To summarize all the posts above, several possible ways that this can play out:
Explicitly naming every step and your opponent doesn't want to kill them:
You: "Pentarch Ward targetting Grizzly Bears, pass priority."
Opponent: "OK, pass priority."
You: "Pentarch Ward resolves. I name black. Draw-a-card trigger on the stack, pass priority.[/c]"
At this point your opponent is unable to Disfigure the Bears.
If your opponent does want to kill him:
You: "Pentarch Ward targetting Grizzly Bears, pass priority."
Opponent: "Disfigure the Grizzly Bears, pass priority."
Disfigure would at this point resolve before the Ward, and you have one more chance to respond (with a Cancel, for example). If you pass priority, the Disfigure kills the Bears.
More realistically, with shortcuts:
You: "Pentarch Ward the Bears for Black."
Opponent: "Disfigure them in response."
You: "Cancel the Disfigure."
Him: "Crap."
You: "Ward resolves?"
Him: "Yes"
You: "Naming Red." <-- this is because your decision of Black was rewound, freeing you from the locked-in choice.
What you can't do is this:
You: "Pentarch Ward the Bears, Black."
Opponent: "OK, no responses."
You: "Naming Red." <-- because when you do "jump the gun" you are committed if he doesn't respond.
Bataar, redireciton is a completely white/red concept. Of course, White has always been an excellent complement to Blue in a control deck, starting with the venerable Wrath of God and Swords to Plowshares.
Instant-speed mind control is certainly something they could bring back - maybe just a reprint of Ray of Command, maybe a more powerful effect.
I think one of the ares of focus for Blue is going to be slowing the opponent down. Blue teems with alternate win conditions; in particular, milling has been made significantly better recently, with everything from Jace to Traumatize to the lowly Hedron Crab. However, Blue's weakness is frequently just getting the time to get up to steam off against the unbridled aggression of other colors, as its win conditions are generally slower. If I'm correct, we'll see more effects along the lines of Cumber Stone, Lethargy Trap, Constricting Tendrils - as well as less obvious methods that still basically deal with tempo, like Whiplash Trap. There is a lot of design space here; limiting spells played, preventing access to the library, weakening creatures directly, even limiting mana access - Early Frost may be weak, but consider the same effect for only U, or some other variation.
Jimbo, it's quite a stretch to say that missing several cards' full potential means that they're bad deck designers. Hindsight is 20/20, and it's not like those cards were treated as throwaways - they thought they'd be strong, just not as strong as they turned out to be. The same thing happens to all the best Magic players, and you can see it in the evolution of archetypes and metagames after a set is released. Do the top world players immediately see the obvious combinations of cards and create decks that last till the next set is released? No, it takes months of effort across thousands of players and the general evaluation of a given card will often jump up and down radically. How many Top-8s is Lotus Cobra in?
In that sentence, "first player" simply refers to the player referenced first in the sentence (the one taking the damage, as opposed to the opponent player mentioned).
Note also that in your sentence, you say "will" where it should be "may". Dealing damage to Jim or to his Chandra Nalaar is your choice, and if you want to hit Jim you can.
Nitpick: Deathtouch doesn't "activate". It's neither a triggered nor activated ability. This is important for stack purposes (namely, it doesn't use the stack.)
greenperson: From the way you're wording things, I'm wondering if you're confusing "toughness" in Magic with the way "defense" stats work in other games. Being a 1/3 doesn't mean "this is a 1 when attacking and a 3 when defending." A 1/3 is always a 1/3, whether attacking, defending or just sitting there - the power, 1, is the combat damage it deals (whether attacking or blocking) and the toughness of 3 is the minimum damage needed to destroy it.
Anyone who thinks "based on things wizards said once upon a time, that Mythics should never be these awesome cards" doesn't correctly remember what Wizards actually said. Wizards said, "the Mythic Rare cards will never be a list of all the best cards in a set." They promised that every Mythic Rare will not be better than every non-Mythic Rare. They never said a Mythic Rare card would never be the single best card in a set, or that all Mythic Rares will be unplayable in Constructed.
Wizards did not set a $60 price tag on Baneslayer Angel, players did. If you think BSA is worth $60, you'll pay $60 for it - or charge $60 when selling it. If Baneslayer was Rare instead of Mythic Rare, and supply & demand responded linearly, it would still cost $30, because there's only twice as many of any given rare per 1000 boosters as there are of any given mythic rare. And BSA was at that price point or lower when people first got a hold of it - that is, the variance within BSA's price range has been greater than the variance between the hypothetical price ranges.
Not only does Wizards not set the prices on the secondary market, I doubt they even spend particularly much time thinking and worrying about them. If you ask Wizards, their response will probably be "if single cards are too expensive for you, buy more boosters."
the_cardfather, you miss my point. I understand that huge creatures don't see play because there are relatively cheap ways to deal with them. My point is that this is unrelated to mythic rarity, and the existence of mythic rarity didn't enable cards that would otherwise not exist.
Mythic is necessary to combat power creep. Consider all cards printed at mythic rarity. (Well, not all, but I'm making a point here.) These cards are all significantly more powerful than similarly-cost rares of each set. Essentially, WotC is now allowed to print ridiculously powerful, game changing cards without forcing up the power of the rest of the game.
...what? Mythic rares are not, on average, more powerful than normal rares. There's a large number of splashy-but-not-powerful cards at Mythic rarity. Sure, Iona, Shield of Emeria shuts down your opponent, but so does anything else you could cast for 9. Does anyone recall any top-tier decks in any format that used Godsire? Prince of Thralls? Child of Alara? There's a small handful of Mythic Rares that are powerful and used in top-tier decks - just like there's a small handful of Rares, a small handful of Uncommons, and a small handful of Commons that are powerful and top-tier. Baneslayer Angel stands out in today's Standard environment, but it's hardly the first card to stand out as powerful. Skullclamp was more powerful, and that was an uncommon.
I think mythic rarity is fine and is probably either neutral or good for the game overall in the long term. It's not a cash grab, unless you want to call reduced set sizes in the first place a "cash giveaway" by Wizards. I also don't believe that Wizards has "broken promises" regarding Mythic Rarity, as some people seem to think.
because its not boring, and thats exactly the kind of attitude that makes a lot of casual playgroups stagnant. rather than adapt and learn how to beat the deck its easier to whine and not play against it. i've had this problem in my casual play group any time they see a counterspell. i figured ok fine, i won't use counterspells, well then it just shifts to any deck that wins. blah blah this isn't fun you control the game. well, learn how to play better and you won't be so butt-hurt when you can't keep a creature in play and mine face no threat of removal. there is absolutely no reason why casual has to mean bad. some combos are a pain to deal with and not really fair, but for the most part if its in the game theres no reason why it should be frowned on in casual. casual is about fun sure, but its also about learning to play better while having fun, and thats not something you can do if you're building and playing against decks that don't utilize everything the game has to offer.
It may be about that for you, it doesn't have to be about that for everyone. Casual doesn't have to be tournament-magic lite. If you think your casual group is missing a way of playing that they would enjoy, go ahead and suggest it to them. But it's unreasonable to say that if most of them enjoy playing one way and you enjoy a different way, they're the ones doing it wrong. Most likely, you just need to find another playgroup.
It's possible that you are, in fact, a better MTG player than everyone else in your group. Do you think an NFL quarterback plays the same way in a neighborhood 4th-of-july-party game as he does in the stadium?
Short answer: Yes, an 8/8 with trample blocked by a 2/2 deathtouch can still deal 6 points of trample damage.
Long answer: Deathtouch doesn't happen during cleanup. Cleanup is the name of a step at the very end of each turn; the creature is dead long before cleanup happens. Deathtouch happens immediately as the damage is dealt. However, all the damage is dealt at the same time - so it doesn't matter that the 8/8 is immediately dying, since its 8 points of damage (2 to the deathtoucher, 6 to the player) were dealt simultaneously with the 2 from the deathtoucher.
This is different if the deathtoucher has first strike - then the 8/8 is dead before it can deal its combat damage, because there are now two combat damage steps happening instead of one.
Minor note, but keep in mind that the 8/8 doesn't strictly speaking have to assign 6 to the player - trample is a "may" not a "must", so it's possible to assign more than 2 to the deathtoucher in this example, if the 8/8's controller wants to for some reason, e.g. he suspects a Shieldmate's Blessing in your hand.
The question itself has been answered... it sounds like your friend is still not convinced for some reason. The only things I can recommend are (a) asking him to give him a rule from the comprehensive rulebook that shows where damage "floats" - you've given him rules references, after all; (b) just shut down any analogies to real bodies and draining energy, etc. because they simply don't work. I can have a slug equipped with four morningstars and twelve swords, because the rules say that object A and B interact with each other according to rule C, and that's all there is to it.
Standard environments can be drastically different based on the power levels of each block included and the synergies or lack thereof. Most people who've been playing for a while have some favorite Standard of the ones they've played; for some people that might be the current Standard, for others a past one. What if we could build a custom Standard environment - one core set, two blocks? What kind of combinations would people want to see? Ice Age - Time Spiral? Ravnica - Lorwyn? Etc.
For the sake of this mental experiment, let's assume no cards are banned/restricted, and exclude Un-sets and Alpha through Unlimited because of their power-9 concentration.
So, what combinations would make a standard environment that is:
- Best: The most balanced, fun, skill-intensive combination? People generally speak very favorably of Rav-TSP, for example.
- Worst: Most degenerate environment. My guess is that a combination of the Mirrodin and Urza's blocks, without banned cards, would make the degeneracy of Affinity even more pronounced.
- Strongest: Possibly though not necessarily the same as the most degenerate. Stomps every other Standard deck, etc. My vote goes again to Urza-Mirrodin.
- Weakest: The kind that wouldn't stand a chance against any other Standard deck. Not really sure what would go here, but my guess is that it would involve Kamigawa.
I don't actually think Council of the Soratami has "more" flavor. It has a different flavor, I would say a more specialized rather than general flavor. A card that didn't have flavor would be named something like "Draw Two". To me, flavor is both about evoking otherworldly images, sometimes magical but not necessarily so, and also about tying the mechanical effect of the card to the fantasy world represented. "Divination" does the latter excellently - you are divining additional knowledge, which is what cards-in-hand generally represent.
To put it another way - I think one of the ways to make a card very flavorful is to allow it to fit to a variety of worlds and storylines. Things like Lightning Bolt and Divination do that. Could they have printed a card in Zendikar named "Valakut's Wrath" that was a functional Lightning Bolt reprint? Sure. That would be flavorful too. But I don't think it would be more flavorful than Lightning Bolt.
There's no "aura" in old art that's missing now. M:tG art was never produced as if it were a masterpiece, and no piece was ever somehow more special than another one. The only significant difference is art direction and coherence, which has increased over time - and nostalgia, which makes people value old things higher regardless. The M10 Shivan Dragon is, in my artistic preferences, strictly better than the Alpha Shivan Dragon. The M10 Birds of Paradise is strictly better than the Alpha Birds of Paradise. The M10 Royal Assassin is strictly better than the Alpha Royal Assassin. And so on. What you're saying isn't really that it's not art, you're saying you don't like the art.
More art in a shorter time is irrelevant even if true (I'm not sure it is), because they can afford to hire more artists now. It's possible that the amount of artist-time per card has actually increased, depending on how much they've expanded their artist pool.
Just like flavor, your personal preference might be to the older art and older card frames. But to say that this means WotC or M:tG has "lost" something is only meaningful if most of the playership shares your preferences. I certainly don't, and I doubt that WotC would move in a direction for years without ever checking what the players actually want. If most people playing the game prefer the new art, etc. wouldn't it be equally or more reasonable to say that M:tG has "found" a soul where it didn't have one before?
Explicitly naming every step and your opponent doesn't want to kill them:
You: "Pentarch Ward targetting Grizzly Bears, pass priority."
Opponent: "OK, pass priority."
You: "Pentarch Ward resolves. I name black. Draw-a-card trigger on the stack, pass priority.[/c]"
At this point your opponent is unable to Disfigure the Bears.
If your opponent does want to kill him:
You: "Pentarch Ward targetting Grizzly Bears, pass priority."
Opponent: "Disfigure the Grizzly Bears, pass priority."
Disfigure would at this point resolve before the Ward, and you have one more chance to respond (with a Cancel, for example). If you pass priority, the Disfigure kills the Bears.
More realistically, with shortcuts:
You: "Pentarch Ward the Bears for Black."
Opponent: "Disfigure them in response."
You: "Cancel the Disfigure."
Him: "Crap."
You: "Ward resolves?"
Him: "Yes"
You: "Naming Red." <-- this is because your decision of Black was rewound, freeing you from the locked-in choice.
What you can't do is this:
You: "Pentarch Ward the Bears, Black."
Opponent: "OK, no responses."
You: "Naming Red." <-- because when you do "jump the gun" you are committed if he doesn't respond.
Instant-speed mind control is certainly something they could bring back - maybe just a reprint of Ray of Command, maybe a more powerful effect.
I think one of the ares of focus for Blue is going to be slowing the opponent down. Blue teems with alternate win conditions; in particular, milling has been made significantly better recently, with everything from Jace to Traumatize to the lowly Hedron Crab. However, Blue's weakness is frequently just getting the time to get up to steam off against the unbridled aggression of other colors, as its win conditions are generally slower. If I'm correct, we'll see more effects along the lines of Cumber Stone, Lethargy Trap, Constricting Tendrils - as well as less obvious methods that still basically deal with tempo, like Whiplash Trap. There is a lot of design space here; limiting spells played, preventing access to the library, weakening creatures directly, even limiting mana access - Early Frost may be weak, but consider the same effect for only U, or some other variation.
Jimbo, it's quite a stretch to say that missing several cards' full potential means that they're bad deck designers. Hindsight is 20/20, and it's not like those cards were treated as throwaways - they thought they'd be strong, just not as strong as they turned out to be. The same thing happens to all the best Magic players, and you can see it in the evolution of archetypes and metagames after a set is released. Do the top world players immediately see the obvious combinations of cards and create decks that last till the next set is released? No, it takes months of effort across thousands of players and the general evaluation of a given card will often jump up and down radically. How many Top-8s is Lotus Cobra in?
Note also that in your sentence, you say "will" where it should be "may". Dealing damage to Jim or to his Chandra Nalaar is your choice, and if you want to hit Jim you can.
greenperson: From the way you're wording things, I'm wondering if you're confusing "toughness" in Magic with the way "defense" stats work in other games. Being a 1/3 doesn't mean "this is a 1 when attacking and a 3 when defending." A 1/3 is always a 1/3, whether attacking, defending or just sitting there - the power, 1, is the combat damage it deals (whether attacking or blocking) and the toughness of 3 is the minimum damage needed to destroy it.
Wizards did not set a $60 price tag on Baneslayer Angel, players did. If you think BSA is worth $60, you'll pay $60 for it - or charge $60 when selling it. If Baneslayer was Rare instead of Mythic Rare, and supply & demand responded linearly, it would still cost $30, because there's only twice as many of any given rare per 1000 boosters as there are of any given mythic rare. And BSA was at that price point or lower when people first got a hold of it - that is, the variance within BSA's price range has been greater than the variance between the hypothetical price ranges.
Not only does Wizards not set the prices on the secondary market, I doubt they even spend particularly much time thinking and worrying about them. If you ask Wizards, their response will probably be "if single cards are too expensive for you, buy more boosters."
...what? Mythic rares are not, on average, more powerful than normal rares. There's a large number of splashy-but-not-powerful cards at Mythic rarity. Sure, Iona, Shield of Emeria shuts down your opponent, but so does anything else you could cast for 9. Does anyone recall any top-tier decks in any format that used Godsire? Prince of Thralls? Child of Alara? There's a small handful of Mythic Rares that are powerful and used in top-tier decks - just like there's a small handful of Rares, a small handful of Uncommons, and a small handful of Commons that are powerful and top-tier. Baneslayer Angel stands out in today's Standard environment, but it's hardly the first card to stand out as powerful. Skullclamp was more powerful, and that was an uncommon.
I think mythic rarity is fine and is probably either neutral or good for the game overall in the long term. It's not a cash grab, unless you want to call reduced set sizes in the first place a "cash giveaway" by Wizards. I also don't believe that Wizards has "broken promises" regarding Mythic Rarity, as some people seem to think.
It's possible that you are, in fact, a better MTG player than everyone else in your group. Do you think an NFL quarterback plays the same way in a neighborhood 4th-of-july-party game as he does in the stadium?
Long answer: Deathtouch doesn't happen during cleanup. Cleanup is the name of a step at the very end of each turn; the creature is dead long before cleanup happens. Deathtouch happens immediately as the damage is dealt. However, all the damage is dealt at the same time - so it doesn't matter that the 8/8 is immediately dying, since its 8 points of damage (2 to the deathtoucher, 6 to the player) were dealt simultaneously with the 2 from the deathtoucher.
This is different if the deathtoucher has first strike - then the 8/8 is dead before it can deal its combat damage, because there are now two combat damage steps happening instead of one.
Minor note, but keep in mind that the 8/8 doesn't strictly speaking have to assign 6 to the player - trample is a "may" not a "must", so it's possible to assign more than 2 to the deathtoucher in this example, if the 8/8's controller wants to for some reason, e.g. he suspects a Shieldmate's Blessing in your hand.
For the sake of this mental experiment, let's assume no cards are banned/restricted, and exclude Un-sets and Alpha through Unlimited because of their power-9 concentration.
So, what combinations would make a standard environment that is:
- Best: The most balanced, fun, skill-intensive combination? People generally speak very favorably of Rav-TSP, for example.
- Worst: Most degenerate environment. My guess is that a combination of the Mirrodin and Urza's blocks, without banned cards, would make the degeneracy of Affinity even more pronounced.
- Strongest: Possibly though not necessarily the same as the most degenerate. Stomps every other Standard deck, etc. My vote goes again to Urza-Mirrodin.
- Weakest: The kind that wouldn't stand a chance against any other Standard deck. Not really sure what would go here, but my guess is that it would involve Kamigawa.
To put it another way - I think one of the ways to make a card very flavorful is to allow it to fit to a variety of worlds and storylines. Things like Lightning Bolt and Divination do that. Could they have printed a card in Zendikar named "Valakut's Wrath" that was a functional Lightning Bolt reprint? Sure. That would be flavorful too. But I don't think it would be more flavorful than Lightning Bolt.
There's no "aura" in old art that's missing now. M:tG art was never produced as if it were a masterpiece, and no piece was ever somehow more special than another one. The only significant difference is art direction and coherence, which has increased over time - and nostalgia, which makes people value old things higher regardless. The M10 Shivan Dragon is, in my artistic preferences, strictly better than the Alpha Shivan Dragon. The M10 Birds of Paradise is strictly better than the Alpha Birds of Paradise. The M10 Royal Assassin is strictly better than the Alpha Royal Assassin. And so on. What you're saying isn't really that it's not art, you're saying you don't like the art.
More art in a shorter time is irrelevant even if true (I'm not sure it is), because they can afford to hire more artists now. It's possible that the amount of artist-time per card has actually increased, depending on how much they've expanded their artist pool.
Just like flavor, your personal preference might be to the older art and older card frames. But to say that this means WotC or M:tG has "lost" something is only meaningful if most of the playership shares your preferences. I certainly don't, and I doubt that WotC would move in a direction for years without ever checking what the players actually want. If most people playing the game prefer the new art, etc. wouldn't it be equally or more reasonable to say that M:tG has "found" a soul where it didn't have one before?