If you had complete power to make any change you wanted to Magic's rules, what would you do? (Feel free to ignore all restrictions of practicality as far as "but that would change too many existing cards" type issues... assume that Magic is being relaunched on an alternate Earth that's never heard of it before, so all you have to do is get things as good as possible from the get go).
For me: The vast, vast majority of changes between 1993 and now are good, so I'd certainly start with the current rules and terminologies as a starting point. That said, I'd make a few minorish changes:
(1) Get rid of the weird interaction between trample and deathtouch. It almost never comes up, is counterintuitive, anti-flavorful, and hard to remember.
(2) Allow multiple instances of lifelink to work they way you expect them to
And at least one more major change:
(1) I understand, and mostly agree with, the logic behind removing damage-on-the-stack, but I've never liked ordering blockers. So I'd go with a hybrid system in which the timing and phases of things are just like the old damage-on-the-stack system, with an additional rule that if a creature isn't on the battlefield when damage actually RESOLVES, it doesn't deal damage. So I attack, you block, then I do any final pumping of my creature's power, you can respond, then I assign where all the damage will GO (damage on the stack), but if I unsummon or sacrifice or you kill my guy then, he won't actually deal the damage
And a few other changes intended to open up neat areas of design space:
(1) I'd add a rule that copying a permanent spell was perfectly legal, and if a copy of a permanent spell resolved, it would create a token copy of the permanent. So it would be entirely possible to fork a creature spell. Why not?
(2) I'd codify the idea of a "keyword" ability... things like First Strike, flying, flanking, etc... so that much as you can have necrotic ooze or quicksilver elemental which can copy or steal all activated abilities from something, you could have similar cards for all keyword abilities. "This creature has all keyword abilities of creatures your opponents control", etc.
(3) I'd similarly clean up and unify all cards that exile or "set aside" other cards, including imprint cards, parallax wave, faceless butcher, etc. I think a good system would be that for every permanent on the battlefield, there's a "set aside" zone that exists as long as that permanent remains on the battlefield. Have some general rules for moving things into or out of set aside zones, including that anything that tries to move something into a set aside zone that no longer exists fails. This gives you two benefits: (a) gets rid of the super-non-flavorful tricks that you can play with Faceless Butcher and its ilk, and (b) opens up design space for cards that can stick things into other cards set aside zones, or for the crazy tricks that it SEEMS like you ought to be able to play by (for instance) hypnoxing your opponent, then cytoshaping the hypnox into a faceless butcher, then killing it, etc.
And I'd also like to do something to make mana flood and mana screw less of an issue, but I feel like that really deserves a thread of its own, so I'll ignore that for now.
I would probably leave it the way it is.
I understand some people have pet peeve rules/rule changes but i started playing after most major rules changes, so the way it is now is pretty ok to me.
Also, inb4 "BRING BACK MANA BURN"
Edit: Ok, i lied a bit. I dislike the current legend rule, and how clones become removal spells, but that is purely a flavor thing. I can't think of any replacements to the current legend rule that aren't worse anyways.
lol I was thinking of Legendary too, I would prefer that aditional creatures and clones fizz (go to the graveyard) or kill the active one. But while those two are more flavorful, I understand how the current rule is more fair.
I am a firm believer in "one free mulligan" since it means more good games, rather than more handicapped by luck games.
Honestly I would be happy scrapping Regeneration and doing everything as "play it from your graveyard when you could play a sorcery".
Do something to try to fix Mana Screw. The problem is you can't really let people keep taking Mulligans without a penalty b/c they'll redraw for more "ideal" hands.
So you could do something like allow for any card in hand to be laid face down in place of your land drop and treat it as a generic colorless mana generator.
lol I was thinking of Legendary too, I would prefer that aditional creatures and clones fizz (go to the graveyard) or kill the active one. But while those two are more flavorful, I understand how the current rule is more fair.
Up until Kamigawa block, that's how Legendary worked. If there was a Legendary permanent on the board and a second was played, the second would go to the grave and the first would stick around. Because of this, Lin Sivvi became completely broken and got banned out of Masques block.
I much prefer the current rule.
@Qatol: That's how WoW TCG works, but it'll never happen in Magic, partially because that would completely change the game and partially because MaRo has consistently said that he likes how sometimes players falter or flood with regards to mana.
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Edit: Ok, i lied a bit. I dislike the current legend rule, and how clones become removal spells, but that is purely a flavor thing. I can't think of any replacements to the current legend rule that aren't worse anyways.
If we were going back to the beginning, I would just errata all copy cards to include "non-legendary"...
So you could do something like allow for any card in hand to be laid face down in place of your land drop and treat it as a generic colorless mana generator.
I've played a lot of casual games of magic with one or another version of that rule, and it's fun... VERY fun. But it does change things a LOT. If you have wrath in your hand and 2 lands, knowing with 100% certainty that you will absolutely positively make those two lands drops if you want to changes pretty much everything. Would it make Magic a more predictable, less interesting game in the long run? Possibly... it's a complicated question.
I think Maro has a good point about land drops adding variability to the game, but he takes his point way too far when he says that mana screw actually makes the game better. Piffle.
One far less drastic possibility would be this: any time you have > 7 cards and have to discard in your discard step, instead of discarding until you have 7, you discard any number and then draw up to 7. So if you're stuck with 8 non-lands, you can discard 4 of them and then draw 3. (Probably would have to change to exiling or put-on-bottom-of-library to avoid super-easy-filling-of-graveyard.)
One far less drastic possibility would be this: any time you have > 7 cards and have to discard in your discard step, instead of discarding until you have 7, you discard any number and then draw up to 7. So if you're stuck with 8 non-lands, you can discard 4 of them and then draw 3. (Probably would have to change to exiling or put-on-bottom-of-library to avoid super-easy-filling-of-graveyard.)
That is the most drastic change, as that would alter the game completely.
Combo would absolutely destroy every deck always if they had that kind of card selection
That is the most drastic change, as that would alter the game completely.
Combo would absolutely destroy every deck always if they had that kind of card selection
I'm not sure I agree. Would combo deliberately want to choose to draw first, then skip playing a land turn 1, just to get one big bazaar of baghdad activation (without actually putting more than one card in the GY)? As someone who is definitely not a constructed combo player, I gotta say I have no idea.
@Qatol: That's how WoW TCG works, but it'll never happen in Magic, partially because that would completely change the game and partially because MaRo has consistently said that he likes how sometimes players falter or flood with regards to mana.
Interesting, thanks, I did not know that, never touched or looked at WoW TCG.
I'd like to experiment with changing the mulligan rule to 7-6-6-5-5-5-4-4-4-4 and so on. Or maybe 7-6-6-5-5-4-4-...
Some point that would decrease the number of games lost to being dealt nonviable hands but not be so abusable that people are mulling to 5 all the time for better selection.
It would be more fun because it would eliminate bad feelings of being dealt awful hands and it would increase skill because players are presented with more options to change their fate.
I do miss mana burn, I dont really understand why it went away.
I don't understand why an effect like Exalted can stack, and an effect like Lifelink cannot, unification either way would make more sense.
I don't have any suggestions to adjust mana flood/screw, as managing your resources during deckbuilding helps for better decks. I think a better mana producing card pool would help better then a rules change (simpler, more accessable duel lands, colored mana producing lands with additional effects.) But just printing new cards isn't really an elegant solution either.
I'd like to experiment with changing the mulligan rule to 7-6-6-5-5-5-4-4-4-4 and so on. Or maybe 7-6-6-5-5-4-4-...
Some point that would decrease the number of games lost to being dealt nonviable hands but not be so abusable that people are mulling to 5 all the time for better selection.
It would be more fun because it would eliminate bad feelings of being dealt awful hands and it would increase skill because players are presented with more options to change their fate.
I think this is the best solution. Printing fixers/improved cards, as stated by Mazeura, would make them just overpowered, and creating a new way to get mana such as putting cards facedown would radically chane to much.
Another solution might be cards that can enter either as creatures, or lands:
Forest bear 1G
Creature / Land: Bear / Forest
This card can be played either as a land, or as a creature. If you play it as a land you do not have to pay the casting cost.
2/2
Ofcourse, this is strictly better than a normal land, and would cause massive weird interractions with rulings.
If I could change the rules, I would've added more keywords, as keywords make the game easier to get into for new players.
From the top of my head:
Mill X - put top x from library into graveyard
Berserker - This creature attacks every turn if able
Reckless - This creature can't attack
Foretell X - look at the top X cards you your library
I do miss mana burn, I dont really understand why it went away.
I don't understand why an effect like Exalted can stack, and an effect like Lifelink cannot, unification either way would make more sense.
I don't have any suggestions to adjust mana flood/screw, as managing your resources during deckbuilding helps for better decks. I think a better mana producing card pool would help better then a rules change (simpler, more accessable duel lands, colored mana producing lands with additional effects.) But just printing new cards isn't really an elegant solution either.
Because 2 instances of Exalted means that there are two separate triggers, each of which state "Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, that creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn".
On the other hand, 2 instances of lifelink means that there are two instances of "Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life", and having two instances of that doesn't suddenly cause it to read "Damage dealt by this creature causes you to gain life equal to twice the damage dealt."
Prior to the M10 rules changes, lifelink read "Whenever ~ deals damage, you gain that much life", and multiple instances of lifelink did stack with one another.
The one thing that has always bothered me is that if I use the effect of Heritage Druid and tapped my three elves to create GGG, I have not tapped any permanents for mana.
Tapping a permanent for mana means, in CR parlance, to activate an ability of a permanent which includes :symt: as a cost and which is a mana ability.
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I do miss mana burn, I dont really understand why it went away.
Because it closed off a fair amount of interesting design space for little benefit. The ability to create cards like Omnath, Locus of Mana or Braid of Fire is definitely superior to mana burn.
As for mine...
MaRo has said he would prefer it if instants were a subtype of sorcery. I can see the merit in that.
I don't like that clone effects kill legends, but agree that it's probably the least bad option.
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Current Decks
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Standard: White Weenie :symw:, UW Control:symwu:
As some others said, I would change something to avoid manascrew/manaflood. Don't know exactly what, but it would be in that direction. I think Magic is not a luck game but a strategy one, and I don't see Kasparov rolling a dice to decide his starting setup or check if its rook gets eaten or not.
What I think they could have done back when they created the game is to play with decks split in two, that is, a normal deck and a land deck, and allow players to draw one card from each deck per turn. Of course that's impossible to implement at this point as it would mess with a lot of things, but I think that's how the game should have started.
Yeah, the Marvel and DC ccg game also had you put any sort of card down to pay for bringing in more characters or using abilities or cards.
The problem is that with Magic "as is" it would potentially create new strategies.
For example: "Facedown Card equals 1 colorless": major boon to artifact decks.
Card is played Face Up, and represent a land used to cast it: memory for multi color and also nothing would stop you from dumpling situational cards since they are worthless but worth something as a land.
That said this could work:
If a the end of a players turn they have 8 or more cards in their hand and have not played a land, they may exile a card and search the library for one basic land that produces one of the colors used to cast that card and put it into play tapped.
Hopefully that would prevent:
a) I NEED 1 mountain for a lightning bolt so I can fry you during your turn.
b) Extra ramp (it only kicks in during a serious mana screw)
c) Avoids exploitation for graveyard hijinks.
d) If your hand is all colorless and you cannot play... you forgot to add land.
e) Basic land, not fancy pants land.
f) Too late during the turn to synergize with most "land comes into play" effects.
Honestly, I don't see much that I would change. A part of me wants damage on the stack back but then cards like Ember Hauler and Restoration angel would get absolutely bonkers.
If it means taking less away from design, then it can stay gone.
Also there's nothing you guys can come up with to prevent mana screw/flood without changing the way we play magic completely. Give up and deal.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
1) Maybe tweak layers so that they're _strictly_ applied time stamp rather than the current version where some effects go to definite layers. That sort of thing is counterintuitive and hellishly hard to explain at times.
2) spell enters the stack before it gets paid for. I think its fine, but explaining that to some players is like pulling hair. They simply can't seem to grasp the concept. "How can a spell enter the stack when it hasn't been paid for?!". I'm fairly sure even some people reading this thread aren't even aware that the spell enters the stack first, rather than having to have mana available first.
3) things like hexproof/shroud being ignored by crown of the ages. It is counterintuitive and hard to explain to newbs.
What I'm very surprised about is no one has brought up "ban IDs!" yet.
2) spell enters the stack before it gets paid for. I think its fine, but explaining that to some players is like pulling hair. They simply can't seem to grasp the concept. "How can a spell enter the stack when it hasn't been paid for?!". I'm fairly sure even some people reading this thread aren't even aware that the spell enters the stack first, rather than having to have mana available first.
Yeah, I think that this was added basically as a convenience, because people like to actually announce their spell and then tap their lands... particularly on MTGO. But if the rule was just "you may not cast a spell unless you can ALREADY pay all of its costs, with mana already in your pool" then all sorts of crazy-ass corner cases involving rifstone portal and chromatic star and so forth just vanish.
I'd also do my best to get rid of any of the fairly small number of things where you pay the mana at resolution, such as Furnace Celebration. It obviously makes RULES sense, but it doesn't make PLAYING sense, as it basically works exactly backwards from everything else. (Granted, it would require some new templating, but I think the way it should work is I sacrifice something, so furnace celebration triggers and an ability goes on the stack. When the trigger resolves, I MAY pay 2 mana and choose a target. If I do, then a new and different ability goes on the stack with a target. Maybe the templating should be like an activated ability, but with a play timing restriction. So furnace celebration would read "Whenever you sacrifice a permanent, you may play this ability once -- 2: ~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player" or something like that.)
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For me: The vast, vast majority of changes between 1993 and now are good, so I'd certainly start with the current rules and terminologies as a starting point. That said, I'd make a few minorish changes:
(1) Get rid of the weird interaction between trample and deathtouch. It almost never comes up, is counterintuitive, anti-flavorful, and hard to remember.
(2) Allow multiple instances of lifelink to work they way you expect them to
And at least one more major change:
(1) I understand, and mostly agree with, the logic behind removing damage-on-the-stack, but I've never liked ordering blockers. So I'd go with a hybrid system in which the timing and phases of things are just like the old damage-on-the-stack system, with an additional rule that if a creature isn't on the battlefield when damage actually RESOLVES, it doesn't deal damage. So I attack, you block, then I do any final pumping of my creature's power, you can respond, then I assign where all the damage will GO (damage on the stack), but if I unsummon or sacrifice or you kill my guy then, he won't actually deal the damage
And a few other changes intended to open up neat areas of design space:
(1) I'd add a rule that copying a permanent spell was perfectly legal, and if a copy of a permanent spell resolved, it would create a token copy of the permanent. So it would be entirely possible to fork a creature spell. Why not?
(2) I'd codify the idea of a "keyword" ability... things like First Strike, flying, flanking, etc... so that much as you can have necrotic ooze or quicksilver elemental which can copy or steal all activated abilities from something, you could have similar cards for all keyword abilities. "This creature has all keyword abilities of creatures your opponents control", etc.
(3) I'd similarly clean up and unify all cards that exile or "set aside" other cards, including imprint cards, parallax wave, faceless butcher, etc. I think a good system would be that for every permanent on the battlefield, there's a "set aside" zone that exists as long as that permanent remains on the battlefield. Have some general rules for moving things into or out of set aside zones, including that anything that tries to move something into a set aside zone that no longer exists fails. This gives you two benefits: (a) gets rid of the super-non-flavorful tricks that you can play with Faceless Butcher and its ilk, and (b) opens up design space for cards that can stick things into other cards set aside zones, or for the crazy tricks that it SEEMS like you ought to be able to play by (for instance) hypnoxing your opponent, then cytoshaping the hypnox into a faceless butcher, then killing it, etc.
And I'd also like to do something to make mana flood and mana screw less of an issue, but I feel like that really deserves a thread of its own, so I'll ignore that for now.
I understand some people have pet peeve rules/rule changes but i started playing after most major rules changes, so the way it is now is pretty ok to me.
Also, inb4 "BRING BACK MANA BURN"
Edit: Ok, i lied a bit. I dislike the current legend rule, and how clones become removal spells, but that is purely a flavor thing. I can't think of any replacements to the current legend rule that aren't worse anyways.
I am a firm believer in "one free mulligan" since it means more good games, rather than more handicapped by luck games.
Honestly I would be happy scrapping Regeneration and doing everything as "play it from your graveyard when you could play a sorcery".
www.theconnoisseurs.com
So you could do something like allow for any card in hand to be laid face down in place of your land drop and treat it as a generic colorless mana generator.
Up until Kamigawa block, that's how Legendary worked. If there was a Legendary permanent on the board and a second was played, the second would go to the grave and the first would stick around. Because of this, Lin Sivvi became completely broken and got banned out of Masques block.
I much prefer the current rule.
@Qatol: That's how WoW TCG works, but it'll never happen in Magic, partially because that would completely change the game and partially because MaRo has consistently said that he likes how sometimes players falter or flood with regards to mana.
Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
Have played duals? I have PucaPoints for them!
(Credit to DarkNightCavalier)
$tandard: Too poor.
Modern:
- GW Birthing Pod(?)
Legacy:
- UWR Delver
If we were going back to the beginning, I would just errata all copy cards to include "non-legendary"...
I've played a lot of casual games of magic with one or another version of that rule, and it's fun... VERY fun. But it does change things a LOT. If you have wrath in your hand and 2 lands, knowing with 100% certainty that you will absolutely positively make those two lands drops if you want to changes pretty much everything. Would it make Magic a more predictable, less interesting game in the long run? Possibly... it's a complicated question.
I think Maro has a good point about land drops adding variability to the game, but he takes his point way too far when he says that mana screw actually makes the game better. Piffle.
One far less drastic possibility would be this: any time you have > 7 cards and have to discard in your discard step, instead of discarding until you have 7, you discard any number and then draw up to 7. So if you're stuck with 8 non-lands, you can discard 4 of them and then draw 3. (Probably would have to change to exiling or put-on-bottom-of-library to avoid super-easy-filling-of-graveyard.)
That is the most drastic change, as that would alter the game completely.
Combo would absolutely destroy every deck always if they had that kind of card selection
I'm not sure I agree. Would combo deliberately want to choose to draw first, then skip playing a land turn 1, just to get one big bazaar of baghdad activation (without actually putting more than one card in the GY)? As someone who is definitely not a constructed combo player, I gotta say I have no idea.
Interesting, thanks, I did not know that, never touched or looked at WoW TCG.
Some point that would decrease the number of games lost to being dealt nonviable hands but not be so abusable that people are mulling to 5 all the time for better selection.
It would be more fun because it would eliminate bad feelings of being dealt awful hands and it would increase skill because players are presented with more options to change their fate.
Also mana burn.
I don't understand why an effect like Exalted can stack, and an effect like Lifelink cannot, unification either way would make more sense.
I don't have any suggestions to adjust mana flood/screw, as managing your resources during deckbuilding helps for better decks. I think a better mana producing card pool would help better then a rules change (simpler, more accessable duel lands, colored mana producing lands with additional effects.) But just printing new cards isn't really an elegant solution either.
Noah Weil on scouting, an attorney from Seattle with 20 Pro Tour appearances.
I think this is the best solution. Printing fixers/improved cards, as stated by Mazeura, would make them just overpowered, and creating a new way to get mana such as putting cards facedown would radically chane to much.
Another solution might be cards that can enter either as creatures, or lands:
Forest bear 1G
Creature / Land: Bear / Forest
This card can be played either as a land, or as a creature. If you play it as a land you do not have to pay the casting cost.
2/2
Ofcourse, this is strictly better than a normal land, and would cause massive weird interractions with rulings.
If I could change the rules, I would've added more keywords, as keywords make the game easier to get into for new players.
From the top of my head:
Mill X - put top x from library into graveyard
Berserker - This creature attacks every turn if able
Reckless - This creature can't attack
Foretell X - look at the top X cards you your library
Because 2 instances of Exalted means that there are two separate triggers, each of which state "Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, that creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn".
On the other hand, 2 instances of lifelink means that there are two instances of "Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life", and having two instances of that doesn't suddenly cause it to read "Damage dealt by this creature causes you to gain life equal to twice the damage dealt."
Prior to the M10 rules changes, lifelink read "Whenever ~ deals damage, you gain that much life", and multiple instances of lifelink did stack with one another.
The one thing that has always bothered me is that if I use the effect of Heritage Druid and tapped my three elves to create GGG, I have not tapped any permanents for mana.
Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
Have played duals? I have PucaPoints for them!
(Credit to DarkNightCavalier)
$tandard: Too poor.
Modern:
- GW Birthing Pod(?)
Legacy:
- UWR Delver
Because it closed off a fair amount of interesting design space for little benefit. The ability to create cards like Omnath, Locus of Mana or Braid of Fire is definitely superior to mana burn.
As for mine...
MaRo has said he would prefer it if instants were a subtype of sorcery. I can see the merit in that.
I don't like that clone effects kill legends, but agree that it's probably the least bad option.
EDH: Captain Sisay Tokens
Standard: White Weenie :symw:, UW Control:symwu:
WRGBCombo MillWRGB
???
Modern:
UUWWErayo AffinityWWUU
WWGUEnchantress ControlUGWW
EDH:
GGBBGlissa MultiplayerBBGG
RRRRKazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs Land DestructionRRRR
Not quite. MaRo said that he would prefer if Instant were a supertype (like Snow or Legendary are supertypes)
So, an "instant" would be an Instant Sorcery, and a creature with flash would be Instant Creature - [creature subtype].
Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
Have played duals? I have PucaPoints for them!
(Credit to DarkNightCavalier)
$tandard: Too poor.
Modern:
- GW Birthing Pod(?)
Legacy:
- UWR Delver
What I think they could have done back when they created the game is to play with decks split in two, that is, a normal deck and a land deck, and allow players to draw one card from each deck per turn. Of course that's impossible to implement at this point as it would mess with a lot of things, but I think that's how the game should have started.
The problem is that with Magic "as is" it would potentially create new strategies.
For example: "Facedown Card equals 1 colorless": major boon to artifact decks.
Card is played Face Up, and represent a land used to cast it: memory for multi color and also nothing would stop you from dumpling situational cards since they are worthless but worth something as a land.
That said this could work:
If a the end of a players turn they have 8 or more cards in their hand and have not played a land, they may exile a card and search the library for one basic land that produces one of the colors used to cast that card and put it into play tapped.
Hopefully that would prevent:
a) I NEED 1 mountain for a lightning bolt so I can fry you during your turn.
b) Extra ramp (it only kicks in during a serious mana screw)
c) Avoids exploitation for graveyard hijinks.
d) If your hand is all colorless and you cannot play... you forgot to add land.
e) Basic land, not fancy pants land.
f) Too late during the turn to synergize with most "land comes into play" effects.
www.theconnoisseurs.com
If it means taking less away from design, then it can stay gone.
Also there's nothing you guys can come up with to prevent mana screw/flood without changing the way we play magic completely. Give up and deal.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
At most:
1) Maybe tweak layers so that they're _strictly_ applied time stamp rather than the current version where some effects go to definite layers. That sort of thing is counterintuitive and hellishly hard to explain at times.
2) spell enters the stack before it gets paid for. I think its fine, but explaining that to some players is like pulling hair. They simply can't seem to grasp the concept. "How can a spell enter the stack when it hasn't been paid for?!". I'm fairly sure even some people reading this thread aren't even aware that the spell enters the stack first, rather than having to have mana available first.
3) things like hexproof/shroud being ignored by crown of the ages. It is counterintuitive and hard to explain to newbs.
What I'm very surprised about is no one has brought up "ban IDs!" yet.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I'd make a one "free muligan rule".
I'd get rid of "the battlefield". I hate that terminology with a passion. Of all the changes they've made over the years that one bothers me the most.
Yeah, I think that this was added basically as a convenience, because people like to actually announce their spell and then tap their lands... particularly on MTGO. But if the rule was just "you may not cast a spell unless you can ALREADY pay all of its costs, with mana already in your pool" then all sorts of crazy-ass corner cases involving rifstone portal and chromatic star and so forth just vanish.
I'd also do my best to get rid of any of the fairly small number of things where you pay the mana at resolution, such as Furnace Celebration. It obviously makes RULES sense, but it doesn't make PLAYING sense, as it basically works exactly backwards from everything else. (Granted, it would require some new templating, but I think the way it should work is I sacrifice something, so furnace celebration triggers and an ability goes on the stack. When the trigger resolves, I MAY pay 2 mana and choose a target. If I do, then a new and different ability goes on the stack with a target. Maybe the templating should be like an activated ability, but with a play timing restriction. So furnace celebration would read "Whenever you sacrifice a permanent, you may play this ability once -- 2: ~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player" or something like that.)