Themaninnavyblue
08-31-2009, 04:47 AM
Magic, a story of old and new
Let me first introduce myself and how I came to magic, before I go into the main topic of this article. My name is Tyler, this is my first article, but I have been playing magic for almost 7 years. In reality its probably more like 3-4 because I have left magic for chunks of time for various other reasons. I first started playing probably right before Mirrodin came out, but I did not start playing with the “new” cards at that time. I actually first started playing yu-gi-oh (yea I know, heart of the cards right?) but that was in middle school so don’t hold to much against me. Right after I became a freshman I saw some people playing magic in the library of our school. I was entranced by it, the look of the cards, the complexity and competitiveness attracted me right at the start. So I asked a good friend of mine to teach me how to play since he had a lot of cards, I should probably add he had a lot of OLD cards. So he dug out his old collection and made a black deck for me and he played green. I don’t remember much about the first time I played but I just got it, it came very natural. However I wasn’t taught quite the right way to play, but ill save that for another article. To move along I have come and gone, but always ive come back, but the current future of magic Is uncertain but it is devolving.
M10 a product in commercialism
I will tell you something before I continue with my article, I dislike M10, and it is a symbol of everything I have come to loathe about Wizards of the Coast. This is my reasons why I dislike and disagree with m10 in general and the rules that came along.
M2010 rules changes a lesson in logic
Battlefield, Exile, and Casting:
You know I actually don’t really care about this, I mean I think its stupid and doesn’t really help the game in any way. I mean most of my playgroup is 14-20 and I know of no one that is happy about this change, some people like me don’t care, and some people really hate it (some of the more aged gentlemen in our playgroup) why would wizards do something that at best the vast majority of magic will simply not care about. And exile just confuses new players, I kept saying that its stupid because how you would explain exile to a new player is by saying its removed from the game, and I was vindicated a couple weeks ago when a new player opened a pack of m10, and looked at a card and asked us what exile was (after a couple of minutes of raucous laughter) we settled down and told him it meant the card was removed from the game and the light bulb above his head turned on and he said “oh ok”. I mean what self respecting magic player looked at a card and went “HOLY SHAT MY MOTHERTRUCKING TOKEN COMES INTO THE BATTLEFEILD EEEEEEHHHHH!!!!!” this also begs the question who exactly came up with this change? I wonder if the designers of magic were sitting around the office one day and said “aw man coming into play is so un flavorful it makes me sad :( , "LETS CHANGE IT TO BATTLEFEILD” and then they all cheered and high fived each other. I mean come on.
Mana Burn:
Again this is another thing that I don’t really care about I just think it enables bad magic play, I really liked mana burn as a punishment for bad resource management, it really helped people actually think about what they needed to tap and etc. now it just lets the newer players yell “YEA!” and tap all there mana in one sweeping gesture for a lightning bolt leaving 8 mana in their pool.
Combat Damage:
This is the big one, this is one I really care about. I think the main reason is it just makes the combat step flat out less interesting. If anyone plays WoW tcg, they know what I’m talking about. I attack, you block, giant growth? Cool, I lose. There was so much you could do with stacking combat damage, the possibilities were almost limitless. But we can talk about combat damage in a tactical sense another time. I’m here to assault the “flavor” reason for taking it out. If you think about it, stacking combat damage makes sense, because people and things don’t die instantly, it takes a little time for someone to actually die passed the point of no return, for instance, you have your 1/1 Eager Cadet attack into a another 1/1, you stack combat damage, which means that both the creatures are fated to die, they have “Mortal Damage” on the stack, basically flavor wise they both have stabbed each other and are bleeding to death, then before they die you summon your Cadet back to your hand, basically returning him to his original state in your mind, and in play, the sword that was in him clutters to the ground as the other 1/1 falls to the ground bleeding from the sword wound. Also with being able to deal damage how you choose makes sense, lets say you have a Pyroclasm in hand, and a big beater on the table, you tell your minion to only “Hurt the opponents creatures” lets say deal 1 damage to all of their 3/3’s then you Pyroclasm and wipe their boards. Basically what happens now flavor wise with m10 rules, your opponent’s creature’s line up and your creatures goes “BAM BAM” and smashes them one after another like a mindless brute? Apparently your creatures have no restraint and you no control over them. Also with combat damage wizards is basically saying that there is no window between combat damage and your creatures dyeing, your two 1/1’s stab each other and immediately their heads explode and their hearts cave in and they crumple up on the ground. Sense there is no game time between lethal damage and them going to the graveyard. It just makes less sense then the combat system that we did have, and another thing is the last 10 years of magic cards were made with the fact that combat damage was stackable so many cards were designed with that in mind. So by taking that away you’re ultimately nullifying the past 10 years of cards you just made, smart business move!
Lifelink:
I understand why they took away the cumulative nature of Lifelink, although it made more sense then what they changed it to now, lets say you equip a Loxodon Warhammer onto a Rhox War Monk, your monk then precedes to smash your foe over the head with it, you gain life from the Warhammer and from the inherent nature of the monk. If you don’t buy that, lets say you have two Loxodon War hammer’s on one guy, doesn’t he smash the guy with both of them? Then wouldn’t you gain life from each hammer? And if they form some kind of super hammer wouldn’t the Lifelink enchantment be twice as strong? But no matter, I like them taking it away it just doesn’t make any sense.
Magic 2010 card pool, Death to the Blue Wizard
Counterspell. That is all that needs to be said about the state of affairs in Magic 2010, red got there Ball Lighting and Lightning Bolt cards that haven’t seen play in over 10 years, white got a better version of Crusade and one of the most efficient creatures magic has seen in a long time, Baneslayer Angel . Green even got some crazy stuff, Elvish Archdruid, Master of the Wild Hunt, and Great Sable Stag, all amazing cards that break the mana curve. Black got Doom Blade (a better terror) and Sign in Blood , both really efficient cards that are in many ways better cards than their predecessors, not to mention duress, didn’t we learn our lesson from Thoughtseize? What did blue get? Time Warp? Cool I guess but I hope that Zendikar is going to bring some of the hard control that is needed to have viable blue decks, I mean they made Cryptic Command, why cant they bring back Counterspell? It seems balanced in today’s environment and seems less powerful then some of the counter out there in the current tournament scenes, Pact of Negation? Cryptic Command? Remand? Counterbalance? Rewind? Oh well we all know they always print something insane in blue that they never should print, like Djinn of Wishes, now that is a card that is going to make its way into some crazy decks (Liliana Vess + Darksteel Colossus or Progenitus, YES!) but wait, when did blue become the color of ramping massive fatties into the field? Somewhere along the lines magic has lost its way, oh well, im always going to keep playing, I just hope Wizards of the Coast steps it up.
Let me first introduce myself and how I came to magic, before I go into the main topic of this article. My name is Tyler, this is my first article, but I have been playing magic for almost 7 years. In reality its probably more like 3-4 because I have left magic for chunks of time for various other reasons. I first started playing probably right before Mirrodin came out, but I did not start playing with the “new” cards at that time. I actually first started playing yu-gi-oh (yea I know, heart of the cards right?) but that was in middle school so don’t hold to much against me. Right after I became a freshman I saw some people playing magic in the library of our school. I was entranced by it, the look of the cards, the complexity and competitiveness attracted me right at the start. So I asked a good friend of mine to teach me how to play since he had a lot of cards, I should probably add he had a lot of OLD cards. So he dug out his old collection and made a black deck for me and he played green. I don’t remember much about the first time I played but I just got it, it came very natural. However I wasn’t taught quite the right way to play, but ill save that for another article. To move along I have come and gone, but always ive come back, but the current future of magic Is uncertain but it is devolving.
M10 a product in commercialism
I will tell you something before I continue with my article, I dislike M10, and it is a symbol of everything I have come to loathe about Wizards of the Coast. This is my reasons why I dislike and disagree with m10 in general and the rules that came along.
M2010 rules changes a lesson in logic
Battlefield, Exile, and Casting:
You know I actually don’t really care about this, I mean I think its stupid and doesn’t really help the game in any way. I mean most of my playgroup is 14-20 and I know of no one that is happy about this change, some people like me don’t care, and some people really hate it (some of the more aged gentlemen in our playgroup) why would wizards do something that at best the vast majority of magic will simply not care about. And exile just confuses new players, I kept saying that its stupid because how you would explain exile to a new player is by saying its removed from the game, and I was vindicated a couple weeks ago when a new player opened a pack of m10, and looked at a card and asked us what exile was (after a couple of minutes of raucous laughter) we settled down and told him it meant the card was removed from the game and the light bulb above his head turned on and he said “oh ok”. I mean what self respecting magic player looked at a card and went “HOLY SHAT MY MOTHERTRUCKING TOKEN COMES INTO THE BATTLEFEILD EEEEEEHHHHH!!!!!” this also begs the question who exactly came up with this change? I wonder if the designers of magic were sitting around the office one day and said “aw man coming into play is so un flavorful it makes me sad :( , "LETS CHANGE IT TO BATTLEFEILD” and then they all cheered and high fived each other. I mean come on.
Mana Burn:
Again this is another thing that I don’t really care about I just think it enables bad magic play, I really liked mana burn as a punishment for bad resource management, it really helped people actually think about what they needed to tap and etc. now it just lets the newer players yell “YEA!” and tap all there mana in one sweeping gesture for a lightning bolt leaving 8 mana in their pool.
Combat Damage:
This is the big one, this is one I really care about. I think the main reason is it just makes the combat step flat out less interesting. If anyone plays WoW tcg, they know what I’m talking about. I attack, you block, giant growth? Cool, I lose. There was so much you could do with stacking combat damage, the possibilities were almost limitless. But we can talk about combat damage in a tactical sense another time. I’m here to assault the “flavor” reason for taking it out. If you think about it, stacking combat damage makes sense, because people and things don’t die instantly, it takes a little time for someone to actually die passed the point of no return, for instance, you have your 1/1 Eager Cadet attack into a another 1/1, you stack combat damage, which means that both the creatures are fated to die, they have “Mortal Damage” on the stack, basically flavor wise they both have stabbed each other and are bleeding to death, then before they die you summon your Cadet back to your hand, basically returning him to his original state in your mind, and in play, the sword that was in him clutters to the ground as the other 1/1 falls to the ground bleeding from the sword wound. Also with being able to deal damage how you choose makes sense, lets say you have a Pyroclasm in hand, and a big beater on the table, you tell your minion to only “Hurt the opponents creatures” lets say deal 1 damage to all of their 3/3’s then you Pyroclasm and wipe their boards. Basically what happens now flavor wise with m10 rules, your opponent’s creature’s line up and your creatures goes “BAM BAM” and smashes them one after another like a mindless brute? Apparently your creatures have no restraint and you no control over them. Also with combat damage wizards is basically saying that there is no window between combat damage and your creatures dyeing, your two 1/1’s stab each other and immediately their heads explode and their hearts cave in and they crumple up on the ground. Sense there is no game time between lethal damage and them going to the graveyard. It just makes less sense then the combat system that we did have, and another thing is the last 10 years of magic cards were made with the fact that combat damage was stackable so many cards were designed with that in mind. So by taking that away you’re ultimately nullifying the past 10 years of cards you just made, smart business move!
Lifelink:
I understand why they took away the cumulative nature of Lifelink, although it made more sense then what they changed it to now, lets say you equip a Loxodon Warhammer onto a Rhox War Monk, your monk then precedes to smash your foe over the head with it, you gain life from the Warhammer and from the inherent nature of the monk. If you don’t buy that, lets say you have two Loxodon War hammer’s on one guy, doesn’t he smash the guy with both of them? Then wouldn’t you gain life from each hammer? And if they form some kind of super hammer wouldn’t the Lifelink enchantment be twice as strong? But no matter, I like them taking it away it just doesn’t make any sense.
Magic 2010 card pool, Death to the Blue Wizard
Counterspell. That is all that needs to be said about the state of affairs in Magic 2010, red got there Ball Lighting and Lightning Bolt cards that haven’t seen play in over 10 years, white got a better version of Crusade and one of the most efficient creatures magic has seen in a long time, Baneslayer Angel . Green even got some crazy stuff, Elvish Archdruid, Master of the Wild Hunt, and Great Sable Stag, all amazing cards that break the mana curve. Black got Doom Blade (a better terror) and Sign in Blood , both really efficient cards that are in many ways better cards than their predecessors, not to mention duress, didn’t we learn our lesson from Thoughtseize? What did blue get? Time Warp? Cool I guess but I hope that Zendikar is going to bring some of the hard control that is needed to have viable blue decks, I mean they made Cryptic Command, why cant they bring back Counterspell? It seems balanced in today’s environment and seems less powerful then some of the counter out there in the current tournament scenes, Pact of Negation? Cryptic Command? Remand? Counterbalance? Rewind? Oh well we all know they always print something insane in blue that they never should print, like Djinn of Wishes, now that is a card that is going to make its way into some crazy decks (Liliana Vess + Darksteel Colossus or Progenitus, YES!) but wait, when did blue become the color of ramping massive fatties into the field? Somewhere along the lines magic has lost its way, oh well, im always going to keep playing, I just hope Wizards of the Coast steps it up.