Conversation: Recent Activity
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 17:38:05)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 17:38:05)
Was thinking that something like this would do:
It wipes the board, but sticks around after. It also blasts the lands, but they can recover over time.
I tossed around making it indestructible, then decided against it. But the non-indestructible version of this card doesn't do what you'd want it to do if any player cast Smelt after it was activated. I had the 'return a land' be part of the ability and be independent of whether the Chime is in play, but that's confusing (and, at the very least, busy since it requires reminder text.) In the end, I decided it was better to leave indestructible on and let players deal with that.
First thing I thought of was an updated Nevinyrral's Disk, but Perilous Vault is good too. Exile might be better.
Sounds to me like a Perilous Vault functional reprint...
Apocalypse Chime is a card from Homelands. It looks like this:
![[[Apocalypse Chime]]](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/named?format=image&version=normal&exact=apocalypse+chime)
In Homelands Restored, my goal is to do the least to update the cards to feel like they're modern. Most times that means that if a Modern card can do something, and it doesn't interfere with the needs of the set, then the only thing I do is alter the casting cost to be appropriate to modern standards.
Not knowing quite what to do with the chime, I just increased the cost and the activation by one and called it a day. But this still bugs me. For what I assume would be obvious reasons to a modern player, Wizards doesn't print cards like this anymore.
So I need to update the Apocalypse Chime. But I'm not sure how. It turns out the Chime appeared in the 1996 comic book. Details to follow:
So, we have a chime that when you ring it destroys everything, rips all mana from the land, removes the planeswalker's spark, but the walker and the chime sticks around. Just talking this through, I'm starting to get an idea of how to shape this card. But it would be very silly of me to ask for help, only to design the card and say "You know what. Forget it." Besides, I wouldn't mind seeing how other people would approach this Mythic Legendary Artifact.
Evidently, Jennifer is the 6th most common female name in the U.S.. Jean comes in at 58:
http://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm
Number one is Mary. Makes sense. Bit surprised to see that Patricia is number two, however.
The bottom of that list makes for strange oddities, too. Evidently, there are over 12,000 women in the U.S. named 'Robert'.
I think I only know one person named Jenny.
Well, I suppose it was inevitable. Though, he could have used 'Jeannie' instead. It may be the feminized version of 'Jon', but it isn't as ubiquitous as Jen. I swear, half the women I know are named Jen...
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/113098836228/the-player-psychographics
Several years ago I started using Timmy/Tammy and Jenny/Johnny, not just the male versions. I didn't remember seeing them before that, but I may have subconsciously taken the names from somewhere else.
But I've been seeing them more widely and I only just noticed a few months ago, Mark Rosewater endorsed exactly the same conclusion, with exactly the same names.
@Alex/JM and in furry circles were herm characters are common, you'll see "shi" and "hir" a lot. Still in the broader populace, I agree these aren't picking up.
I'm firmly in the "they" camp. Although I generally defer to Wizard's awkward templating, I cannot abide their insistence on wasting invaluable card space using "he or she".
You say "never stuck". There are several people in my Livejournal extended circles who use things like "ze" regularly. But it always looks unnatural to me. I think "they" is perfectly sufficient. (The one nonbinary person I know f2f prefers "they", fortunately.)
For what it's worth: the only time 'they' is an inappropriate pronoun is when the gender of the pronoun is known. So...
"I don't know who drank my Crystal Pepsi I've been saving since 1991, but I hope they enjoyed it."
...is grammatically correct, but...
"Sarah ran her penny-farthing off a cliff and broke her cervix. I hope they have medical insurance."
...is not. But we wouldn't use 'he or she has' in this scenario either, so the choice to use 'he or she' over 'they' is moot.
Double down on 'They'. It may sound awkward to our ears but 95% of the time it's grammatically correct and avoids the he/she awkwardness.
As an aside, when I did my Scrabble's Two Letter Words article on He & Hi I happened upon the words 'ze' and 'hir'. The two words were intended to be gender neutral pronouns put forward by the queer community back in the 80s. They never stuck. Mostly, I suppose, because nobody wants to have their gender mis-labeled, whether you're gay, straight, trans or gender fluid.
Still, it's a cute idea. It's a pity there isn't some sort of language judge who changes the way we speak for expedience sake. But maybe I shouldn't be so hasty. Reading Shakespeare is tough enough, and hirs verboseness comes with only organic changes to the language.
One doesn't need to be added, because English already has one. "They" is a gender-neutral pronoun that had been used in that context for hundreds of years. (Other interesting arguments for it at the link as well.) Even CMOS, which is what Wizards users, endorsed it until the 90s. The only people who criticize it are assholes (either language prescriptives, which is often racist, or anti-LGBT bigots).
Copypasted to not be tiny
In English there has been a push for a singular gender-neutral pronoun. If one is "officially" added to English how do you think it would alter the format of how cards are phrased? If a "new" pronoun, like xe is added, would the cards be "he, she, or xe discards..."? If they were to also become a singular gender-neutral pronoun would that just become the default "that they controls"? Alternatively pronouns could probably be avoided entirely with by just referencing a person as player "unless that player pays..."
fuseback seems like a sweet mechanic
I love the new Gideon. He's reminiscent of my Ara, Hope Unfound, only better.
Right, thank you, that makes sense. I'm sad we didn't find a new loophole, but I'm glad we explored it :)
Now I look, the rules explicitly call out simultaneous card draws and game loss, and say 101.4, if each player does something at the same time, the active player chooses if necessary, then each other player in turn order, then all the actions happen simultaneously. I think that matches my intuition for what SHOULD happen.
I still feel there might be some other edge case, but I can't think of one :)
Generally they all happen simultaneously. Drawing cards is unusual. At the time we're making choices what to bounce for Curfew, you can't choose the Bears.
The Comp Rules explicitly state that losing the game multiple times to a single state-based action gets combined into one lose-the-game event (for purposes of Lich's Mirror replacing a multiple-suicide case of Ambition's Cost etc).
They don't actually specify the same about replacement effects causing you to lose the game, though... hmm.
Sigh. With previous Rules Managers, I could have reported that and there'd be an outside chance the Comp Rules could get updated with a tweak. Tabak really doesn't care about anything that's not actually coming up in multiple games though.
Ah, right.
Now I'm unsure. If an effect says "each something does something", do they happen simultaneously, or (like drawing cards) sequentially in some unspecified order?
If one of us casts Curfew and I bounce Dragonlord Silumgar controlling a Runeclaw Bears, can you bounce Grizzly Bears, or do we all make choices simultaneously?
If it's simultaneous, and you lose the game twice at once, does Withengar Unbound trigger twice...?
Slow Claps
On the "multiple copies" front, I think you could have lots of Nefarious Lich tokens, and find a way to cause lots of them to all apply simultaneously. That's a little tricky because a single parcel of damage gets entirely replaced by a single Lich, so you want lots of chunks of damage - but they all need to be dealt at exactly the same time otherwise it'll make you lose before any more resolve.
But I think if you have lots of tokens each enchanted with Treacherous Link, and then cast Dry Spell, the damage will all get redirected to you but in lots of little chunks, so you can apply a different Lich's replacement effect to each point of damage, allowing you to be made to lose 100 times by 100 different Liches :)
I guess you could say, if you had something like angel's grace active, how many times does it prevent a loss during the resolution of one ability and following state-based-effects? In which case, I guess it would be six: Nefarious Lich, Laboratory Maniac and Forbidden Crypt sequentially during resolution, and then life, poison and cards during the subsequent state-based-effects.
ETA: Although I suppose you could cheat that metric too: if state-based-effects are checked and something changes (eg. creature goes to graveyard), then they're checked again, and you would not-lose another three times. So if you can trigger a long sequence of state-based-effect actions, you would not-lose each time.
I don't know if that's interesting for this puzzle, but it seems interesting for its own sake. Say you had a 100 Pack Rat in play, one which has taken 100 damage, one which has taken 99 damage... one which has taken 1 damage. First one dies. Second one is smaller, so dies. And so on, to bite 'em.
Heh. I suppose DQ does count as another way to lose the game. So doesn't forfeiture for that matter, in a sort of "you can't fire me, cause I'm quitting" sort of maneuver.
I think I can add one more legitimate way to lose the game, however. Cast Caress of Phyrexia on yourself while you have less than seven total cards in your library, in your graveyard and on the battlefield, one of which is Lich's Mirror. The mirror will save you, but then you'll lose to both poison and the inability to draw 7 cards a second time.
Granted, the mirror 'prevents' you from losing the game. But I still think it's fair to imagine yourself losing in three different way, doubling back and losing in two additional ways all as part of the same spell resolution.
Oh yes, I forgot you mentioned Caress of Phyrexia which does the whole "lose three times" thing simply in one card :)
In fact, maybe that is as good as we can ever get. I think cards, life, and poison are the only three state-based effects, and we already have those at once.
And in the resolution of an ability, I think (?) everything happens sequentially, so if you lose, you don't resolve the rest of the ability? So you can only ever lose once.
And even if we count "during the resolution of one ability" as "at once", I think only Nefarious Lich, Laboratory Maniac and Forbidden Crypt cause you to win/lose as a replacement effect, everything else is a triggered ability.
So unless you cheat in front of a judge while casting Caress... :)
I thought I had a way to get up to 4: use Nefarious Lich as well as either Platinum Angel+Words of Wind or Caress of Phyrexia. But it doesn't work, because the failure to exile a card from graveyard makes you lose during the resolution of the card draw spell, where the other three loss conditions happen during SBAs immediately after the spell.
The conversation came up with reference to the time (at the Eighth Edition prerelease) when I targeted myself with Ambition's Cost when I had 3 life and 2 cards left in library. Boringly, Caress of Phyrexia is probably the best way to make someone lose in three ways.
Decimator Web is trying to do the same thing, but mills rather than making them draw. It's possible for replacement effects to turn things into drawing cards, but I can't find a chain of effects that starts with Decimator Web and ends up in 3 loss conditions simultaneously.
There's another way to lose to several conditions at once which is kinda fun:
Gideon planeswalker -- wow, they're still steadily churning out variants on "become a creature" ability, I'm still amazed they managed more than one!
Spell mastery -- it vaguely reminds me of other "combo lots of instants and sorceries" mechanics, except it's balanced to aim at a number of instants and sorceries it's possible to actually play in a plausible deck (rather than mechanics that eg need N copies of inst/sorc with that mechanic).
Someone asked at Alex's games evening, how many different ways can you lose at once?
I can count three at once in a single state-based-effects check: Have Phyrexian Unlife in play, be on zero or less life and eight or more poison counters and every player has zero cards in library. Activate Words of War and then Words of Wind. Cast Wheel of Fortune (or anything else that draws a bunch of cards).
Replace the first card draw with doing two damage to yourself in the form of two poison. Replace the second with bouncing phyrexian unlife. Allow the third draw to fail. After resolution, state-based-effects are checked, and you lose thrice over: life, poison, and decking.
You can also manage two with Laboratory Maniac and Forbidden Crypt: as part of the same spell resolution, you lose because you can't return a card, and your opponent wins because they can't draw a card. However, I think even during a spell resolution, drawing cards happens sequentially, so whichever happens first, you don't proceed to the second, nor to state based effect resolutions. So that may not count as "at once".
There's also lots of cards that win or lose based on a trigger, so you could count "how many lose the game triggers can you trigger off the same action", but I didn't do that.
I also wondered, if you allow multiple copies of the same effect, can you get more of them? Like, in multiplayer, if all your opponents have laboratory maniacs, and get decked at once, you lose N times. But you don't because in multiplayer "win" is translated to "everyone else loses" and if everyone loses it's a draw. And if someone has angel's grace, then "win the game" doesn't happen. So I can't quite think of the right combination but I'm sure there must be something like that...
Now it has a Twitter account.