The problem with turning a Goblin into a Locus or an Aura means you can turn it into a plains, and now it can tap for mana. And any way to fix this ends up being far more complicated and definitely not worth getting rid of Tribal.
As I worked out above, I think changing the five basic land types into Supertypes avoids this issue, lets you get rid of any remaining rules baggage on subtypes*, lets you disassociate subtypes from types entirely, and lets you delete Tribal. I don't think it even requires changing the phrasing on any cards that care about basic land types. It's still "Search your library for a Forest", "Target land becomes a Swamp", and "Enchanted land becomes an Island in addition to its other types". Just rephrase 305.7 slightly to talk about changing supertypes instead of subtypes without any functional changes except in possibly the most extreme of corner cases.
*Equipment and Fortification are still left, but they're easily fixed by hinging the relevant rules bits of 301.5 and 301.6 on having an Equip or Fortify ability instead of having the right subtype.
The fact that people don't understand what's wrong with universal subtypes is amazing to me.
If there were universal subtypes, Imagecrafter would be a mana accelerant and fixer. You could make your creature into a Forest and it would tap for green mana. All changelings would tap for mana. You could errata basic lands, duals, Ravnica duals, and the Leechridden Swamp cycle and remove the rules baggage attached to basic land types, but this causes a whole host of other problems with cards that change the types of lands. How would you ever print Convincing Mirage under these rules?
Okay, that's an actual issue, because land subtypes still have rules baggage. The solution is to get either get rid of that rules baggage or get rid of them as a subtype.
If you get rid of the rules baggage, as was done with Wall, then you now have "Plains" as the name of a card with type "Land" and rules text "Plains", which is an ability that lets you tap for white mana. Then you'd have phrasings like "search your library for a land with Plains", "target land gains Plains", and "target land loses all abilities and gains Plains".
Alternately, get rid of the subtypeness, as they did with Legend -> Legendary. Plains is now either a full-on Type or a Supertype, not a Subtype, though it is normally only printed on cards that also have the Land type. Then you'd have phrasings like "search your library for a Plains", "target land gains Plains in addition to its other types", and "target land becomes a Plains Land". This seems like the better alternative (with the trivial downside that Tarmogoyf just gained another +5/+5 to make up for the loss of Tribal, if it's a Type and not a Supertype).
Yes, it was really that difficult. Instant - Goblin, means that Goblin is now a subtype of instants and sorceries, as well as creatures. But because if one subtype is shared between types, they all must be, you now could have a Creature - Trap. Or a Creature - Aura. Or a Creature - Contraption.
So? What's the problem with universal subtypes? Thanks to Tribal, we have to specify "Goblins" vs "Goblin Creatures" in lots of places already. Why not specify "Arcane Instant or Sorcery" and "Aura Enchantments" in cards that care about those? Universal subtypes doesn't introduce any problem that can't be solved by rephrasing old cards, and they've already rephrased most of them since creature vs non-creature is by far the most cared about distinction. Subtypes as a universal #tag system would work fine.
Everyone claiming that double-sided cards would be illegal in tournament play is completely ignoring the possibility that everyone is supposed to see the back, and that it might be illegal to use opaque sleeves with them. The issue of shuffling randomly is the big stickler though, so I'm inclined to believe that points towards them being two separate physical cards, with the divot in front of the werewolf's type indicating that it is a special card that can't actually go in your deck. If they were double-sided cards, then there would be no reason to have that symbol (in addition to the day-and-night icons), as it already has no casting cost and thus you couldn't play that side of it.
This is easily answered, as you can not say Yes, you have to say No.
For the question if you concede you simply answer by not saying No.
like, I'll never concede you fool.
You can phrase it in increasingly-tortorous ways to avoid this sort of linguistic equivocation. "Are the truth values of the propositions 'You will concede this turn.' and 'You will answer Yes to this question.' the same?" Even apart from power level (which is basically "Mindslaver every turn"), Frankie Peanuts is unprintable due to the hours-long rules and semantic arguments it would inspire. It does to language what Chaos Orb does to physics.
I think the most likely candidates for the un-set cards would be Frankie Peanuts or Staying Power. Both could be slightly altered to make a card that is playable but also understandable in real magic.
Frankie Peanuts is unplayably broken, as is any card in any game that allows you to bind players to future actions based on yes or no questions. "Are your answers to the questions 'Will you concede this turn?' and this question I am currently asking the same?" If you can't make statements about concession binding, then you can still force any in-game action such as preventing your opponent from blocking, casting spells, and activating abilities until end of turn. Unless you limit it to a fixed list of questions you can ask, coming up with rules that prevent this sort of action-forcing question from being legal requires that the players understand second-order predicate logic and some fairly hairy math. This is why Monocle of Clarity in Jyhad / VtES was banned for several years until they errataed it to just allow asking about the present state of things (and it's still very hard to enforce correct answers to questions about hidden state in tournament level play).
Exactly my idea.
TCG's already get cranked out en masse. Instead of hiring a dev team to make a come up with a new game and make a horrible TCG game based on some TV show that no one will ever play, they could just license the MTG ruleset and make the game off that.
No one that currently plays MTG would be affected by it all, none of these cards would be legal, or even true "MTG" cards so they could be completely ignore. The casual crowd could enjoy some nice cross-playability if they choose, and the people making the TCG would save a lot of development costs not having to write up a rules system.
There is no way this could offend anyone.
You really think that WotC would charge less for letting you use the rules to the first, best, and hugely successful CCG than it would cost you to pay some wanna-be game designers to whip up their "fixed" version of Magic with all the "improvements" they're dying to make? The companies churning out these disposable CCGs don't care about long-term game health or really game play. They want to sell a bunch of cards within a few months while the property they're hyping is hot, then they move on to the next cash mine.
Wizards actually tried this at one point, with the ARC System designed as a simple, generic card game that could be easily reflavored for different licensed properties, which they did for Xena, Hercules, and C-23, but then it died out due to presumed lack of interest.
I've been LOVING Armored Ascension in my WW deck. And there's just no equipment that could do what it does at that price.
Lashwrithe? Costs the same four mana, though you have to pay four life to hit with it the turn you play it, but the fact that it's equipment more than makes up for it. And it's in the best color for Infect, to boot.
Saying that there's any kind of hard limitation on something supposedly "infinite" would make that something finite.
That's just plain wrong. There's plenty of middle ground between finite sets and "everything". Just because the Magic universe includes infinitely many planes doesn't mean that it does include every idea that could possibly be a plane. There's infinitely many different stories you could tell that people would agree are fairy tales, but that excludes all the stories that look like cyberpunk spy thrillers. The set of all possible English language sentences is infinite, but doesn't contain any of the also-infinite set of all possible Chinese language sentences. The set of integers is infinite, but doesn't include any fractions (even though it's the same size as the set of all rational numbers, though smaller than the set of all real numbers).
Been reading through this post because I am interested in infect decks, but I haven't seen anybody mention Thrummingbird.
I'm curious about what you guys think about that creature.
My feeling is that it's cute, but doesn't get that all-important first poison counter on your opponent. He's useless if he's your only creature, and we're running few enough creatures that you can't afford to be looking at him as a dead draw early on. Blighted Agent doesn't proliferate all your magnets and Jace, but is so much better at getting through for actual poison that it should be no contest between them. (Plus, equipment does very little on a Thrummingbird, unlike a creature with actual Infect.)
If you have two (or more) specific cards in your deck where you wouldn't play either without the other, that's when I consider it combo instead of synergy. If those cards are your win condition, that's when it's a "combo deck."
That's basically my definition. Cards that are good on their own but even better together are synergy. Cards that are mediocre to useless on their own but good together are a combo.
Same here. Carpe Noctem deserves to be on a vampire-themed card.
As I worked out above, I think changing the five basic land types into Supertypes avoids this issue, lets you get rid of any remaining rules baggage on subtypes*, lets you disassociate subtypes from types entirely, and lets you delete Tribal. I don't think it even requires changing the phrasing on any cards that care about basic land types. It's still "Search your library for a Forest", "Target land becomes a Swamp", and "Enchanted land becomes an Island in addition to its other types". Just rephrase 305.7 slightly to talk about changing supertypes instead of subtypes without any functional changes except in possibly the most extreme of corner cases.
*Equipment and Fortification are still left, but they're easily fixed by hinging the relevant rules bits of 301.5 and 301.6 on having an Equip or Fortify ability instead of having the right subtype.
Well, admittedly, Nameless Inversion is only cool because of Haakon, Stromgald Scourge, plus a few creature-type-specific tutors.
Okay, that's an actual issue, because land subtypes still have rules baggage. The solution is to get either get rid of that rules baggage or get rid of them as a subtype.
If you get rid of the rules baggage, as was done with Wall, then you now have "Plains" as the name of a card with type "Land" and rules text "Plains", which is an ability that lets you tap for white mana. Then you'd have phrasings like "search your library for a land with Plains", "target land gains Plains", and "target land loses all abilities and gains Plains".
Alternately, get rid of the subtypeness, as they did with Legend -> Legendary. Plains is now either a full-on Type or a Supertype, not a Subtype, though it is normally only printed on cards that also have the Land type. Then you'd have phrasings like "search your library for a Plains", "target land gains Plains in addition to its other types", and "target land becomes a Plains Land". This seems like the better alternative (with the trivial downside that Tarmogoyf just gained another +5/+5 to make up for the loss of Tribal, if it's a Type and not a Supertype).
So? What's the problem with universal subtypes? Thanks to Tribal, we have to specify "Goblins" vs "Goblin Creatures" in lots of places already. Why not specify "Arcane Instant or Sorcery" and "Aura Enchantments" in cards that care about those? Universal subtypes doesn't introduce any problem that can't be solved by rephrasing old cards, and they've already rephrased most of them since creature vs non-creature is by far the most cared about distinction. Subtypes as a universal #tag system would work fine.
Yeah, cause we all knew how Planeswalkers worked without reading the new rules on them? Relax and wait for the article…
More like Hammer Films, who ripped off Bram Stoker, who ripped off Romanian folklore.
You can phrase it in increasingly-tortorous ways to avoid this sort of linguistic equivocation. "Are the truth values of the propositions 'You will concede this turn.' and 'You will answer Yes to this question.' the same?" Even apart from power level (which is basically "Mindslaver every turn"), Frankie Peanuts is unprintable due to the hours-long rules and semantic arguments it would inspire. It does to language what Chaos Orb does to physics.
Frankie Peanuts is unplayably broken, as is any card in any game that allows you to bind players to future actions based on yes or no questions. "Are your answers to the questions 'Will you concede this turn?' and this question I am currently asking the same?" If you can't make statements about concession binding, then you can still force any in-game action such as preventing your opponent from blocking, casting spells, and activating abilities until end of turn. Unless you limit it to a fixed list of questions you can ask, coming up with rules that prevent this sort of action-forcing question from being legal requires that the players understand second-order predicate logic and some fairly hairy math. This is why Monocle of Clarity in Jyhad / VtES was banned for several years until they errataed it to just allow asking about the present state of things (and it's still very hard to enforce correct answers to questions about hidden state in tournament level play).
You really think that WotC would charge less for letting you use the rules to the first, best, and hugely successful CCG than it would cost you to pay some wanna-be game designers to whip up their "fixed" version of Magic with all the "improvements" they're dying to make? The companies churning out these disposable CCGs don't care about long-term game health or really game play. They want to sell a bunch of cards within a few months while the property they're hyping is hot, then they move on to the next cash mine.
Wizards actually tried this at one point, with the ARC System designed as a simple, generic card game that could be easily reflavored for different licensed properties, which they did for Xena, Hercules, and C-23, but then it died out due to presumed lack of interest.
Lashwrithe? Costs the same four mana, though you have to pay four life to hit with it the turn you play it, but the fact that it's equipment more than makes up for it. And it's in the best color for Infect, to boot.
That's just plain wrong. There's plenty of middle ground between finite sets and "everything". Just because the Magic universe includes infinitely many planes doesn't mean that it does include every idea that could possibly be a plane. There's infinitely many different stories you could tell that people would agree are fairy tales, but that excludes all the stories that look like cyberpunk spy thrillers. The set of all possible English language sentences is infinite, but doesn't contain any of the also-infinite set of all possible Chinese language sentences. The set of integers is infinite, but doesn't include any fractions (even though it's the same size as the set of all rational numbers, though smaller than the set of all real numbers).
My feeling is that it's cute, but doesn't get that all-important first poison counter on your opponent. He's useless if he's your only creature, and we're running few enough creatures that you can't afford to be looking at him as a dead draw early on. Blighted Agent doesn't proliferate all your magnets and Jace, but is so much better at getting through for actual poison that it should be no contest between them. (Plus, equipment does very little on a Thrummingbird, unlike a creature with actual Infect.)
That's basically my definition. Cards that are good on their own but even better together are synergy. Cards that are mediocre to useless on their own but good together are a combo.