Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on the swamp, but I built it all the same. Just to show'em! It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. It sank into the swamp. Then I built a third one. It burnt down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!
Is almost finished with match, sees a new silver-boarded match just starting.
"Its dangerous to go alone, take this!" Sends over BFM during their opponent's turn.
The Batman (Intimidate)
Or Judge Dredd (Death is the only punishment he ever gives)
Or the Crow (Undead)
Or Riddick (Death touch)
Batman black?
Judge Dredd non-white?
That makes absolutely no sense at all.
Don't look at the mechanics. (Intimidate is not solely black, anyway, and white is has no trouble killing those go against the law.) Look at what motivates the characters.
@DisRaptor Perhaps Gully Foyle from Alfred Bester's Stars My Destination?
Since Mark maintains the color pie, I told him about black's problems in the FFL. Mark paused, then said, "Black can kill Planeswalkers." I told him a card that just killed a Planeswalkers wouldn't be strong enough for Standard, even at one mana. He said it was okay to make a card that could kill a creature or a Planeswalker. I expected that. Then he said something I wasn't expecting: killing Planeswalkers is a rare event.
Artifact lands, just by existing, have a very curious effect where they actually limit design space. Besides affinity, there's still a fair share of mechanics (some only on individual cards) that count the number of artifacts for a positive effect, or sacrifice artifacts, all utilizing the fact that you can easily commit to running a lot of different artifacts (there's much less mechanics for enchantments this way, probably because the pool is much smaller with a color requirement as well).
The existence of artifact lands make all of these mechanics count lands and artifacts. Which is fun, I grant that, but it makes the mechanics much harder to balance. During development, when you keep an eye out for potentially abusable mechanics, every instance of "sacrifice an artifact" now reads "sacrifice an artifact or a land." Every instance of "for each artifact you control" now reads "for each artifact and land you control." The cure is either to weaken the mechanic, add drawbacks to the artifact lands so that they can only be used in a constructed deck with a heavy commitment to using the mechanic, (rendering them useless for limited and more casual, or one-of type of mechanics) or simply not print them at all.
The last option frees you to design better artifact-related mechanics. Both immediately and in years to come.
Gift of Immortality seems very nice with a lot of cards. Of course, you'll have to draw and play those cards, and then play Gift on them, hoping your opponent doesn't blow them out from under it.
I just can't shake the feeling that if I were to make a deck utilizing Gifts of Immortality -- outside of some sort of sick self-sacrificial combo deck -- I could always make a better deck by taking the Gifts out and replacing them with more threats.
have you read the page? typhon threw cities and mountains against zeus, zeus resisted, became gigantic and threw him in a volcano. clearly greek gods aren't just "immortal humans with some little magical tricks", but very powerful beings
I was merely calling out the fact that Typhon wasn't an example of a Greek god in this context. If the post I replied to meant to use Zeus from the Typhon article as an example of his point INSTEAD, then perhaps the post should've been more clear. In any case, all the other gods fled. Zeus, the most powerful of the Olympians, managed to eventually triumph over Typhon using all his might. It pretty much reads as a heroic story, with the hero triumphing over a monster against the odds only the hero already being a godlike being in this case.
I suggest you read Devil's Advocate's post on the matter also.
Regarding cards that you don't own that would end up in your hand or library -- I think the ultimate reason for why doing so would be problematic is not theft, or problems with sleeves: What if there's more than one copy of a card in a library, but with different owners? Normally not an issue, but with extremely valuable cards (moxen etc.) it could lead to dispute, especially if the cards are in too similar a condition to reliably tell which one belonged to which player originally, but with one card slightly but noticeably in worse shape.
Regarding the 'infinity' issue. Mox Lotus doesn't really work in "real" magic. It defies logic even in silver-bordered land, but that doesn't of course matter. What happens when one guys pours his infinite mana into infinite life and the other guy pours his into infinite damage? Is the end result zero? What if the other guy says "infinite + 1?" Mathematically speaking the question itself is nonsensical, indefinable.
There's two ways I can see something like this could be done. You could have a card that allows a player simply to name any (natural) number in a situation like this. Another player playing a similar effect is then free to use the same number, a lesser number, or the same number raised to its own power. In fact this is what already happens when someone controls an infinite loop they can choose to stop after any number of iterations. Only now it would be defined on a card.
Real Mox Lotus
T: Add X to your mana pool where X is a positive integer of your choice.
Another way would be to define the "infinity" as an entity within the rules, with its own special arithmetic. Cover all the cases of "infinity minus infinity is what?" and "infinity doubled minus infinity is what?" This would be rather pointless and inelegant compared to the first solution, thought, but at least it could allow them to use the term as it has more flavor than "positive integer of your choice."
This post came out a bit more long-winded and boring than I intended. In any case, for most of the OP's examples, even if a way exists to do them, one shouldn't necessarily go down the path of doing them for the sake of novelty. It's the "explorer's fallacy" MaRo touched upon in his latest column, I think.
Wouldn't an Adorable Kitten be more appropriate?
"We sail. We plunder. Then we dance. Later... there's fireworks."
Batman black?
Judge Dredd non-white?
That makes absolutely no sense at all.
Don't look at the mechanics. (Intimidate is not solely black, anyway, and white is has no trouble killing those go against the law.) Look at what motivates the characters.
@DisRaptor Perhaps Gully Foyle from Alfred Bester's Stars My Destination?
The existence of artifact lands make all of these mechanics count lands and artifacts. Which is fun, I grant that, but it makes the mechanics much harder to balance. During development, when you keep an eye out for potentially abusable mechanics, every instance of "sacrifice an artifact" now reads "sacrifice an artifact or a land." Every instance of "for each artifact you control" now reads "for each artifact and land you control." The cure is either to weaken the mechanic, add drawbacks to the artifact lands so that they can only be used in a constructed deck with a heavy commitment to using the mechanic, (rendering them useless for limited and more casual, or one-of type of mechanics) or simply not print them at all.
The last option frees you to design better artifact-related mechanics. Both immediately and in years to come.
Pyroclasm
"Mmm... Bacon..."
-- Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
I just can't shake the feeling that if I were to make a deck utilizing Gifts of Immortality -- outside of some sort of sick self-sacrificial combo deck -- I could always make a better deck by taking the Gifts out and replacing them with more threats.
Threats are always good.
I think nal2 has this card pegged.
I was merely calling out the fact that Typhon wasn't an example of a Greek god in this context. If the post I replied to meant to use Zeus from the Typhon article as an example of his point INSTEAD, then perhaps the post should've been more clear. In any case, all the other gods fled. Zeus, the most powerful of the Olympians, managed to eventually triumph over Typhon using all his might. It pretty much reads as a heroic story, with the hero triumphing over a monster against the odds only the hero already being a godlike being in this case.
I suggest you read Devil's Advocate's post on the matter also.
Typhon wasn't a god. I'd say Typhon was to gods what ordinary monsters are to mortals.
There isn't a single sentence on that card that isn't wrong in some way. Impressive.
Regarding the 'infinity' issue. Mox Lotus doesn't really work in "real" magic. It defies logic even in silver-bordered land, but that doesn't of course matter. What happens when one guys pours his infinite mana into infinite life and the other guy pours his into infinite damage? Is the end result zero? What if the other guy says "infinite + 1?" Mathematically speaking the question itself is nonsensical, indefinable.
There's two ways I can see something like this could be done. You could have a card that allows a player simply to name any (natural) number in a situation like this. Another player playing a similar effect is then free to use the same number, a lesser number, or the same number raised to its own power. In fact this is what already happens when someone controls an infinite loop they can choose to stop after any number of iterations. Only now it would be defined on a card.
Real Mox Lotus
T: Add X to your mana pool where X is a positive integer of your choice.
Another way would be to define the "infinity" as an entity within the rules, with its own special arithmetic. Cover all the cases of "infinity minus infinity is what?" and "infinity doubled minus infinity is what?" This would be rather pointless and inelegant compared to the first solution, thought, but at least it could allow them to use the term as it has more flavor than "positive integer of your choice."
This post came out a bit more long-winded and boring than I intended. In any case, for most of the OP's examples, even if a way exists to do them, one shouldn't necessarily go down the path of doing them for the sake of novelty. It's the "explorer's fallacy" MaRo touched upon in his latest column, I think.