I’ve played this game since Ice Age and probably have a solid level 1 judge level of rules knowledge. I currently play on MTGO due to COVID. After my third loss, mid but usually late(ish) game due to poor luck drawing 3+ lands in a row with a deck with 6 fetches and the proper land count, it made me stop and seriously think about how to make this game better.
We all know mana screw due to opening draw is a thing we’ve overhauled mulligans for; trying to reduce the number of non-games, particularly in televised MTG. It’s harder to make this game entertaining and expand it with boring, waste of time, non-games. If you get a god hand and the other guy doesn’t, tough luck. There’s only so much we can do with a game of chance. But what happens when your great game that goes long(ish) suddenly goes to crap bc of mana flood when you already have a solid operating mana base on the battlefield? You get another non-game, just late instead of early. If games of chance have too much chance, their rules need to tighten up.
New rule! You can cycle any land for 1 (or maybe 2 colorless) that doesn’t already have a cycling function once during your turn at instant (or sorcery depending on play testing) speed. Lands cycled this way are exiled and do not trigger cycling-triggered abilities. If you do so, you cannot play lands afterward during your turn. If you choose to play a land(s) from anywhere prior to this cycling function, you cannot choose to use this function till your next turn. This includes spells and effects that put lands into play during your turn from anywhere. It’s either play land(s) or free-cycle a non-cycling land. Cycling lands do not change. You can cycle a cycling land and your free-cycled land too.
I’ve play tested this some and I can’t find any major exploits that break the game. It eliminates more chance and more non-games.
if you wanted to get more clear on keeping track of when a player plays a land or free-cycles, the player must announce free-cycling (done when they have priority) and place a free-cycling completion token into play to be removed at cleanup.
Try this out. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. One player said to me, “will this make having more lands better?” I say no, bc you can freecycle only one land per turn, on your turn, can’t play more land afterward, and the land is exiled. This works. Try it out.
Hmm, haven't tried it out but from a glance it looks like helps one type of deck more than the others and these are hyperaggresive decks.
Decks that rely on their landdrops don't benefit that much from that rule they might even loose out a bit.
Unfortunately don't have anyone to test it out rn to give more feedback.
Some addendums: while priority is not passed for playing lands, priority is passed with free-cycling. It’s too advantageous to retain priority while being able to draw a card.
All lands exiled with free-cycling are exiled face down. The land is revealed upon activation of free-cycling before priority is passed. This way, no return of face up, exiled lands can occur.
Good point. That would make a cost of 1 to do it too easy for that deck. It would have to be 2. If this cost is too high (3) then it again favors low cc spells drawn off the cycling.
I would think big mana decks would love this and have a distinct advantage over other on curve mana decks. If you would pair the mana cost with a pay 3 life cost as well I would be more inclined. Although more difficult to determine, I would like to see the cycling cost you proposed be something like "Pay X mana rounded up to cycle where X is one half of the maximum mana you have available produced by permanents on the battlefield." That way big mana decks are at least paying a more "fair share" for the cycling cost versus on curve decks.
I agree flood at the end of a game makes for a lot of "non" games.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
The game rules are made around struggling to get 3+ lands, so many decks especially if they reduce the overall curve to 1-2 mana, then they operate alot more smooth.
Legacy decks with Brainstorm, fetchlands and the like are a very real representation how "mana" can smooth out in a very good way, simply play much less lands and build the deck to be able to operate with 2 lands, and lands with abilities or cards to utilize them (discard to Liliana and such).
Decks with high mana costs need a ton more lands, control decks with 30+ lands will draw a lot of lands, so having some way to discard them for an effect or drawing into more gas is basically what makes all control decks opt into blue to get such draw effects in some way or another.
Drawing blind into a random card always has the problem that you can have insane luck and curve out or draw dead cards that are just worthless.
If you dont want that, you would basically have a permanent Abundance , so you can just decide to draw lands or non-lands.
That will guarantee more cards that are meaningful for the game state, you cant sit on no-land, as you can always just force the land draw, and if you have enough lands, you can just decide to never draw lands again.
Splitting decks into a pile of lands and non-lands works the same.
It makes all draw spells much stronger, if you are guaranteed to hit non-lands and fuel your hand, it completely removes the potential to brick a draw spell into multiple lands (unless you want to get lands).
To completely remove lands entirely also works, just have a "land-board" of like 15 lands and let the player pick the land they want to play.
Thats a problem with Urza lands and the like, which only exist as the randomness to get them is a thing.
But if there is no randomness in your land drops, the games randomness shifts entirely to the ability to draw the specific cards to curve out and beat the opponents curve (still, randomness, but much less dead games where you sit on 2 lands and cant play anything, or draw 5+ lands and have nothing to answer anything).
The double sided land spell-land cards help quite a bit in that regard too, but its a special thing, just like cycling is a special ability on some lands or cards, all help to smooth out bad draws.
If each card you play has a inherent scry 1 , each land helps to see what you draw and gives you a choice, all the time, so even that is reducing the potential for bad draws, while it increases the potential for good draws, so the divide gets shifted to more enjoyable games where stuff works out as intended and less luck involved.
The most extreme form is to simply allow every single card to be visible at all times.
You have a face-up library, you know what you draw, your opponent knows what you will draw, and everyone would have perfect information at all times to make their choices, in which case, Magic turns into a fairly complicated Chess-game, but without randomness, suddenly a "perfect" play is possible.
Each of these changes has a effect on the game itself, having more "scry" or "cycling" on basically any card helps to produce more smooth games, it shrinks the divide between perfect god hands and curving out with the total non-games.
But that said, if you remove non-games, the actual better player would basically win almost any time, as a terrible player will not win, if they have just a little bit better draw, they need the non-games to win against a much better player.
So the randomness is a balancing factor, so good players are actually able to lose against any opponent, at least potentially.
And the game has randomness for the sole reason that everyone is at least potentially able to win against any opponent to gap that skill level and make games interesting for each player involved.
If both players are of equal skill level, the randomness is basically the only deciding factor who wins (given no dramatic mistake is made), which can be enjoyable too, if you opt into the randomness and find it enjoyable (as funny enough, if you have a terrible draw and still manage to find a way out and win the game, that you and the opponent decided to be a non-game turns earlier, thats a crazy nice feeling, to do the impossible, like winning with a mulligan to 3, while the opponent has 7 cards, and they draw 7 lands in a row, while you get to curve out, feels wonderful).
We all know mana screw due to opening draw is a thing we’ve overhauled mulligans for; trying to reduce the number of non-games, particularly in televised MTG. It’s harder to make this game entertaining and expand it with boring, waste of time, non-games. If you get a god hand and the other guy doesn’t, tough luck. There’s only so much we can do with a game of chance. But what happens when your great game that goes long(ish) suddenly goes to crap bc of mana flood when you already have a solid operating mana base on the battlefield? You get another non-game, just late instead of early. If games of chance have too much chance, their rules need to tighten up.
New rule! You can cycle any land for 1 (or maybe 2 colorless) that doesn’t already have a cycling function once during your turn at instant (or sorcery depending on play testing) speed. Lands cycled this way are exiled and do not trigger cycling-triggered abilities. If you do so, you cannot play lands afterward during your turn. If you choose to play a land(s) from anywhere prior to this cycling function, you cannot choose to use this function till your next turn. This includes spells and effects that put lands into play during your turn from anywhere. It’s either play land(s) or free-cycle a non-cycling land. Cycling lands do not change. You can cycle a cycling land and your free-cycled land too.
I’ve play tested this some and I can’t find any major exploits that break the game. It eliminates more chance and more non-games.
if you wanted to get more clear on keeping track of when a player plays a land or free-cycles, the player must announce free-cycling (done when they have priority) and place a free-cycling completion token into play to be removed at cleanup.
Try this out. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. One player said to me, “will this make having more lands better?” I say no, bc you can freecycle only one land per turn, on your turn, can’t play more land afterward, and the land is exiled. This works. Try it out.
Decks that rely on their landdrops don't benefit that much from that rule they might even loose out a bit.
Unfortunately don't have anyone to test it out rn to give more feedback.
All lands exiled with free-cycling are exiled face down. The land is revealed upon activation of free-cycling before priority is passed. This way, no return of face up, exiled lands can occur.
I agree flood at the end of a game makes for a lot of "non" games.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Legacy decks with Brainstorm, fetchlands and the like are a very real representation how "mana" can smooth out in a very good way, simply play much less lands and build the deck to be able to operate with 2 lands, and lands with abilities or cards to utilize them (discard to Liliana and such).
Decks with high mana costs need a ton more lands, control decks with 30+ lands will draw a lot of lands, so having some way to discard them for an effect or drawing into more gas is basically what makes all control decks opt into blue to get such draw effects in some way or another.
Drawing blind into a random card always has the problem that you can have insane luck and curve out or draw dead cards that are just worthless.
If you dont want that, you would basically have a permanent Abundance , so you can just decide to draw lands or non-lands.
That will guarantee more cards that are meaningful for the game state, you cant sit on no-land, as you can always just force the land draw, and if you have enough lands, you can just decide to never draw lands again.
Splitting decks into a pile of lands and non-lands works the same.
It makes all draw spells much stronger, if you are guaranteed to hit non-lands and fuel your hand, it completely removes the potential to brick a draw spell into multiple lands (unless you want to get lands).
To completely remove lands entirely also works, just have a "land-board" of like 15 lands and let the player pick the land they want to play.
Thats a problem with Urza lands and the like, which only exist as the randomness to get them is a thing.
But if there is no randomness in your land drops, the games randomness shifts entirely to the ability to draw the specific cards to curve out and beat the opponents curve (still, randomness, but much less dead games where you sit on 2 lands and cant play anything, or draw 5+ lands and have nothing to answer anything).
The double sided land spell-land cards help quite a bit in that regard too, but its a special thing, just like cycling is a special ability on some lands or cards, all help to smooth out bad draws.
If each card you play has a inherent scry 1 , each land helps to see what you draw and gives you a choice, all the time, so even that is reducing the potential for bad draws, while it increases the potential for good draws, so the divide gets shifted to more enjoyable games where stuff works out as intended and less luck involved.
The most extreme form is to simply allow every single card to be visible at all times.
You have a face-up library, you know what you draw, your opponent knows what you will draw, and everyone would have perfect information at all times to make their choices, in which case, Magic turns into a fairly complicated Chess-game, but without randomness, suddenly a "perfect" play is possible.
Each of these changes has a effect on the game itself, having more "scry" or "cycling" on basically any card helps to produce more smooth games, it shrinks the divide between perfect god hands and curving out with the total non-games.
But that said, if you remove non-games, the actual better player would basically win almost any time, as a terrible player will not win, if they have just a little bit better draw, they need the non-games to win against a much better player.
So the randomness is a balancing factor, so good players are actually able to lose against any opponent, at least potentially.
And the game has randomness for the sole reason that everyone is at least potentially able to win against any opponent to gap that skill level and make games interesting for each player involved.
If both players are of equal skill level, the randomness is basically the only deciding factor who wins (given no dramatic mistake is made), which can be enjoyable too, if you opt into the randomness and find it enjoyable (as funny enough, if you have a terrible draw and still manage to find a way out and win the game, that you and the opponent decided to be a non-game turns earlier, thats a crazy nice feeling, to do the impossible, like winning with a mulligan to 3, while the opponent has 7 cards, and they draw 7 lands in a row, while you get to curve out, feels wonderful).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮