You are splitting hairs here (with a lot of skill and back ground). Ante involves exchanges of ownership. You cannot force this on someone. Even more if all the cards are from one player. You can kind of ignore it, which is what people did back then when they played their own decks in practice matches.
But I can't see this is as not being a house rule. It feels very rules lawyerly to claim that you can play for ante only in this match (not the others in the same tournament), and that you ignore the ownership side of the rule and that you ignore the fact that it has to be mutually agreed upon and ignore the fact that in regular booster tournaments it is forbidden. I am sure we could rules lawyer our way out of these objections, hell we are Magic players, rules lawyering becomes second nature if you play long enough.
You could claim (maybe even be right) that in some old school official variant, laying this card in Limited was legal, but why do it? If you want to play, you don't have to jump through hoops to make it semi legal. Just play the card and enjoy its brokenness!
It feels very rules lawyerly to claim that you can play for ante only in this match (not the others in the same tournament), and that you ignore the ownership side of the rule and that you ignore the fact that it has to be mutually agreed upon and ignore the fact that in regular booster tournaments it is forbidden.
How is this any different from Canal Dredger? Cube is a draft format where all cards revert to house ownership at the end regardless of anything that happens during the draft/matches. Even if you're going to claim that this reversion is a house rule, why should ante alone carve out an exemption?
You could claim (maybe even be right) that in some old school official variant, laying this card in Limited was legal, but why do it?
Even outside of limited. Remember that ante was mandatory up until that starting causing legal problems.
If you want to play, you don't have to jump through hoops to make it semi legal. Just play the card and enjoy its brokenness!
Because it's not particularly clear what the card does. Beta was horrible about that. It's not even particularly clear what it means to "play for ante." Consider, a cube tourney is X rounds. After round X, the winner will get a card from the loser's draft pool that was in the deck during the final game. Have satisfied "playing for ante?" Or do all prior games require that the players in the final game perform the ante ritual before playing their final game?
Is Ancestral Recall modal? The target player template existed already as seen on Stream of Life. What were the requirements to untap Time Vault? Illusionary Mask is pure WTF. Card prices were already so high and availability so low that by 1997, ante wasn't even really a thing anymore and they were doing everything that could to make it disappear. WotC has absolutely zero incentive to clarify the rules regarding ante if only because they love $200 Tarmogoyfs.
Canal Dredger doesn't mention ownership. Drafting a card doesn't mean you own it (permanently). Otherwise people would stop building cubes.
Sure there is a history to Ante, but ante would have killed Magic. People dislike losing their cards, nobody would play friendly games with ante and expensive cards. The whole collecting part would become strange. People would play with the crappiest copy they own just to make sure they don't lose mint cards.
To most of us it is pretty clear what the card does. Read the oracle text. This is 2015, not 1994. We play with current rules, not how the card was supposed to be played in 1994.
It is not that unclear to me when you play for ante. You can only play this card if you play for ante. So you have to know before you can construct your deck. So if you include this card in the pool, the draft is played with ante rules. I am sure you could interpret it slightly different, but cube is a group specific format. You make the rules for your cube, so even if it is a house rule, it is your house. Ante away if you want.
If you were to play it, do report back how the card works out. Too broken or not? Do people like ante? You could replace ante with money or beer or whatever to spicen things up, if you want (more) house rules.
The current DCI floor rules specify that a randomization device to which both players consent should be used to determine who goes first. This isn't a house rule and still requires mutual consent.
It's saying players pick a randomization device of their choice. If one player wants to argue that a die rill is random and another player doesn't, that can be settled by a Judge who can determine which approved randomization device will be used. It's not even remotely the same thing as players mutually deciding to modify an outlined rule in the rulebook. The Beta book had to specify that you can house rule ante out of the game because Garfield didn't want to force a permanent change of ownership if players weren't comfortable with it. But it did outline how Ante should be used if players decide to play for ante.
But honestly, I don't care. You can't convince me that playing Contract in the cube with alternative method for being about the same thing as ante is somehow not a house rule. Because you're not playing for ante. And therefore, the card has to be house-ruled if you want to include it in your deck.
I'm always a little flabbergasted when people try to find ways to play contract. It's a 1-mana draw seven. It would be oppressively broken in even the most powered of cubes. It is a substantially, substantially better recall, which is already in the running for the best magic card ever (yes, I know contract makes you discard, but if you aren't playing like an idiot it's a draw 7). And it's not even like it's finding a way to get some incredibly powerful but incredibly unique effect in the cube - it's just a draw spell, albeit the best one ever.
It just doesn't seem worth jumping through all these hoops to include a card that is going to be so absurdly better than anything else, at the expense of warping probably every draft it's seen in.
I played it for a while, but my cube sometimes gets newer magic players, so it has to be understandable on first read. I took it out because I hated explaining my errata every draft. It actually wasn't that insanely broken in play. Still probably the best card in the game, but it kind of acted like a discounted wheel of fortune or mind twist. It was possible to come back from.
The difference between this and deal broker is that deal broker states everything it does on the card in a really easy to understand way. This is not actually that easy to understand. I know this through explaining the errata to people in the draft, not because I'm extremely dense and don't understand it.
Canal Dredger doesn't mention ownership. Drafting a card doesn't mean you own it (permanently). Otherwise people would stop building cubes.
In Magic's terminology, "ownership" means something different than it does in property law. The rules of a game don't supersede local law. You can play for "ante" without legal ownership of cards changing hands even if in-game ownership changes hands. If would be stupid if cards like Brand and Capsize reflected legal ownership instead of in-game ownership.
The difference between this and deal broker is that deal broker states everything it does on the card in a really easy to understand way. This is not actually that easy to understand. I know this through explaining the errata to people in the draft, not because I'm extremely dense and don't understand it.
Exactly. Beta cards have to be decoded and it's clear as mud when you're playing for ante. I think the whole thing gets resolved by saying that it's a tourney-for-ante. After the last match is played, but before cards are returned to the cube, a card from the loser's pool will be moved to the winner's pool. That satisfies the Beta rulebook without starting the game with the ante ritual. The whole thing is weird because of the lack of sideboards and the like, though.
What keeps getting me is the discussion of house rules. NOT playing for ante was the house rule when these cards were printed. As recently as the 4th edition rulebook:
If you don't like one of the rules of the game, or if you find yourself in a situation that the rules don't seem to cover, you're welcome to come up with a "house rule." We don't mind; in fact, we encourage it. You should, however, know what the official rules are just in case you end up playing in somebody else's house. Some common house rules are:
You don't have to play for ante if you don't want to.
In an ante game, the winner must offer to trade the loser's card back to him.
"No-Land Mulligan": If you get no land in your initial seven-card draw, you can reshuffle and draw again.
"All-Land Mulligan": Same as the above, only with no spells.
Everyone must follow certain rules of deck construction. These are too varied to mention any specific rules, but the general idea is to give newbies a chance against "card lords" with five of every card.
The winner of each duel must contribute $1 to the pizza fund--great for a big group on a Friday night!
So the question we're left with is what the card actually does and when it does it. Modern descriptions of ante seem designed explicitly to prevent anyone from bothering and past descriptions are ambiguous.
3.2.3 If ante is required, the ante card is the first card selected by a player's opponent after the deck has been shuffled and cut. Once it is selected, the ante card is placed face down on the playing surface before the first hand is dealt. Cards won as ante are considered part of a player's sideboard and may be introduced into a player's deck prior to the beginning of a duel.
Even here, it isn't clarified whether ante happens at the beginning of each game or only the beginning of each match.
You should give up talking about this here Ambivalent Duck. The more doctrinaire these guys become the more sure you can be they have an ulterior motive. They live in a world where Conspiracy cards make perfect sense on the first glance and Contract from Below is too horribly complicated for anyone to ever understand.
No KBH. Cube managers make a decision to either include Conspiracies or not. Once you make that decision there is no discussion. With Contract you have to decide to play for ante, or house rule (or rules lawyer)it so you can play it without having to deal with ante. The cube manager decides in both cases and his word is final in how these cards work in his cube.
Nobody here faults ambivalentduck for trying this out. We just don't follow his logic in why this is not a house rule. It is more semantics by both sides. Neither side really cares that much , so we discuss this calmly.
I would love for you to explain what my ulterior motive would be? You really saw through me there... Like Freud you claim to know me better then I know myself. Do you think I really want to keep people from doing what they want? Do you think I want to chase away polite posters? This is a discussion forum, I think it is pretty normal to defend your point of view on an internet forum. Maybe you should explain why we are 'these guys' and what our 'ulterior motives' would be be? You seem to think we are evil snobs poopooing everything that does not fit in our world view. I can only speak for myself: I am for freedom to do the hell what you want with your cube. This doesn't mean I don't have the right to say how I see things.
I repeat my claim that it is fine to play this card. There is no reason though to find reasons in the old rulebooks in how this should work in 2015 in Cube drafts.
Some common house rules are:
You don't have to play for ante if you don't want to.
The old rulebooks are awesome, lol.
Quote from ambivalentduck »
Even here, it isn't clarified whether ante happens at the beginning of each game or only the beginning of each match.
Since the beta book specifies that you can reduce the impact of ante by using a house rule that limits it to one ante per match instead of 1 per game, I think it's clear that the original intent was to ante every game.
Quote from KBH »
You should give up talking about this here Ambivalent Duck. The more doctrinaire these guys become the more sure you can be they have an ulterior motive. They live in a world where Conspiracy cards make perfect sense on the first glance and Contract from Below is too horribly complicated for anyone to ever understand.
This is just silly and wrong in every way. I understand completely how to use Contract. You make up a house rule that allows it to be an acceptable card for this format. It's pretty easy to understand what's happening here, actually.
When you play for ante you run the risk of losing the contract itself, and never actually drawing it. With the whole "exile an extra card" kitchen table rule, you don't even satisfy the most basic of the intentions that playing for ante encompassed. So not only are there multiple house rules that need to be applied to make it work, but even with all of them in place it still doesn't make the card work like it was intended. It sounds to me like it's actually the Contract supporters that don't understand.
You should give up talking about this here Ambivalent Duck. The more doctrinaire these guys become the more sure you can be they have an ulterior motive. They live in a world where Conspiracy cards make perfect sense on the first glance and Contract from Below is too horribly complicated for anyone to ever understand.
If I can't explain it to an internet troll, how will I ever explain it to a friend? Trolls perform the most valuable service one person can do another: they hold a position long past the point where any reasonable person would mock them for doing so in real life.
So far as I can tell, you're forced to make a "house rule" to define the admission cost and prize structure for any cube tourneys you hold. You can fix the entire "playing for ante" problem by moving a random card from the loser's card pool to the winner's card pool at the end of the last game of the last match. This places "ante" into the prize structure even though all cards will revert to house ownership immediately afterwards.
If only games where Contract from Below resolves have an ante, it is undisputably a house rule. Conspiracies don't change that in any way, because they have nothing to do with ante.
What really puzzles me: Why does anyone pro-houserule care if the other side doesn't see it as a house rule and vice versa? And why do you discuss it that much without any gain besides being right? If people are happy bending the rules so much that they can proclaim "I'm cubing without house rules!", just let them. Neither side gets anything out of this discussion.
If only games where Contract from Below resolves have an ante, it is undisputably a house rule. Conspiracies don't change that in any way, because they have nothing to do with ante.
Ante seemingly can be by game/match/tourney as described in the Beta rulebook. They were listed as official variants and not "house rules" like restricting Black Lotus.
And why do you discuss it that much without any gain besides being right?
It's not about being right. It's about having a position that isn't confusing.
So far as I can tell, you're forced to make a "house rule" to define the admission cost and prize structure for any cube tourneys you hold. You can fix the entire "playing for ante" problem by moving a random card from the loser's card pool to the winner's card pool at the end of the last game of the last match. This places "ante" into the prize structure even though all cards will revert to house ownership immediately afterwards.
I think it would be closer to meeting the intent of Ante if you had players ante at the beginning of each game. Since that's how it's explained from the rulebooks back when Ante was still a thing. But even then, it would still require house rules and a loose interpretation of what Ante means.
If I can't explain it to an internet troll, how will I ever explain it to a friend? Trolls perform the most valuable service one person can do another: they hold a position long past the point where any reasonable person would mock them for doing so in real life.
So why do it?
..........
And Ante is clearly outlined in the rules, FWIW.
Quote from The Rules »
407.1. Earlier versions of the Magic rules included an ante rule as a way of playing “for keeps.” Playing Magic games for ante is now considered an optional variation on the game, and it’s allowed only where it’s not forbidden by law or by other rules. Playing for ante is strictly forbidden under the Magic: The Gathering Tournament Rules (Wizards.com/WPN/Events/Rules.aspx). #
407.2. When playing for ante, each player puts one random card from his or her deck into the ante zone after determining which player goes first but before players draw any cards. Cards in the ante zone may be examined by any player at any time. At the end of the game, the winner becomes the owner of all the cards in the ante zone.
So it's against the tournament rules if your playgroup uses those rules.
You should give up talking about this here Ambivalent Duck. The more doctrinaire these guys become the more sure you can be they have an ulterior motive. They live in a world where Conspiracy cards make perfect sense on the first glance and Contract from Below is too horribly complicated for anyone to ever understand.
This is so painfully unnecessary and wrong. You act like the MTGsalv cube forum is the illuminati.
Again, the current rules for ante are neither clear nor consistent. 407.2 appears to conflate "legal ownership" and "in-game ownership" where 108.3 is the only place "legal ownership" is addressed.
108.3. The owner of a card in the game is the player who started the game with it in his or her deck. If a
card is brought into the game from outside the game rather than starting in a player’s deck, its
owner is the player who brought it into the game. If a card starts the game in the command zone, its
owner is the player who put it into the command zone to start the game. Legal ownership of a card
in the game is irrelevant to the game rules except for the rules for ante. (See rule 407.)
407.2. When playing for ante, each player puts one random card from his or her deck into the ante zone
after determining which player goes first but before players draw any cards. Cards in the ante zone
may be examined by any player at any time. At the end of the game, the winner becomes the owner
of all the cards in the ante zone.
Wizards isn't really trying to support ante or rules for it.
Neither of those statements are at odds with one another. One defines ownership for what "owner" means on cards (and it specifically states that ownership in ante is different from ownership as printed on cards) and the other explains how ante is intended to work.
Supporting ante isn't a priority for the rules committee, but there are clearly defined rules in the comprehensive rulebook for playing for ante. I had two separate judges (a current L2, and an ex-L3 that now sits on the rules committee) confirm that the comprehensive rulebook addresses ante, and that it if the rules are followed properly, it must take place every game in between the time when the player chooses to go first or second and when they draw starting hands.
You can house rule ante however you want, but if you deviate from the guidelines explained in 407.2, you're not playing ante in accordance with the comprehensive rules. And tournament rules disallow it entirely. And the clarification in 108.3 states that ante is referring to legal ownership (not gameplay ownership), which pretty much prevents it from functioning at all in phantom events.
Thanks for posting those additional sections for me! It's never been more clear that ante simply doesn't work in this setting without massive rule bending and multiple house rules that change not only the original intent of ante, but the rules as they're outlined in the current comprehensive rulebook.
That seems pretty clear to me. It could be written better I agree, but it seems clear what they want to say.
That's the point, though. It's not a rule that ever affects organized play so everything about it is careless. As far back as 1997, the floor rules were downright contradictory regarding what ante even does. I could probably also go back to the old judge's listserv, but Tabak would probably refuse to even clean up the lack of clarity just to avoid giving any impression that WotC remotely supports ante in any way.
Before we even get into the discussion of ante, someone first needs to say with a straight face that B: Draw 7 is a card that will make cube better.
Black needs the help. It's only really best at tutoring. Blue's removal (ie. Control Magic) is way better, green has better acceleration and critters, and red is better at racing.
you don't need our permission to run it.
If you can't explain something to a troll, you can't explain it to a lawyer. Lawyers troll people for a living.
Before we even get into the discussion of ante, someone first needs to say with a straight face that B: Draw 7 is a card that will make cube better.
If you can't explain something to a troll, you can't explain it to a lawyer. Lawyers troll people for a living.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Who is this troll and this lawyer you are talking about?
I enjoy talking about cards, I even enjoy the occasional rules lawyering, but what are you trying to do in this thread? You want badly written current rules to be clear by using very badly written old rule books? What does this have to do with Contract from Below in Cube, a non-sanctioned format in a casual setting?A format where the cube manager decides everything?
Peace be with you Mr. Duck. May the devil let you draw tons of cards. I am out of this weird discussion.
Several years ago, I was a big player and proponent of the 5-Color format. (Look on the web archive for it at 5-color.com if you're curious. For the MTGO players among you, 5-Color inspired the online Prismatic format.) The gist: 250-card decks, 20 cards of each color, and ante was allowed. Most notably, Contract From Below was allowed. Decks could run 4 copies of Contract and games often turned into races to find it. If I cast it and you didn't, I was probably going to win. It's a draw-7 for B. Let's ignore ante, which is meaningless in the cube: that's more than twice as good as Ancestral Recall. Decks that have Contract will spend time and Tutors trying to find it. It won't have the fun variance of a 250-card deck to mitigate the fact that the game devolves into a race to find Contract before you die.
Decks could run 4 copies of Contract and games often turned into races to find it. If I cast it and you didn't, I was probably going to win. It's a draw-7 for B. Let's ignore ante, which is meaningless in the cube: that's more than twice as good as Ancestral Recall. Decks that have Contract will spend time and Tutors trying to find it. It won't have the fun variance of a 250-card deck to mitigate the fact that the game devolves into a race to find Contract before you die.
Just like Vintage is often a contest to find and resolve Ancestral Recall? I hear you, it's ridiculously good. It's just that other colors have more bombs than black does. Green and blue in particular are problematically strong. Rather than cut bombs like Parallax Tide I'd rather prop up black and white where I can.
If you're friends with folks (plural) with law degrees, the hardest thing about including Contract from Below in the cube is that you'll have to arbitrate a disagreement between them about what the stupid thing does. It's a card, it's very strong, but if you don't include it the only thing that changes is that the strongest card is something else. This isn't Homelands: the Cubening. It takes major adjustments to the floor rules to even run a Cube tourney. For instance, card ownership reverts to the house at the end of the night and REL: Beer-Involved. If the tourney is "for ante," as described in the Beta rules, that seems sufficient.
But I can't see this is as not being a house rule. It feels very rules lawyerly to claim that you can play for ante only in this match (not the others in the same tournament), and that you ignore the ownership side of the rule and that you ignore the fact that it has to be mutually agreed upon and ignore the fact that in regular booster tournaments it is forbidden. I am sure we could rules lawyer our way out of these objections, hell we are Magic players, rules lawyering becomes second nature if you play long enough.
You could claim (maybe even be right) that in some old school official variant, laying this card in Limited was legal, but why do it? If you want to play, you don't have to jump through hoops to make it semi legal. Just play the card and enjoy its brokenness!
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Canal Dredger says otherwise.
How is this any different from Canal Dredger? Cube is a draft format where all cards revert to house ownership at the end regardless of anything that happens during the draft/matches. Even if you're going to claim that this reversion is a house rule, why should ante alone carve out an exemption?
Even outside of limited. Remember that ante was mandatory up until that starting causing legal problems.
Because it's not particularly clear what the card does. Beta was horrible about that. It's not even particularly clear what it means to "play for ante." Consider, a cube tourney is X rounds. After round X, the winner will get a card from the loser's draft pool that was in the deck during the final game. Have satisfied "playing for ante?" Or do all prior games require that the players in the final game perform the ante ritual before playing their final game?
Is Ancestral Recall modal? The target player template existed already as seen on Stream of Life. What were the requirements to untap Time Vault? Illusionary Mask is pure WTF. Card prices were already so high and availability so low that by 1997, ante wasn't even really a thing anymore and they were doing everything that could to make it disappear. WotC has absolutely zero incentive to clarify the rules regarding ante if only because they love $200 Tarmogoyfs.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Sure there is a history to Ante, but ante would have killed Magic. People dislike losing their cards, nobody would play friendly games with ante and expensive cards. The whole collecting part would become strange. People would play with the crappiest copy they own just to make sure they don't lose mint cards.
To most of us it is pretty clear what the card does. Read the oracle text. This is 2015, not 1994. We play with current rules, not how the card was supposed to be played in 1994.
It is not that unclear to me when you play for ante. You can only play this card if you play for ante. So you have to know before you can construct your deck. So if you include this card in the pool, the draft is played with ante rules. I am sure you could interpret it slightly different, but cube is a group specific format. You make the rules for your cube, so even if it is a house rule, it is your house. Ante away if you want.
If you were to play it, do report back how the card works out. Too broken or not? Do people like ante? You could replace ante with money or beer or whatever to spicen things up, if you want (more) house rules.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
It's saying players pick a randomization device of their choice. If one player wants to argue that a die rill is random and another player doesn't, that can be settled by a Judge who can determine which approved randomization device will be used. It's not even remotely the same thing as players mutually deciding to modify an outlined rule in the rulebook. The Beta book had to specify that you can house rule ante out of the game because Garfield didn't want to force a permanent change of ownership if players weren't comfortable with it. But it did outline how Ante should be used if players decide to play for ante.
But honestly, I don't care. You can't convince me that playing Contract in the cube with alternative method for being about the same thing as ante is somehow not a house rule. Because you're not playing for ante. And therefore, the card has to be house-ruled if you want to include it in your deck.
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It just doesn't seem worth jumping through all these hoops to include a card that is going to be so absurdly better than anything else, at the expense of warping probably every draft it's seen in.
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The difference between this and deal broker is that deal broker states everything it does on the card in a really easy to understand way. This is not actually that easy to understand. I know this through explaining the errata to people in the draft, not because I'm extremely dense and don't understand it.
thats my cube
In Magic's terminology, "ownership" means something different than it does in property law. The rules of a game don't supersede local law. You can play for "ante" without legal ownership of cards changing hands even if in-game ownership changes hands. If would be stupid if cards like Brand and Capsize reflected legal ownership instead of in-game ownership.
Exactly. Beta cards have to be decoded and it's clear as mud when you're playing for ante. I think the whole thing gets resolved by saying that it's a tourney-for-ante. After the last match is played, but before cards are returned to the cube, a card from the loser's pool will be moved to the winner's pool. That satisfies the Beta rulebook without starting the game with the ante ritual. The whole thing is weird because of the lack of sideboards and the like, though.
What keeps getting me is the discussion of house rules. NOT playing for ante was the house rule when these cards were printed. As recently as the 4th edition rulebook:
So the question we're left with is what the card actually does and when it does it. Modern descriptions of ante seem designed explicitly to prevent anyone from bothering and past descriptions are ambiguous.
Even here, it isn't clarified whether ante happens at the beginning of each game or only the beginning of each match.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Nobody here faults ambivalentduck for trying this out. We just don't follow his logic in why this is not a house rule. It is more semantics by both sides. Neither side really cares that much , so we discuss this calmly.
I would love for you to explain what my ulterior motive would be? You really saw through me there... Like Freud you claim to know me better then I know myself. Do you think I really want to keep people from doing what they want? Do you think I want to chase away polite posters? This is a discussion forum, I think it is pretty normal to defend your point of view on an internet forum. Maybe you should explain why we are 'these guys' and what our 'ulterior motives' would be be? You seem to think we are evil snobs poopooing everything that does not fit in our world view. I can only speak for myself: I am for freedom to do the hell what you want with your cube. This doesn't mean I don't have the right to say how I see things.
I repeat my claim that it is fine to play this card. There is no reason though to find reasons in the old rulebooks in how this should work in 2015 in Cube drafts.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
The old rulebooks are awesome, lol.
Since the beta book specifies that you can reduce the impact of ante by using a house rule that limits it to one ante per match instead of 1 per game, I think it's clear that the original intent was to ante every game.
This is just silly and wrong in every way. I understand completely how to use Contract. You make up a house rule that allows it to be an acceptable card for this format. It's pretty easy to understand what's happening here, actually.
When you play for ante you run the risk of losing the contract itself, and never actually drawing it. With the whole "exile an extra card" kitchen table rule, you don't even satisfy the most basic of the intentions that playing for ante encompassed. So not only are there multiple house rules that need to be applied to make it work, but even with all of them in place it still doesn't make the card work like it was intended. It sounds to me like it's actually the Contract supporters that don't understand.
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If I can't explain it to an internet troll, how will I ever explain it to a friend? Trolls perform the most valuable service one person can do another: they hold a position long past the point where any reasonable person would mock them for doing so in real life.
So far as I can tell, you're forced to make a "house rule" to define the admission cost and prize structure for any cube tourneys you hold. You can fix the entire "playing for ante" problem by moving a random card from the loser's card pool to the winner's card pool at the end of the last game of the last match. This places "ante" into the prize structure even though all cards will revert to house ownership immediately afterwards.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
If only games where Contract from Below resolves have an ante, it is undisputably a house rule. Conspiracies don't change that in any way, because they have nothing to do with ante.
What really puzzles me: Why does anyone pro-houserule care if the other side doesn't see it as a house rule and vice versa? And why do you discuss it that much without any gain besides being right? If people are happy bending the rules so much that they can proclaim "I'm cubing without house rules!", just let them. Neither side gets anything out of this discussion.
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Ante seemingly can be by game/match/tourney as described in the Beta rulebook. They were listed as official variants and not "house rules" like restricting Black Lotus.
It's not about being right. It's about having a position that isn't confusing.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
I think it would be closer to meeting the intent of Ante if you had players ante at the beginning of each game. Since that's how it's explained from the rulebooks back when Ante was still a thing. But even then, it would still require house rules and a loose interpretation of what Ante means.
So why do it?
..........
And Ante is clearly outlined in the rules, FWIW.
So it's against the tournament rules if your playgroup uses those rules.
And Ante takes place in every game.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
This is so painfully unnecessary and wrong. You act like the MTGsalv cube forum is the illuminati.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Wizards isn't really trying to support ante or rules for it.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Supporting ante isn't a priority for the rules committee, but there are clearly defined rules in the comprehensive rulebook for playing for ante. I had two separate judges (a current L2, and an ex-L3 that now sits on the rules committee) confirm that the comprehensive rulebook addresses ante, and that it if the rules are followed properly, it must take place every game in between the time when the player chooses to go first or second and when they draw starting hands.
You can house rule ante however you want, but if you deviate from the guidelines explained in 407.2, you're not playing ante in accordance with the comprehensive rules. And tournament rules disallow it entirely. And the clarification in 108.3 states that ante is referring to legal ownership (not gameplay ownership), which pretty much prevents it from functioning at all in phantom events.
Thanks for posting those additional sections for me! It's never been more clear that ante simply doesn't work in this setting without massive rule bending and multiple house rules that change not only the original intent of ante, but the rules as they're outlined in the current comprehensive rulebook.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Owner: in-game, except for owner under 407.2/ante.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
-Luffy
My cube
My cube on Cube tutor
I'm OP_Forever. I'll be putting this in my signature for a while so everyone know I change my nickname.
That's the point, though. It's not a rule that ever affects organized play so everything about it is careless. As far back as 1997, the floor rules were downright contradictory regarding what ante even does. I could probably also go back to the old judge's listserv, but Tabak would probably refuse to even clean up the lack of clarity just to avoid giving any impression that WotC remotely supports ante in any way.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Before we even get into the discussion of ante, someone first needs to say with a straight face that B: Draw 7 is a card that will make cube better.
I submit to you that it will not make your cube games better. And if you disagree, then frankly you don't need our permission to run it.
Black needs the help. It's only really best at tutoring. Blue's removal (ie. Control Magic) is way better, green has better acceleration and critters, and red is better at racing.
If you can't explain something to a troll, you can't explain it to a lawyer. Lawyers troll people for a living.
Warning for trolling.
-Luffy
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Who is this troll and this lawyer you are talking about?
I enjoy talking about cards, I even enjoy the occasional rules lawyering, but what are you trying to do in this thread? You want badly written current rules to be clear by using very badly written old rule books? What does this have to do with Contract from Below in Cube, a non-sanctioned format in a casual setting?A format where the cube manager decides everything?
Peace be with you Mr. Duck. May the devil let you draw tons of cards. I am out of this weird discussion.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
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I used to write for MTGS, including Cranial Insertion and cube articles. Good on you if you can find those after the upgrade.
Just like Vintage is often a contest to find and resolve Ancestral Recall? I hear you, it's ridiculously good. It's just that other colors have more bombs than black does. Green and blue in particular are problematically strong. Rather than cut bombs like Parallax Tide I'd rather prop up black and white where I can.
If you're friends with folks (plural) with law degrees, the hardest thing about including Contract from Below in the cube is that you'll have to arbitrate a disagreement between them about what the stupid thing does. It's a card, it's very strong, but if you don't include it the only thing that changes is that the strongest card is something else. This isn't Homelands: the Cubening. It takes major adjustments to the floor rules to even run a Cube tourney. For instance, card ownership reverts to the house at the end of the night and REL: Beer-Involved. If the tourney is "for ante," as described in the Beta rules, that seems sufficient.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420