Hello Again and My Perspective on M10

Hello again, World!

After a lot of encouragement and a surprisingly strong inner desire, I’m once again picking up keyboard to continue sharing my thoughts on the ol’ Magic: the Gathering.

And of course, there’s a lot to talk about right now. M10’s rules changes are at the top of the list, but there’s an upcoming B&R change and several awesome summer tournaments as well. Plus, I’ve been trying out more Vintage decks lately and have even started dabbling in other formats thanks to a new testing group in Virginia. In short, I should have no shortage of subjects or motivation for the next few months.

I’m not sure I could avoid talking about the new rules and terminology that will debut alongside M10 in another month or so. If you haven’t seen them, please come out from under your rock and log on to the Intersphere with the rest of us: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a. You’ll have to understand (and love?) these changes sooner or later, so you might as well dig in now so you can follow along.

I’ll go in order and start with simultaneous mulligans. This is already a fairly timesaving device around the kitchen table and even comes up in some low-REL tournament games. Mulligans are an undeniably strategic part of the game, and I don’t think the new rule takes too much away from that. As a potential mulliganer, one must consider sooner and more often the implications of throwing back a hand against an opponent. No longer will a player be able to keep a marginal hand knowing that an opponent has already mulliganed to four.

By the way, this is actually huge for Manaless Ichorid in Vintage. If your coin-flip winning opponent mulligans to two on the play, you might put them on Ichorid early and keep that in mind for your own mulligans. Now you don’t have that option.

The next group of changes are totally cosmetic. “Battlefield,” “Cast, Play, and Activate,” “Exile,” and “Beginning of the End Step,” should ultimately make very little difference to gameplay. Even considering that Living Wish, Cunning Wish, and the rest of the Wish clan are reported now to be limited to sideboard access only (i.e., you won’t be able to get back cards exiled by Leyline of the Void or Psychatog or Yawgmoth’s Will), nothing is so drastically nerfed that it will be apparent in even a fraction of games played.

More importantly, the marginally weakened Burning Wish should be a shoo-in for coming off the Vintage restricted list now. You can’t get back a maindecked Yawgmoth’s Will for another go-round and you can’t get something removed by Demonic Consultation. Are you really going to run your Yawgmoth’s Will sideboard, where it can’t be topdecked or tutored for otherwise? Seems bad.

Sure, there’s the added embarrassment of “Exiling” someone’s recently “Cast” creature from the “Battlefield,” but is that any worse than removing a creature from play? Magic, in the eyes of the average bystander, is a dorky game, easier to relate to Dungeons & Dragons or Yu-Gi-Oh! than it is to poker or chess, no matter how much we’d like to proclaim otherwise. I (and I’m sure many people) will continue using the same terminology I’m used to, and if the new flavorful language helps entice more people into learning the game, consider me a fan.

The loss of manaburn is tragic, but also relatively harmless to gameplay. This change was a long time coming (or a long time rumored, at least), which left a long time for peoples’ ire to rankle. To be frank, when I first heard of this, I thought it was ludicrous. “Can people not count? It’s simple addition!” I argued. “You match the colors and the numbers and your spells get cast.” How could something so easy to calculate as manaburn be keeping people from playing Magic?

Now, with a little time to consider, I don’t think it’s going to matter much. People are still going to have to manage their mana wisely, so none of the “I’ma tap all my mana at the start of my turn and just figure everything works out right” scenarios. And the number of games decided by manaburn damage must be small, especially in slower formats based on the regulated buildup of mana over several turns. There will be a few less damage taken from Mishra’s Workshops and Mana Drains, but does that really make those cards any more broken? Manaburn didn’t seem to be a big concern for the players of those cards before. Most of the time, nobody will notice this change.

Token ownership—these rules make so much more sense now. When I first heard about the Brand-Hunted Creature combo, I thought that couldn’t possibly be how it works. First instincts should be right about this from now on. And for all you Brand-Hunted Creature combo players, I’m sorry. Thankfully, there are countless other combos in Magic for you to try out.

The last changes, all related to the combat phase, are the most controversial. I too am admittedly apprehensive, but based on the comments I’ve seen, I know I’m also more optimistic than most. Wizards of the Coast didn’t make these changes lightly. Even if the simplification was done to attract new players to Magic, there would be no sense in undermining the strategy of the game at the cost of long-term enjoyment. I tend to trust entities that I’ve worked with for a long time, so it’s trust I’m putting in Wizards right now. The things they do for Magic, they do for the long-term benefit of the game, which in the end is what I want too.

Anyway, combat damage doesn’t stack, deathtouch and lifelink are both static abilities. The implications of combat damage not stacking are numerous and too far reaching to go into here, but the major problem is that there’s one fewer opportunity to play effects during the combat phase; players’ last opportunity to affect combat is during the declare blockers step. Attacking players will also have to arrange multiple blockers in the order damage will be dealt, so that effects can also be arranged appropriately.

This severely limits the strategy with things like bounce, damage prevention, and creature abilities. A creature such as the oft-cited Mogg Fantastic can now no longer block, put its damage on the stack, and then sacrifice itself to deal damage, thus dealing two damage in the combat phase. Instead it can block and either deal combat damage or damage from its effect. This is weaker but simpler, more appropriate for newer players.

To me, this limitation makes sense from a flavor perspective. Why should a creature in the heat of battle also have time to concentrate on other things? At the same time, from a gaming perspective, the loss of options is disappointing. I like strategy; I like feeling smart when I play Magic; and I like the opportunity to outplay my opponent. Fortunately, there are still ample opportunities to make the decision between the right and wrong play. I also suspect that there will be new strategies to learn, developed in light of the new combat rules.

It’s hard to argue from the perspective of a long-time Magic player that the combat changes have not detrimentally changed the game.

At the same time, though, I don’t think these changes are quite as drastic as they appear. Like I said, Wizards has a definite interest in making Magic a continuous, long-term source of income, and I don’t think these changes quite smack of “fire-sale.”

The changes, then, are a mixed-blessing for experienced Magic players. On the one hand we lose some elements of the strategy we love; on the other, more players are likely to find and play the game. This is a good thing. More players mean more money for Wizards, which means they’ll make more cards, especially cards that will work with these new rules (M10 will be the first Core Set with new cards—coincidence?!). More cards and more players make Magic better: new ideas are introduced, tournaments get bigger, and the system perpetuates.

I suspect that a lot of players have already drawn their conclusions and my essay on convincing people to relax, trust Wizards, and continue enjoying Magic won’t change any opinions. Luckily, I’m also confident that Magic is just to appealing for long-term players to pass on for long. Even those who do take a couple months’ hiatus in protest of the new rules will return, sooner or later, I suspect. I hope that when they do they find a more vibrant and active Magic scene than when they left. I’ll be waiting for them.