Most of the game skeleton is the same as back in invasion though there have been a couple of big changes.
Combat damage no longer uses the stack. It is dealt and assigned as a single game action at the start of each combat damage step. You can't use Mog fanatic to kill an x/2 any more, and if you want to regenerate a creature you have to activate the ability in the declare blockers step. Other than that the Stack is the same as it was. Spells and abilites go on there and resolve in LIFO order.
There have been a number of terminology changes for zones and actions.
Zones:
In play is now the battlefield
Removed from the Game is now the Exile zone any thing that refered to Remove from the game now says it exiles it.
Actions
You play lands, Cast spells and activate abilities. Functionally this doesnn't make much difference it just clears up some of the language used.
The legendary supertype only cares about permanents that you control, both players can control a Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor. For Planeswalkers there is a similar rule that cares about the subtype where there legendary rule still cares about the name.
There are two possibilities for playable characters:
1. Almost all of the preexisting planeswalkers are playable characters. I think that the Marvel MMORPG has a similar system where players choose from preexisting characters. There would be enough playable planeswalkers that you wouldn’t run into duplicates too often. A few planeswalkers might have to be excluded for being much bigger and more powerful than most other planeswalkers (Bolas, Garruk, Karn, Ugin) or being dead (Elspeth, Freyalise, Teferi, Venser, Xenagos). They also might want to reserve some or all antagonistic planeswalkers to be used as bosses. But overall this is a very practical and reasonable choice, albeit a bit uninteresting in my opinion.
If they did it this way they would be to limited in the number of planeswalkers there are. They are going to have to set this after the mending otherwise the planeswalkers are going to be to powerful, and for all there are a lot of planeswalker cards there aren't that many planeswalkers currently only 35 so there it would be likely that you are likely to run across a lot of people using the same walkers especially if there is a tiering mechanic that limits when you get access to the different planeswalkers which would allow you to put in the slightly more powerful walkers.
2. You play as a custom-built planeswalker for which you can choose your race, class, and perhaps plane origin. Maybe you even start out your home plane for a while before your spark ignites and you gain access to other planes. This would be perfect given the premise of the game (“you are a planeswalker”) and many players’ tendencies to come up with “fanwalkers” as a result. However, this would be much more difficult to implement. There are a huge number of races and types of magic; it would be almost impossible to put all of them into game, and people would be disappointed by the exclusions. Having different players start out on different worlds would make matters even worse. It isn’t impossible to have races start out in different areas (WoW does it) but it would still be problematic in many ways. I think that this is less likely than them using existing planeswalkers, but it would be really cool if they did it.
If they were able to transfer the Elder Scrolls levelling mechanics up to a MMORPG it could work. Give the player some choices around Species, world and initial color specialization then allow how the player acts work out the sort of abilities they have with skills centered around both spell casting and the more physical abilities. Whilst we haven't seen it that much in the story there should still be some scope for characters that rely on the more physical skills like close combat, stealth and archery.
It will be interesting to see how they implement planeswalking. It should make it easy to get between different areas, but I doubt that this will be a complete sandbox game so there will have to be some sort of order that you unlock planes in (the most obvious choice being Zendikar, Innistrad, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, Ixalan). I assume that when you die in combat you will planeswalk to another plane’s hub area. Perhaps one plane will be the main starting plane/hub area, but I would expect that every plane has both areas with enemies and areas without them. If they do use one plane as the starting plane/hub area, I would expect it to be either Dominaria, Ravnica, or Shandalar.
This seems like a sensible way to manage it and is similar to how Bioware handles a similar issues in Star Wars: The old Republic. Though as this is the company that is behind the Star Trek MMO any one know how they deal with travelling between the various planets? As for a starting plane, if they are forced to use an existng MTG plane rather than creating new ones Ravnica would probably be the better choice as it seems to be the current hub of the multiverse with Dominaria still recovering from the events of Time Spiral and Shandalar not really well known outside of the the long term MTG players.
Anything that will make a creatures toughness down to 0 will also be sufficient to deal with any indestructible creatures so black gets stuff like infest.
To general points to kick off with. A single game object can only be targetted once per instance of the world target on the spell or ability. Secondly any spell or ability is legal target for the ability on spellskite it just might not do anything when it comes to resolve.
go for the throat can't target an artifact creature so when the ability on spellskite comes to resolve it won't do anything and the original target will be destroyed
4. I target 5 different artifacts with by force including the spellskite.
Since the spellskite is already targetted by the spell your opponent can't redirect the spell away from any of the other 4 artifacts. All 5 will be destroyed.
You are correct, you won't be able to cast the visier of many faces as if it has flash the decision on what to copy is made as the vizier like any other clone enters the battlefield, which is a long time after you have cast the spell.
In the scenario as you have described it the 4/4 is going to live regardless.
If you wait until the combat damage step to activate the ability your creature will have been dealt 4 damage and will be dead long before you can activate the ability.
If you activate the ability in the declare blockers step you will deal 2 damage to the attacking creature before your opponent can cast his instant as the creature is sacrificed as part of the cost of paying the ability but then the creature is no longer around to deal combat damage.
The answer is in the gatherer rulings for Thundermaw Hellkite.
The Baneslayer angel won't be dealt any damage but will still be tapped by the ability from the Dragon.
Quote from Gatherer »
7/1/2012 If the damage that would be dealt to a creature with flying is prevented, that creature will still be tapped. If that damage is redirected to another creature, the creature with flying will be tapped, not necessarily the creature that ultimately was dealt damage.
Hi all! I'm working on a Deathtouch Pauper deck and have some questions about a potential combo I think might work in an Orzhov or Abzan build...
So if I played a Wall of Glare and enchanted with a Touch of Moonglove giving it Deathtouch and 1 power, when Wall-o-Glare blocks does it deal that one damage back to the creature it blocks or not because it is a defender? My guess is that it can as long as it's technically blocking and not attacking, but then do I decide how that damage is dealt among attackers or is that based on the attacking players choice of damage order? Lets say x2 3/3 whatevers attack and I block both with the enchanted Wall. Do I kill one of them with one power of Deathtouch damage and then survive after blocking the extra 3 damage? Or do I trade with one and the other survives? Sorry I'm sure this is super creature combat 101 stuff.
Defender on stops a creature from being declared as a an attacker. It does not stop it from dealing damage. You can block any number of creatures and line them up to receive damage in the order you chose. The first one in line will be dealt 1 point of damage and most likely kill it. At the same time your opponents attacking creatures will deal damage as he assigned it most likely destroying your wall.
Then my other question and kind of the theme for my deck: what if it also had First Strike? Say my wall has the Touch of Moonglove and also a Cartouche of Solidarity... now it's a 2/6 Defender with Deathtouch, First Strike, and can block multiples... I'm guessing I can take out two of the attackers with 1 damage each, but then how many additional can he block before dying? Do I choose which attackers to kill? Does my choice of those targets influence how much damage my Wall will have to deal with?
Sorry such a long post, thanks if you made it to the end and double thanks if you feel like responding
The only difference that first strike does is create an extra combat damage step where creatures with first strike and double strike deal damage before creatures with out first strike or double strike.
In this case it would mean that 2 creatures would each be dealt 1 point of damage and be destroyed in the first strike combat damage step so won't be arround to deal damage in the normal combat damage step.
The answer to both your questions is your are protected.
The token copies have the same name as the original and runed hako does not care whether the game object currently aimed at you is a token or a real card just that is has the same name as the card you chose when it entered the battlefield.
Your opponent will be able to attack you with al 500 felidar guardians but unless he manages to do something to the halo or stop you from preventing the damage with something like flaring pain you won't actually be dealt any damage.
With grapeshot your opponent won't be able to target you with the grapeshot copies in the first place.
I wish I could. But, I am terrified of clicking on any links because of the risk of seeing any spoilers or in-depth details of any kind.
As I explained in the original post (especially the parts highlighted in bold font), I DO NOT want to accidentally see anything about the storyline or mid-level or high-level specifics of any kind.
So you don't want to write fan fiction then. You just want to write fiction using names from MTG regardless of where they show up.
I just wanted to know the bare minimum of what the names and formats of the early locations were. Like, whether they were on a single planet or multiple planets or multiple universes or what, and, what the names of the regions/planets were, if they had name, and which ones were offset by time from which ones.
I didn't want to know anything else other than that though, as that would ruin the whole writing experiment I'm trying to do.
Again if you want to write coherent fan fiction you can not do this. I am going to give you the same advice I give to people who turn up here proposing assorted rules changes. Don't bother unless you are willing to do the grond work. And for writing fan fiction that is learning what the current story is and working out where and what you slip in to the current storyline with out it not making sense.
Anyway, I think I know almost enough now, as it seems that most of these early sets took place on the same planet, which is what I was trying to find out, without risking seeing the spoilers I would've inevitably seen if I had just looked it up on some website.
Yes the same planet but in vastly different areas and at different times. The current History of Dominaria is of about similar length to that of civilised history on our rock. If you don't know what you are doing it would very easy to make very large errors like having Confucius and Napoleon wandering around the same place at the same time with out any form of time travel.
I guess ideally it would be best if someone was able to just list from Alpha through Exodus the name of the plane/planet/continent and time-era of each set in the format of the example I provided a couple posts up above. But even without something like that, I think maybe I already have enough to go off of from Kahedron's answers to start writing some stories. So, thanks for the info everyone, this will come in handy.
No you don't. And you won't until you ditch the I don't want spoilers/storyline information schtick you are displaying. Do your ground work first then start writing the fiction it will be a lot better in the end.
For the recent planes like Innistrad and Kaladesh we have only seen small parts of the them and in similar time periods.
For others like Mirrodin and Zendikar whilst we have and idea of what the whole plane looks like the story and the cards only concentrate on a couple of areas and the same time period. Other areas and times are left for when/if they return to the plane.
As to the physical lay out of the planes it depends on what Storyline needs it to be.
Speficially for Dominaria all the action takes place on a planet that bares the name Dominaria all the blocks that take place there all take place on that planet just at various different times or in different places. For an idea of its history check out the Wiki article for it here.
You are better off asking this in the storyline forum.
But essentially yes a lot of the early blocks did take place on Dominaria. As for why they appear so different just look at the geography/sociology of our planet even our time. Asia has a very different character to Europe which again very different to Africa and again different to Antartica.
Likewise looking back over the history of our rock different periods of history are very different to each other with things like landmasses moving, forming and collapsing at different times.
The same thing applies with Dominaria as each block is set on a different continent to the others or during a different time period, for example The Ice age block takes place a lot earlier than the Odyssey Block and Onslaught Block, during an actual Ice age that turned the Plane of Dominaria into an ice cube.
For the two you picked out spefically Arabian Nights is not set on Dominaria it was an attempt to extend the franchise out into existing properties in this case 1001 Arabian Nights and similar stories. Not to sure about Fallen Empires but the other thing to consider is that during the early years WOTC did not have a defined style to how they wanted each set to look so there are more differences in look and feel than there is in the modern era.
I admit I am confused. Segoth, are you saying that you can permanently exile cards with Angel of Serenity and Deadeye Navigator? Even with your explanation I just don't see how that works.
Yes it is possible.
The reasons why it works are:
Once an ability hits the stack it is completely independant of its source
Triggered abilities fire immeadiatly and go on the stack the next time a player would get priority.
If multiple triggers fire at the same time and are controlled by the same player they chose the order they go on the stack
Once a permanent leaves the battlefield it loses any memory of its previous existence
The steps behind this specific example are:
1) Angel of Serenity ETB triggering the Deadeye navigator and the Angel of Serenity
2) Put the ability of the Angel of Serenity on the stack first
3) The soulbound ability on Dead eye navigator resolves
4) Bounce out the Angel of serenity using the deadeye navigators ability
5) LTB ability on Angel of serenity will fire
6) Angel of serenities LTB will resolve with nothing to return.
7) Angel of Sernities ETB will finally resolve removing the targetted creatures
As the new Angel that returns is not the one that exiled the creatures you won't get them back when it leaves the battlefield.
You can, literally, and very very very easily, which is exactly what writers get paid a salary to do. You think every single card WoTC comes up with is the only idea they ever had for that set? There's thousands of more ideas behind the scenes backlogged, but they choose the ones that are most likely to maximize their profit with the current state of the game.
When you have a Lightning Bolt, it isn't really possible to make all of the direct damage spells as good. You can try making variations, like one that deals 4 damage to a creature but 2 to a player, but then one still tops it all.
1
I disagree with you its not hard at all, Here let me provide you with some
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player
New Bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player, Gain 1 energy
New Bolt
R
Deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to target walker
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player Scry 1
New bolt
R
Deals 1 damage to all creatures OR deals 3 damaged to each opponent.
New Bolt
R
Deals 2 damaged to each player for each nonbasic land they have in play
New Bolt
R
Deals X damaged to target permanent where X is its total converted casting cost. or 2 damaged to all players
New bolt
R
Deals 6 damaged to target creature, new bolt can target creatures with hexproof or shroud.
New bolt
R
Deals 4 damage to target player.
New bolts all playable alongside original bolt.
Nope. New Bolts most of which completely outclass the one true bolt to an almost laughable extent. If some those got printed there would be no point in using the original lightning bolt which very eloquantly proves the point that Lord Soth has been making.
If the baseline spells like terror, wrath of god and lightning bolt are to efficient any new version of them needs to do something rather shiny for the new cards to get a look in. It is far better to have a lower base line so variants don't have to be so rediculous yet still provide a reason to use them instead of the baseline version of the spell.
Combat damage no longer uses the stack. It is dealt and assigned as a single game action at the start of each combat damage step. You can't use Mog fanatic to kill an x/2 any more, and if you want to regenerate a creature you have to activate the ability in the declare blockers step. Other than that the Stack is the same as it was. Spells and abilites go on there and resolve in LIFO order.
There have been a number of terminology changes for zones and actions.
Zones:
In play is now the battlefield
Removed from the Game is now the Exile zone any thing that refered to Remove from the game now says it exiles it.
Actions
You play lands, Cast spells and activate abilities. Functionally this doesnn't make much difference it just clears up some of the language used.
The legendary supertype only cares about permanents that you control, both players can control a Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor. For Planeswalkers there is a similar rule that cares about the subtype where there legendary rule still cares about the name.
Mana burn does not exist any more.
That should be the major ones.
If they did it this way they would be to limited in the number of planeswalkers there are. They are going to have to set this after the mending otherwise the planeswalkers are going to be to powerful, and for all there are a lot of planeswalker cards there aren't that many planeswalkers currently only 35 so there it would be likely that you are likely to run across a lot of people using the same walkers especially if there is a tiering mechanic that limits when you get access to the different planeswalkers which would allow you to put in the slightly more powerful walkers.
If they were able to transfer the Elder Scrolls levelling mechanics up to a MMORPG it could work. Give the player some choices around Species, world and initial color specialization then allow how the player acts work out the sort of abilities they have with skills centered around both spell casting and the more physical abilities. Whilst we haven't seen it that much in the story there should still be some scope for characters that rely on the more physical skills like close combat, stealth and archery.
This seems like a sensible way to manage it and is similar to how Bioware handles a similar issues in Star Wars: The old Republic. Though as this is the company that is behind the Star Trek MMO any one know how they deal with travelling between the various planets? As for a starting plane, if they are forced to use an existng MTG plane rather than creating new ones Ravnica would probably be the better choice as it seems to be the current hub of the multiverse with Dominaria still recovering from the events of Time Spiral and Shandalar not really well known outside of the the long term MTG players.
A creature will be affected by summonin sickness if you have not controlled it since the start of your most recent turn.
Electrolyze as cast here needs to seperate targets so both the player and the spellskite will be dealt damage
Both modes can be changed to the spellskite so the player won't be dealt any damage
go for the throat can't target an artifact creature so when the ability on spellskite comes to resolve it won't do anything and the original target will be destroyed
Since the spellskite is already targetted by the spell your opponent can't redirect the spell away from any of the other 4 artifacts. All 5 will be destroyed.
Disenchant is not a modal spell so the spellskite will remain a legal target. Its going to be destroyed.
If you wait until the combat damage step to activate the ability your creature will have been dealt 4 damage and will be dead long before you can activate the ability.
If you activate the ability in the declare blockers step you will deal 2 damage to the attacking creature before your opponent can cast his instant as the creature is sacrificed as part of the cost of paying the ability but then the creature is no longer around to deal combat damage.
The Baneslayer angel won't be dealt any damage but will still be tapped by the ability from the Dragon.
Defender on stops a creature from being declared as a an attacker. It does not stop it from dealing damage. You can block any number of creatures and line them up to receive damage in the order you chose. The first one in line will be dealt 1 point of damage and most likely kill it. At the same time your opponents attacking creatures will deal damage as he assigned it most likely destroying your wall.
The only difference that first strike does is create an extra combat damage step where creatures with first strike and double strike deal damage before creatures with out first strike or double strike.
In this case it would mean that 2 creatures would each be dealt 1 point of damage and be destroyed in the first strike combat damage step so won't be arround to deal damage in the normal combat damage step.
The token copies have the same name as the original and runed hako does not care whether the game object currently aimed at you is a token or a real card just that is has the same name as the card you chose when it entered the battlefield.
Your opponent will be able to attack you with al 500 felidar guardians but unless he manages to do something to the halo or stop you from preventing the damage with something like flaring pain you won't actually be dealt any damage.
With grapeshot your opponent won't be able to target you with the grapeshot copies in the first place.
So you don't want to write fan fiction then. You just want to write fiction using names from MTG regardless of where they show up.
Again if you want to write coherent fan fiction you can not do this. I am going to give you the same advice I give to people who turn up here proposing assorted rules changes. Don't bother unless you are willing to do the grond work. And for writing fan fiction that is learning what the current story is and working out where and what you slip in to the current storyline with out it not making sense.
Yes the same planet but in vastly different areas and at different times. The current History of Dominaria is of about similar length to that of civilised history on our rock. If you don't know what you are doing it would very easy to make very large errors like having Confucius and Napoleon wandering around the same place at the same time with out any form of time travel.
No you don't. And you won't until you ditch the I don't want spoilers/storyline information schtick you are displaying. Do your ground work first then start writing the fiction it will be a lot better in the end.
For others like Mirrodin and Zendikar whilst we have and idea of what the whole plane looks like the story and the cards only concentrate on a couple of areas and the same time period. Other areas and times are left for when/if they return to the plane.
As to the physical lay out of the planes it depends on what Storyline needs it to be.
Speficially for Dominaria all the action takes place on a planet that bares the name Dominaria all the blocks that take place there all take place on that planet just at various different times or in different places. For an idea of its history check out the Wiki article for it here.
But essentially yes a lot of the early blocks did take place on Dominaria. As for why they appear so different just look at the geography/sociology of our planet even our time. Asia has a very different character to Europe which again very different to Africa and again different to Antartica.
Likewise looking back over the history of our rock different periods of history are very different to each other with things like landmasses moving, forming and collapsing at different times.
The same thing applies with Dominaria as each block is set on a different continent to the others or during a different time period, for example The Ice age block takes place a lot earlier than the Odyssey Block and Onslaught Block, during an actual Ice age that turned the Plane of Dominaria into an ice cube.
For the two you picked out spefically Arabian Nights is not set on Dominaria it was an attempt to extend the franchise out into existing properties in this case 1001 Arabian Nights and similar stories. Not to sure about Fallen Empires but the other thing to consider is that during the early years WOTC did not have a defined style to how they wanted each set to look so there are more differences in look and feel than there is in the modern era.
Yes it is possible.
The reasons why it works are:
Once an ability hits the stack it is completely independant of its source
Triggered abilities fire immeadiatly and go on the stack the next time a player would get priority.
If multiple triggers fire at the same time and are controlled by the same player they chose the order they go on the stack
Once a permanent leaves the battlefield it loses any memory of its previous existence
The steps behind this specific example are:
1) Angel of Serenity ETB triggering the Deadeye navigator and the Angel of Serenity
2) Put the ability of the Angel of Serenity on the stack first
3) The soulbound ability on Dead eye navigator resolves
4) Bounce out the Angel of serenity using the deadeye navigators ability
5) LTB ability on Angel of serenity will fire
6) Angel of serenities LTB will resolve with nothing to return.
7) Angel of Sernities ETB will finally resolve removing the targetted creatures
As the new Angel that returns is not the one that exiled the creatures you won't get them back when it leaves the battlefield.
Nope. New Bolts most of which completely outclass the one true bolt to an almost laughable extent. If some those got printed there would be no point in using the original lightning bolt which very eloquantly proves the point that Lord Soth has been making.
If the baseline spells like terror, wrath of god and lightning bolt are to efficient any new version of them needs to do something rather shiny for the new cards to get a look in. It is far better to have a lower base line so variants don't have to be so rediculous yet still provide a reason to use them instead of the baseline version of the spell.