed) tended to think too long which card to remove from the deck, adding needlessly to the match's length. The number of possibilities for them was too big anyway, especially in EDH/Commander so this adjustment just streamlines the process.
However, now when I think about it, the rule might be abused with scry effects, so maybe it's safer to search the deck from the bottom. In any case, this rule is definitely optional and will be tested more.
There are other issues that came to my attention. First, spell density is much greater in 2.0. Of course, the goal is to avoid mana flood, but is it really mana flood to have 3-4 lands. RedDeckWin doesn't need that many, and is REALLY strong, considering you can play 7-10 spells that deal 2-3 damage and win. Just look at starting hands with this. Having 2-3 lands guaranteed might be a bit too strong.
From my testing, I rarely needed more than 4 lands with any deck though I didn't try to build a RDW. The spell density is greater, true, but so is the spell turnover. The gameplay is in general more dynamic and spells "cancel" each other out quickly. But burn might be something to reckon with...
One way to slow things down is to try a draw-or-cast scheme. Needs testing though, there might be unexpected consequences.
Also a made a list of cards that will or could be problematic, there aren't that many. I probably missed a few ones but I was pretty thorough.
Note that we shouldn't necessarily try to fix everything as M2.0 is a format that would eventually require its own design space and approach. Since for the time being only the like-minded play M2.0, if a card gets out of hand, houseruling or ban solves the problem easily.
Landmill (grind):
Balustrade Spy
Consuming Aberration
Destroy the Evidence
Mind Funeral
Mind Grind
Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
Undercity Informer
With the latest ideas in mind, since each card with a color identity can be channeled, landmilling just hits the first colored card and stops.
Compared to the sheer number of creatures that were nerfed by abolishing damage on stack, this list is indeed very short
Cards that get broken good without lands:
See my other comments below:
Goblin Guide (2/2 haste that reveal all draws of opponent, for 1) <- would need errata
Grindstone (auto win vs mono color) <- ban
Trepanation Blade (+toomuch/+0) <- landmill, covered
Abundance (reorder library) <- you choose land/nonland and most of the time hit the top card
Chandra, Pyromaster <- not sure if problematic
Domri Rade <- might be too good
Garruk, Caller of Beasts <- might be too good
Goblin Charbelcher <- landmill, nerfed by the above rule
Rally the Horde <- landmill variant, nerfed
Seismic Assault (fixed with limited 1 per turn) <- easy, just don't allow to discard channeled cards
Land's Edge (same) <- same as SA
Lightning Storm <- same as SA
Manabond (fixed with limited 1 per turn) <- don't really see a problem here, you can't channel more than once a turn, unless you play Explore, Summer Bloom etc.
Explorer's Scope (it can always be a land) <- except for colorless cards, but I'm not sure about broken good, seems just notably better
Into the Wilds (same)
Druidic Satchel (same)
Clear the Land(same)
I hope I've thinned the list some more
Cards to check out, might be too good:
*Oona, Queen of the Fae (pretty much 6 to create 5 fairies vs mono, each turn) <- not sure if broken
*Epic Experiment <- might need errata
Duskmantle Seer <- M2.0 actually hoses this guy and Confidant... good
*Jace's Mindseeker <- gets marginally better IMHO
*Oracle of Mul Daya <- might need errata
Mindshrieker <- might be problematic in Limited
Sanity Grinding <- might need errata
Undead Alchemist <- might need errata
*Delver of Secrets <- might need errata
Skyward Eye Prophets <- coin toss for the rescue
Augur of Bolas <- not sure if broken
Avenging Druid (possible sick combo with Laboratory Maniac) <- landmill, covered
Hermit Druid (same as above) <- landmill, covered
Baneful Omen <-IMHO not a problem
Beast Hunt <- gets marginally better
Bioplasm <- gets marginally better
Bloodline Shaman <- similar to kinship, see below
Brass Herald <- 2/2 for 6 - don't mind him getting a little better, also similar to kinship
Borborygmos Enraged (fixed with limited 1 per turn) <- see SA above
Brilliant Ultimatum <- not sure if broken
Call of the Wild <- pretty mana intensive, not sure if broken
Call to the Kindred <- similar to kinship
Counterbalance <- ban
Descendants' Path <- kinship variant
Enshrined Memories <- maybe trouble with aluren, otherwise seems okay
Galvanoth <- get better, yes. not sure if broken
Genesis Wave <- might need errata
Lurking Predators <- high CMC for M2.0, seems okay
Sages of the Anima <- might need errata
Uncovered Clues <- not sure if broken
Vampire Nocturnus <- gets noticeably better, yes - restriction perhaps?
Vigean Intuition <- gets marginally better
Zoologist <- elvish piper 2 should be fine
Trade Routes (not so good with 1 per turn) <- see SA
Compulsive Research <- you cannot channel while resolving the spell, should be fine
Nantuko Cultivator (becomes pretty good with unlimited channeling) <- there's no unlimited channeling
Rise/Fall (becomes hymn to Tourach unless you channel preemptively) <- might need errata
Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant <- no unlimited channeling
Scorched Earth <- see SA above
Kinship and all its variants might be a reason to reduce the playset size in M2.0 Constructed. Might be enough or not - at this point, we don't know how a dedicated tribal deck would work.
Retrace is fixed with the same rule as Seismic Assault - just don't allow to discard channeled lands for effects.
Cards that change but are still mostly unplayable:
Cellar Door
Cerebral Eruption
Coerced Confession
Game Preserve
Helm of Obedience
Infernal Genesis
Ink Dissolver
Knowledge Pool
Paroxysm
Shapeshifter's Marrow
Thought Dissector
Aerial Caravan
Heed the Mists
Loafing Giant
M2.0 does not get rid of mana. It gets rid of mana screw and mana flood.
What if instead, the players had two decks, a "main" deck containing no mana and a "mana" deck containing nothing but. At the start of a player's turn, they choose which deck they want to draw from based on whether they need mana or not.
The basic rule of M2.0 is: Any time you are allowed to play a land (or put it into play from any zone), you may choose a card in your hand (or in that zone), reveal it, and choose one of its colors. Then, you exile that card (or put it into the command zone, just to be safe) and replace it with a basic land producing mana of the chosen color.
iv) Explore, Azusa, etc. work. If you are allowed to play more than one land in a turn, you are also allowed to apply the M2.0 rule that many times.
The wording here made me think that you can channel for lands as long as you don't play a land card (since you are then allowed to play one). The iv) point seems to indicate the opposite, but that's not what the rules say. Just make that clarification directly in the rule. You can only channel as many times as you can play lands each turn.
Also note that I assumed that only lands that could get into play are able to be channeled. Landmill thus remains unaffected. Ruling that landmill cards consider every card or other card a land is the way to go though, other then banning them (though that's probably simpler, no one will play these anyway).
About effects that allow you to play lands from the top of the library such as Explorer's Scope, most of these saw play at least in standard, and are thus already good when they work 40% of the time. Making them work at more then double efficiency is is too good. I say we can't channel when checking the top card, better unplayable then broken.
Selective removal for land search can take a long time yes. Magic 2.0 takes longer to play since you have more decisions, so you might consider that part of the goal. If you prefer it shorter I would advise 2 options:
-Simply give a time limit of 30 seconds or so.
-Limit the choices to the bottom 5 cards or so. There is a shuffle afterwards usually.
None of these really nerf land searching.
What if instead, the players had two decks, a "main" deck containing no mana and a "mana" deck containing nothing but. At the start of a player's turn, they choose which deck they want to draw from based on whether they need mana or not.
This has been proposed many times, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that this variant with a few tweaks for top/bottom library effects breaks almost nothing, while giving the same mana fixing results as 2.0. The key is to have the same odds for combo decks though. Drawing from a main deck of 40 cards makes combo much better. Reducing playsets to 3 cards makes it right. Main deck should have between 40 and 50 cards, with the reminder of 60 in the land deck, composed entirely of lands. You don't want less then 40 cards otherwise odds get too big (3/40 is already better then 4/60, it also has less variance). You want at least 10 cards in the land deck because some lands are really great (many decks would play 1 shockland+3 checkland). Also some lands like dark depths combo. Maybe forcing 40/20 with playsets of 3 might be obligatory, some mix of lands become overly good otherwise.
Thing about 1.5 (2 decks) is that it doesn't offer the nice Kaijijudo choices of sacrificing some cards. 2.0 (channeling) is harder to rule effectively and breaks a few cards but becomes a more involved game with more choices.
Well, as I discussed above, the whole idea behind M2.0 is nothing groudbreakingly new and there are even more variants to tackle the secondary luck factor in Magic. I call one of them Magic 1.5 but that's for another thread.
There is no luck factor, its poor deck building skills and ability to shuffle a simple deck of cards.
There is no luck factor, its poor deck building skills and ability to shuffle a simple deck of cards.
"No luck factor" - now that's interesting... If that was the case, I'd imagine that at least players that make it to the Top 8 at GPs would know how to build a deck and how to shuffle it. But read some GP Top 8 coverage reports - what you will find is that these excellent players who invested a lot of time and money to tune their strategy still lose to dumb blind luck at times. So there appears to be _some_ luck factor involved even for them.
Fun fact: Brian Kibler, a renowned Magic player and game designer helped to create WoW TCG, in which there is no mana screw or mana flood. Jon Finkel, a Magic Champion and successful poker player helped to create The Spoils, in which also is no mana screw or mana flood. These guys know something about luck and skill. Yet they went out their limb to redesign the resource management system in a TCG to positive effects.
Be it The Spoils, WoW TCG, Call of Cthulhu, Netrunner, or almost any other modern TCG or LCG, the vast majority of them uses a system where screwing or flooding yourself is not even an option. I've cited R.Garfield in the OP as to how the luck factor still contributes to Magic's success today...
2) 2-color multicolored cards channel into a basic land of your choosing from the two colors but if you play that land the same turn, it comes into play tapped.
3) multicolored cards of 3 or more colors channel into a random basic land out of all colors of the card and if you play that land the same turn, it comes into play tapped.
4) if you channel a land and don't play it right away, either replace it for an actual basic land or hold it in your hand upside down with its picture facing the opponent.
5) cards with no color identity cannot be channeled unless you reveal another colored card from your hand with a color identity and follow its rules for the channeling. Cards revealed this way remain revealed as long as you are holding them in your hand and cannot be used again to channel a colorless card. (If you draw a copy of a revealed card, you can use it for channeling like this.)
6) if you search your library for a specific basic land, you reveal cards from the bottom of your library until you reveal a colored card that has the matching color. Then shuffle your library and follow rule 4) if applicable.
7) Playset is 3 cards and minimum deck size remains at 60.
These rules really balanced decks heavy on multicolored cards - you simply can't go hogwild with them lest a dedicated weenie deck squashed you like a bug :).
Next in line is to try out some dedicated burn and ramp decks to see how they fare in my miniature metagame.
One question though - what about monocolored card with off-color mana activation and hence 2-color identity (Dutiful Thrull, Crackling Triton)? Since they are few and encourage interesting strategies, would it be fair to make them a kind of "dual lands" in M2.0? In other words, they are mono-colored with multi-colored identity. Thus, you could maybe put them into play untapped even if you're choosing out of two colors.
But is it worth it to make this exception? Would it break Fleshformer and friends? I'm kind of torn but my guts are telling me that if we use color identity, we should use it all the way, effectively nerfing these cool cards.
The random selection is similar to the Dakkon Blackblade Vanguard, see comment #4. However, the whole point of M2.0 is to lower the luck factor. I'm not sure how much of an impact this rule would have on playing multicolored cards overall but I think it would make drafts of Alara or Shadowmoor block, or Ravnica with DGM rather problematic.
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I mean, if you were able to convert any card into basic lands, you would be able to build decks that are 80% or more spells. The power level of the above cards suddenly skyrockets.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
Not sure if this is even the first one. I learned that principle from the Call of Cthulhu LCG and I know many other modern games follow it, include the Lord of the Rings.
Well, yes. My whole beef with Magic and lands is that it unnecessarily forbids players to play the game. Of course, your deck is randomized and there is always color screw but, as this thread has shown, mana screw and mana flood are quite easily avoidable.
There is more than one way to curb the mana problems without removing the lands completely, look up the "Magic wildcards" above.
There was also an official one - the mulligan rule. That rule was not in Magic from the start and I call it a rough patch on what I think is a major desing flaw in the game.
Just think about how many cards got screwed after damage on stack was abolished. Or consider mana burn, or the latest change to the legend rule. With your logic, Wizards or casual players like me would be unable to improve the game rules in any way, just to preserve rather fringe strategies such as revealing lands from a library.
The goal of M2.0, M1.5, or the wildcards is not to fix the mana problems in Magic without touching anything else. The goal of these variants is to remove said problems first, and deal with unintended consequences later. What you do above is to use an example as a proof, which is not adequate. If you benefit from the M2.0 rule in your B/W deck, chances are that your opponent does too in their deck. If everyone started to play M2.0 today, the metagame would definitely change. I just don't see it as a problem - metagame changes every time Wizards implement a major rules update or even when a new block is released.
Regarding the artifacts, they are still universal cards that do have a disadvantage using the M2.0 rule. Your idea to improve it also makes sense, you trade something for having a mana you need, I like it.
Also, one thing I've been hearing from other opponents of M2.0 is that the luck factor of any kind does not matter at all because statistically it always evens out for everyone over time... Yeah but that only applies if you play with a single deck over and over. I'm talking Limited here - drafting cubes, seal decks etc. Imagine that you draft an excellent pool at FNM where you only play 3 matches; and then you get screwed two times by your own deck. You just wasted the whole evening, the game rules screwed you over, you had no fun and maybe you'll skip the next FNM, but most importantly, unless you are very dedicated to keep the deck and find someone else with a comparable one, preferably from the same draft, you will not see your drafted pool perform in a proper game. This is simply not something I'd expect any game to do to me...
The whole point of M2.0 is to lower the luck factor and increase the skill factor so I don't see the number of options going up as a bad thing. The game is 20 years old, after all. But I like your idea to lower the starting/maximum hand size under the M2.0 rule to maybe make a game faster.
Yup, I know this one too. BTW, M2.0 by itself does not eliminate mulligans and if you play M1.0 with wildcards, this rule would help even then.
Seems to me that here you complicate things a little too much. This rule is arbitral and counter-intuitive, definitely compared to Magic wildcards above. Counting turns, discarding at random, remembering further limitations... this is not keeping it simple IMHO.
This seems way too complicated. Just cycle away a land from your hand and be done with it
Thank you for your feedback!
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As I've already alluded to, switching to M2.0 everywhere overnight would completely rewrite the metagame. True, it would be easier to ramp into big spells such as those mentioned but remember, all other decks would also become much faster and consistent and I can't really predict which strategy would prevail in the new environment.
But, if these spells really turned out to be overpowered in M2.0, we could always ban them or restrict them as they are very few.
Also, M2.0 is a new experimental format primarily focused on Limited. You can always tune your drafting cube to avoid potentially problematic spells.
The whole thing is the perception - Among all the possibilities, you can view M2.0 as a means to enhance the current rules for casual play, eliminating those pesky mana problems, or you can gauge such a variant as a kind of a threat to the status quo. But still, there are easy solutions: you can lower the size of starting/maximum had to 5 cards, decrease the size of a playset to 3 cards, etc.
Or, if you are really concerned with lands as an integral part of Magic, you can start with the wildcards, see comment 23.
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We discussed something similar earlier in the thread, this is also akin to the M1.5 variant, see comment #10. IMO, setting up 6 libraries before each game seems a little impractical. But if these are meant to be in the middle of the table and service at least 4 players at the same time, it might work for some groups.
I've discussed these cards in comment #3
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No problem, that's not an issue for me. Maybe I'd focus on whether you have actually tried playing M2.0 or are judging it from afar.
First, just calling something "exponential" doesn't make it so. Please, try to back that up.
Second, if you draw and play your mana to your content, you will be playing 4-mana spells consistently on turn 4 in M1.0 or M2.0. M2.0 just blocks those dead moments when you cannot play anything because of mana.
And third, the consistency in getting mana when you need it is absolutely symmetrical. With M2.0, metagame would change and the balance would shift but... so what?
M2.0 is different from M1.0, that is the point of it.
This analysis seems very vague to me. How do you know, you wouldn't be overrun by a M2.0 weenie deck by the time you hit 7 mana for SSS? I'm quite confident you would be, I have built some decks. I argue that _ALL_ cards are better in M2.0 due to its consistency, not just the ones you are trying to single out.
Therefore, I'd agree to tone things down a little, at least in Constructed, by lowering the size of opening/maximum hand and the playset size.
And it would also be a lot easier to disrupt your Eldrazi plan while hitting you with early beaters in M2.0. I don't see any evidence right now that fatties and ramp would automatically take over the constructed metagame with M2.0.
What do you mean by "OP"? Anyway, if you don't like M2.0, that's okay, you can perhaps at least try the wildcards described in comment #23 as a minimalistic version that stems from M2.0.
Richard Garfield had a different idea with Magic, just watch the talk he had at ChannelFireball, it is linked in comment #8.
And again, thank you for your comments.
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Never heard of VSS before but by the looks of it, it follows the pattern of many modern CCGs or LCGs - cards can be played as cards or used as resources...
In fact, I have yet to find a game that would have the "lands-in-Magic" type of limitation in its rules.
Thanks for the tip.
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I think that The Spoils has resources similar to Magic.
Oh cool, there's the Spoils, I didn't know that. I watched some tutorials and it was hilarious
Let's summarize:
Now, it is true that the Spoils use separate resource cards and other cards. Let's take a look at how the Spoils deals with the mana stability and balance:
So, as we can see, while the basic premise of separate resource cards is met in the Spoils, the way they are implemented is nothing as limiting as Magic, not by a long shot. I will have to look further to find a popular card game, which is built around a resource mechanic that regularly screws over the player, with no recourse. For me, the developers of the Spoils obviously learned the lesson and did it right.
Thank you, bone_doc, for bringing the Spoils to my attention. The only bad news for me is that I will have a hard time to persuade anyone to switch
@Lucy: As lazy as you claim to be, you sure write a lot of text Allow me some time to respond to it properly.
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You've probably found this by now, but if you're interested in playing the game, I think Team Covenant still sells starter decks and such:
http://teamcovenant.com/
Again, you are singleing out just one category of cards that would be significatnly boosted in your opinion, probably because it was the first one that crossed your mind. From the top of my head, there is another significant group of cards: hosers and sideboard cards in general - with almost unlimited consistency, you could run them in your deck without fear and effectively disrupt the big spells you're talking about.
Without predicting the overall metagame, I see a balancing factor just in these two groups of cards, which would benefit from M2.0.
Considering the opening hand (one you do not want to mulligan), you absolutely want to drop a land each turn in first 3 turns at the very least with almost any Magic deck. So, it's more like _drawing_ a land roughly every third rather than dropping it.
Looking at the history of the mulligan rule in Magic, the mana problems turned out to be an unintended consequence of the overall design, despite being so glaring in the hindsight. Taking that into consideration, I'd contest the idea that the fine tuning of the mana curve progression was even considered in the early stages of the Magic design. From what I've learned so far, it was a much bigger mess than I'd previously expect.
Don't forget, Magic was the first one in its category and this was bound to happen so that the later games could learn from mistakes in Magic's design and move the player experience forward (Call of Cthulhu, the Spoils, and many others). What got out of hand with Magic was its immense initial commercial success, which basically sealed the basic principles of its rules. IMO, that is why we are still stuck with basic lands today, to a degree. Another such issue is the 6th color - inconcievable for many Magic players while more recent games, often built around factions, are much more flexible in expanding its universe in this regard.
Plus, if you carefully tune some mana fixing and/or ramp to your deck, you are able to play 6-mana spells on turn 4 _very_ consistently even in M1.0. That is literally your plan when building such a deck. Unless, of course, your deck screws you over and you lose to blind bad luck. I'd even go as far as to say that while testing your deck in tournaments, the amount of bad luck you experience initially contributes a great deal to your decision whether to continue to tune the deck or dismantle it and "try your luck" with another archetype.
In effect, if your strategy really is to ramp into big spells quickly, M2.0 does very little to help you specifically as it provides great consistency for all strategies. For me, much bigger effect of M2.0 is the shift in responsibility - it really is much easier to make a mistake in M2.0 and you can't use mana problems as a convenient scapegoat to blame your loss on.
Don't get me wrong - this shifting the blame on the rules (in M1.0) was part of the design - R.Garfield explicitly admitted it. New players tend to be discouraged to play if they lose a game to a stronger opponent. But if the rules allow them to defeat a much more experienced player, it feels so empowering to them that they jump in the game and continue to play for... decades sometimes, right :)? Nevermind that the sense of victory by mana screw/flood is just an illusion, in this case designed to hook them up.
And that is part of the reason Magic is still so successful - humans are creatures of comfort and don't like to admit their mistakes - blind luck kind of absolves them. That is also why M2.0 is not for everyone. Some players simply don't want to think too much while playing...
Well, I content that comparatively these cards might seem overpowered. But as I've said, it's just a matter of perception. IMO, if these cards would start to dominate, they would also be played much more and soon, strategies to play around them would emerge. And for the worst offenders, we always have the banlist.
In other words, your perspective seems to be: M2.0 is kind of cool but I insist that by switching to it, next to no cards and mechanics will be affected to maintain the status quo.
My perspective is more like: Magic has some major design flaws, which ruin the fun for me and many other players. I believe that for players who have been playing Magic for many years, it's no longer worth it. Let's come with a variant to fix the issues and let's not worry too much if balance among existing cards shifts a little.
This sounds like a conjecture to me. I see your point but I also think you're just projecting you "OP" argument. I content that M2.0 would rewrite the Constructed metagame but I don't see any indication as to why things wouldn't balance themselves out over time.
You keep repeating that. But saying "many cards simply become overpowered" is not a persuasive argument. I understand that you feel that way and simply don't like the idea as you perceive it as too great a change. However, I am left unconvinced.
First: M2.0 is still mainly meant for Limited where it works just fine.
Second: In Constructed, I wouldn't mind one bit if, for example, everyone played a single Platinum Angel in their decks just because it's so good and "easy to cast". I also don't think cards such as SSS or Akroma would break the format. If you can suddenly play Akromas and Sky Swallowers in M2.0 because you have more space in your deck, others can just as easily play them too or get rid of them by playing Virulent Swipes, Avenging Arrows, sweepers, clones, counterspells etc. NOT. A. PROBLEM
Third: An official M2.0 Standard block would no doubt provide more effective disruption for big spells by maybe reintroducing land destruction, reprinting a card similar to Retribution of the Meek or whatever. Until that time, I wouldn't worry about Constructed at all. I'd simply continue testing and making notes for possible adjustments. Or play it non-rare, or as a highlander format, whatever suits you. The possibilities are endless.
Fourth: What do you think about the Magic wildcards variant described in comment #23 above?
Thanks
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I love the idea of being able to trade a non-land for a basic land, and vice versa, but I also appreciate the comments that the cards and game have been developed/tested/balanced in an environment where lumpy land distribution is part of the game's necessary randomness. This makes me wary of changes that would make it almost trivial to get one land on the table per turn for the first six turns. It might turn out to be a non-issue, but I'm naturally sceptical.
So... if the proposed free land/non-land exchange turns out to be TOO much, how about increasing the cost of each exchange as we go? For example, my first exchange would be 1-for-1, my second would be 2-for-1, etc. This would be simple to implement - it's a little reminiscent of the escalating cost for rolling the Planechase dice - and would effectively make exchanges much rarer. One or two exchanges per player per game, I imagine, but with the possibility that players could push it further. I prefer this kind of ramped cost to a simple 2-exchange limit, or similar, as it puts the tactical decisions in the players' hands.
Anyway, that's just a little twist I thought I'd throw into the mix. I haven't tested Magic 2.0, 1.5, or any other no-screw variant yet, but I'm keen to start. For now, my wife has been winning the screw-wars, so it might be difficult to persuade her ;-)
Thanks heaps,
LBB
Well, unless you aspire to attend a lot of competitive tournaments, I'm not sure the shift in balance matters a lot. If you're mainly playing for fun, the main concern should be, well, fun.
I'd like to emphasise yet again that M2.0 is mainly focused on Limited where consistent combos, ramp, or other strategies benefiting from the M2.0 rule are not a problem.
But from my limited testing of M2.0 Constructed, I almost never even got to have 6 lands in play. The format plays differently - you constantly need answers to what your opponent is doing. After your 3rd or 4th land, you need to make some tough decisions what card in hand to convert or if at all. Thus, I'm not sure if ramping is even a viable strategy in M2.0
Now when I think about it - if you have no basic lands in your deck and want to search for them, maybe it would make sense to flip cards from the top of your library instead of searching your deck for the least useful card of the right color in every situation. As soon as you flip a card that qualifies for the land type you're searching for, that card becomes a land.
It avoids searching the deck and might nerf one of your key cards if you ramp too much...
If I understand it correctly, in this variant, you would still need lands in your deck to only convert cards for an increasing cost when absolutely necessary. I already thought of something similar - a minimalistic form of M2.0 that plays almost the same way as normal Magic but removes a lot mana problems: the Magic wildcards; please check http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=9883119#post9883119 in this thread
That seems to be a different game entirely
Thank you for your feedback
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Although targeted at children originally, it is still a very strategic game.
In Kaijudo, you can play any card in your hand into your "Mana Zone". This gives you access to that color of mana to cast your creatures and spells. If you play a two color card into your "Mana Zone" you get access to both colors but it enters tapped. Once you have access to a color it doesn't matter how many cards of that color you want to play per turn.
The game does differ from Magic in a few ways:
1) The minimum deck size is 40 cards (since there are no resource cards.)
2) There is a maximum of 3 copies of each card allowed in your deck.
3) The starting hand size is 5 cards.
4) You decide if you'd like to play or draw after seeing your hand.
5) There are no mulligans.
6) You have no life total. Instead you deal 5 random cards off the top of your deck as "Shields", each creature that attacks you successfully breaks a shield, and that card goes to your hand. If you are successfully attacked when you have no shields, you lose.
7) Creature combat is very different (and outside the scope of this post)
8) You can't play spells on your opponent's turn (except Shield Blasts which are kind of like Miracles)
9) There are no mana symbols. Cards simply have a color or colors and an amount of mana they cost.
I'm sure there are other differences I've missed but those are the ones that are most relevant to what you are discussing.
I used to call Kaijudo, Magic Lite, but lately I've been calling it "Frustration Free" Magic.
If I were to try to eradicate "mana screw" from Magic I would start by adapting some Kaijudo rules.
Reducing the deck size to 40 and 3 ofs seems like a good place to start. Also I see no reason why a 5 card starting hand size would cause a problem here.
I would also add the "Mana Zone" to the official zones. that would solve a lot of the rules issues with having spells or creatures that weren't actually spells or creatures on the battlefield.
I would also have spells with 2 or more colors enter the Mana Zone tapped and spells with 3 or more colors not untap during their controllers next turn.
I would NOT use the color access rules however. I think managing your resources is still an important part of Magic.
Finally, as a comment on Basic Lands and cards that interact with them consider them optional! As the game evolves and the rules change some cards get better and some cards get worse. That's the nature of an ever evolving game like Magic. Even chess started out using dice to determine the pieces you could move!
Think of it like "Damage on the stack", in a world without Basic Lands, the cards that need them wouldn't exist, and in formats where they do, players would choose whether or not to use them.
I've been playing Magic for 20 years now (seriously) and ideas to get rid of Basic Lands or fix "mana screw" have been around the WHOLE time. I believe that eventually Basic Lands will go away someday if the game lasts long enough and I seriously look forward to it.
Also, don't be afraid to design your own cards for this "variant" of yours.
About limited: limited is very abuse-proof. It's about doing best with what you have, considering the rules. This means you can throw pretty much anything at limited and have a fun time in a great metagame. Magic 2.0 is no exception. I will focus on constructed since limited can handle itself. (Limited works, the end)
Landless Magic would change the game in a few ways:
-Less luck. Considered a great thing by many, Mark Rosewater offer a different angle here. It's a matter of taste. I'd personally prefer lower luck then now.
-More choices. Also means more complexity and analysis. Also a matter of taste. More choices can be overwhelming and lead to a more involved game. This variant is then much less laid back then usual MtG. It's also more challenging and offer a higher skill cap. I like that. Normal MTG can be heavy at times but I think many could handle more, especially with less probability calculations. Hand size of 6 can help lower the complexity if needed.
-Different card value. If rules changes, many cards behave differently. Just look at the changes to combat damage, legend rules and mana burn. Just look at Ravenous Baloth. Cards have a certain balance and ideally you don't want to change this too much. Some card might have to get banned or houseruled but you want this to be isolated cases and not wildly all cards of a type for instance. There are many possibilities for multicolored card and artifact to prevent huge balance swings that would render a type useless or overpowered. This will be discussed further.
-Broken cards. Some cards especially care about out of play land cards. Playing without lands will break these cards. Many won't be playable anymore or will need a banhammer.
-Mana curve. Many comments point out that having a guaranteed land each turn makes high cost cards better. I would argue that having a guaranteed spell each turn makes weenies much better. Getting to 7 mana with 6 non-land cards to protect yourself from 2 creatures per turn from the opponent is close to impossible. I know, I play green ramp all the time and lose. Right now, the metagame favors midrange decks: too many land for big spell can leave you mana screwed and too few lands in aggro can make you mulligan to oblivion. It's hard to predict the outcome of landless magic but I think having control of your curve will make more deck idea viable.
-More space for spells and recycling . We need to keep the 4/60 or 3/40 ratio of copies per deck to make bombs not too likely to be drawn. This means that instead of playing 4 copies of 9 cards (36 spells) you have to play at least 15 different cards. This is significantly more. But you don't have to play all these new spells, a good portion of drawn card will be used as land. Since removing lands gives about 24 new card and a sideboard is made of 15 occasionally played cards, I suggest that the sideboard is eliminated and part of the main deck, still leaving 9 more cards to be played. Sideboard cards will be prime candidates as lands and 15 out of 60 is still fewer "dead" draws then usual. Aggro decks that don't play as many lands might want to include less then 15 matchup specific cards and control decks might play more. Overall, more flexibility. Keeping current sideboard rules is an option but you can see that cards with more specific uses more easily find home in landless deck, rendering them not as important to preserve an healthy metagame. As an added bonus, it leaves space for lands in a 75 cards box. Perfect!
-Mana Fixing/Color shortage. It's already easy enough to run decks with 3 colors of mana. More mana options (because old options still exist) will make it even easier. It'll only be a problem of priorities rather then waiting for the lucky draw. Mana fixing cards will lose value, but more importantly, gold cards will be even easier to play. 5 color control will probably be a force to fear but will still have to deal with some mana problems, which is only normal considering you aren't supposed to have access to every color.
BALANCE
The suggested rule is:
Each card in hand can be traded for basic land card of it's color at sorcery speed.
This makes colorless cards a bit better (colorless mana land), monocolored cards good (normal basic land) and multicolor cards even better ([U]choice [/U]of normal basic land).
You might see a trend here. Gold cards are easier to play, but also offer more mana options(++). Artifact card on the other hand have always been easy to play and give you bad mana options (--). Since we can't really change the part about how easy they are to play, let's change how they provide mana.
Better artifact option:
Make artifacts give better, existing colorless lands. Lands that give 1 but also have an added perk such as: Shimmering Grotto (1,T: Any color), Henge of Ramos or School of the Unseen (2, T: Any color, worst), Archaeological Dig, Crystal Vein or Darksteel Citadel. Finding which one is right and preserve a balanced playstyle for artifacts is a matter of testing. Crystal Vein is my favorite since it's even more colorless.
Make artifact give basic lands of the color of a card in hand and/or in play. This seems pretty good, gives you choices, almost always better then a monocolored card.
Worst gold card options:
Random land among the colors. Still almost strictly better then monocolored. And I don't like random.
Basic land comes into play tapped. You choose one of the color, but it ETB tapped. Can only work if gold cards are limited to channel a land and play it immediately, which is fine by me. Also means no searching of the library to put lands in hand, maybe even in play.
Channel //gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[%22enters%20the%20battlefield%20tapped.%22">&type=+[%22Land%22]&rarity=|[U]&set=|[%22invasion%22]"]Taplands or other not so good multilands. This is still pretty good. Too good. And you'd need to have all these types of land in your playkit.
Overall, I think the system can work pretty well by only breaking a few cards. The channeling rules for non-monocolor cards needs tweaking (playtest) and some additionnal rules will probably be needed for some mechanics and edge cases.
I look forward to try it. Long live Channeling!
And I also thank crasher for summarizing mana issues in Kaijudo for everyone.
Seems like even Wizards themselves already fixed Magic's flaws in another game. Yet, as the Magic community gets bigger and bigger, so does the elephant in the room.
Recently, I browsed some of the Top 8 coverages from GPs. I noticed how the reporters painstakingly avoid using words like "(mana) screw" or "flood". Instead, they casually mention that "Fourth land never showed up..." or "XY missed his third land drop." Excellent way to condition readers to not question this whole business of top players randomly losing to mana after days and weeks of testing... But I digress.
I think it's time to summarize the main improvements to M2.0 that came from this thread and discussion:
1) Seems like in M2.0 Constructed at least, lowering the deck size to 40 or 50, lowering the playset size to 3, and lowering the max hand size to 5 or 6 has enough support among commenters and me to make it the next thing to update in the canonical M2.0 rules.
2) To make it intuitive and unobtrusive to play colorless cards in M2.0, we can use color identity of a card to determine its channeling options. This immediately takes care of most utility lands (New Benalia, Halimar Depths), many mana stones (signets, cluestones, talismans), etc.
For colorless cards that do not even have any color in their identity, I really like the idea of having to reveal another colored card in order to channel the colorless card. That would give even more flexibility to the player while allowing us to remove the pseudo-Barry's land construct of a colorless basic land from the rules that was there to work around the problem in the first place.
Plus, to make the whole improvement consistent, we could use color identity for all cards in M2.0. I wouldn't mind Urborg Elf to have a 3-way channeling option. Or even Paragon of the Amesha to give access to any basic land. See 3).
3) It is true that gold cards in M2.0 as it stands now are perhaps disproportionately too good, with all the advantages and no drawbacks. I like the idea to nerf them down as outlined above:
If you channel a 2-colored (meaning the color identity) card and want to play it the same turn, the land would come into play tapped.
If you channel a 3-or-more-colored card and want to play it the same turn, the land would come into play tapped and with a random type out of those allowed by the original card.
This adjustment would not only balance the power level of multicolored cards which generally provide more powerful effects and/or stats, but also slow down the game in general, which might be desirable as well, as almost unlimited flexibility of M2.0 favors weenie and agro strategies in general. But this needs some testing... I'm volunteering
4) Finally, searching lands and ramping should be still possible but the searching itself and especially shuffling is a pain and even more so in EDH/Commander. At the same time, thinning your deck selectively of unnecessary cards might be abusable and is an unintended consequence of channeling from library. Therefore, I propose to make it easier and more fair at the same time:
Instead of searching you library for lands, you would reveal cards from the top of your library, channeling the first card that matches the type that's being searched for. Then all other revealed cards would go to the bottom of your library.
This way, if you ramp too much, you'll be automatically revealing parts of your deck to your opponent, as well as risking to channel an important card unvoluntarily as a discouraging factor. But some testing is still in order here nonetheless.
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2)Color identity is a better rule in most cases I think. Showing a colored card for colorless seems to be the way to go too. This makes multicolor cards good enabler for artifacts though. You could just repeatedly use artifacts to get any land and not showing much. Maybe make channeling with artifacts follow the rules of the revealed card. That way if you want fast multicolor lands from artifacts you have to show a different monocolor each time. Using cards in play instead of revealing (if you want) needs to be tested too.
3)I like these multicolor channel rules. 3-5 color might be overkill since they are already not too easy to cast. I have no better idea though.
4)I also dislike selective removal. But, in normal MtG, when you search for a land card you usually are already removing a card you don't want to draw. And library ramping/fixing will be much less needed with 2.0 rules. It doesn't need to be nerfed further. If anything, both of these aspects cancel out nicely. If you don't like shuffling then that's an other topic, there is no additionnal shuffle in 2.0 so it is non-issue.
There are other issues that came to my attention. First, spell density is much greater in 2.0. Of course, the goal is to avoid mana flood, but is it really mana flood to have 3-4 lands. RedDeckWin doesn't need that many, and is REALLY strong, considering you can play 7-10 spells that deal 2-3 damage and win. Just look at starting hands with this. Having 2-3 lands guaranteed might be a bit too strong.
Also a made a list of cards that will or could be problematic, there aren't that many. I probably missed a few ones but I was pretty thorough.
Visual list
Landmill (grind):
Balustrade Spy
Consuming Aberration
Destroy the Evidence
Mind Funeral
Mind Grind
Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
Undercity Informer
Cards that get broken good without lands:
Goblin Guide (2/2 haste that reveal all draws of opponent, for 1)
Grindstone (auto win vs mono color)
Trepanation Blade (+toomuch/+0)
Abundance (reorder library)
Chandra, Pyromaster
Domri Rade
Garruk, Caller of Beasts
Goblin Charbelcher
Rally the Horde
Seismic Assault (fixed with limited 1 per turn)
Land's Edge (same)
Lightning Storm
Manabond (fixed with limited 1 per turn)
Explorer's Scope (it can always be a land)
Into the Wilds (same)
Druidic Satchel (same)
Clear the Land(same)
Cards to check out, might be too good:
*Oona, Queen of the Fae (pretty much 6 to create 5 fairies vs mono, each turn)
*Epic Experiment
Duskmantle Seer
*Jace's Mindseeker
*Oracle of Mul Daya
Mindshrieker
Sanity Grinding
Undead Alchemist
*Delver of Secrets
Skyward Eye Prophets
Augur of Bolas
Avenging Druid (possible sick combo with Laboratory Maniac)
Hermit Druid (same as above)
Baneful Omen
Beast Hunt
Bioplasm
Bloodline Shaman
Brass Herald
Borborygmos Enraged (fixed with limited 1 per turn)
Brilliant Ultimatum
Call of the Wild
Call to the Kindred
Counterbalance
Descendants' Path
Enshrined Memories
Galvanoth
Genesis Wave
Lurking Predators
Sages of the Anima
Uncovered Clues
Vampire Nocturnus
Vigean Intuition
Zoologist
Trade Routes (not so good with 1 per turn)
Compulsive Research
Nantuko Cultivator (becomes pretty good with unlimited channeling)
Rise/Fall (becomes hymn to Tourach unless you channel preemptively)
Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant
Scorched Earth
//gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[kinship">"]Kinship in general
//gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[retrace">"]Retrace in general
Cards that change but are still mostly unplayable:
Cellar Door
Cerebral Eruption
Coerced Confession
Game Preserve
Helm of Obedience
Infernal Genesis
Ink Dissolver
Knowledge Pool
Paroxysm
Shapeshifter's Marrow
Thought Dissector
Aerial Caravan
Heed the Mists
Loafing Giant
Some cards such as Reweave would allow you to get that 1 and in your deck, but tutors are usually easier.
Many of these cards have problems with channeling from the top of the library into play. Maybe limit channeling to search effects.
Also some cards get really good when you channel lands as you see fit (good retrace, Manabond , etc). Maybe limit channel to the number of lands you can play each turn.
What if instead, the players had two decks, a "main" deck containing no mana and a "mana" deck containing nothing but. At the start of a player's turn, they choose which deck they want to draw from based on whether they need mana or not.
Remember, M2.0 is not by definition landless - it allows lands but does not require them.
I think lowering these stats relates quite a bit to the spell density you mention below. For the sake of transition to the format alone, it might be a good idea to tackle the amount of new possibilities players suddenly get in M2.0.
For Constructed, the conversion of an existing deck is already covered in the OP but once you start building and testing brand new decks for M2.0, why not tweak the deck/playset/hand size to see what works best? I already started to build 50-card decks since 36+15 is the usual number of nonland cards used in a deck, including the SB.
If you want to channel a colorless card, the action should follow the same rules for the enabling card you reveal as if you were channeling the colored card. But channeling a card will only get you a basic land, there are no "fast multicolor lands". We should test if enabling cards should be revealed forever to make sure that you never use them for channeling again, though it should be possible to use a card with the same name as an enabling card later on.
Not sure about checking cards in play as there seems to be no trade off to the channeling.
Anyway, using enabling cards to channel colorless cards should be quite rare because even with artifacts in your deck, you need (mono)colored cards to get any mana at all, so usually you factor in advance to what extent a card will be used for channeling as opposed for casting a spell.
Thanks for leading me to that idea. With this setup, it seems that multicolored cards are balanced again - you won't probably want to build decks full of multicolored cards and having all lands you play come into play tapped. And the extra discouragement for cards of 3 or more colors ensures that you think twice before including them. Plus, if you play a 3-color card, you really should cast it for its abilities rather than use it to fix your mana.
This proposal is purely practical - from my earlier testing, players who searched for mana (in Limited or Constructed) tended to think too long which card to remove from the deck, adding needlessly to the match's length. The number of possibilities for them was too big anyway, especially in EDH/Commander so this adjustment just streamlines the process.
However, now when I think about it, the rule might be abused with scry effects, so maybe it's safer to search the deck from the bottom. In any case, this rule is definitely optional and will be tested more.
From my testing, I rarely needed more than 4 lands with any deck though I didn't try to build a RDW. The spell density is greater, true, but so is the spell turnover. The gameplay is in general more dynamic and spells "cancel" each other out quickly. But burn might be something to reckon with...
One way to slow things down is to try a draw-or-cast scheme. Needs testing though, there might be unexpected consequences.
Note that we shouldn't necessarily try to fix everything as M2.0 is a format that would eventually require its own design space and approach. Since for the time being only the like-minded play M2.0, if a card gets out of hand, houseruling or ban solves the problem easily.
With the latest ideas in mind, since each card with a color identity can be channeled, landmilling just hits the first colored card and stops.
Compared to the sheer number of creatures that were nerfed by abolishing damage on stack, this list is indeed very short
See my other comments below:
I hope I've thinned the list some more
Kinship and all its variants might be a reason to reduce the playset size in M2.0 Constructed. Might be enough or not - at this point, we don't know how a dedicated tribal deck would work.
Retrace is fixed with the same rule as Seismic Assault - just don't allow to discard channeled lands for effects.
Fine with me
Great discussion, thanks
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M2.0 does not get rid of mana. It gets rid of mana screw and mana flood.
If that's your preference, M1.5 is for you: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=9504151#post9504151
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The wording here made me think that you can channel for lands as long as you don't play a land card (since you are then allowed to play one). The iv) point seems to indicate the opposite, but that's not what the rules say. Just make that clarification directly in the rule. You can only channel as many times as you can play lands each turn.
Also note that I assumed that only lands that could get into play are able to be channeled. Landmill thus remains unaffected. Ruling that landmill cards consider every card or other card a land is the way to go though, other then banning them (though that's probably simpler, no one will play these anyway).
About effects that allow you to play lands from the top of the library such as Explorer's Scope, most of these saw play at least in standard, and are thus already good when they work 40% of the time. Making them work at more then double efficiency is is too good. I say we can't channel when checking the top card, better unplayable then broken.
Selective removal for land search can take a long time yes. Magic 2.0 takes longer to play since you have more decisions, so you might consider that part of the goal. If you prefer it shorter I would advise 2 options:
-Simply give a time limit of 30 seconds or so.
-Limit the choices to the bottom 5 cards or so. There is a shuffle afterwards usually.
None of these really nerf land searching.
This has been proposed many times, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that this variant with a few tweaks for top/bottom library effects breaks almost nothing, while giving the same mana fixing results as 2.0. The key is to have the same odds for combo decks though. Drawing from a main deck of 40 cards makes combo much better. Reducing playsets to 3 cards makes it right. Main deck should have between 40 and 50 cards, with the reminder of 60 in the land deck, composed entirely of lands. You don't want less then 40 cards otherwise odds get too big (3/40 is already better then 4/60, it also has less variance). You want at least 10 cards in the land deck because some lands are really great (many decks would play 1 shockland+3 checkland). Also some lands like dark depths combo. Maybe forcing 40/20 with playsets of 3 might be obligatory, some mix of lands become overly good otherwise.
Thing about 1.5 (2 decks) is that it doesn't offer the nice Kaijijudo choices of sacrificing some cards. 2.0 (channeling) is harder to rule effectively and breaks a few cards but becomes a more involved game with more choices.
There is no luck factor, its poor deck building skills and ability to shuffle a simple deck of cards.
"No luck factor" - now that's interesting... If that was the case, I'd imagine that at least players that make it to the Top 8 at GPs would know how to build a deck and how to shuffle it. But read some GP Top 8 coverage reports - what you will find is that these excellent players who invested a lot of time and money to tune their strategy still lose to dumb blind luck at times. So there appears to be _some_ luck factor involved even for them.
Fun fact: Brian Kibler, a renowned Magic player and game designer helped to create WoW TCG, in which there is no mana screw or mana flood. Jon Finkel, a Magic Champion and successful poker player helped to create The Spoils, in which also is no mana screw or mana flood. These guys know something about luck and skill. Yet they went out their limb to redesign the resource management system in a TCG to positive effects.
Be it The Spoils, WoW TCG, Call of Cthulhu, Netrunner, or almost any other modern TCG or LCG, the vast majority of them uses a system where screwing or flooding yourself is not even an option. I've cited R.Garfield in the OP as to how the luck factor still contributes to Magic's success today...
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1) M2.0 rule checks color identity.
2) 2-color multicolored cards channel into a basic land of your choosing from the two colors but if you play that land the same turn, it comes into play tapped.
3) multicolored cards of 3 or more colors channel into a random basic land out of all colors of the card and if you play that land the same turn, it comes into play tapped.
4) if you channel a land and don't play it right away, either replace it for an actual basic land or hold it in your hand upside down with its picture facing the opponent.
5) cards with no color identity cannot be channeled unless you reveal another colored card from your hand with a color identity and follow its rules for the channeling. Cards revealed this way remain revealed as long as you are holding them in your hand and cannot be used again to channel a colorless card. (If you draw a copy of a revealed card, you can use it for channeling like this.)
6) if you search your library for a specific basic land, you reveal cards from the bottom of your library until you reveal a colored card that has the matching color. Then shuffle your library and follow rule 4) if applicable.
7) Playset is 3 cards and minimum deck size remains at 60.
These rules really balanced decks heavy on multicolored cards - you simply can't go hogwild with them lest a dedicated weenie deck squashed you like a bug :).
Next in line is to try out some dedicated burn and ramp decks to see how they fare in my miniature metagame.
One question though - what about monocolored card with off-color mana activation and hence 2-color identity (Dutiful Thrull, Crackling Triton)? Since they are few and encourage interesting strategies, would it be fair to make them a kind of "dual lands" in M2.0? In other words, they are mono-colored with multi-colored identity. Thus, you could maybe put them into play untapped even if you're choosing out of two colors.
But is it worth it to make this exception? Would it break Fleshformer and friends? I'm kind of torn but my guts are telling me that if we use color identity, we should use it all the way, effectively nerfing these cool cards.
Let me know what you think.
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Tired of losing to mana problems or interested to learn more about Magic's mana system?
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