MTG Salvation

hello. I know i'm extremely late to this conversation. either way, i agree with the people before me that have stated the originator of this challenge is being too much of a stickler.

the reason i stumbled across this thread is i was looking for the term used to describe a card like noxious revival in its relationship to reclaim. i believe i have seen this word in economics and also magic previously but now cannot think of it and it's really annoying me. it's not dominant btw, although that would be a synonym i guess. anyone know the word i'm thinking of?

I am a bit late on this, but the definition you've presented of "strictly better" is far too strict. If we all accepted this definition as true, strictly better would cease to exist as a term to compare Magic cards.

Counterspell is strictly better than Cancel. Yeah, maybe it wouldn't if someone flipped over an Isochron Scepter with their Counterbalance, but that is such a corner case it can't be considered.

As far as I think we should be concerned, the determination of "strictly better" ignores obscure corner cases, such as your reason for why Lightning Bolt is not strictly better than Shock.

I contend that Mindslaver is strictly better than Amulet of Quoz, and my reasoning is twofold:

Firstly, Amulet of Quoz is not legal in any sanctioned game of magic and, as a result, is always strictly worse on the grounds that it is not legally possible to win with Amulet of Quoz in your deck due to disqualification. If the definition of "a game of magic" is called into question, this argument is invalidated. However, doing so also enables the possibility of variant unsanctioned formats in which the rules could be anything (including the possibility of a three-card format consisting only of mountains, shocks, and lightning bolts, in which case lightning bolt would indeed be strictly better than shock).

If you do not accept this first argument on the basis of the two aforementioned cards being too dissimilar in nature, you admit to the existence of criteria by which cards may be qualified and their value measured. If cards are able to be qualified as such, then this second argument can be considered true:
Mindslaver is a strictly better card than Amulet of Quoz as a result of the possibility that Mindslaver could cause any other card to be rendered detrimental at a player's discretion. It is directly superior due to the fact that it can potentially make any other card inferior. This is a quality that Amulet of Quoz lacks.

My arguments are simultaneously flawed and flawless in the sense that under strict, improbable conditions, any outcome is possible (even cards being "strictly better" than others). In any case, the point I am so eloquently trying to convey is that these exceptions are irrelevant to the concept of "strictly better." Yes, player-dependent scenarios involving cards such as Mindslaver can create contradictions in conventional game-theory. However, in the magic community, the term "strictly better" is an idiom that is convenient in advancing useful discussion regarding card evaluation. I wish the same could be said of this pedantic crusade for verbal specificity.

Since you didn't read it earlier, an excerpt from this page.

An idiom is a term or phrase whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use.

If you want to argue strictly better, go to the strictly better thread I created.

Strictly better is not specific for Magic. The term did not just spawn at the time Magic was created. Strictly better comes from dominance, when A is better than B no matter what the outcome is.

You're wrong again. "Strictly better" in the Magic sense just doesn't mean the same thing as dominance in the game theory sense, and claiming that it does doesn't make it so. The argument seems to be that because a piece of jargon doesn't mean what it might intuitively mean that everyone is using it wrong.

Because of the existence of Control Magic, Spelljack, and probably a few other cards to catch corner cases, it's true that there is no pair of cards for which the first is -always- better to have than the second. Nobody's disagreeing with that. But that just isn't what "strictly better" means. It has a definition unique to Magic, and that isn't it.

Really? "Strictly better" is better known in game theory as dominance. Dominance is when X is better than Y no matter what the outcome is. This is where "strictly better" comes from.

If magic were an extremely simple game, dominance would exist (aka cards being strictly better). Obviously, magic is a very complex game, and even though there are a finite number of outcomes, there are just too many to have dominance exist in Magic.

I am arguing strictly better according to game theory. If you want to go beyond strictly better by arguing "generally better" (ie. Lightning Bolt > Shock), then go ahead. But it's tiresome having to defend fact. Strictly better didn't just materalize a couple of years ago. It has existed with dominance in game theory for a long time.

Sutherlands is correct. The problem, SC, is that the definition of "strictly better" isn't a perfectly literal one. "Strictly better" has a special Magic: the Gathering definition, just like many other terms do, and virtually everyone understands this. The definition of "strictly better" that people have been using for years is "all of the good things are at least as good and there are no extra drawbacks". Things that are compared are card type (instants are better than sorceries), mana cost, P/T, magnitude of effect, magnitude of drawbacks, legendary status and mana cost (cards of a different color can't be strictly better or worse than each other). (This isn't meant to be a perfect definition of "strictly better", but it's close.)

Are there hedge cases? Absolutely. In particular, whether creature type should be an issue comes up sometimes. But "strictly better" is a bit of jargon that's slightly different in meaning than what it suggests if taken totally literally. (A slightly more common mistake people unfamiliar with the terminology make is to use "strictly better" to just mean "way better", like "Tarmogoyf is strictly better than just about any other green two-drop in recent memory.")

Again Sutherlands, your definition of "strictly better" is flawed. You can say "card A is just like card B, except A has X making it better than B all the time. Thus A is strictly better than B".

Too bad that doesn't exist in Magic. What does exist in Magic is "card A is just like card B, but A has X making it better than B most of the time. X can be a drawback though, making B better than A in a very few circumstances."

No matter how hard you try, Lightning Bolt is not strictly better than Shock, nor is Glory Seeker strictly better than Squire.

If you want to further argue "strictly better", we could necro the thread on strictly better (or I could just make a new one).

"Back seat driver" means just that though; a person is driving from the back seat.

I don't see how this isn't understood. If a person is driving from the front seat or is not driving, they are not a back seat driver.

There is nothing around it. If you want to bend the rules and say the back seat is the front seat, then you have your understanding of back seat driver wrong.


Not only did you ignore my link of the idiom, but cards that are considered "strictly better" are considered in a vacuum. That's the ONLY MEANINGFUL DEFINITION of "strictly better," and thus, it's the one that gets used.

You can say "strictly better means a card has to be better than another card in all circumstances, and there for no card is strictly better than another," but that's pretty worthless for conversation. I'd rather use the definition of "card A has all the advantages that card B has, and none of the disadvantages that it doesn't, plus it is superior in way X, therefore, it is strictly better." This meaning is actually useful in conversation, and once again, that's why it gets used.

Strictly better means just that though; card A is better than card B 100% of the time.

I don't see how this isn't understood. If card A is better than card B 99% of the time (but not 100%) it is not strictly better. It is generally better, but not strictly better.

There is nothing around it. If you want to bend the rules and say 99% = strictly better, then you have your understanding of strictly better wrong.

To put it mildly: You're wrong.

Check out this thread. Nothing is 100% always better than something else, that's why when talking about "strictly better" we use a functional definition. Also, check out this page.

When I compare cards, I look at them from a game theory point of view. I don't take expansion symbols, rarity, or any of that into account. I look at the functionality of the cards (ie what it says on the card).

I stand corrected Goyf. 2 schA! Totally thought llanowar was a warrior. HA DERRRR!!!

Both elves are the exact same at what they do. The only thing different are their names (which is irrelevant because Meddling Mage can equally block either one from being played).

Tyler Durden, saying Ashcoat Bears is strictly better than Grizzly Bears is just plain incorrect. Maybe you won't come across a crazy Mindslaver situation over the course of a game, but the fact of the matter is, that situation is possible in a game of Magic and it exists. This throws the 100% better in every single situation out of the window, and it completely invalidates the argument that Ashcoat is strictly better than Grizzly.

Mindslaver makes sure that "strictly better" doesn't exist in Magic. It still boggles my mind how people haven't grasped onto that concept yet.

BTW, Murganda Petroglyphs makes it so Grizzly Bears is better than Ashcoat Bears.

@Meat: They're both druids lol.

Look, using the term "strictly better" when talking about how Ashcoat Bear is better than Grizzly Bear is valid. We all know that under some crazy circumstance, usually involving Mindslaver or something, that Ashcoat Bear will be inferior to Grizzly Bear. Are you ever going to come across that situation in a game? Probably not. Either you use the term "strictly better" to say that Ashcoats are better than Grizzlies, or you find some stupid way to show that they aren't superior.

If you're using some sort of Mindslaver scenario to disprove the theory of any card being "strictly" better, then isn't NOTHING strictly better than anything? There is no strictly superior card in every single situation to another card, as proved by thousands of nerds with too much time who come up with useless, overly complex scenarios. So either we use the term strictly better to describe how Ashcoat Bears>Grizzly Bears, or how Lightning Bolt>Shock, or don't use the term strictly better at all.

As long as it's a hypothetical situation, I'll fight the Elves battle with this:
If there were/are more Fynhorn elves printed then Llanowar, then the opposite is true and vice versa. I guess it depends on how many are available in your area?

Actually thats not true Alacar.

Im not gonna search for it but there is the elf druid in morningtide that has its controller tap 7 druids to gain control of a bunch of stuff. If i have 6 already, i want the druid, not the warrior!

SCHWANG!!!