ITT: MTG rules nit-pickingFollow

One of these days I should dig through my old cards. IIRC, my last tournament deck was pretty tight and vicious. Had exactly 40 cards in it (the tourney minimum) and used pestilence to wipe out opponents and their creatures. The deck which beat it in the last tourney I was in was a very well crafted all blue deck (and he beat me in the final round).

I can't remember the complete details, but it was black and white. It had nothing but smallish regenerating black creatures, and white knights (both types at the time), with protection from black. It had 4 pestilence cards, and some circles of protection: black. It also had a few nasty uncommon and rares in there just to keep people on their toes. The whole plan was to get pestilence out along with a creature or two that couldn't be killed by it. Get the circle out as well and the game is basically over. Any creature on the board is dead, and damage is constantly being done to the other guy. Mana was a bit tight, so it usually required 4 or 5 points each round, but most decks just couldn't do anything once the combo was out.

In the semi-final of that tourney I did beat a really tough blue deck (blue was difficult to deal with due to this decks vulnerability to denial effects). I don't know if I was the first player to win a tourney game after losing all his hit points the round before, but I had to have been one of the first. I wasn't able to get both circle and pestilence out before he got a ton of creatures and was going to blow through me. All his damage was done during the main round though, so I let him through (saving my creatures), let him do massive damage to me during the combat putting me at negative hps. Then I cast simulacrum and directed all the damage I'd taken since the beginning of the main phase onto a poor wee skeleton...

Then I hit him with a round of pestilence, started my turn, and finished him off with another round of damage. It was fun. ;)


I think that was the same tourney where I actually felt sorry for a kid I was playing against. He had an all black deck. Lots of completely vicious cards and creatures. He didn't actually understand what protection did and had to call one of the mods over to clarify the rules. He almost started crying as he realized there wasn't a single card in his hand or in his entire deck which could do anything to me at all. Not only could he not do any damage to me, nor damage most of my creatures (much less kill them), he couldn't block about 2/3rds of them either. And his deck didn't include any method to get rid of enchantments. That wasn't nearly as much fun. I just tried to end it as quickly as possible and wished him luck on his next attempt.


That was right around the time that token creature generating cards appeared in the game. Needless to say, they didn't do well against that deck either.

Going to tourneys would be awesome, and if the game is still alive, when I'm older and have decent cash to spend I'll definitely get into it.

Speaking of tournament stories and kids though, I have one that just puts kids to shame.

I myself was a kid, still am really. This was maybe a year ago, when I was 15. This other kid that I got matched against was about the same age. Now, he looked a little odd. It's not something you can describe, but you could tell there was maybe something wrong with this guy. Glasses looked a bit crooked in a bad way, expression and eyes slow moving. He was attentive, but not the brightest bulb - by far.

It was a sealed deck tourney, and I had created a black/green, I think, while he had a terribly annoying white/blue all defense deck. Eventually though, I played Doom Blade. Now when I play an instant, I typically hold it between two fingers and then gently place it on top of the creature I am targeting, and I announce it. I did so, and I always face it towards my opponent, so they can read it and verify if they want to. He did just that, leaned in real close and read it, then nodded and said "Alright." Now what happened next is the point of the story.

I take my Doom Blade and put it in my graveyard, and watch him. He, instead of putting the 3/3 or whatever it was with no special text, grabbed his 4/4 with flying and shroud and placed it in the graveyard. And it was equipped or enchanted with something that made it indestructible.

I didn't tell him his mistake, though if it was nowadays, I would've.

That is a pretty awesome card, I was not aware of it.

Actually, from the official rulings on the card:



So yes, your whole library is exiled. The effect stops at that point. You lose the next time you have to draw, unless you can somehow get at least one card back into your library before that time.

No rules lawyering here; this is how it works. You have the rest of your opponent's turn to respond, unless you have something that, say, causes you to skip your draw step, in which case you have until the next time you have to draw a card for any other reason.

Edited, May 21st 2010 11:55pm by MDenham

Yeah. I get that that's how the rules are interpreted, I still think that's a poor interpretation and I'm not sure at what time the folks running/designing MTG stopped having a clue about game design. I'm talking about how the rule should have been interpreted.

I'd rule that an effect that redirects an effect to somewhere else redirects all aspects of that effect to the same target location as possible. So (for example), if I cast a spell that drained life, and you used an effect to redirect it onto a creature, not just the damage, but the life gain for me would be redirected to that creature (meaning I don't gain "zero" life, but am limited to the life of the creature). Kinda obvious and simple, right?

That makes effects with mutiple effects much much simpler to resolve. In this case, Leyline redirects the Helms effect to place cards into exile instead of into the graveyard. So now the text would read that after X number of cards, or until the first creature is placed into exile, the effect ends. Of course, the third part of the effect would not occur, since the helm cannot take a creature out of exile and bring it into play under the helm owners control. And since it can't target the creature in exile, the sacrifice doesn't occur either. It's still an effective combo (since you don't lose the helm when used and can therefore use it turn after turn with Leyline, but it isn't the absurd insta-win combo.


Actually, a whole lot of the silly combos in the game could be fixed if they used that interpretation rule. But what do I know about game design, right?

Except that you don't, in that case. Drain life gains you life for every damage "dealt" to the target. Depending on interpretation, this can either mean 12 life gained (since you "dealt" the damage to the target), or zero life gained (since the target didn't actually take any damage), or 1 damage (since the target was changed to a 1/1 creature and it only took 1 damage). It's probably a poor example to be honest since we're really quibbling over whether the whole effect is changed or whether just the damage is redirected.

In the case of Leyline of the Void, the card text says "if a card would be put into an opponents graveyard, [remove it from the game|exile it] instead".

The text on the Helm of Obedience says: "Target opponent puts cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard until a creature card or X cards are put into that graveyard this way, whichever comes first."


Leyline replaces the action of something being "put into (the) graveyard" with "exile". The helm doesn't say "until X cards or a creature have arrived in the graveyard". It says "until X cards or a creature is put into the graveyard". Since "put into the graveyard" is replaced with "put into exile" via Leyline, the helm should still just count cards until X cards or a creature is put into exile and then stop. From the helm's perspective, it's still putting cards "into the graveyard". That they end out in exile instead isn't really relevant.


I just think that the interpretation is wrong, and stupidly so. Why deliberately choose to interpret something in a game breaking way if you don't have to?

Yup. Hence my earlier question about when the game designers for MTG stopped caring about game balance. In the early years of the game, they spent quite a bit of time on rules changes and errata correcting game balance problems with cards, and clarifying wording and rules interpretations. And they always did that with an eye towards preventing ridiculous "I win!" combinations like this one. At some point, they've either given up, or perhaps like doing this so as to make future changes to the cards making the older printed versions more valuable or something.

Dunno. Just makes me glad I got out when I did. I really really enjoyed playing the game. Pretty much lost interest when it seemed like each release had to introduce a completely new game-changing concept.

Having no clue what "Vintage" means, I'll just take you word for it, I guess. ;)

There are 5 recognised toureyment formats.

Vintage: All sets are legal, subject to a small banned list (mainly consisting of Ante cards and the truely broken cards like Tolarian Academy) and resticted list. Also known as Type I.

Extended: The last 12 sets (4 blocks) + current core set.

Standard or Type II: The preceeding and current blocks (upto 6 sets) and current core set

Block Constructed: Current Block only.

Sealed: you get given bosters and make your deck from the card pool contained within (40 card deck only).

Standard is the only one where balance is considered and the game is developed with keeping the idea that that format is fluid and dynamic while remaining balanced.

Currently Standard consists of the following sets: M10 core set, Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara reborn, Zendicar, Worldwake and Rise of the eldrazi. there is conservitably 20 viable deck type crossing all deck genre with possibly 2 cards considered borderline broken, both of which are Planeswalkers and therefor effectively restricted to 1 in play at any time.

Oh and Rise of the Eldrazi was the 54th expansion set, M10 the 11th core set.


Edited, May 27th 2010 1:37am by tarv

I would go for a little more versitility in there (without compromising damage), because it seems pretty easy to disable/overpower in it's present state. I note that you have zero creatures, which means any beatdown or weenie deck worth it's salt will do horrible things to you. Also, I think you are running too much land.

Try something more like this:

{Total = 40}
{Instant = 8}
Shock x4
Lightning bolt x4
{Sorc =4}
Fireblastx4
{Creature : 8}
Mogg Fanatic x4
Ball lightning x4
{Artifact : 2]
Cursed Scroll x2
{Enchantment: 2}
Quest for the Pure flame x2
{Land : 16}
Mountain x16

Easy to build. Minimum card # meaning optimal distribution. Low mana requirements; the biggest spell you'll cast is 3 mana for ~6 damage, and mana usage is roughly 1 per 2 damage. Quest for pure flame lets you use a Ball lightning >> fireblast finisher for ~20 damage for 3 mana. This is how you build burn.

Example play order:
T1: Play mountain, play fanatic.
T2: Play mountain, play quest, swing with fanatic. Play shock. (Opponent@17)
T3: Play mountain, Attack with fanatic. Play Lightning bolt. (Opponent@13)
T4: Play Ball lightning. Trigger Quest. Attack with lightning & Fanatic. Sac fanatic. Sac 2 mountians for Fireblast. (Opponent@-11; DED)

Even without optimal arrangement and opponent interference, T4/5 wins are usual.

This deck can be further optimized with $ for even higher performance levels.

This is how you play burn.

Never have I wished to be more nerdy before, but this thread makes Magic seem interesting (and nerdy).

I've got about 200 MTG cards from back when we used to collect them for trading (yeah, way back). Never learned the rules of the game and now they're just collecting dust somewhere.

Piker.

I have somewhere around ten thousand cards (granted, about 30% of them are lands), the most recent of which date to Mirrodin block. I need to get them all back together and do an inventory to see how much I could sell the lot for.

It's probably firmly in the high four digits, which would be nice.

See, you lost me at 'lands'.

I sense that I should get rid of mine before I get sucked into another time and money consuming addiction. Virtual games are more than enough.