Ahhh!Quote from cml73264 »Anyway to change the text back to something friendly with MTG Dark setting? Cant't read the article. Happened last week too.
Apologies, something was messed up in the styling.
Should be completely readable now.
Always let me know anytime you get something like this!
That is definitely in blue's pie, represents the real-world ability well, and isn't something we see everyday to boot.
I think you've nailed down something that fits the mold and concepts perfectly.
I'm not ready to call it quits, since there's always more great ideas, but this gets a 10 of 10 from me.
White is easy (it gains indestructible uEOT), but blue provided an interesting thought experiment of "How could I even do that?"
I'm really wanting to mimic "it heals itself" without color bleeding the ability at all.
Flicker effect is a really good one.
Timing or triggering the Flicker could represent "it died, but it comes back" well, but stay true to what blue does within the game.
Just preventing the damage seems like a decent way to go, but this ability is seen very seldom within blue. I honestly wonder if damage prevention is really within blue's pie? There's literally only 15 instances of "prevent" in all of true blue, and only 2 that have been printed since Modern. That said, it does feel like something blue could do if done right. Specifically, something along the lines of Guard Gomazoa. Is Gomazoa in line with blue's pie? Could it exist without defender?
This works great for mimicking the ability against spells, like very solidly. But it would still need something to also represent the ability of when it becomes blocked by something that kills it.
If you attach a Kira ability/cost to Gomazoa's prevent ability, does it push it more solidly into blue's territory?
"Whenever ~troll~ would be dealt damage for the first time each turn, prevent that damage unless any player pays {2}."
Would this be solidly blue?
(Sidenote: This ability would work perfectly in my world)
edit: that last ability would lead to some confusion when there are multiple blockers, and I hate confusing designs. Feels like a good direction, but needs more work.
We thus have a Blue-aligned race that happens to be Trolls. Further supposing that their sophistication of life did not change their biology, we would need to in some way emulate their classical regeneration / healing ability.
Given that blue does not get regeneration or indestructibility, how can we replicate or emulate their nature within blue and blue alone?
I've been stuck on this for a while.
I specifically don't want off color costs (
I want to find a way, within Blue's pie, that it can represent the Troll's ability to heal.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Sidenote: I know there are a few random blue cards that have regeneration and indestructible abilities, these are either special circumstances or go directly against the color pie and should be ignored for this thought experiment
Terminology:
First, your wording is ambiguous as to whether you intend for the modifying or affected object having the requirement of being a card. As written: tokens, emblems, and the anything that isn't defined as a "card" won't interact with your design.
Additionally, what you're looking for are "effects" not "sources". Effects do things, sources simply exist. Generally, when a card wants to refer to an effect it's written as "a spell or ability that ___s". "Effects" are like "the stack". They exist and can absolutely be referenced to, but its rare. The only effects that aren't from spells or abilities are from costs or are effects that happen because of the game rules. We don't seem to want to touch costs or game rules, so we should stick with "Spells or abilities" in general.
"Unnaturally" isn't a term in magic. Everything in magic is "natural", as they are precisely defined and governed by the rules and text. You're looking for "A spell or ability causes it to _"
Results as Written:
This is why "Protection" has become mostly deprecated. It doesn't function in a way that reasonable understanding would generally dictate, and it's pretty much impossible to define it in a way that the reasonable understanding wants.
There's simply no way to reword this in a way that keeps the basic functioning. You'll have to retemplate it and adjust the functioning to a defined list of what is feasible and possible within the game.
Retemplating:
Prevents Spells or Abilities
Prevents casting is right out. Can't exist like that, sorry. The only way to tell if it was "prevented" would be to show your opponent you had the card and could otherwise cast it, which is an illegal game procedure. You can't trigger off of this, only prevent it from happening. And if you change the rules to allow it, it triggers ad infinitum. Also, "Hexproof" is an effect that prevents the "free function" of my lightning bolt. No really, it is absolutely an ability that triggers this card based on your wording. This paragraph also applies to "preventing abilities".
Counters a Spell or Ability
-> "Whenever a spell or ability counters.."
Taps Something
-> "Whenever a spell or ability taps.."
Doesn't Untap
We should probably just lose this one, but..
-> "Whenever a permanent would untap, but an effect not created by an ability of that permanent prevents it from untapping or replaces it with another effect, ..."
Prevents Attacking/Blocking
-> "At the beginning of the declare attacker step, if an effect prevented a creature from attacking, and that effect was not created by an ability of that creature.."
-> "At the beginning of the declare blocker step, if an effect prevented a creature from blocking, and that effect was not created by an ability of that creature.."
..There's still some rules ambiguity here.
Is Menace an effect that prevented me from blocking? (Probably?)
Probably needs to be removed, or just redone differently altogether.
Prevents Changing Zones
-> "If a card or permanent would change zones and that effect is replaced, and that replacement effect was not from an ability of that card or permanent, ..."
Changing Text
-> "Whenever a spell or ability modifies the text of a card, spell, or permanent..."
Change Value
-> "Whenever a spell or ability lowers a creatures power or toughness ..."
Loses Abilities
Probably right out due to static abilities that would trigger ad infinitum.
You could limit it to spells only?
Etc
No etc. Right out. List it or lose it. Ambiguity does not exist in magic.
Edit:
Interesting to note, preventing the above list from happening to begin with is actually far easier to template.
"Creatures can attack and block as though they weren't prevented from doing so by any spell or ability."
"Spells and abilities can't be countered"
etc
I believe it was just an issue with some server updates and changes yesterday not fully propagating to everything.
Apologies for the trouble
What Chrome version are you running?
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..and yeah, I guess we never made a new one after Introduce Yourself retired.
I'll bring it up.
Are you looking to play casually or competitively?
Are you looking mainly to start a collection or build specific decks?
It's basically a question of Quantity vs Quality.
Collection and more casual play prefer the Quantity side of things. Buying the gift box, toolkit, fat packs, and booster boxes will bulk up your collection quickly, and offer a lot of interesting options for kitchen table magic and casual play. Then you can slowly trade for what you need.
Competitive play or more specific decks prefer the Quality side of things. They need specific cards depending on what you're wanting to play, so buying a random assortment (whether packs or boxes) won't give you all the specific cards you're looking for. In this case, you are much better off buying individual cards and focusing on just building decks you want to play.
You can, of course, go somewhere between with Standard, specifically. Buy a box/fatpack/etc and use it as a basis of making the Standard deck you want. Especially if you're not sold on one specific Standard deck. You can use its contents to start the decks, pick up anything cheap you're missing, and then slowly work towards finishing it with the more expensive cards. This is one of the best way to get into Standard on a budget, honestly.
Once we hit Modern and Commander, however, we definitely have to start committing to the Competitive vs Casual / Quality vs Quantity debate.
If you're going casual and collection, then you're still fine buying bulk. The decks here will take a hard hit on their viability, but you can easily supplement them up a notch or two on a budget.
If you're looking for a Competitive Deck in either format, however, buying boxes or packs will give you very little return on what you need. Perhaps even none at all. The card pool here is infinitely more vast, Standard cards see only minor play, and decks are very specific about what they want. As such, the only real option is to go with individual buys. Even if you have to start off with a budget-friendly version and work you're way up, you're better off avoiding bulk.
If I were starting off, I would split the decision. Competitive for Standard, Casual for everything else.
Buy a bit of bulk, whether packs, fatpacks, boxes, or giftboxes. Whatever you can afford, while still holding back a bit of money to finish off decks. Use the bulk to start off some EDH or other casual decks, and flesh them out with budget friendly options. It's not hard to finish them off cheaply. The price difference between the best card and the second best card can be staggering. At the same time, if the bulk you're buying is Standard, you'll inevitably get some good Standard cards. From this, you can build a semi-competitive Standard deck, and invest the bulk of the extra money into getting it top notch.