Your wording or mine, it wouldn't lead to a stall in multiplayer, it would lead to you being the focus because unless another player already has a game ending/controlling board position, this guy is too big a threat(early at least, after that much dumber things can be done).
If you want to keep it the other way I think it needs to be "last" not "final".
Out of curiosity, why "last" instead of "final?"
Last is the current term used on cards to refer to such an occurrence, while final isn't used at all. See any card with Suspend, Riftwing Cloudskate
yeah, that's not what I'm aiming for. in a multiplayer, this guy would stall the game until it's gone, because nobody would want to kill anyone else. that, of course, is assuming that you have 20 or more life to pay when a player ends up dying, but that doesn't change the fact that it's really not the kind of situation I want this card to create.
Your wording or mine, it wouldn't lead to a stall in multiplayer, it would lead to you being the focus because unless another player already has a game ending/controlling board position, this guy is too big a threat(early at least, after that much dumber things can be done).
If you want to keep it the other way I think it needs to be "last" not "final".
"If you would win the game or your final opponent would lose the game..."
That way it would check to see if you would win via your opponents losing, avoiding a tie.
Why bother with the "final" part? Why not just "If you would win the game or an opponent would lose the game you may pay 20 life instead. If you do, you win the game. If you don't, you lose the game."?
Is Frontier a recognized format for wizards just a casual one?
Currently just casual. Wizards has said they are aware and watching the communities reaction. Several people at Wizards have questioned Frontier's starting point saying if Wizards made it official they might change it.
Casting spells is done at the speed of thought, and I'm pretty sure Gideon's shield has gone off when he wasn't even paying attention. I always thought it was auto. If it can react to the impact of rocks and stuff, why couldn't it react to the impact of a bullet? I just feel like you're arguing from a place of pure opinion, and that's fine, but you're trying to use a real world comparison on one real world thing and one fictional thing.
If a mage and a gunslinger are having a quick draw match, and the mage can lightning bolt the gunslinger before he draws his gun, its GG. Guns don't automatically trump magic. How is a bullet faster than lightning?
Casting spells is very much not at the speed of thought. Unleashing spells is at the speed of thought, but they have made it abundantly clear that mages have to prep spells which can take quite a while or be fairly fast and that things can be so hectic that it is difficult for a mage to prepare a spell. They have been shaky on whether Gid's shield is auto or controlled. Before Zen he got shanked by a goblin on Rav because he was tired and not focusing. During Zen they made a point that he was having trouble with the Eldrazi because of their unpredictable movements he had to keep his shield up all over his body. Other times they have simply made it obvious that he was thinking about the shield. But a few times it has seemed to be auto, but there is a lot more evidence for controlled rather than auto.
Mairsil can use the ability of the sanctum to return cards that were exilied by "this mairsil's" other sanctum ability, but not any other cards exiled by previous Mairsils or other abilities of "this Mairsil".
Each artifact has an activated ability that has you tap a Zombie to mill one card. By tapping a zombie you can only pay the cost of one of your artifacts, so only one of them is activated. This is different from triggered or static abilities. Triggered abilities look for a trigger event and they all trigger from that event, static abilities are always active and usually redundant ones stack. You can easily tell activated abilities because they are written "cost : effect". A good analogy to think of is each Tools is a vending machine, you tapping your zombies is a dollar, with only one zombie to tap you can only buy from one vending machine.
When did the community say they wanted snapcaster as a mythic? People wanted it reprinted but that is the first time I've ever heard that one.
The community never said "make snap mythic". They have said "We want mythics to be exciting" and "Snaps would be an exciting mythic". Wizards took these two statements as a que to push snap to mythic due to a lack of other exciting cards they wanted at mythic.
Wait what when did people EVER say they wanted good high value cards at mythic? I recall ALOT of people asking to get rid of mythics or to make then all limited fodder but NEVER have I seen someone ask for MORE powerful constructed staples to be printed at HIGHER rarity's. I hear people ask for more good old playabled uncommons and to stop bumping good playable cards TO rare, but almost NEVER the other way around.
It depends on where you look. But the two biggest complaints for mythics are that certain bland but powerful cards, Lotus Cobra, shouldn't be mythics, and that mythics should be exciting powerful cards. How exciting is defined is vague at best, but just look at these forums and you will see leading up to MM there was a lot of buzz about snap at mythic, a combination of it won't happen, it would obviously happen, and people being happy as long as it was printed at all. People want mythics to be good, again 'good' is fairly subjective. For some its tournament worthy, for others it means an awesome looking general, and others its absurdly high numbers.
Don't only listen to the minority that shares your opinion and assume its the Majority. I was disgusted by them up shifting Snap to mythic, but looking back its the communities fault for asking/expecting/accepting it.
I want to be in a world where if a 20 dollar card gets lost or stolen, it is possible to replace it at 20 dollars 2 years later. This isn't possible under the current system.
This isn't realistic regardless of reprint strategy. There are only ever too options reprint or don't reprint, and only one of those has a definitive outcome. Cards spike irrationally and Wizards has a minimum 18 month lead. To have any chance of accomplishing this Wizards would have to set aside one or two points in the year where they have a specialty product that has an abnormally short prep time so they can throw whatever cards have spiked recently into it to drop prices. I've never seen anyone advocating this kind of micromanagement of the secondary market, probably because its crazy. Wanting Wizards to reprint cards more often is a reasonable desire. Wanting Wizards to set an arbitrary price ceiling isn't.
I don't support wizards decisions on how they are handling the reprints, plain and simple, and accept there are people who apparently do support it even if it is at their detriment as a player. People are afraid of phantoms and ghosts in the closet, fearing changes would end the game. But sometimes, those ghosts are not really there and you have to open that door.
Its fine to be upset with their current system. Its reasonable to want them to print more cards more frequently. But I've never seen anyone actually propose anything other than "Unlimited standard release, the meta be damned". The reasonable changes that could be made would be better card selection for master sets, slightly higher print runs, or slightly lower MSRP; heck all three might be reasonable. Wizards listens to the community, but they also have TONS of data to compare against the vocal minority. When the vocal minority shouts MM is awful, no card should cost more than $40, repeal the reserved list and put duels in standard. The data of sales questionnaires and other sources showing people happy or accepting of the status quo drowns out the ridiculous complaints. Not enough people voice reasonable demands. Wizards has shown repeatedly that they make decisions based on community feed back, both bad and good. Modern was taken off the pro tour because of data, but community outcry contradicted it and they made a change. Standard rotation change was the same. Unfortunately Snapcaster was the same, the community said they want exciting mythics and that Snaps would make an exciting mythic, and Wizards heard. So if the community made reasonable demands that weren't contradictory to reality then change could happen.
While hype has never influenced how much product I buy, it does influence how much I think and it talk about something. Leaks make hype at the wrong time. A few weeks ago I couldn't stop talking about the dragon deck, but when official spoilers started I couldn't care less. I was crazy hyped for Mesoamerica world when Ixalan was first previewed, then the rare sheet came out before Hour was done and it killed the hype. Not because I saw anything bad, but because so much was spoiled. If they had let us have "Bolas mind @#$% Jace and now he doesn't remember who or where he is" instead we got "Jace doesn't know who or where he is, I guess Bolas mind @#$% him in next week's episode"
If you need to get people off your back on printing old cards and don't want to burn a lot of resources financially, low print run specialty sets are a good way to go. All they have to do is set a small to moderate print run contract up and set the msrp high enough that the supply doesn't get bought out too quickly. Then wizards can say they reprinted cards like players wanted and pull the expensive reprints from the other product lines.
So something along the lines of the Modern Event Deck, something with a very high MSRP but still technically worth the MSRP? Those didn't do well at all. Or do you want something with an even high MSRP so as to put even more value in? Something like, removing all the draft fodder from MM, cut the total set down to 100ish of only high value cards but quintuple the MSRP?
The thing is other card games have survived and thrived even with high demand playable cards being reprinted constantly. Other than fear of change there is no real good reason not to do the same in Magic other than wizards not really wanting a non-rotating format.
I'm going to admit I don't follow other card games very well so if you could describe how these games have 'survived and thrived' and how they can be compared to MTG, it would be very helpful. My only knowledge is a vague understanding of Yugioh's history which is not at all comparable to MTG. If Magic only had Vintage and Legacy, with Legacy being the premier tournament format I could see the comparison but they abandoned that ship a long time ago.
The reasons are really bad. People wonder why there was a reserved list to begin with and it's because of people who are looking at their trade binders and purchases as investments instead of collections. There are people playing modern who post on this forum that make me question why wizards hasn't just gone and made a reserved list for modern anyway, since they seemed to have already got a crowd wanting one and it's not like they are going to reprint cards enough to keep them from rocketing into the moon anyway. So why beat around the bush? Lets just go all the way. The price is already 60+ usd on a number of cards, so it can't possibly get worse, right? Plus it's good if the price goes up, because people who own the card can now trade for that much more with them, right? We can put the noble hierarch on that list too along with snapcaster mage, Liliana of the Veil, etc.
And I'm not pointing a finger at you Elazar in specific. There's just a small group of people who really are pushing in this direction and don't even seem to realize it, and while they will refute they want to go to a reserved list, their own arguments actually support that position, which is basically what some of your own posts unintentional end goals are coming off as.
Supported formats should have cards floating around the price that most people are willing to obtain them at and for most of the highly competitive cards that are heavily pushed via net decks the price is set too high. 20-30 top end is what we should be looking at, and that should never be the cost of something that is as central and important to decks as mana fixing.
The (good)financial reasons aren't on the player side(keep player cards more expensive) but on Wizard's side(keep players buying product). Truly supporting nonrotating formats isn't in Wizards best interest. Wizards makes their money by selling new product and if they were to support nonrotating formats the way people are asking they would run out of viable products fairly quickly. To keep selling new products they will need cards that appeal to the same people that their now boring product used to, so instead of expensive reprints(which their wouldn't be nearly enough of after a few years) we get more powerful cards so that all of your old cards are slowly becoming worthless. The nonrotating formats become so in name only as they are subject to each new release of increasingly over powered cards.
I'll give it to wizards, they certainly know how to stealth in an old idea, though. They basically stealthed in a "soft" reserved list already with masters sets and removing existing high value reprints from all other products.
How is more frequent but lower volume reprints a 'soft' reserved list? The old style of 'maybe this year we will give them a single card in a every other expansion' was much more akin to a 'soft' reserved list.
Also, regarding your last comment, you can't pay life you don't have. So, if you don't have at least 20 life, you can't pay it.
Which is why I specified EXACTLY 20 life.
That's interesting about the limited range, but it's a narrow problem. And the problem of the normal way in which you winning the game being all opponents have lost is the major concern.
I must have misunderstood the point you were trying to make. Yes, being at exactly 20 life still lets you win in this case.
I am not sure if you read the rest of my post, but if you win in a multiplayer game (or 1v1 for that matter), you just win. There is no problem. Your opponents don't lose so nothing that cares about them losing doesn't interact with this situation.
The second part wasn't talking about what you said, it was talking about the original ability. It looks for you winning the game. The typical method one wins the game through is by making your opponents lose. So the ability doesn't function because it is making you lose the game after your opponents have already lost, at best resulting in a tie.
Also, regarding your last comment, you can't pay life you don't have. So, if you don't have at least 20 life, you can't pay it.
Which is why I specified EXACTLY 20 life.
That's interesting about the limited range, but it's a narrow problem. And the problem of the normal way in which you winning the game being all opponents have lost is the major concern.
However, an effect which reads "you win the game" like Approach of the Second Sun instead causes all opponents to lose the game when playing multiplayer. Those opponents leave the game as a result of losing (Comprehensive Rules 104.5), which immediately causes you to win the game regardless of card effects (C.R. 104.2a). Thus, you win without ever paying the 20 life.
Why does Approach cause opponents to lose the game in multiplayer? I can't find anything that says "you win the game" cards function differently in multiplayer and the only thing I could find implies they don't function that way.
104.2. There are several ways to win the game.
104.2b An effect may state that a player wins the game.
Also this demon doesn't care if you have exactly 20 life, he will take his payment and win you the game before statebased actions are performed. Also as long as you aren't using actual "win the game" cards this guys wording at best causes draws, because you will win as a result of your opponent losing, which makes this guys care but the opponent has already lost you losing won't change that so its wording may not even be functional.
If you want to keep it the other way I think it needs to be "last" not "final".
It depends on where you look. But the two biggest complaints for mythics are that certain bland but powerful cards, Lotus Cobra, shouldn't be mythics, and that mythics should be exciting powerful cards. How exciting is defined is vague at best, but just look at these forums and you will see leading up to MM there was a lot of buzz about snap at mythic, a combination of it won't happen, it would obviously happen, and people being happy as long as it was printed at all. People want mythics to be good, again 'good' is fairly subjective. For some its tournament worthy, for others it means an awesome looking general, and others its absurdly high numbers.
Don't only listen to the minority that shares your opinion and assume its the Majority. I was disgusted by them up shifting Snap to mythic, but looking back its the communities fault for asking/expecting/accepting it.
Its fine to be upset with their current system. Its reasonable to want them to print more cards more frequently. But I've never seen anyone actually propose anything other than "Unlimited standard release, the meta be damned". The reasonable changes that could be made would be better card selection for master sets, slightly higher print runs, or slightly lower MSRP; heck all three might be reasonable. Wizards listens to the community, but they also have TONS of data to compare against the vocal minority. When the vocal minority shouts MM is awful, no card should cost more than $40, repeal the reserved list and put duels in standard. The data of sales questionnaires and other sources showing people happy or accepting of the status quo drowns out the ridiculous complaints. Not enough people voice reasonable demands. Wizards has shown repeatedly that they make decisions based on community feed back, both bad and good. Modern was taken off the pro tour because of data, but community outcry contradicted it and they made a change. Standard rotation change was the same. Unfortunately Snapcaster was the same, the community said they want exciting mythics and that Snaps would make an exciting mythic, and Wizards heard. So if the community made reasonable demands that weren't contradictory to reality then change could happen.
I'm going to admit I don't follow other card games very well so if you could describe how these games have 'survived and thrived' and how they can be compared to MTG, it would be very helpful. My only knowledge is a vague understanding of Yugioh's history which is not at all comparable to MTG. If Magic only had Vintage and Legacy, with Legacy being the premier tournament format I could see the comparison but they abandoned that ship a long time ago.
How is more frequent but lower volume reprints a 'soft' reserved list? The old style of 'maybe this year we will give them a single card in a every other expansion' was much more akin to a 'soft' reserved list.
That's interesting about the limited range, but it's a narrow problem. And the problem of the normal way in which you winning the game being all opponents have lost is the major concern.
Also this demon doesn't care if you have exactly 20 life, he will take his payment and win you the game before statebased actions are performed. Also as long as you aren't using actual "win the game" cards this guys wording at best causes draws, because you will win as a result of your opponent losing, which makes this guys care but the opponent has already lost you losing won't change that so its wording may not even be functional.