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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-04-26 21:33:43)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-04-26 21:33:43)
NNTP is short for Network News Transfer Protocol. There are many NNTP client programs, including Pan, Lynx, Thunderbird, bystand, etc. (The domain name of my own NNTP server is
zzo38computer.org, and the name of the newsgroup isun2.org.zzo38computer.magic.custom. For puzzles, there is another newsgroup, which isun2.org.zzo38computer.magic.puzzle)What is an NNTP?
Okay, I'm in no way trying to be rude, but I legitimately have to ask if you're trolling, zzo38.
"One thing I would change is making the official rules as a open-source literate computer program which implements them (and which runs on Linux, probably in addition to other operating systems too), and make it more mathematically elegant and mathematically precise. This would avoid some confusions with them."
I'm not actually sure what you mean by this, especially the italicized bit.
Another thing is I would introduce namespacing. The basic lands would belong to their own namespace; all official WotC cards other than silver-bordered to another namespace, and all WotC silver-bordered cards to yet another namespace. Names in different namespaces do not compare equal, even if their spelling is the same. (It is also possible for their spelling to differ but to still compare equal, as with foreign cards.) The namespace is not actually printed on the cards; it is implied. The namespace is considered to be a part of the name as far as the game is concerned, and cannot be compared separately by any game effect (other than Un-cards).
What does this accomplish?
I would also errata the cards with physical dexterity effects to silver-bordered and exclude the rules for them from the rules of the game.
Sure, yeah. This is the only thing here that really makes immediate sense to me as something a person would want.
I would reintroduce the old-style card frames, but with more space for text.
The old card frames were hideous, though? I think there's a minority of people that like them, but... well, maybe I'm secretly the one in the minority and I've never realized it.
And, yet another thing is to add cards that would be interesting to use in puzzles. The puzzles are the thing that I am most interested in, really. (They would be usable in actual games too, as long as they aren't banned.)
What sorts of puzzles?
I would change a lot of things, not just one.
One thing I would change is making the official rules as a open-source literate computer program which implements them (and which runs on Linux, probably in addition to other operating systems too), and make it more mathematically elegant and mathematically precise. This would avoid some confusions with them.
Another thing is I would introduce namespacing. The basic lands would belong to their own namespace; all official WotC cards other than silver-bordered to another namespace, and all WotC silver-bordered cards to yet another namespace. Names in different namespaces do not compare equal, even if their spelling is the same. (It is also possible for their spelling to differ but to still compare equal, as with foreign cards.) The namespace is not actually printed on the cards; it is implied. The namespace is considered to be a part of the name as far as the game is concerned, and cannot be compared separately by any game effect (other than Un-cards).
I would also errata the cards with physical dexterity effects to silver-bordered and exclude the rules for them from the rules of the game.
I would reintroduce the old-style card frames, but with more space for text.
And, yet another thing is to add cards that would be interesting to use in puzzles. The puzzles are the thing that I am most interested in, really. (They would be usable in actual games too, as long as they aren't banned.)
There are many more things, too. (You can see some of my custom cards for a few of them.)
I use the older "Timmy", "Johnny", "Spike", "Vorthos", and "Melvin". I don't care what everyone else uses, but I dislike writing both together like "Timmy/Tammy"; just write one or the other, not both. Note that these are not necessarily the player's names, anyways!!! They are independent of the player's names. (To avoid confusion, the sentences that use these terms should perhaps be written in such a way to avoid confusing them with the player's name, if necessary.) (If you make up your own game, or a different kind of psychographics even for this game, and they are different to the things that these names refer to, then you can make up whatever names you want, and should not use these names.)
I think that singular "they" is OK as long as it is not unclear (in some contexts it is; in those contexts, they write "that player" instead, so it is OK). It is like singular "you". "You" is plural, and "they" is also plural, but both words can also be used singular, but will be gramatically plural. Singular "they" is also not really that new; it dates from the fourteenth century. "That they controls" is as wrong as "that you controls"; omit the final "s" on the verb.
I think that banding is mostly good the way it is; however, see my custom card set for my changes to the banding rules.
Artifacts and enchantments are good. Keep them. Without any subtypes, they are good as permanents without other effects due to their types; with subtypes, they can do additional things too.
Having both (rather than only one) is helpful due to effects that can refer to them.
The game should be much more than just creatures.
That it is. I don't use it, and anyways I am on Linux, not Windows. I would prefer FOSS (free-software/open-source) programs, although some don't implement text-changing effects. I had idea of a RDF-based format to define the effects of the cards; it would then compile them into its internal format, and be able to work it. For example, "counter target spell" becomes
[:counter [:target :spell]], and "this object deals 3 damage to any target" becomes[:damage 3; :to [:target :damageable]]. The game engine and the UI should be separate, in order that you can easily replace them. If it can be approved, then its source code (especially if written using literate programming) can then be the "true rules of the game", making the rules less confusing, and allowing you to figure out any situation (for existing cards and custom cards) by putting it into the computer. Write on my NNTP if you have more ideas about this.I really hate this idea (except for silver-bordered cards).
Card names should be mathematically only values that can be compared for equality and nothing else. (This also means changing the rules for implicit names of tokens; my own custom set has such a rule.)
I do like their change of "remove from the game" to "exile"; it is much better. The object isn't removed from the game; it can still be found. (Actually, objects in the sideboard are also part of the game in a sense, they just aren't in any zone.)
I use "dies" for any permanent, not only creatures. (The rules already support this, although this is not done on official cards.)
Another thing I use in some custom cards is "damageable", which means a creature, planeswalker, or player. "Any target" means the same as "target damageable" (I dislike the wording "any target"), and the AST is considered the same. (AST-based text-changing effects is another one of my ideas.)
One idea I had is "lose priority" as a cost. This cost can only be paid if you would be the next player to have priority, and it would occur during the current step of the turn. If you do this, then next time you get priority, you must pass priority; no other actions are valid (other than conceding).
I dislike the rule that specifies which counters are ability counters, and would rather explicitly specify in the cards, to be more general.
I would also like to have some term to mean "whatever object was the source of the effect that created this object, made it a copy of something, or granted it this ability or this text". This may help with writing some kind of effects.
I am not sure that auto-shuffling is a good idea, but if it was added, it should perhaps be a state-based action; this makes the timing much less confusing.
I dislike how the legendary supertype is applied to instants/sorceries. That effect should be a keyword ability instead (which may be applied to any type of card), although those cards should remain legendary, so they are still historic, found by things that find legendary cards, etc. (I don't know what to call this keyword ability.)
However, I also think that the ongoing supertype should be generalized; currenly it suppresses the state-based action for schemes; I suggest to also make it suppress the state-based actions for phenomena/Sagas/dungeons, since those state-based actions are similar to the one for schemes.
I have my own rules for combining types, how I would think they would be working, which are based on the existing rules. They are:
Instant/sorcery and land: To play it, reveal it from your hand; it then remains in your hand (and you can play it again on your next turn). It still counts as playing a land. If it is an instant, you can play it whenever you could play a land with flash (this doesn't strictly match the rules, but it should). It is not a "non-land card", nor is it a "permanent card", but it is a instant (or sorcery) card and a land card. It cannot enter the battlefield under any circumstances (except face-down, e.g. if it has morph or is manifested; if so, then it can never be faced up).
Instant/sorcery and any permanent type, but not land: It is cast as and resolves as an instant/sorcery. If it is a Aura, it targets an object or player specified by the enchant ability, in addition to its other targets (if any); this target is not affected by the things that say "target [whatever]", but is affected if it says "enchanted [whatever]". It is not a "permanent card", but it may be a "creature card" or "enchantment card" or whatever. It cannot enter the battlefield under any circumstances (except face-down, e.g. if it has morph or is manifested; if so, then it can never be faced up, although if it is a instant creature or sorcery creature and is manifested, you can still pay its mana cost as a special action, but that won't turn it face-up). A "sorcery creature" spell is still a creature spell, even though it can never attack or block, or be dealt damage, etc, so it can still be countered by an effect that says "counter target creature spell", and cannot be countered by an effect that says "counter target non-creature spell", etc.
Command-only type and a type that isn't command-only: The command-only type takes precedence. However, e.g. if its type is "creature scheme", then anything with protection from creatures will be protected from it, etc. It can never exist in any zone other than the command zone.
The problem with land tokens is 1) it's very hard to tell if a bead/die is tapped, and 2) it's very easy to forget and shuffle them into your deck at the end of the game. Wizards has experimented with land tokens and it seems like they decided it's not worth it
I disagree with dropping "token" and types implied by subtypes, due to how predefined tokens work, and also because subtypes do not imply a type (some types share the same lists of subtypes, such as creature and tribal, and possibly others in future). However, Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest should be predefined tokens, so that "create a Forest token" is OK.
A new wording for the Servant of the Scale effect is found on Star Pupil: "When ~ dies, put its counters on target creature you control."
Now that is a drastic improvement. The use of X for this kind of effects never sat well with me.
Yes, that's roughly what I imagined, although Tahazzar points out they're going the opposite way and having them all legal. But I don't think "all silver border" is the right way to think of it -- rather, I imagined prioritising making each tie-in set good in its own right, rather than requiring them be legal in eternal formats. Say, each having their own frame, and have the option of including some sets in eternal formats, or not, or having some in but with a lot of banning, or something. But I guess their financial pressure is more to continue the status quo of valuable secondary market in eternal formats, rather than building a new cool thing.
Although I'm not sure that changing the base design would HAVE to mean they don't fit into eternal formats. There's lots of changes which aren't allowed in regular magic but were allowed in time spiral. If you swapped flying into green, or changed all the creature types so rats and cats were 1/1 and 2/2 and most humans were 3/3 and 4/4, or even to print a set with white, grey, blue, brown color pie instead of the regular five, or created a different set of keywords like in "Space: The Convergence", it wouldn't be normally printable, but it wouldn't necessarily produce anything unbalanced in legacy or commander, or maybe even in modern.
I feel like the flavour of MTG cards with a few completely different cards from LOTR (that work under the rules) is actually better than the flavour of MTG cards but a few of them have names from a different world.
You know, the unfortunate thing about all this is that the usual barometer of whether Wizards is doing things the wrong way is down. Sales could be up, but if people aren't coming out to Friday Night Magic, there's a big indicator that there's a problem. But the pandemic has shut that avenue of attentiveness out.
WotC: Universes Beyond to be legal in eternal formats
"if they designed self-contained sets which were designed to be fun players by themselves, and could also change the colour pie or keyword choices to match the setting."
Translation: you want then to do more silver-bordered set. Because unless Wizards are ever more moneygrabbing than I already assume they are, they will not contaminate the pool of non-rotating in any shape or form, and that means printing any sets such as what you describe in silver borders only.
I agree completely with Jack
Ahhhh fair point
I don't know, I felt like the lego worlds were pretty fun in their own right.
My problem, which I've complained about before, is that I think it would be more interesting if they designed self-contained sets which were designed to be fun players by themselves, and could also change the colour pie or keyword choices to match the setting. Producing cards that feel like normal magic cards but reskinned with a different flavour just feels cheap to both magic and the flavour.
And if people want them to interoperate with normal magic, they can design a format permitting whatever combinations they think are fun :)
I would really like the ability to mash up some of these different properties in the same game of magic, I think that would be fun. But I think it only works if they actually feel like "lightsabre weilder" is dropped into mediavel fantasy and has to figure out what's the same and what's different, not that everything is just like a magic card with a funny hat :)
Having the word token appear in the text makes it easier/possible for new players to figure out what a "nontoken creature" is. And I'd prefer that to introducing a new wording like "noncreated creature". ;)
One word reduction I’d be interested in, is dropping the word token. Now that we have the action “Create”, I feel it’s redundant.
Eg “Create a 1/1 white Human Soldier creature”
I’d even be up for dropping types whenever they were implied by the subtype
Eg “Create an Aura with Enchant Creature” “Create a 2/2 green Wolf”
Magic trying to do what Lego did in the 2000s-2010s by cashing on franchises is a terrible idea. The Lego stuff did amazing in the short term, but it was awful long term because it never created new Lego fans. And these ventures are even more daft given that LoTR and Warhammer card games already exist!
While "shuffle" is a MUCH better choice of shorthand than "Add X" ever was, I am dubious of "mana value" being useful replacement. As in, I see no reason whatso-f@@@@ing-ever to assume it's going to be any less confusing for new players.
What I like is cards that would be interesting in a puzzle.
The Zenith ability (shuffle ~ into its owner's library) is probably not getting any errata. With GSZ in particular, the instance of "then shuffle your library" will be changed into just "then shuffle."
This made me look at Green Sun's Zenith for reference. Wouldn't that simply read "Search your library for a green creature card with mana cost of X or less"? That seems straightforward to me. "Shuffle ~ back into your library" is the part that I think would be harder to simplify with the new wording.