For Challenge # 060

I'm not sure about the cost. How good is "draw an instant or sorcery"?

If it didn't add the mana, I'd say fair as fair can be. With the mana? I'm not sure... though I do find it kind of odd that this might be a mana ability. The rules might find fault with that. "I cast Serra Angel with my Spellstone. Oh... there's a Shatter on top of my library. I guess I did not, and instead draw this Shatter. Weird.

I mean, I know that most people cast spells after adding mana... but you could choose to announce spell, then add mana, intentionally. By the by... does anyone know why that's a rule anyhow? I've never understood why you could announce the spell, then tap your lands. It only seems to lead to making cards like this not work (or cards like Chromatic Sphere getting strange bonuses with Affinity). Annoying.

It's a rule because; well, that's how almost everone does it outside of a tournament; and so the tourneys either had to start issuing a LOT of warnings, or change the rules. They went least resistance. I kinda like the potential strange interaction here; though uit's more often going to be "Ok, let's see if I get a card. Hmm, now what can I do with a spare mana?"

Good point. I think this shouldn't be a mana ability, but is as written. And that's a problem, since if you don't have enough mana, you can usually back up, but if you reveal a card, you can't really reverse that...

Is there a way to make it not a mana ability (other than "put the top card of your target library..." :))? Deranged Assistant self-mills as a cost, how does that avoid the problem?

@Vitenka: Oh, you're absolutely right. It's a pity the rules committee didn't come up with a different system that said "the official rules are you add mana, then cast spells. Presenting your spell before adding mana, however, invokes no penalty." I generally agree with the precept of 'letting the players play the game the way they're going to anyway', but there must have been some middle ground.

@Jack: You could just do 'best of both worlds' always granting the . I think at that point this nudges up to ... but maybe it grants ? I could see how you'd want one or the other, though. I kind of like the "Fail to draw? Here's a mana as your parting gift. Thanks for playing!"

The Deranged Assistant avoids the problem by always giving you . It didn't really need to be a cost. Right now this is similar to a land that says ": Flip a coin. If you win the flip, add one mana of any color." That's a pretty awesome land if you ask me, but the rules aren't happy with it.

Eh, magic already has a stack. Letting it be "If you want to, it's permitted to go: I cast this; um, in response I'll tap the lands to make the mana I need; phew! Ok, just in time, now I can cast the spell!" would have been my preferred fix. Hanyway.

@jmg, but isn't part of the problem that you can withdraw from an impossible action without penalty? So you can go:

1. I play VERY EXPENSIVE spell.2
2. I tap deranged assistant to pay for it.
3. Oh, look at that I did/didn't want to draw that spell.
4. Oops, still not enough mana. OK, rewind to before step 1.
5. OK, now I do/don't activate deranged assistant and cast a cheaper/cheaper+1 spell.

Yeah, that's pretty much the problem. You'll have to excuse me... I'm talking at cross points about two separate things, and I'm quite sure I'm being confusing. My first point is, "This card, as a Magic card using the rules the way they are, is degenerate". My other point is, "It is a pity this card is degenerate, because the rules are written in such a way to make it degenerate, but the rules don't need to be written that way." If I had my way, there would be two ways to cast spells:

1). I add the mana to my pool. Then I use the mana to cast my spell.
2). I announce that I'm going to cast a spell. I add the mana to my pool. Then I use the mana to cast a spell.

The only difference was that you showed your opponent the spell you were going to cast... that shouldn't be a ruling issue. There was a time when players were discouraged from showing other players their cards. Nowadays, there's no penalty for letting a person see you have a Fireball in hand, so we can move to game two. How you cast spells, however, hasn't changed to reflect that.

Ah, right, thank you. I think I get that, but I didn't understand why this was different to Deranged Assistant.

Now I google, I find threads like: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28824455/deranged_assistant_and_makeshift_mauler?pg=last which say that if you use deranged assistant during the casting of a spell and then back up, you don't back up the assistant's ability. So it's basically equivalent to using deranged assistant before you start casting to float the mana, and both ways work the same, it's just sometimes confusing.

So I think that would work the same with this, or with a hypothetical ": Toss a coin. If you win, add one mana of any colour to your mana pool," card?

That said, I think there might be ways to simplify the comp rules, but I'm not sure how what you suggested was different?

Weird. Well, that's interesting. My problem with the current rules is that they're the reverse order from my previous two examples. The current way we cast spells is:

1). Announce Spell
2). Choose all targets
3). Pay all costs.

The way this is set up, Spelltome causes a problem... since you must announce your spell before paying the cost of the spell... even if we don't know whether or not you can pay for it. The 'players cannot reverse actions' ruling, though, is very weird. I wasn't aware this existed... I kind of assumed the game backed up, but I can understand why they would want the opposite to happen.

Well, anyway, if the comp rules operated like I suggested in my previous post, the deranged assistant problem would never happen. You wouldn't be able to cast your spell until you had the mana already in your pool. The way it is now, you play a funny game of "I cast this. Could I have cast it?" I know that's how many people naturally play, but it causes headaches. Many players also cast spells, then look at the card they drew for the turn... that doesn't mean we should make the rules create corner cases for when that happens. We should just let them draw out of order, if it has no effect on the game.

EDIT: By the by, I'm interested in hearing an alternate opinion as to why the system needs to stay the way it is... assuming it isn't retreading the same very true argument of 'letting the players play the way they want to play'. This seems like good article material, but I'd hate to write up the article only to have someone attack me from left field with a very valid argument as to why we need to do things the way we do things. I've done some pre-liminary scavenging of internet articles on the subject, but many of them talk about how we do it, but don't really get into the 'why' so much. I love finding out I'm wrong. It makes for more interesting reading, anyway, if I can come up with a sound theory, then find a way to disprove myself.

"My problem with the current rules is that they're the reverse order from my previous two examples. The current way we cast spells is:"

You remember that you can tap mana beforehand and have it your pool, right? My interpretation is that most people, if there's any doubt that they may have enough mana, or want to use a not-technically-mana ability like a fetchland, do:

1. Activate mana abilities, float mana to their pool.
2. Announce spell.
3. Pay costs.

Whereas if they're only tapping lands and will clearly have enough mana, they do:

1. Announce spell.
2. Play mana abilities.
3. Pay costs.

So it seems to me like you always CAN use mana abilities first. And if you choose to use mana abilities during the resolution of a spell, there's no major benefit or downside to doing so, except that:

(i) if you tap your mana first and realise you don't have enough, you may not be able to back it up (ii) if you announce your spell first and then back it up, your opponent knows you have it

So it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference, and the current situation is nearly equivalent to "tap mana, then play spell" with the optional step of telling your opponent in a non-binding way what spell you're about to try to cast.

Simplifying the rules might be better, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference -- am I missing something?

For the issue to do with this card in particular, this is indeed the kind of mana ability you don't want people activating during the process of casting a spell or ability.

I'd say the best solution is probably to add the Charmed Pendant rider to it, "Activate this ability only any time you could cast an instant."

@Jack: Oh, I'm aware that you can do one or the other, and that they're both similar. It's just that... I'm curious. Do you know how Chromatic Sphere and Frogmite interact? This is using the current rules (and the rules as they were in 2003... this was a very common interaction). Let's say you have 3 lands and the sphere in play. You announce Frogmite, lock in the cost at 3, shuffle mana through Chromatic Sphere (because it's a mana ability), draw a card, then pay Frogmite's cost. You pay three, even though you have no artifacts in play. It's very unintuitive, but that's how it works.

I'm glad to admit that this sort of interactions doesn't come up often. But I'm pretty sure they don't come up that often because any time there's a card that threatens the stability of how spells are cast, the design is nixed, or made less appealing. How often does that happen? I don't know. I do know that someone in the Great Designer Search submitted a card that was rejected for this reason, though.

Hmm... the more I think about it, the more I think this spell, Spellstone (and my hypothetical land), is getting in the way. I'm trying to come up with a combination of a card which would be better for you to announce, then activate Spellstone. The truth is, I can't come up with one. Almost universally, you would want to activate this card before casting your spell, unless you want to see the casting of your spell fail, and nothing really happen because of it. It's a head scratcher. Charmed Pendant sure is an example of a card that goes all wrong using the current model. Lion's Eye Diamond, Rhystic Cave and Witch Engine have been errated as well with 'only any time you could cast an instant', so I know the examples exist. All old cards, before Wizards decided not to mess with this space anymore. But Spellstone? Maybe there's no specific reason to errata it. There might be an interaction I'm not thinking of, but I can't think of one.

Oh, I came up with one. You could sacrifice a permanent as part of a cost, then activate the Spellstone, since you choose how to pay for things in the order of your choice. Then, having not gotten mana, the thing you sacrificed is already sacrificed.... which might be important if you were fizzling a spell. I admit, it's a poor example of what could go wrong, but I did, at least, find a little hole.

­Do you know how Chromatic Sphere and Frogmite interact? ... any time there's a card that threatens the stability of how spells are cast, the design is nixed, or made less appealing.

Good point. OK, you're right, this confusion is a problem, and if it could be avoided it'd be better.

I wonder if the sequence for announcing a spell could be:

1. Announce spell
2. Optionally play mana abilities
3. Lock in costs, etc.

That would remove the ambiguity, but officially endorse saying the name and then tapping the mana if you want to.