Sorry I only made it through the first two pages or so, so i don't know for sure if something like this has been suggested, but an attempt at addressing all of the shortcomings I saw mentioned for the more intuitive 2-deck style:
You get two decks, and just 3 rules for deck construction: 1 Both decks must have the same number of cards. 2 You must have a minimum of 60 cards total. 3 30-44 cards in a deck = You may only have up to 2 copies of a single card in that deck. 45-59 cards in a deck = You can have up to 3 copies. 60 or more cards in a deck = You can have up to 4 copies.
Also just 3 special rules for play: 1At the start of the game, you can distribute the numbers 1-6 amongst your two decks in any proportions you desire (could be all on one deck). Mark down your choices on two index cards or something and set your decks on top of them so the number assignments are clearly visible. For example ("1-2" on one deck, and "3-6" on the other. Keep the numbers consecutive.) 2 Any time you would normally draw a card into your hand, you can freely choose which deck to draw it from. 3 Any time you do ANYTHING else with your library, you decide which deck you do it with by rolling a die, and choosing the deck with that number assigned to it, on a per-card basis.
Examples:
* A card says search your deck for 2 cards (like Tooth and Nail). You roll one die, get a "3" and you can only search within the deck that had "3" assigned to it. Then you roll another die, and you can only search for your second card in that deck.
* A card says to draw 4 cards and then put them back on your library in any order. You roll 4 dice, and use those numbers to draw your cards from one or both decks as indicated. Then you decide your order, and you roll 4 more dice to decide which deck each card goes back on top of in that order.
* A card says to play with the top card of your library revealed. You roll a die and reveal a card from that deck. Whenever you end up drawing that card or otherwise moving it somewhere else, you roll a die again to figure out which deck gets the card revealed on top next.
* A card says to put the top 10 cards of your library in the graveyard. You roll a die 10 times (or a handful of mini dice would be handy - bring one along if you play a mill deck, for convenience. Although decide ahead of time a rule for the order the dice are read in. I.e. in order of how close they land to the roller), and each roll = the source of a single card.
(If one deck is empty, you always remove/search/draw from the other, although you can still place cards into either)
Benefits:
1) There's no strict rules about "land deck only," so you won't piss off people who want to have strategic flexibility.
2) At the same time, it's very difficult to abuse that flexibility. You can't put the 90% of your early game cards (mana and weenies) in one deck and your best 6 fatties in their own deck, for instance, because they have to be equal size. And you can't put 8000 lands in one deck to be immune to dying from mill decks, because your other deck would also need 8000 cards and would be wildly inconsistent. And you can't put all of your playsets in one deck and your singletons in the other to have a "no surprises deck," because the sliding scale of maximum copies guarantees the odds of any one card are about the same as in Magic 1.0.
3) The dice mechanic also avoids abuse and weirdness. Generally, you will assign more weight to the deck that has more interesting/important stuff in it, so that any fetch cards will get you what you want. But this is then linked to a greater likelihood of that deck losing cards to mills and so forth. Alternatively, you could assign 1-6 all to a land deck and play mostly weenies, protecting your from mills... for awhile. But with the more stringent "number of copies" rule, this becomes pretty restrictive, because you may only get 2-3 copies of each card, and you can't use any tutors (because they would only be able to search your land deck). Checks and balances!
3) Much MUCH simpler to understand and less ambiguous than drawing lines in the sand about what are "mana cards" etc.
5) Also much more intuitive and satisfying flavor-wise than converting creatures to lands willy-nilly. Lands are lands. Non-lands are non-lands. Everything is as it seems.
6) You can completely choose how much you do or do not want to be susceptible to mana screw or mana flood. If you make one deck 100% lands, you will be immune to both. If you mix more, you will become increasingly more susceptible, but you get to try more shenanigans in exchange, within reason.
6) The total number of cards in a deck would still hover very near 60 for most normal playstyles. Maybe more like 70-80 or so, since most people normally run more than 30 non-land cards. If you normally run 24 lands, for instance, a vanilla conversion to this format would be 72 cards total: your same normal 37 non-lands, and a matching 37 card land deck. But the slight increase is small enough not to put a burden on people to obtain more cards. And for vanilla conversions, ALL of those extra cards are super cheap basic lands.
There is no luck factor, its poor deck building skills and ability to shuffle a simple deck of cards.
This doesn't make any sense. It's the opposite, actually. Shuffling correctly makes it MORE unpredictable.
If you just do a half-*** job of shuffling once or twice, then you know you won't get all the same cards again. Whereas if you put your cards in some sort of computerized shuffling machine that harnessed random background radiation to shuffle your cards or whatever, there WOULD always be a chance that you could get the same hand again.
Bad shuffling = Subset of possible randomizations next hand = more predictable.
Good shuffling = Equal probability of all possible randomizations = less predictable (and some probability that all your hands will be just land, even with multiple mulligans)
God no this is horribly, horribly broken. And not just because of charbelcher.
This basically turns Magic into yu-gi-oh, and glorifies the starting hand. Mana screw/flood are VERY important aspects to the game. And knowing how to build your deck right so that you'll have access to the cards you want when you generally want them is a very important skill to be learned. Just because some noob is tired of "boring" cards that "do nothing" doesn't mean that you can take away a major aspect of the game. Here's a hint, play more lands that do things other than just mana, like Manlands, Wasteland/Tectonic Edge/Encroaching Wastes, Kessig Wolf-Run, etc. Don't dumb down the game because you don't know how to build a deck or mulligan properly (though I'm sure you're one of the unimaginative masses who mindlessly copies netdecks all day, so likely the latter).
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This doesn't make any sense. It's the opposite, actually. Shuffling correctly makes it MORE unpredictable.
If you just do a half-*** job of shuffling once or twice, then you know you won't get all the same cards again. Whereas if you put your cards in some sort of computerized shuffling machine that harnessed random background radiation to shuffle your cards or whatever, there WOULD always be a chance that you could get the same hand again.
Bad shuffling = Subset of possible randomizations next hand = more predictable.
Good shuffling = Equal probability of all possible randomizations = less predictable (and some probability that all your hands will be just land, even with multiple mulligans)
Sorry, but I rarely get mana screwed. This format caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks.
Sorry, but I rarely get mana screwed. This format caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks.
Sorry you disagree.
Prove it. Post a deck you have designed that you believe gets mana screwed less often than other people's decks. And then we can copy/paste it onto tappedout.net or similar, and playtest it using a superhumanly good shuffling algorithm. Thus meeting both of your qualifications -- a deck up to your standards, and perfect shuffling.
Then we can confirm just how rare mana screw/flood is under your conditions.
I suspect that it won't be much different than in a normal deck, and that the reason you may experience it less is due to shuffling BADLY and not fully randomizing, therefore guaranteeing your clumps of land actually get broken up, instead of guaranteeing nothing at all like a truly random shuffle should do. But I may be wrong. Let's see the goods and try 'em out.
Also, if "people who can build proper decks and shuffle" are immune to things like mana flood/screw, then why do world championship tournaments still do best 3 out of 5?
Surely, if good deck building and shuffling removes luck from the equation, then we could just make do with a single game, yes? Those people surely know how to build good decks and how to shuffle, so it should be just skill, so why waste everybody's time with best of 5?
God no this is horribly, horribly broken. And not just because of charbelcher.
This basically turns Magic into yu-gi-oh, and glorifies the starting hand. Mana screw/flood are VERY important aspects to the game. And knowing how to build your deck right so that you'll have access to the cards you want when you generally want them is a very important skill to be learned. Just because some noob is tired of "boring" cards that "do nothing" doesn't mean that you can take away a major aspect of the game. Here's a hint, play more lands that do things other than just mana, like Manlands, Wasteland/Tectonic Edge/Encroaching Wastes, Kessig Wolf-Run, etc. Don't dumb down the game because you don't know how to build a deck or mulligan properly (though I'm sure you're one of the unimaginative masses who mindlessly copies netdecks all day, so likely the latter).
* The two-deck variants (magic 1.5, or a "land only deck" or the variant I suggested at the bottom of the previous page) can easily solve the charbelcher situation, by just having you alternate or choose randomly per card which deck you draw from when forced to do so by a spell (but not when drawing normally).
* The two deck variants also still have land cards, and thus all of the strategy of dual lands and man lands and utility lands, etc. still remains in the game, so it isn't "dumbing it down" like you are claiming (perhaps rightfully) that the 2.0 version does.
* Mana screw/flood is not only something that happens in your starting hand, so mulligans are not a continuing protection against it. Yes, mulligans can (usually) make sure you aren't COMPLETELY screwed and have some sort of a base, but you can still end up drawing 10 land cards in a row turns 2-11, for instance, or none, no matter how you build your deck (unless you have fewer than 13 or more than 46 lands or have a ridiculous number of tutors to make sure one or more are in your start hand... neither is a common situation).
The only time I ever get mana screwed is when I'm dumb enough to keep a 1 or 2 land hand at 6 or 7.
Yeah mana flood happens from time to time, but I account for that by playing mana sinks like Sphinx's Revelation/Celestial Colonnade, or Kessig Wolf run.
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Sorry I only made it through the first two pages or so, so i don't know for sure if something like this has been suggested, but an attempt at addressing all of the shortcomings I saw mentioned for the more intuitive 2-deck style:
You get two decks, and just 3 rules for deck construction: 1 Both decks must have the same number of cards. 2 You must have a minimum of 60 cards total. 3 30-44 cards in a deck = You may only have up to 2 copies of a single card in that deck. 45-59 cards in a deck = You can have up to 3 copies. 60 or more cards in a deck = You can have up to 4 copies.
Also just 3 special rules for play: 1At the start of the game, you can distribute the numbers 1-6 amongst your two decks in any proportions you desire (could be all on one deck). Mark down your choices on two index cards or something and set your decks on top of them so the number assignments are clearly visible. For example ("1-2" on one deck, and "3-6" on the other. Keep the numbers consecutive.) 2 Any time you would normally draw a card into your hand, you can freely choose which deck to draw it from. 3 Any time you do ANYTHING else with your library, you decide which deck you do it with by rolling a die, and choosing the deck with that number assigned to it, on a per-card basis.
--snip--
As far as the two-deck variant is concerned, the improvements look good, except maybe for all the die rolling. Simple alternating between the libraries looks more simple.
Because that's the thing with these variants, especially for Constructed where metagame has to be considered. The more flexibility and variability you provide, the more time it takes for a new person to get into the format, understand it, and master it.
For example, I no longer even ask my friends to try and build decks for M2.0 Constructed. It too much of a hassle for them because some play Magic competitively and don't want to "stain" their deck-building skills (that's what they claim anyway:rolleyes:), some rarely play at all and have a different excuse etc.
So in order to play, I mostly build all the decks myself and test by lending them. And in Limited, I'm trying hard to keep everything as simple as possible. The most popular are the wildcards (see post 23) as they are super easy to use in any format for everyone.
Even M2.0 Limited is sometimes a tough sell even when playing casually. So for me, simplicity matters a lot.
I just don't get it, it seems like how i would teach a child to play before they can understand proper magic. Mana screw and flood are aspects of the game that you learn to deal with. Simple as that.
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Mana screw/flood are VERY important aspects to the game.
Yes, for business and for sucking in new players, as discussed earlier in this thread and by R.Garfield himself.
Tell me, why is mana screw and flood important to you? And why so very few other TCG/LCG games even allow it?
And knowing how to build your deck right so that you'll have access to the cards you want when you generally want them is a very important skill to be learned. Just because some noob is tired of "boring" cards that "do nothing" doesn't mean that you can take away a major aspect of the game. Here's a hint, play more lands that do things other than just mana, like Manlands, Wasteland/Tectonic Edge/Encroaching Wastes, Kessig Wolf-Run, etc. Don't dumb down the game because you don't know how to build a deck or mulligan properly (though I'm sure you're one of the unimaginative masses who mindlessly copies netdecks all day, so likely the latter).
Not sure if you responded specifically to Crimeo's two-deck variant, M2.0, or any Magic variant eliminating screw/flood. But again, M2.0 is primarily for drafts where value lands and good mana sinks tend to be sparse. Plus, if you manage to draft good cards, know how build a deck with adequate mana base, and still happen to lose 2 games out of 3 because of dumb luck, it's just a stupid waste of time because you are unlikely to play with the same deck again. This is a big difference compared to Constructed where you can make your deck better over time. Mana problems happen to EVERYONE, even the best out of the best, go read some GP Top 8 reports to confirm.
Then, if you already like M2.0 Limited, you can try M2.0 Constructed, which plays differently from M1.0.
But if you cannot enjoy Magic without its flaws, that is perfectly fine in my opinion.
I just don't get it, it seems like how i would teach a child to play before they can understand proper magic. Mana screw and flood are aspects of the game that you learn to deal with. Simple as that.
I understand your bewilderment, I felt the same way for many years only because I lived in a bubble, never trying other games, never looking at history of Magic and its mechanics, and never questioning the rules as if they were set in stone.
I suggest you read the opening post of this thread for brief overview.
As far as the two-deck variant is concerned, the improvements look good, except maybe for all the die rolling. Simple alternating between the libraries looks more simple.
Because that's the thing with these variants, especially for Constructed where metagame has to be considered. The more flexibility and variability you provide, the more time it takes for a new person to get into the format, understand it, and master it.
For example, I no longer even ask my friends to try and build decks for M2.0 Constructed. It too much of a hassle for them because some play Magic competitively and don't want to "stain" their deck-building skills (that's what they claim anyway:rolleyes:), some rarely play at all and have a different excuse etc.
So in order to play, I mostly build all the decks myself and test by lending them. And in Limited, I'm trying hard to keep everything as simple as possible. The most popular are the wildcards (see post 23) as they are super easy to use in any format for everyone.
Even M2.0 Limited is sometimes a tough sell even when playing casually. So for me, simplicity matters a lot.
Alternating is simpler conceptually, but breaks a lot more cards and introduces more shenanigans. For instance, cards that say things like "put cards from your library into your graveyard until you hit a land" work pretty much as intended by WOTC in the dice rolling variant, but on alternation, are guaranteed to only bury 1-2 cards.
Also you could time things to be squirrely, like if a card says "draw 3, then discard 2" you would wait until the alternation says the next card is from your creature deck, and guarantee 2 useful cards late game and 1 land.
How about a compromise:
* Fine, make it 50/50, but still i think should be random. 50/50 puts a slight strain on game design since decks that WOTC designed cards for are usually closer to 2/5 lands, not 1/2, but probably close enough, and the simplicity seems worth it.
* Replace dice tossing (or in this case coin flipping) with some faster digital solution. Whoever in the meta is the one pushing the variant (like you or me), they take the trouble of providing a laptop or smartphone with a coin flipping app or whatever on it. Random.org conveniently will give you a whole page of random bits almost instantly for situations where you mill 10 cards or whatever. OR you can buy little devices that blink one of two lights mostly randomly off like Amazon or whatever, if table space is a concern. Just slide it right between the person's two decks and hit the button, and you draw from the deck next to the light that lights up.
* The guy pushing the variant on the meta also goes to the trouble of buying a box or two of 400 spare lands, to let people use since the equal deck size means almost everybody will have more lands needed than before.
So that's easier than my variant, and the randomization should still maintain most deck strategies to the point where you don't HAVE to build a deck for this format. You can just use any old magic 1.0 deck, and borrow the half dozen or whatever extra lands you need for your second deck from me to get it up to size, and you're off to the races.
The flexibility still exists to do more interesting mixes of your two decks, but any vanilla deck can be converted to the vanilla two decks (one land one not) easily, without design effort, for those who don't want to "stain" their deck building skills.
To people who simply dismiss the idea: Game design 101. Every idea should be playtested even if it sounds silly. Mana management is an integral part of Magic, yes. This variant scraps mana base management in favor of more spell choice and less games where one player is just mana flooded to death. That's a compromise I see many experienced people willing to take.
People in this thread aren't saying that playing Magic with lands is dumb, just that it might be worthwhile to try playing without.
While this format may "caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks" and not develop the same deckbuilding/mulligan skills, that doesn't mean it also lack other appeals.
My main gripe with Magic 2.0 is how hard it is to play because of the lack of people willing to try:
-Many only like to play games with the true rules
-Many invested too much time in mastering the normal rules/metagame
-Newer players can be overwhelmed by the choices
-Building a deck takes time/money that might be wasted if you don't play often.
To people who simply dismiss the idea: Game design 101. Every idea should be playtested even if it sounds silly. Mana management is an integral part of Magic, yes. This variant scraps mana base management in favor of more spell choice and less games where one player is just mana flooded to death. That's a compromise I see many experienced people willing to take.
People in this thread aren't saying that playing Magic with lands is dumb, just that it might be worthwhile to try playing without.
While this format may "caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks" and not develop the same deckbuilding/mulligan skills, that doesn't mean it also lack other appeals.
To be frank, after studying history of Magic and other games, and exploring new variants, I now feel it's dumb every time I play Commander with someone who refuses to even use several wildcards in the game but ends up mulliganing 3 times before drawing something worthwhile. Not as rare in Commander as in other formats.
I also think it's dumb to draft at FNM a pool perceived as good, constructing the deck properly, and then getting screwed without a chance to actually learn how good the deck was (and wasting the entry fee and one's time in the process)...
The "caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks" quote is a non-sequitur anyway. Even if it was true, I don't really care which players a certain variant caters to. Every game or variant should be judged on its own merits.
My main gripe with Magic 2.0 is how hard it is to play because of the lack of people willing to try:
-Many only like to play games with the true rules
Translation: many people are unfortunately susceptible to authority that is almost never unerring. There are no "true" rules - Wizards have been and will continue to change the rules and even casual players who reject changes to the game from a lone innovator will accept them almost without question when announced officially.
-Many invested too much time in mastering the normal rules/metagame
For those who play Magic for PW points, glory, personal recognition, or material prices, this is naturally important. Old habits die hard because the will to let go really must come from within...
-Newer players can be overwhelmed by the choices
Not necessarily if they start learning the variant with a preconstructed deck. I've built several and lend them to anyone willing to try something new.
-Building a deck takes time/money that might be wasted if you don't play often.
On the other hand, the metagame does not fluctuate as much, so if you build just a few decks on tight budget, the decks have a good chance to last until more players join the format, at which point it's no longer wasted if you dedicate some time to make your decks better.
But the entry barriers for new players have to be considered for M2.0 and other variants. I acknowledge that with Magic, the simplicity is the key. That's why I now mostly play M1.0 with 3 wildcards (5 wildcards in EDH/Commander), which is super easy and convenient. Wildcards really help to promote the idea of M2.0 for special occasions and when I play casually 1 on 1, for example.
^
I'm guessing this guy was referring to choices in-game, most likely specifically the 2.0 variant, as you constantly have to evaluate whether to play any one of your current cards as a land or not, in addition to all your normal decisions.
Which isn't necessarily good or bad for game design in the long run, I'm not sure. But is certainly more intimidating to new people to the game or the format.
This could be another advantage of my strong preference: a 2 deck solution. Choosing whether to draw from Deck A vs. Deck B is only adding ONE decision per turn over Magic 1.0, whereas Magic 2.0 adds SEVEN more decisions (well not really, but usually more than one)
^
I'm guessing this guy was referring to choices in-game, most likely specifically the 2.0 variant, as you constantly have to evaluate whether to play any one of your current cards as a land or not, in addition to all your normal decisions.
Which isn't necessarily good or bad for game design in the long run, I'm not sure. But is certainly more intimidating to new people to the game or the format.
This could be another advantage of my strong preference: a 2 deck solution. Choosing whether to draw from Deck A vs. Deck B is only adding ONE decision per turn over Magic 1.0, whereas Magic 2.0 adds SEVEN more decisions (well not really, but usually more than one)
Well, I spoke with many new players and they are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of cards and possibilities without knowing anything about M2.0. I think it's a matter of perception. Many card games that are younger than Magic don't use lands at all and they still prosper even if their target audience isn't maybe as ubiquitous as that of Magic. But that is true of M2.0 as well.
A precon deck seems to be a good thing to start with M1.0 and M2.0. The limited pool of cards makes it easier for the new player to get familiar with it regardless of the format. Decks for M2.0 can also be "dumbed down" by construction design:
You can build the deck in such a way that cards with only one colored mana symbol in their casting cost are considered "mostly lands" while cards with two or more colored mana symbols in CC are "mostly spells". And it works - cards that are more mana intensive are usually more powerful and you want to play them more. This way, a new player doesn't have to think too hard about channeling cards at the beginning. But if they get stuck, they know there's a possibility to channel a "mostly spell" or cast a "mostly land" whereas there would be only frustration from the inability to do anything waiting for them in a similar situation in M1.0.
So by making it easy to understand the underlying principle of M2.0, you can offset the extra complexity it entails, ideally leading to empowerment of the new player later on. That is still not to say that M2.0 and similar variants are for everyone but in my opinion it is ultimately rewarding and even a little enlightening to pursue the idea.
Because we all know it - a lot of players secretly hope that their opponent gets screwed or flooded even before a match even starts. They know the chance is always there. Such players profit from misfortune of others. I've met quite a few of such players and their skill isn't usually very high. They netdeck a lot and perceive their opponents' mana problems as good luck. And even though they might not win a lot anyway, they enjoy their victories and keep coming back to buy more cards, which is the ultimate goal of Wizards. I think it's a bad value structure - the secondary luck factor sometimes empowers those who don't really deserve it and frustrates those who are really trying. I think the primary luck factor (deck randomization) is quite enough for that.
By starting with wildcards and then with cleverly built precons, we can transition to a more modern and officially yet unrecognized version of Magic
1) Divide any legal magic deck into two equal piles prior to play (if odd number of cards, then X and X+1 sized piles). Choose whatever cards you want for each pile.
2) Put one pile in one color/type of sleeve, and the other pile in another. For example, black vs. white sleeves.
3) Shuffle everything back together again as one deck.
4) Play the game as normal, vanilla Magic, except that whenever you would draw a card for your normal draw phase, OR when you draw each of the 7 cards for your opening hand, you may choose to either take the top-most white card, or the top-most black card, for example. ALL other times, treat the deck like you normally would.
5) There's no longer any mulligans allowed.
Simple as that! But actually pretty damn difficult to abuse when you think about it, and also preserves almost every major Magic deck strategy out there, as well as the function of pretty much all cards.
The only drawback is advertising information about your hand and the top of your deck to your opponents. But A) They don't know what ratio of lands there are in each color, since you can choose piles as you wish (althrough trying to find out adds some amusing skill/strategy), B) Even if they did, if one pile is 70% land, that doesn't tell you much of anything definite about what's in my hand, even if you can see the colors, and C) Obviously, I will take efforts to not make the distribution of colors in my hand easily visible during the game.
1) Divide any legal magic deck into two equal piles prior to play (if odd number of cards, then X and X+1 sized piles). Choose whatever cards you want for each pile.
2) Put one pile in one color/type of sleeve, and the other pile in another. For example, black vs. white sleeves.
3) Shuffle everything back together again as one deck.
4) Play the game as normal, vanilla Magic, except that whenever you would draw a card for your normal draw phase, OR when you draw each of the 7 cards for your opening hand, you may choose to either take the top-most white card, or the top-most black card, for example. ALL other times, treat the deck like you normally would.
5) There's no longer any mulligans allowed.
Simple as that! But actually pretty damn difficult to abuse when you think about it, and also preserves almost every major Magic deck strategy out there, as well as the function of pretty much all cards.
The only drawback is advertising information about your hand and the top of your deck to your opponents. But A) They don't know what ratio of lands there are in each color, since you can choose piles as you wish (althrough trying to find out adds some amusing skill/strategy), B) Even if they did, if one pile is 70% land, that doesn't tell you much of anything definite about what's in my hand, even if you can see the colors, and C) Obviously, I will take efforts to not make the distribution of colors in my hand easily visible during the game.
This is an interesting take on the two-deck variant but I see several potential issues with it:
1) the entry barrier - splitting a deck and figuring out which card to put to which sleeve (without making it obvious which sleeve is land/nonland) doesn't strike me as something a random player would subscribe to from the get go.
2) unforseen consequences - with no limitations on the split deck, this variant kind of encourages pseudo-tutoring with each draw, which can potentially be broken and without testing, I cannot tell to what extend it could affect the metagame overall.
3) compatibility - since the nuances of this variant are still unexplored, there's no telling how decks built for it would fare against normal Magic decks.
For M2.0, I'm trying a new thing to build a deck - prepare the pool of playables as normal in M1.0. But instead of physical basic lands, add support cards and sideboard cards to the sleeves upside down. That way, you can play normal M1.0 with little difficulty, the upside-down cards will help players new to M2.0 to channel for lands and this setup is also 100% compatible with full-fledged M2.0.
If your opponent only has a normal deck, they can play in M2.0 mode, which means unlimited wildcards - they can channel as many cards as they need during the game and cycle away as many land cards as necessary. Another improvement I'm proposing is to cycle away lands to the bottom of the deck instead of the exile zone to make M1.0 decks a little less susceptible to milling strategies.
With limited number of wildcards and M2.0 mode, IMHO you can't make it much more easier to remove mana screw and mana flood for players closely attached to M1.0
But keep the variants coming, they are good inspiration
1) the entry barrier - splitting a deck and figuring out which card to put to which sleeve (without making it obvious which sleeve is land/nonland) doesn't strike me as something a random player would subscribe to from the get go.
2) unforseen consequences - with no limitations on the split deck, this variant kind of encourages pseudo-tutoring with each draw, which can potentially be broken and without testing, I cannot tell to what extend it could affect the metagame overall.
3) compatibility - since the nuances of this variant are still unexplored, there's no telling how decks built for it would fare against normal Magic decks.
For a normal player, I'd probably just suggest making one pile "80% of your lands + your weakest other cards" and the other "20% of your lands + your strongest remaining cards" or so.
No idea on the compatibility, of course.
But as for tutoring, the fact that you have to split even sized halves makes this not a big deal. If it were to become an issue, a rule could be added:
"No more than 2 copies of any one card in either half of your deck, other than basic lands" to bring the odds on any one card back down to a maximum of what they are in Magic 1.0
For M2.0, I'm trying a new thing to build a deck - prepare the pool of playables as normal in M1.0. But instead of physical basic lands, add support cards and sideboard cards to the sleeves upside down. That way, you can play normal M1.0 with little difficulty, the upside-down cards will help players new to M2.0 to channel for lands and this setup is also 100% compatible with full-fledged M2.0.
I strongly considered some upside down card ideas, but they seemed too fragile. One shuffling error destroys the recordkeeping for the whole game, or if you forget to put cards down the right way when discarding or shuffling back in or blah blah.
Another idea which i think I posted elsewhere but not here:
Custom made sleeves with UV ink printed on them. Put lands in one color inked sleeves, non-lands in another. Only turn on the black light during your normal draw phase or opening hand draw (shield your hand and others' hands and decks, or use a very narrow pen light only), at which point you can declare land or non-land, and get the first of the type you want off the top of your library (you don't bury the other ones -- too easy to cycle for combos that way if you know what's on top. Instead, the info you give away about the top of your deck is a cost you pay for using this ability).
When the black light is off, all cards look identical, so there are no minds games about what is in a person's hand, which means it can be just land/not by rule, and thus no worrying about how to decide to divide up your deck.
Obviously the downside is that such sleeves do not exist. But the idea could be tested out with transparent sleeves with UV-stamped basic lands behind each card, and if it worked really well, then a group of fans of the format could probably commission the design of such sleeves from one of the sleeve companies.
Or alternatively, sleeves with slightly different tactile textures on the front face of them (so you can feel which is a land while still face down, as can your opponents if they want to confirm, without any special equipment or advertising identidies of things in hand or on deck, etc.)
For a normal player, I'd probably just suggest making one pile "80% of your lands + your weakest other cards" and the other "20% of your lands + your strongest remaining cards" or so.
No idea on the compatibility, of course.
At this point, I'd start testing
But as for tutoring, the fact that you have to split even sized halves makes this not a big deal. If it were to become an issue, a rule could be added:
"No more than 2 copies of any one card in either half of your deck, other than basic lands" to bring the odds on any one card back down to a maximum of what they are in Magic 1.0
This sounds fine and dandy in theory but on the practical level, this would be even harder to check/enforce than a regular deck check.
And it would be one additional arbitral rule to remember, just to work around a potentially problematic feature of the format, kind of like the mulligan rule works around mana problems...
I strongly considered some upside down card ideas, but they seemed too fragile. One shuffling error destroys the recordkeeping for the whole game, or if you forget to put cards down the right way when discarding or shuffling back in or blah blah.
Umm, I don't quite follow. No matter how you shuffle or handle your deck, after drawing a card, you can always orient it with the sleeve opening up, right? Then you immediately see if the card inside the sleeve is inserted normally (mostly spell) or upside down (mostly land). I don't see a problem here...
This sounds fine and dandy in theory but on the practical level, this would be even harder to check/enforce than a regular deck check.
And it would be one additional arbitral rule to remember, just to work around a potentially problematic feature of the format, kind of like the mulligan rule works around mana problems...
That's sort of what rules are for...?
The problem with the mulligan rule is not just that it is a rule. The problem is that it's a bad, ineffective rule. This one, by contrast, should be very effective, reducing the odds precisely to Magic 1.0 standards and interfacing almost exactly the same way with tutor/draw strategies, regular turn draw steps, etc.
With the possible exception of cards that look for other copies of a card in your library without asking you to search, which would still work but might be slightly less effective.
This is a very small subset of cards. I think only ones with "Ripple" actually matter here. For example, Thrumming Stone loses a small amount of power. Honestly, who cares? Unlike mulligans and mana screw which effect entire decks, this only effects like half a dozen cards in the game, and it doesn't even break them, just slightly weakens them.
This is also a very intuitive rule, as it flows quite naturally from "4 of a card in a 60 card deck, to 2x2 of a card in your 30 card halves"
this would be even harder to check/enforce than a regular deck check.
This is the casual forum, dude. You do deck checks with your friends at the kitchen table?
Umm, I don't quite follow. No matter how you shuffle or handle your deck, after drawing a card, you can always orient it with the sleeve opening up, right? Then you immediately see if the card inside the sleeve is inserted normally (mostly spell) or upside down (mostly land). I don't see a problem here...
Sorry I guess I didn't read closely enough. I thought you meant unsleeved cards, which would have no marker of their original orientation. The sleeve thing works.
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You get two decks, and just 3 rules for deck construction:
1 Both decks must have the same number of cards.
2 You must have a minimum of 60 cards total.
3 30-44 cards in a deck = You may only have up to 2 copies of a single card in that deck. 45-59 cards in a deck = You can have up to 3 copies. 60 or more cards in a deck = You can have up to 4 copies.
Also just 3 special rules for play:
1At the start of the game, you can distribute the numbers 1-6 amongst your two decks in any proportions you desire (could be all on one deck). Mark down your choices on two index cards or something and set your decks on top of them so the number assignments are clearly visible. For example ("1-2" on one deck, and "3-6" on the other. Keep the numbers consecutive.)
2 Any time you would normally draw a card into your hand, you can freely choose which deck to draw it from.
3 Any time you do ANYTHING else with your library, you decide which deck you do it with by rolling a die, and choosing the deck with that number assigned to it, on a per-card basis.
Examples:
* A card says search your deck for 2 cards (like Tooth and Nail). You roll one die, get a "3" and you can only search within the deck that had "3" assigned to it. Then you roll another die, and you can only search for your second card in that deck.
* A card says to draw 4 cards and then put them back on your library in any order. You roll 4 dice, and use those numbers to draw your cards from one or both decks as indicated. Then you decide your order, and you roll 4 more dice to decide which deck each card goes back on top of in that order.
* A card says to play with the top card of your library revealed. You roll a die and reveal a card from that deck. Whenever you end up drawing that card or otherwise moving it somewhere else, you roll a die again to figure out which deck gets the card revealed on top next.
* A card says to put the top 10 cards of your library in the graveyard. You roll a die 10 times (or a handful of mini dice would be handy - bring one along if you play a mill deck, for convenience. Although decide ahead of time a rule for the order the dice are read in. I.e. in order of how close they land to the roller), and each roll = the source of a single card.
(If one deck is empty, you always remove/search/draw from the other, although you can still place cards into either)
Benefits:
1) There's no strict rules about "land deck only," so you won't piss off people who want to have strategic flexibility.
2) At the same time, it's very difficult to abuse that flexibility. You can't put the 90% of your early game cards (mana and weenies) in one deck and your best 6 fatties in their own deck, for instance, because they have to be equal size. And you can't put 8000 lands in one deck to be immune to dying from mill decks, because your other deck would also need 8000 cards and would be wildly inconsistent. And you can't put all of your playsets in one deck and your singletons in the other to have a "no surprises deck," because the sliding scale of maximum copies guarantees the odds of any one card are about the same as in Magic 1.0.
3) The dice mechanic also avoids abuse and weirdness. Generally, you will assign more weight to the deck that has more interesting/important stuff in it, so that any fetch cards will get you what you want. But this is then linked to a greater likelihood of that deck losing cards to mills and so forth. Alternatively, you could assign 1-6 all to a land deck and play mostly weenies, protecting your from mills... for awhile. But with the more stringent "number of copies" rule, this becomes pretty restrictive, because you may only get 2-3 copies of each card, and you can't use any tutors (because they would only be able to search your land deck). Checks and balances!
3) Much MUCH simpler to understand and less ambiguous than drawing lines in the sand about what are "mana cards" etc.
5) Also much more intuitive and satisfying flavor-wise than converting creatures to lands willy-nilly. Lands are lands. Non-lands are non-lands. Everything is as it seems.
6) You can completely choose how much you do or do not want to be susceptible to mana screw or mana flood. If you make one deck 100% lands, you will be immune to both. If you mix more, you will become increasingly more susceptible, but you get to try more shenanigans in exchange, within reason.
6) The total number of cards in a deck would still hover very near 60 for most normal playstyles. Maybe more like 70-80 or so, since most people normally run more than 30 non-land cards. If you normally run 24 lands, for instance, a vanilla conversion to this format would be 72 cards total: your same normal 37 non-lands, and a matching 37 card land deck. But the slight increase is small enough not to put a burden on people to obtain more cards. And for vanilla conversions, ALL of those extra cards are super cheap basic lands.
This doesn't make any sense. It's the opposite, actually. Shuffling correctly makes it MORE unpredictable.
If you just do a half-*** job of shuffling once or twice, then you know you won't get all the same cards again. Whereas if you put your cards in some sort of computerized shuffling machine that harnessed random background radiation to shuffle your cards or whatever, there WOULD always be a chance that you could get the same hand again.
Bad shuffling = Subset of possible randomizations next hand = more predictable.
Good shuffling = Equal probability of all possible randomizations = less predictable (and some probability that all your hands will be just land, even with multiple mulligans)
This basically turns Magic into yu-gi-oh, and glorifies the starting hand. Mana screw/flood are VERY important aspects to the game. And knowing how to build your deck right so that you'll have access to the cards you want when you generally want them is a very important skill to be learned. Just because some noob is tired of "boring" cards that "do nothing" doesn't mean that you can take away a major aspect of the game. Here's a hint, play more lands that do things other than just mana, like Manlands, Wasteland/Tectonic Edge/Encroaching Wastes, Kessig Wolf-Run, etc. Don't dumb down the game because you don't know how to build a deck or mulligan properly (though I'm sure you're one of the unimaginative masses who mindlessly copies netdecks all day, so likely the latter).
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
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Sorry, but I rarely get mana screwed. This format caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks.
Sorry you disagree.
Prove it. Post a deck you have designed that you believe gets mana screwed less often than other people's decks. And then we can copy/paste it onto tappedout.net or similar, and playtest it using a superhumanly good shuffling algorithm. Thus meeting both of your qualifications -- a deck up to your standards, and perfect shuffling.
Then we can confirm just how rare mana screw/flood is under your conditions.
I suspect that it won't be much different than in a normal deck, and that the reason you may experience it less is due to shuffling BADLY and not fully randomizing, therefore guaranteeing your clumps of land actually get broken up, instead of guaranteeing nothing at all like a truly random shuffle should do. But I may be wrong. Let's see the goods and try 'em out.
Surely, if good deck building and shuffling removes luck from the equation, then we could just make do with a single game, yes? Those people surely know how to build good decks and how to shuffle, so it should be just skill, so why waste everybody's time with best of 5?
* The two-deck variants (magic 1.5, or a "land only deck" or the variant I suggested at the bottom of the previous page) can easily solve the charbelcher situation, by just having you alternate or choose randomly per card which deck you draw from when forced to do so by a spell (but not when drawing normally).
* The two deck variants also still have land cards, and thus all of the strategy of dual lands and man lands and utility lands, etc. still remains in the game, so it isn't "dumbing it down" like you are claiming (perhaps rightfully) that the 2.0 version does.
* Mana screw/flood is not only something that happens in your starting hand, so mulligans are not a continuing protection against it. Yes, mulligans can (usually) make sure you aren't COMPLETELY screwed and have some sort of a base, but you can still end up drawing 10 land cards in a row turns 2-11, for instance, or none, no matter how you build your deck (unless you have fewer than 13 or more than 46 lands or have a ridiculous number of tutors to make sure one or more are in your start hand... neither is a common situation).
Yeah mana flood happens from time to time, but I account for that by playing mana sinks like Sphinx's Revelation/Celestial Colonnade, or Kessig Wolf run.
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
Quotes:
As far as the two-deck variant is concerned, the improvements look good, except maybe for all the die rolling. Simple alternating between the libraries looks more simple.
Because that's the thing with these variants, especially for Constructed where metagame has to be considered. The more flexibility and variability you provide, the more time it takes for a new person to get into the format, understand it, and master it.
For example, I no longer even ask my friends to try and build decks for M2.0 Constructed. It too much of a hassle for them because some play Magic competitively and don't want to "stain" their deck-building skills (that's what they claim anyway:rolleyes:), some rarely play at all and have a different excuse etc.
So in order to play, I mostly build all the decks myself and test by lending them. And in Limited, I'm trying hard to keep everything as simple as possible. The most popular are the wildcards (see post 23) as they are super easy to use in any format for everyone.
Even M2.0 Limited is sometimes a tough sell even when playing casually. So for me, simplicity matters a lot.
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Are you constructing a proof by example here?
Sorry but this is just a bare assertion. Please, consider my reply in post 58 and Crimeo's responses and try to prove your case. Thanks
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Currently Playing
1994 Magic The Rack
Type 1: B/W Zombies
Modern: Kuldotha Red
Legacy: Pox, Oath
Vintag: 10 Proxy Merfolk
Pauper: Pestilence, UG Threshold
EDH: Karn, Roon, Sliver Queen, Xiahou Dun, Arcanus
Yes, for business and for sucking in new players, as discussed earlier in this thread and by R.Garfield himself.
Tell me, why is mana screw and flood important to you? And why so very few other TCG/LCG games even allow it?
Not sure if you responded specifically to Crimeo's two-deck variant, M2.0, or any Magic variant eliminating screw/flood. But again, M2.0 is primarily for drafts where value lands and good mana sinks tend to be sparse. Plus, if you manage to draft good cards, know how build a deck with adequate mana base, and still happen to lose 2 games out of 3 because of dumb luck, it's just a stupid waste of time because you are unlikely to play with the same deck again. This is a big difference compared to Constructed where you can make your deck better over time. Mana problems happen to EVERYONE, even the best out of the best, go read some GP Top 8 reports to confirm.
Then, if you already like M2.0 Limited, you can try M2.0 Constructed, which plays differently from M1.0.
But if you cannot enjoy Magic without its flaws, that is perfectly fine in my opinion.
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I understand your bewilderment, I felt the same way for many years only because I lived in a bubble, never trying other games, never looking at history of Magic and its mechanics, and never questioning the rules as if they were set in stone.
I suggest you read the opening post of this thread for brief overview.
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Alternating is simpler conceptually, but breaks a lot more cards and introduces more shenanigans. For instance, cards that say things like "put cards from your library into your graveyard until you hit a land" work pretty much as intended by WOTC in the dice rolling variant, but on alternation, are guaranteed to only bury 1-2 cards.
Also you could time things to be squirrely, like if a card says "draw 3, then discard 2" you would wait until the alternation says the next card is from your creature deck, and guarantee 2 useful cards late game and 1 land.
How about a compromise:
* Fine, make it 50/50, but still i think should be random. 50/50 puts a slight strain on game design since decks that WOTC designed cards for are usually closer to 2/5 lands, not 1/2, but probably close enough, and the simplicity seems worth it.
* Replace dice tossing (or in this case coin flipping) with some faster digital solution. Whoever in the meta is the one pushing the variant (like you or me), they take the trouble of providing a laptop or smartphone with a coin flipping app or whatever on it. Random.org conveniently will give you a whole page of random bits almost instantly for situations where you mill 10 cards or whatever. OR you can buy little devices that blink one of two lights mostly randomly off like Amazon or whatever, if table space is a concern. Just slide it right between the person's two decks and hit the button, and you draw from the deck next to the light that lights up.
* The guy pushing the variant on the meta also goes to the trouble of buying a box or two of 400 spare lands, to let people use since the equal deck size means almost everybody will have more lands needed than before.
So that's easier than my variant, and the randomization should still maintain most deck strategies to the point where you don't HAVE to build a deck for this format. You can just use any old magic 1.0 deck, and borrow the half dozen or whatever extra lands you need for your second deck from me to get it up to size, and you're off to the races.
The flexibility still exists to do more interesting mixes of your two decks, but any vanilla deck can be converted to the vanilla two decks (one land one not) easily, without design effort, for those who don't want to "stain" their deck building skills.
People in this thread aren't saying that playing Magic with lands is dumb, just that it might be worthwhile to try playing without.
While this format may "caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks" and not develop the same deckbuilding/mulligan skills, that doesn't mean it also lack other appeals.
My main gripe with Magic 2.0 is how hard it is to play because of the lack of people willing to try:
-Many only like to play games with the true rules
-Many invested too much time in mastering the normal rules/metagame
-Newer players can be overwhelmed by the choices
-Building a deck takes time/money that might be wasted if you don't play often.
To be frank, after studying history of Magic and other games, and exploring new variants, I now feel it's dumb every time I play Commander with someone who refuses to even use several wildcards in the game but ends up mulliganing 3 times before drawing something worthwhile. Not as rare in Commander as in other formats.
I also think it's dumb to draft at FNM a pool perceived as good, constructing the deck properly, and then getting screwed without a chance to actually learn how good the deck was (and wasting the entry fee and one's time in the process)...
Or reading reports such as this one:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gphk13/welcome#3
Best of the best getting foiled by mana problems... kind of dumb.
The "caters to those who cannot shuffle and build proper decks" quote is a non-sequitur anyway. Even if it was true, I don't really care which players a certain variant caters to. Every game or variant should be judged on its own merits.
Translation: many people are unfortunately susceptible to authority that is almost never unerring. There are no "true" rules - Wizards have been and will continue to change the rules and even casual players who reject changes to the game from a lone innovator will accept them almost without question when announced officially.
For those who play Magic for PW points, glory, personal recognition, or material prices, this is naturally important. Old habits die hard because the will to let go really must come from within...
Not necessarily if they start learning the variant with a preconstructed deck. I've built several and lend them to anyone willing to try something new.
On the other hand, the metagame does not fluctuate as much, so if you build just a few decks on tight budget, the decks have a good chance to last until more players join the format, at which point it's no longer wasted if you dedicate some time to make your decks better.
But the entry barriers for new players have to be considered for M2.0 and other variants. I acknowledge that with Magic, the simplicity is the key. That's why I now mostly play M1.0 with 3 wildcards (5 wildcards in EDH/Commander), which is super easy and convenient. Wildcards really help to promote the idea of M2.0 for special occasions and when I play casually 1 on 1, for example.
Thank you for your input.
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^
I'm guessing this guy was referring to choices in-game, most likely specifically the 2.0 variant, as you constantly have to evaluate whether to play any one of your current cards as a land or not, in addition to all your normal decisions.
Which isn't necessarily good or bad for game design in the long run, I'm not sure. But is certainly more intimidating to new people to the game or the format.
This could be another advantage of my strong preference: a 2 deck solution. Choosing whether to draw from Deck A vs. Deck B is only adding ONE decision per turn over Magic 1.0, whereas Magic 2.0 adds SEVEN more decisions (well not really, but usually more than one)
Well, I spoke with many new players and they are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of cards and possibilities without knowing anything about M2.0. I think it's a matter of perception. Many card games that are younger than Magic don't use lands at all and they still prosper even if their target audience isn't maybe as ubiquitous as that of Magic. But that is true of M2.0 as well.
A precon deck seems to be a good thing to start with M1.0 and M2.0. The limited pool of cards makes it easier for the new player to get familiar with it regardless of the format. Decks for M2.0 can also be "dumbed down" by construction design:
You can build the deck in such a way that cards with only one colored mana symbol in their casting cost are considered "mostly lands" while cards with two or more colored mana symbols in CC are "mostly spells". And it works - cards that are more mana intensive are usually more powerful and you want to play them more. This way, a new player doesn't have to think too hard about channeling cards at the beginning. But if they get stuck, they know there's a possibility to channel a "mostly spell" or cast a "mostly land" whereas there would be only frustration from the inability to do anything waiting for them in a similar situation in M1.0.
So by making it easy to understand the underlying principle of M2.0, you can offset the extra complexity it entails, ideally leading to empowerment of the new player later on. That is still not to say that M2.0 and similar variants are for everyone but in my opinion it is ultimately rewarding and even a little enlightening to pursue the idea.
Because we all know it - a lot of players secretly hope that their opponent gets screwed or flooded even before a match even starts. They know the chance is always there. Such players profit from misfortune of others. I've met quite a few of such players and their skill isn't usually very high. They netdeck a lot and perceive their opponents' mana problems as good luck. And even though they might not win a lot anyway, they enjoy their victories and keep coming back to buy more cards, which is the ultimate goal of Wizards. I think it's a bad value structure - the secondary luck factor sometimes empowers those who don't really deserve it and frustrates those who are really trying. I think the primary luck factor (deck randomization) is quite enough for that.
By starting with wildcards and then with cleverly built precons, we can transition to a more modern and officially yet unrecognized version of Magic
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1) Divide any legal magic deck into two equal piles prior to play (if odd number of cards, then X and X+1 sized piles). Choose whatever cards you want for each pile.
2) Put one pile in one color/type of sleeve, and the other pile in another. For example, black vs. white sleeves.
3) Shuffle everything back together again as one deck.
4) Play the game as normal, vanilla Magic, except that whenever you would draw a card for your normal draw phase, OR when you draw each of the 7 cards for your opening hand, you may choose to either take the top-most white card, or the top-most black card, for example. ALL other times, treat the deck like you normally would.
5) There's no longer any mulligans allowed.
Simple as that! But actually pretty damn difficult to abuse when you think about it, and also preserves almost every major Magic deck strategy out there, as well as the function of pretty much all cards.
The only drawback is advertising information about your hand and the top of your deck to your opponents. But A) They don't know what ratio of lands there are in each color, since you can choose piles as you wish (althrough trying to find out adds some amusing skill/strategy), B) Even if they did, if one pile is 70% land, that doesn't tell you much of anything definite about what's in my hand, even if you can see the colors, and C) Obviously, I will take efforts to not make the distribution of colors in my hand easily visible during the game.
This is an interesting take on the two-deck variant but I see several potential issues with it:
1) the entry barrier - splitting a deck and figuring out which card to put to which sleeve (without making it obvious which sleeve is land/nonland) doesn't strike me as something a random player would subscribe to from the get go.
2) unforseen consequences - with no limitations on the split deck, this variant kind of encourages pseudo-tutoring with each draw, which can potentially be broken and without testing, I cannot tell to what extend it could affect the metagame overall.
3) compatibility - since the nuances of this variant are still unexplored, there's no telling how decks built for it would fare against normal Magic decks.
For M2.0, I'm trying a new thing to build a deck - prepare the pool of playables as normal in M1.0. But instead of physical basic lands, add support cards and sideboard cards to the sleeves upside down. That way, you can play normal M1.0 with little difficulty, the upside-down cards will help players new to M2.0 to channel for lands and this setup is also 100% compatible with full-fledged M2.0.
If your opponent only has a normal deck, they can play in M2.0 mode, which means unlimited wildcards - they can channel as many cards as they need during the game and cycle away as many land cards as necessary. Another improvement I'm proposing is to cycle away lands to the bottom of the deck instead of the exile zone to make M1.0 decks a little less susceptible to milling strategies.
With limited number of wildcards and M2.0 mode, IMHO you can't make it much more easier to remove mana screw and mana flood for players closely attached to M1.0
But keep the variants coming, they are good inspiration
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For a normal player, I'd probably just suggest making one pile "80% of your lands + your weakest other cards" and the other "20% of your lands + your strongest remaining cards" or so.
No idea on the compatibility, of course.
But as for tutoring, the fact that you have to split even sized halves makes this not a big deal. If it were to become an issue, a rule could be added:
"No more than 2 copies of any one card in either half of your deck, other than basic lands" to bring the odds on any one card back down to a maximum of what they are in Magic 1.0
I strongly considered some upside down card ideas, but they seemed too fragile. One shuffling error destroys the recordkeeping for the whole game, or if you forget to put cards down the right way when discarding or shuffling back in or blah blah.
Another idea which i think I posted elsewhere but not here:
Custom made sleeves with UV ink printed on them. Put lands in one color inked sleeves, non-lands in another. Only turn on the black light during your normal draw phase or opening hand draw (shield your hand and others' hands and decks, or use a very narrow pen light only), at which point you can declare land or non-land, and get the first of the type you want off the top of your library (you don't bury the other ones -- too easy to cycle for combos that way if you know what's on top. Instead, the info you give away about the top of your deck is a cost you pay for using this ability).
When the black light is off, all cards look identical, so there are no minds games about what is in a person's hand, which means it can be just land/not by rule, and thus no worrying about how to decide to divide up your deck.
Obviously the downside is that such sleeves do not exist. But the idea could be tested out with transparent sleeves with UV-stamped basic lands behind each card, and if it worked really well, then a group of fans of the format could probably commission the design of such sleeves from one of the sleeve companies.
At this point, I'd start testing
This sounds fine and dandy in theory but on the practical level, this would be even harder to check/enforce than a regular deck check.
And it would be one additional arbitral rule to remember, just to work around a potentially problematic feature of the format, kind of like the mulligan rule works around mana problems...
Umm, I don't quite follow. No matter how you shuffle or handle your deck, after drawing a card, you can always orient it with the sleeve opening up, right? Then you immediately see if the card inside the sleeve is inserted normally (mostly spell) or upside down (mostly land). I don't see a problem here...
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That's sort of what rules are for...?
The problem with the mulligan rule is not just that it is a rule. The problem is that it's a bad, ineffective rule. This one, by contrast, should be very effective, reducing the odds precisely to Magic 1.0 standards and interfacing almost exactly the same way with tutor/draw strategies, regular turn draw steps, etc.
With the possible exception of cards that look for other copies of a card in your library without asking you to search, which would still work but might be slightly less effective.
This is a very small subset of cards. I think only ones with "Ripple" actually matter here. For example, Thrumming Stone loses a small amount of power. Honestly, who cares? Unlike mulligans and mana screw which effect entire decks, this only effects like half a dozen cards in the game, and it doesn't even break them, just slightly weakens them.
This is also a very intuitive rule, as it flows quite naturally from "4 of a card in a 60 card deck, to 2x2 of a card in your 30 card halves"
This is the casual forum, dude. You do deck checks with your friends at the kitchen table?
Sorry I guess I didn't read closely enough. I thought you meant unsleeved cards, which would have no marker of their original orientation. The sleeve thing works.