...and then: where are those good examples that will make MB worthy of removing?
Really, I'm open minded, but although I read everywhere "it opens design space", I've seen none so far posting a serious example of how it will actually open that space...
Have you read the thread? A few pages back Foxbat posted some excellent examples:
"Third Time's the Charm" :1mana::symw: Sorcery
You win the game if your life total is 3.
"Empathic Link" :symw::symw::3mana: enchantment
Whenever you lose life, target opponent loses the same amount.
"Double Edged Sword" artifact equipment
Equipped creature gains +8/+0 and has trample and lifelink.
When your life total is 20 or greater, you lose the game.
Equip
They're not remotely balanced, but show great examples of the mechanics that could be done thanks to the absence of mana burn.
...and then: where are those good examples that will make MB worthy of removing?
Acquisition is the #1 reason.
When you teach someone a game, there is a point where the recruit flips the "not interested" switch. Mana burn is another checkpoint where that switch may get flipped.
Yeah, I powered through my 4th Edition rulebook, but I was extremely motivated to learn MTG. I do not expect my experience to be commonplace.
Seriously, teach this game to someone that is not a gamer. Maybe a wife/girlfriend/etc. See where that person rolls their eyes and flips the switch. That is what WOTC marketing does.
Probably not, but what does that prove? Removing mana burn sure must serve some cause, otherwise why get rid of it? If it's for ex. because of the life-matters theme, then instead of playing that crappy cantrip i'd just play abusable life-altering cards to abuse the new mechanic/theme.
Uh... This is extremely hypothetical, but isn't that kinda part of the game? You play cards that maximize outcomes. They want you to do that. Compared to mana burn, which would be using a rule to maximize an outcome.
In design terms they might not want this hypothetical mechanic to be maximized by a rule. Again, it is an issue of interactivity and deck construction, among other things.
One standard cards that get's better if we lose the mana burn is manpurpose. I always hate top decking this because it means I have to get lucky in what I draw off it or I've shocked myself. And I do end up shocking myself sometimes. With manaburn gone this little spell gets more playable by a little bit.
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Not sure exactly what you mean, but if you are referring to a mill loss, that wouldn't seem to be as confusing. A natural question that comes up in teaching is "what if I run out of cards?" It isn't a usually "switch off" checkpoint because it comes at the student's prompting.
I'm guessing your post is strictly conjecture though, because Seds didn't mention it.
I just had some more information come in, also mentioning the name 'battlefield' and the naming of the rfg zone.
The new tidbit is that mana burn is going the way of the dodo. (I smell masserrata)
This could be good or bad. It opens up design at least, and allows for more interesting plays to be made. (Upkeep clique, resp tap my lands and hope for goddraw with nothing to lose if I don't get it, etc)
Could we get a little bit more information on this "tidbit"? I'm not sure how reliable your source was, but it seems we might be arguing over nothing at all...
As far as acquisition is concerned, Magic is at its heart a very flavorful, fantastic game. If powerful wizards draw mystical magical energy to themselves, how does it not make sense that this energy, if not properly spent, will cause harm? Don't we get this in real life when a battery short-circuits? It just makes sense that this very powerful magical energy would start searing the mind of a wizard who holds it too long. It's something like putting something on the stove - incredible, useful energy that accomplishes a lot... but if you keep the food on too long, it gets burned. It's not hard to explain the concept of mana to a new player, and mana burn is just as easy, if not easier, to understand. It even helps paint a richer picture of the multiverse.
And the dozen-plus cards above that would require awkward errata to fix?
You can argue that mana burn doesn't affect many games, but it's affected a fair number in which I've played. Heck, I've played in games where the stack doesn't matter... and the stack's pretty hard to explain to new players.
I've said this in previous posts, but I think that we would lose an integral part of the game if this rules change turns out to be more than a rumor.
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You can argue that mana burn doesn't affect many games, but it's affected a fair number in which I've played. Heck, I've played in games where the stack doesn't matter... and the stack's pretty hard to explain to new players.
A major difference: The stack is key to interactivity.
When you slap cards one on top of another, it makes sense pretty fast. Translating abilities into the card "stack" concept is the next level and a pretty natural progression.
Really balanced, both of them. They could actually read: wait there doing nothing, let all of your opponents creatures go through, win the game when in burn range.
On the victory condition card, I think it would create a really fascinating situation where you would want to have the creatures you need to block accordingly to take enough damage to end up at 3 life, as opposed to 4 or 2. It takes on a whole new degree of interaction if your opponent knows it's in your deck, in which they must finish you off without stopping at 3 along the way.
I think the second one is printable if it is put on something more vulnerable, such as an artifact creature. It would feel something like Platinum Angel. Alternatively, it could have a drawback where "Whenever an opponent has less than 10 life, sacrifice ~".
Anyway, why will anyone use Mana Burn to sistematically control his/her own flow of life when it could simply play cards like Night's whisper and get extra profit...
Probably because filling your deck with cards like that dilutes your deck and makes it harder to get the cards you need in your opening draws. Not that it wouldn't be great in that situation, but you just might not be able to work those into your deck. Or you might not be playing black. If that was truly the best choice, then everyone would just do that instead of burning themselves already and it wouldn't matter if the rule was there or not anyway. Removing mana burn would push players to use cards like that to control their life gain, which would be a good thing IMO. I'm sure a "life matters" set would be chock full of that type of card, especially in black.
Sorry, this one was explained before: if anyone loses to "switch life total" card (Mirror Universe, Reverse the Sand, Magus of the Mirror), powered by Mana Burn, he or she deserves it... and there's not much more to say about it.
I agree that this card doesn't really support the anti-mana burn cause (which is why I didn't quote it in my last post) since it already exists, but I do think this mechanic would have been FAR more fun on casual cards if mana burn had never existed.
So far several people have commented on how horribly balanced those cards are, but they all seemingly ignore the statement (which has also been clearly made several times) that the cards are in no way meant to be balanced, but are rather meant to showcase the mechanics. So if people are going to refute the point that it opens up design space, argue about the design space, not the the proxies for design space used.
Now with that said, I would also like to point out that while the MB rules change may help (to arguable degrees) introduce more players, there still hasn't been a compelling reason why it is beneficial to us, the current playerbase. The design space argument hasn't really been approached intelligently yet, so I will withhold judgment on that one.
Now with that said, I would also like to point out that while the MB rules change may help (to arguable degrees) introduce more players, there still hasn't been a compelling reason why it is beneficial to us, the current playerbase. The design space argument hasn't really been approached intelligently yet, so I will withhold judgment on that one.
They grow the product and keep making the game, possibly with even more budget.
New players = more people to play against.
Similar to item #2, it will be easier to get our significant others to play.
Signets and karoos are commons.
That's just off the top of my head. Variable mileage with individual players on these benefits, but all are substantially good for me.
They grow the product and keep making the game, possibly with even more budget.
New players = more people to play against.
Similar to item #2, it will be easier to get our significant others to play.
Signets and karoos are commons.
That's just off the top of my head. Variable mileage with individual players on these benefits, but all are substantially good for me.
I think he meant there haven't been compelling arguments why mana burn benefits the current player base. I don't think anyone will argue against new players being good for the current player base.
If I could grossly oversimplify the pro-manaburn participants' arguments on these topics so far in this thread into 3 words each, it would be:
Removing mana burn will make the game more accessable to new players. No it won't.
Why is mana burn good for the game? It punishes noobs.
Saying "what's good for Wizards is good for us" IS a valid argument, however in this particular case, I would say it is not a very strong one. We benefit indirectly from Wizard's success, so any benefit Wizards sees is going to be somewhat mitigated by the time we see it.
For cases like "play a spell" to "cast a spell", the expected benefit is large, so we will probably see some degree of its effect on our local playerbase. For something that will have a relatively minor effect on introducing new players such as the axing of Manaburn, however, I wonder if we will even notice the difference it will make on our local playerbase (the degree of effect, however, is a purely hypothetical point as the manaburn change is going to be piggybacking on a numberof other high profile changes, so we can't actually measure the change it will have).
Now as for signets and karoos... Well yeah, it removes the risk of using them, but risk/reward asessments is one of the things that makes Magic such a vibrant and robust card game. To reduce the risk of a large number of mana sources is to remove the degree of consideration that goes into them. Now, if you want turn two manafixing, there's no reason why you wouldn't run ravnica bouncelands or signets. If you're playing elves and want mana acceleration, there's no reason why you wouldn't run effects that add mana for each elf in play.
The easiest way to impliment the mana burn change, should it prove to be more than rumor, would be to keep "mana burn" as a game action, but only have it apply as specified. For example...
Spectral Searchlight 3
Artifact T: Choose a player. That player adds one mana of his or her choice to his or her mana pool. This mana causes mana burn.
This would apply to any old card that was designed with burn in mind, removed from those where it has no application as with Heartbeat of Spring, and any new card designed where mana burn would be part of the strategy.
Rather than the phrase found on those snakes from Kamigawa block.
Lava Cave
Land T: Choose a player. That player adds his or her choice of B or R to his or her mana pool. This mana causes mana burn. If this mana is unspent, Lava Cave doesn't untap during your next untap step.
The easiest way to impliment the mana burn change, should it prove to be more than rumor, would be to keep "mana burn" as a game action, but only have it apply as specified. For example...
Spectral Searchlight 3
Artifact T: Choose a player. That player adds one mana of his or her choice to his or her mana pool. This mana causes mana burn.
This would apply to any old card that was designed with burn in mind, removed from those where it has no application as with Heartbeat of Spring, and any new card designed where mana burn would be part of the strategy.
Rather than the phrase found on those snakes from Kamigawa block.
Lava Cave
Land T: Choose a player. That player adds his or her choice of B or R to his or her mana pool. This mana causes mana burn. If this mana is unspent, Lava Cave doesn't untap during your next untap step.
From the point of view of a hypothetical player who's never known a M:tG in which mana burn is the norm, this seems like a very strange game action. It's so narrow and specific; why would the designers bother writing up special rules for it?
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Paying for cumulative upkeeps with this reverse cumulative upkeep, else to activate cards like Chimeric Staff during your upkeep, or to play progressively higher casting-cost Instant cards with X in the casting cost, or to build up something like Helix Pinnacle that much quicker. It is a creative card, and a fun card, and in the right builds/formats a potent card, but not a power-card. It is not, however, worthless, or nearly-so, such as a 1/1 flier with a crappy ability that costs 5 mana.
The thing is, it closes just as much design space as it opens. Look at cards like mistbind clique; with no manaburn it's a complete dork.
Why? Why is it a complete dork? Removal of mana burn does NOT cause mana to float forever, until the end of the turn, or even past the current phase. All it does is prevent you from taking damage for each unspent mana purged from your mana pool at the end of a phase. Period. The end. Mistbind Clique is not changed on iota by removing mana burn.
i think it would be stupid to just errata all cards that were meant to work with mana burn, i'm sure there are a lot more cards that those that have already been mentioned, even cards like Orim's Chant or the new card Silence should have an erata, back in the days i'm pretty sure i caused some serious mana burns with a chant in response to a dark ritual.
It's not a change that is going to bring more benefits than problems to the game, i dont think it's a smart move.
Originally Posted by urzassedatives It would be like if there was a rule allowing you to discard any card in your hand any time you wanted when Threshold was around. (Nevermind mongrel or madness or anything...)
Not really, dumping your hand doesn't neccesarily hurt you. Mana burn does.
I think the point was that mana burn makes doing a "life matters" theme as unworkable as if being able to dump your hand makes threshold, madness, or hellbent too easy. But to your retort, if mana burn were to be around in such an environment (i.e. getting down to, staying below, a life total), hurting yourself wouldn't actually hurt you.
I've never been on either end of a mana burn loss, but I have found mana burn to be annoying. I can see why some people don't want it to go, but if you think about the aforementioned "hand size/no cards in hand matters" designs, there probably are some interesting things that can be done.
It may not be consolation, but over-tapping land is punishment for carelessness in and of itself. That was mentioned before, but the game can come down to who makes the least mistakes and there is still plenty of room to make them without mana burn.
I guess Forbidden Orchard gets alot better in oath. The removal of mana burn is lame, why even bother. Why not just remove the discard phase, or cut out the second main phase, why not just rewrite the whole game?
I guess Forbidden Orchard gets alot better in oath. The removal of mana burn is lame, why even bother. Why not just remove the discard phase, or cut out the second main phase, why not just rewrite the whole game?
The degree to which removing mana burn affects the game is far less than removing the discard or second main phase, and you know that.
Regarding mana removing mana burn - where did this information first appear, anyways?
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The new tidbit is that mana burn is going the way of the dodo. (I smell masserrata)
This could be good or bad. It opens up design at least, and allows for more interesting plays to be made. (Upkeep clique, resp tap my lands and hope for goddraw with nothing to lose if I don't get it, etc)
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If anything, removing mana burn would remove the necessity for players to think in certain situations. Having to decide whether it's worth it to take the point to play a body with something like Heartbeat out no longer is an issue. I don't mind the other changes so much (though battlefield seems kind of pointless), but getting rid of mana burn removes a layer of thought. I don't especially care for that.
Plus, with no mana burn, my absolute favorite multiplayer play of all time could never have happened (someone actually did this):
Guy: Swamp, Dark Rit, go.
Everyone else:
Me: Are you sure you want to do that?
Guy: Yeah.
Me: Really? You're positive? You can take it back if you want.
Guy: Yes, I'm sure. Can we just get on with it already?
Everyone else:
I just had some more information come in, also mentioning the name 'battlefield' and the naming of the rfg zone.
The new tidbit is that mana burn is going the way of the dodo. (I smell masserrata)
This could be good or bad. It opens up design at least, and allows for more interesting plays to be made. (Upkeep clique, resp tap my lands and hope for goddraw with nothing to lose if I don't get it, etc)
I am sorry, but WHAT???? no more mana burn? that makes absolutely NO SENSE, not to mention it makes so many already GOOD cards broken....
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Have you read the thread? A few pages back Foxbat posted some excellent examples:
They're not remotely balanced, but show great examples of the mechanics that could be done thanks to the absence of mana burn.
Acquisition is the #1 reason.
When you teach someone a game, there is a point where the recruit flips the "not interested" switch. Mana burn is another checkpoint where that switch may get flipped.
Yeah, I powered through my 4th Edition rulebook, but I was extremely motivated to learn MTG. I do not expect my experience to be commonplace.
Seriously, teach this game to someone that is not a gamer. Maybe a wife/girlfriend/etc. See where that person rolls their eyes and flips the switch. That is what WOTC marketing does.
Uh... This is extremely hypothetical, but isn't that kinda part of the game? You play cards that maximize outcomes. They want you to do that. Compared to mana burn, which would be using a rule to maximize an outcome.
In design terms they might not want this hypothetical mechanic to be maximized by a rule. Again, it is an issue of interactivity and deck construction, among other things.
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Not sure exactly what you mean, but if you are referring to a mill loss, that wouldn't seem to be as confusing. A natural question that comes up in teaching is "what if I run out of cards?" It isn't a usually "switch off" checkpoint because it comes at the student's prompting.
I'm guessing your post is strictly conjecture though, because Seds didn't mention it.
Could we get a little bit more information on this "tidbit"? I'm not sure how reliable your source was, but it seems we might be arguing over nothing at all...
As far as acquisition is concerned, Magic is at its heart a very flavorful, fantastic game. If powerful wizards draw mystical magical energy to themselves, how does it not make sense that this energy, if not properly spent, will cause harm? Don't we get this in real life when a battery short-circuits? It just makes sense that this very powerful magical energy would start searing the mind of a wizard who holds it too long. It's something like putting something on the stove - incredible, useful energy that accomplishes a lot... but if you keep the food on too long, it gets burned. It's not hard to explain the concept of mana to a new player, and mana burn is just as easy, if not easier, to understand. It even helps paint a richer picture of the multiverse.
And the dozen-plus cards above that would require awkward errata to fix?
You can argue that mana burn doesn't affect many games, but it's affected a fair number in which I've played. Heck, I've played in games where the stack doesn't matter... and the stack's pretty hard to explain to new players.
I've said this in previous posts, but I think that we would lose an integral part of the game if this rules change turns out to be more than a rumor.
A major difference: The stack is key to interactivity.
When you slap cards one on top of another, it makes sense pretty fast. Translating abilities into the card "stack" concept is the next level and a pretty natural progression.
On the victory condition card, I think it would create a really fascinating situation where you would want to have the creatures you need to block accordingly to take enough damage to end up at 3 life, as opposed to 4 or 2. It takes on a whole new degree of interaction if your opponent knows it's in your deck, in which they must finish you off without stopping at 3 along the way.
I think the second one is printable if it is put on something more vulnerable, such as an artifact creature. It would feel something like Platinum Angel. Alternatively, it could have a drawback where "Whenever an opponent has less than 10 life, sacrifice ~".
Probably because filling your deck with cards like that dilutes your deck and makes it harder to get the cards you need in your opening draws. Not that it wouldn't be great in that situation, but you just might not be able to work those into your deck. Or you might not be playing black. If that was truly the best choice, then everyone would just do that instead of burning themselves already and it wouldn't matter if the rule was there or not anyway. Removing mana burn would push players to use cards like that to control their life gain, which would be a good thing IMO. I'm sure a "life matters" set would be chock full of that type of card, especially in black.
I agree that this card doesn't really support the anti-mana burn cause (which is why I didn't quote it in my last post) since it already exists, but I do think this mechanic would have been FAR more fun on casual cards if mana burn had never existed.
So far several people have commented on how horribly balanced those cards are, but they all seemingly ignore the statement (which has also been clearly made several times) that the cards are in no way meant to be balanced, but are rather meant to showcase the mechanics. So if people are going to refute the point that it opens up design space, argue about the design space, not the the proxies for design space used.
Now with that said, I would also like to point out that while the MB rules change may help (to arguable degrees) introduce more players, there still hasn't been a compelling reason why it is beneficial to us, the current playerbase. The design space argument hasn't really been approached intelligently yet, so I will withhold judgment on that one.
I think he meant there haven't been compelling arguments why mana burn benefits the current player base. I don't think anyone will argue against new players being good for the current player base.
If I could grossly oversimplify the pro-manaburn participants' arguments on these topics so far in this thread into 3 words each, it would be:
Removing mana burn will make the game more accessable to new players.
No it won't.
Why is mana burn good for the game?
It punishes noobs.
Anyone else see a contradiction there?
And the entire point of this card is?
For cases like "play a spell" to "cast a spell", the expected benefit is large, so we will probably see some degree of its effect on our local playerbase. For something that will have a relatively minor effect on introducing new players such as the axing of Manaburn, however, I wonder if we will even notice the difference it will make on our local playerbase (the degree of effect, however, is a purely hypothetical point as the manaburn change is going to be piggybacking on a numberof other high profile changes, so we can't actually measure the change it will have).
Now as for signets and karoos... Well yeah, it removes the risk of using them, but risk/reward asessments is one of the things that makes Magic such a vibrant and robust card game. To reduce the risk of a large number of mana sources is to remove the degree of consideration that goes into them. Now, if you want turn two manafixing, there's no reason why you wouldn't run ravnica bouncelands or signets. If you're playing elves and want mana acceleration, there's no reason why you wouldn't run effects that add mana for each elf in play.
Spectral Searchlight 3
Artifact
T: Choose a player. That player adds one mana of his or her choice to his or her mana pool. This mana causes mana burn.
This would apply to any old card that was designed with burn in mind, removed from those where it has no application as with Heartbeat of Spring, and any new card designed where mana burn would be part of the strategy.
Rather than the phrase found on those snakes from Kamigawa block.
Lava Cave
Land
T: Choose a player. That player adds his or her choice of B or R to his or her mana pool. This mana causes mana burn. If this mana is unspent, Lava Cave doesn't untap during your next untap step.
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From the point of view of a hypothetical player who's never known a M:tG in which mana burn is the norm, this seems like a very strange game action. It's so narrow and specific; why would the designers bother writing up special rules for it?
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Paying for cumulative upkeeps with this reverse cumulative upkeep, else to activate cards like Chimeric Staff during your upkeep, or to play progressively higher casting-cost Instant cards with X in the casting cost, or to build up something like Helix Pinnacle that much quicker. It is a creative card, and a fun card, and in the right builds/formats a potent card, but not a power-card. It is not, however, worthless, or nearly-so, such as a 1/1 flier with a crappy ability that costs 5 mana.
Why? Why is it a complete dork? Removal of mana burn does NOT cause mana to float forever, until the end of the turn, or even past the current phase. All it does is prevent you from taking damage for each unspent mana purged from your mana pool at the end of a phase. Period. The end. Mistbind Clique is not changed on iota by removing mana burn.
It's not a change that is going to bring more benefits than problems to the game, i dont think it's a smart move.
I think the point was that mana burn makes doing a "life matters" theme as unworkable as if being able to dump your hand makes threshold, madness, or hellbent too easy. But to your retort, if mana burn were to be around in such an environment (i.e. getting down to, staying below, a life total), hurting yourself wouldn't actually hurt you.
I've never been on either end of a mana burn loss, but I have found mana burn to be annoying. I can see why some people don't want it to go, but if you think about the aforementioned "hand size/no cards in hand matters" designs, there probably are some interesting things that can be done.
It may not be consolation, but over-tapping land is punishment for carelessness in and of itself. That was mentioned before, but the game can come down to who makes the least mistakes and there is still plenty of room to make them without mana burn.
BUWGRChilds PlayGRWUB
BUWGR Highlander GRWUB
UBSquee's Shapeshifting PetBU
BW Multiplayer Control WB
RG Changeling GR
UR Mana FlareRU
UMerfolkU
B MBMC B
The degree to which removing mana burn affects the game is far less than removing the discard or second main phase, and you know that.
Regarding mana removing mana burn - where did this information first appear, anyways?
Plus, with no mana burn, my absolute favorite multiplayer play of all time could never have happened (someone actually did this):
Guy: Swamp, Dark Rit, go.
Everyone else:
Me: Are you sure you want to do that?
Guy: Yeah.
Me: Really? You're positive? You can take it back if you want.
Guy: Yes, I'm sure. Can we just get on with it already?
Everyone else:
UBDragonlord Silumgar WGKarametra, God of Harvests
BRUNekusar, the Mindrazer BGMazirek, Kraul Death Priest
URMelek, Izzet Paragon UGPrime Speaker Zegana
WUHanna, Ship's Navigator BWUSydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Queen RBBladewing the Risen
WBKarlov of the Ghost Council RGXenagos, God of Revels
GFreyalise, Llanowar's Fury RWAurelia, the Warleader
RIb Halfheart, Goblin Tactician BDrana, Liberator of Malakir
UAzami, Lady of Scrolls WNahiri, the Lithomancer
WBGDoran, the Siege Tower CEmrakul, the Promised End
I didn't say I dislike many of them. I didn't even say I dislike any of them.
I said I dislike seeing so many of them. The dislike is aimed at the number of the class, not the elements.
Oh and if they rename any zone to the battlefield I will kill a kitten.
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I am sorry, but WHAT???? no more mana burn? that makes absolutely NO SENSE, not to mention it makes so many already GOOD cards broken....