General The evolution of Magic...

[ahadabans]

I derailed a recent thread on color matters / devotion with some discussion about challenging conventions in Magic. It's an interesting topic to me and I wanted to start a new thread to keep it going.

The discussion centered originally around the origins of the "4-of" rule specifically with respect to constructed. Honestly, I'm not really at all interested in constructed magic at this point so I'm going to shift gears and bring the focus more towards cube. Specifically conventions in Magic and what could be changed to address weaknesses in the game.

As this group is pretty open minded and already doing a lot of unconventional things (breaking singleton, running custom cards, etc.), I figure this topic may get some traction and generate interesting ideas.

As a primer, here are three things about Magic which I find to be weaknesses of the game. They aren't horrible weaknesses that can't be worked around, but i see them as small design flaws that certainly could have been improved upon at the games inception but maybe even today with small changes to the game itself.

1. Mana flood/screw - I realize this is part of the game and many just accept it as such, but there really isn't anything fun about losing games because you can't draw land or you top deck 4 islands in a row. Proper land distribution during deck building, aggressive mulligans, 2 out of 3 - all that is just a bandaid for the problem really.

2. Power level discrepancies, including degenerate cards and card combinations - this is really not a problem in cube because we can just remove cards that create this scenario. But outside this format you are faced with this problem in various forms. In casual magic, it really boils down to how much you spend on the game a lot of times. Degenerate cards are a whole other discussion. Again though, in cube, this is a moot point.

3. Silver bullets / unanswerable card types - the biggest offenders are artifacts and enchantments. Some color and color combinations have no answers. Not sure why the game was designed that way, but again I think we can limit this problem with card selection in cube (get rid of artifact/enchantment bombs). Protection is another mechanic that I think really sucks too, but again you can greatly limit and/or remove it in cube. Even so, unless you gut all powerful enchantment/artifacts, you really can't prevent the occasional silver bullet scenario. With that said, it is probably a livable situation in the grand scheme of things.

Curious what peoples thoughts are on the above and if anyone has other things that they find weak about the game that could be improved upon.

As far as solutions... I had a small casual group that used to play with a resource land rule. It wasn't perfect, but it did help with mana screw (though did nothing for flood). Recently, I saw someone mention something about a card filtering rule (sort of like cycle). I thought it was really clever and I wanted to give you my interpretation of it and ask for thoughts on it. Here is the rule:

After your untap step, you may remove a card in your hand from the game. If you do, draw a card. This may only be done once and only on your turn.

I see several benefits to this rule:
1. It helps with both mana screw and flood. If you have too many lands, you can ditch them to draw a card. If you don't have enough, you can give up a card to get a card and hopefully draw into land.
2. It makes side board cards more tolerable in your maindeck. You can run disenchant without feeling like it's useless in some matchups. If you don't need it, filter it away and get a card.

Drawbacks:
1. This effect is pretty powerful and it is certainly going to help combo decks A LOT. In constructed, this would be a disaster probably. But in cube, you completely control the amount of combo that exists, so it might not be too bad.
2. Maybe this needs to also have a cost (similar to cycle)? Maybe pay 1 mana for the effect? I don't know. Having to ditch a card before you see what you draw feels like a drawback in and of itself. Sometimes it's a no-brainer. Other times though you will be faced with a very hard decision (what to toss?). And both players can do it, so I don't feel like it's inherently broken from that perspective (both players already get to draw a free card each turn for no cost - this is similar but requires you to pitch a card to get the effect).

Discuss.

 

[Jonas]

The mana flood and screw has been handled well in newer games like the CoC game, where you can't screw or flood in a neat way, since all of your cards are also lands.

 

[ahadabans]

The mana flood and screw has been handled well in newer games like the CoC game, where you can't screw or flood in a neat way, since all of your cards are also lands.

That was essentially the resource land rule that I played with a couple friends years back. Here was the exact rule.

You may play any card face down as a "resource land". This counts as your land drop for the turn. Resource lands have "tap: add 1 to your mana pool". If a resource land would leave the battlefield for any reason, remove it from the game instead. If you control more resource lands than non-resource lands, sacrifice a number of resource lands until you control the same number.

The last two clauses were there to prevent bounce and graveyard shenanigans (they weren't there originally but then I broke them with a reanimator deck).

I never got my larger play group to accept this idea though, so it died after awhile. But it did help with mana screw and I felt like it made the game flow better because it increased the options you had. And it could have helped with flood too if you built decks with fewer lands to compensate for the fact that you could run resource lands using non-land cards. Anyway, I think it was a little too radical for my more conventional friends. But the filter draw idea I posted above feels more palatable. I'm probably going to suggest it at some point and see what the response is.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I don't think you can really change the basics of Magic's resource system, since it's been in place for so long. If you feel it's a problem you can certainly houserule some fixes though. Personally I really liked the way the WoW TCG handled its resources. Basically you still have lands, called quests, which give you 1 "mana" and also can be "completed" for a bonus. You can, however, play any card from your hand face-down as a completed quest if you don't have a quest card in your hand. It's a pity really that WotC used up its face-down mechanic for morph.

As an alternative to your proposal, what if you changed it to the following: Once per turn, at the start of your upkeep, you may exile a card from your hand and note it's colors. If you do, you search your library for a basic land card that can produce mana of one of those colors and reveal that card. Shuffle your library, then put the card on top of it.

This doesn't fix mana floods, but with this rule in place you would be inclined to maybe run a little less land anyway. You are stunting your progress if you use this rule. But then again, we don't want to be stepping on green's toes and totally take away it's ability to fix mana bases.

 

[CML]

i hear hearthstone has no lands.

isn't looting sometimes already a thing?

the cube decks on this forum are already much more consistent than the grim monolith cubes, which is part of why they're so much more fun to play (and much more powerful, if we're gonna go there). the most interesting direction this thread could go in, imo, is discussing "how much consistency is desirable?" (and, "what design choices could we make to get there?") my instinct is to make these changes within some amount of "typical" cube constraints -- MTS and WotC see me as a revolutionary, but, in addition to my love of 20th-century british novels and 19th-century music, i'm quite conservative when it comes to MTG design.

anyway:

-on the skype thread, jonas says, "retail limited" which i assume means occasional color-screw and some amount of bombs. this seems undesirable to me as retail limited is similar in consistency to grim monolith cubes, but there is the compelling argument, "too much consistency and it starts to feel like your are fighting over wich preconstructed deck to play with minor variations."

-i say, "standard constructed," basic functionality and fine manabases with a smattering of combo potential. break singleton with great restraint.

-moving beyond that we get the Wadds cube, with its 360 cards and many duplicates ("modern"). at this point i would worry about limiting the number of archetypes to the point where they become poisony, as well as a diminished amount of replay value. jonas says, "drafting jasons cube on sunday, it felt pretty much that you took a card, and then you were locked into what cards you should take, unless someone downstream was locking you out. Even just sticking to a colour or two doesn't always feel right with the cards that you have, there is a bit of a difference between black control and zombie aggro after all," which feels right to me.

two things i unequivocally recommend to reduce the number of 'non-games':

-powermax fixing (easy one)

-mulls to 6 scry 1, 6, 5 scry 1 rather than 6, 5, 4. in practice this has always yielded a playable hand on 6, and would not be an option in modern and legacy for the same combo reason.

something to add diversity:

-draft with strong players with individual styles. it's been gratifying to see esper win in person x's hands, RUG in another's, zoo and reanimator ramp in another's, etc., as the stronger players really throw themselves against the constraints of the cube's capabilities.

another idea i have is that "diversity" and "consistency" are not necessarily at odds up to a certain point. even if they are, maybe we should be looking to maximize that function

 

[ahadabans]

Once per turn, at the start of your upkeep, you may exile a card from your hand and note it's colors. If you do, you search your library for a basic land card that can produce mana of one of those colors and reveal that card. Shuffle your library, then put the card on top of it.

That's a nice idea too. I especially like the shuffle effect. Cube needs more of those.

It feels a little punishing though. Losing a card to ensure a land drop (actually, thinking of it like that sounds better for some reason). Feels almost like an in-game mulligan of sorts. I suppose this is essentially a land version of Mystical Tutor, so I'm probably underrating it somewhat after talking it out.

I like it.

 

[ahadabans]

"how much consistency is desirable?"

A question near and dear to my heart. And I think you are correct in where that falls (somewhere in the middle).

-mulls to 6 scry 1, 6, 5 scry 1 rather than 6, 5, 4. in practice this has always yielded a playable hand on 6, and would not be an option in modern and legacy for the same combo reason.

Another nice idea. This one should be a super easy sell too. Guys in my group HATE taking a mulligan because starting with one less card is just a disadvantage plain and simple (and all because your shuffle fucked you over too). It's a feel bad situation. We very often play a flavor of friendly mulligan just to avoid that (reveal your hand and draw another 7 - you can only do this if you have 0,1,6,7 lands). Basically reveal what you are playing as payment for getting to reshuffle and hopefully un-fuck your land distribution.

MTS and WotC see me as a revolutionary, but, in addition to my love of 20th-century british novels and 19th-century music, i'm quite conservative when it comes to MTG design.

I'm certainly more on the revolutionary end of the spectrum. I have no problem completely changing a game if there is a good reason to do so. Magic is a well designed game, so making radical departures doesn't make much sense to me. But introducing new rules that address deficiencies even if they have far reaching impacts to the game play IMO are totally up for consideration.

I guess the reason I started with a more extreme option (essentially allowing you replace a card in addition to your normal draw step) is that it gives you a really solid set of options (it's not a compromise by design). I think most of us agree that the game is better when you have more decisions to make, not less (decision density). Again, one of my biggest gripes with hard aggro for example is how boring it is to play and play against. You get one or two decisions to make and that's it. Either you drew the cards you needed to goldfish out or (if playing against) you drew the answers you needed to foil said goldfish. But really, how much interaction was involved in any of that? It feels like playing WAR to me.

My point is, the more decisions you introduce into the game, the better I think it ends up playing. The game has so much depth, it's sad when games devolve into what essentially is solitaire. Taking the above example. Both the hard aggro player and the guy playing against now have additional decisions to make. Do they aggressively filter cards from their hand to try to dig for more answers/threats? In this matchup, the answer is probably always going to be yes. But now it's not just a brainless step (draw step for example requires zero brain power to perform as there is no decision to make - you just draw a card). With the filter decision, you need to decide what in your hand is expendable to get another card? Do you toss an important card for your later strategy hoping you stop your opponent now and draw into a win condition later after you stabilize? Or do you toss a land to keep that win condition and hope you get a land in the next three cards? The aggro player has a similar choice to make. He can't cast the 4 drop in his hand but if he gets two more lands he will be able to. Does he hold it hoping for that land on curve? Or does he toss it hoping for something he can play now?

 

[CML]

I guess the reason I started with a more extreme option (essentially allowing you replace a card in addition to your normal draw step) is that it gives you a really solid set of options (it's not a compromise by design). I think most of us agree that the game is better when you have more decisions to make, not less (decision density).

this is a common misconception, the decisions must not only be numerous, they must have meaning. in EDH there are hundreds of decisions to be made every cycle with ridiculously byzantine board states, but they all basically amount to the same thing and are completely irrelevant after a board-wipe or infinite combo or some other catastrophic event. having a lot of decisions to make and having those decisions not matter over the course of a game is pure frustration.

if you get to draw/exile every turn you'd have to change the balance of the cube and its archetypes to reflect that.

i would also worry that it would make the games way too similar to one another in another EDHish way, viz. "decks do the same thing every time"

 

[ahadabans]

this is a common misconception, the decisions must not only be numerous, they must have meaning.

I don't disagree. And this is kind of what I'm after.

Isn't the option before your draw step of exiling and drawing a new card a decision with meaning? I don't think it's something you always want to do depending on the board state, what's in your hand, etc.

Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe this is simply too strong and you would always want to do it from a mathematical perspective. In which case, it probably needs to have it's cost adjusted (again to a cost of 1 perhaps). The idea I'm after is something that adds as you say a real decision point - not something that is an obvious move (because that doesn't enhance the game as you stated, although it sort of does because it fixes flood/screw which is really the purpose of the rule after all).

I wish I had more time to play Magic. I'd really enjoy testing some of these ideas out.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

A game can get by with less variety in cards if it has a lot of intrinsic options available. Magic only has one really (attack!) and sequencing within a turn is very often inconsequential. As such, which cards you draw and the order in which you draw them is a large source of the variety in the game, so attempts to get around that will often result in less variety as cardplay is basically the only language of interaction in the game.

Conversely, V:TES has a discard phase where you can do exactly as you describe: discard a card to draw a new one each and every turn. However, V:TES contains a very large amount of intrinsic options and intra-turn sequencing is much more sensitive, so having a variety of cards is more related to the effectiveness of a form of interaction rather then the ability to complete it. Indeed, I've played against 90 card V:TES decks with only 2 or 3 different cards in them that had more depth then plenty of Magic decks because V:TES intrinsically makes what you do, where you do it and the order in which it is done into a much deeper question.

I think that the flaws of Magic have become as much a part of the game as the strengths. They've been designed around and accounted for so deeply and, to be subjective, they just feel like Magic. I'm of the opinion that we can and should use cube to make Magic, the game that is, the best game it can be. If we don't want to play the game, well, their are plenty of other good ones out there and many more good ones yet unmade. No need use the wrong tool for the job. That said, I'm up for tinkering with the game in lots of ways (I do 1 free mulligan and sharpie cards to retune them for my purposes), but a full scale intrinsic reworking of the value of a draw or a land drop seems to me to be too fundamental a change that spans too much of the game. I think you'd have to either redesign swaths of cards and/or resign to the fact that the game you are playing rejects much of what people consider Magic.

 

[ahadabans]

An interesting idea posted on MTG Salvation in the casual forum. I posted this there as well. Here is a link to that thread.

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/...ats/177476-magic-2-0-aka-screw-the-mana-screw

It's a cool idea actually. My only reservation about the rules as presented in this thread is the added complexity which I think may be a harder sell (with my group for sure). I'm after something very simple that doesn't add rule bloat. It easier to get people to try something if it's simple and appears innocuous.

 

[ahadabans]

I think you'd have to either redesign swaths of cards and/or resign to the fact that the game you are playing rejects much of what people consider Magic.

I don't think this rule is that game changing honestly. But I'll have to run some tests to see what happens.

Consistency will increase, and that is the one thing I have some reservations about (I like the lower level of consistency you get in limited personally). Decks will work better as a result though, so it seems a fair trade off. Again though, I have to test it to really know.

 

[CML]

I wish I had more time to play Magic. I'd really enjoy testing some of these ideas out.

yeah me too. on one hand i am deeply suspicious of the value of theorycrafting since all of us get stuff wrong all the time, on the other hand ideas are more numerous than time. outsourcing them to people whose judgment we trust (at least a little) and reporting on what happened / reading other reports is one of the main ideas behind a forum, afaik

 

[ahadabans]

yeah me too. on one hand i am deeply suspicious of the value of theorycrafting since all of us get stuff wrong all the time, on the other hand ideas are more numerous than time. outsourcing them to people whose judgment we trust (at least a little) and reporting on what happened / reading other reports is one of the main ideas behind a forum, afaik

Totally. On both points. It is so hard to theorycraft Magic. I'm wrong more than I'm right, and frankly it's not even close. So I could be completely off base on what this rule change could do. Maybe flood/screw is just as prevalent and I completely break the value of card draw in the game to the point that I make ancestral recall look fair. Who knows?

I do really value the feedback here though, especially from the groups that play a lot and clearly spend a ton of time gathering real data. I have a very limited amount of real world experience with cube. I played Magic daily for probably 5 years way back when, but cube isn't the same at all so not all that experience I have translates over well.

 

[ahadabans]

I just spent an hour or so running a few simulations with a white weenie deck versus a golgari midrange deck. The WW deck won 2-1, but all matches were very close (one game coming down to a single life).

A few thoughts on the exile/draw step rule and how it changed things:

1. Knowing when to use the exile draw step is not as obvious as it might seem. A couple of times, I thought I could improve my hand by doing it and I ended up hurting my hand instead. Not knowing what card you are going to get before you exile makes is a crap shoot and unless you really need to dig for something, it isn't automatically a good decision. I hadn't expected that honestly. I figured it would be an obvious thing to do most of the time.

2. If your opening hand is decent, you really don't want to use the exile/draw in the beginning for reasons above (making your hand worse is a real possibility), but later in the game when you need an answer or you are short a land, it's a no-brainer. I actually like that to some extent. It increased the odds of you getting what you needed at crucial times and that made the match more interactive. But there were still a lot of times when choosing to exile/draw was not clear and you had to put thought into it. It even has an element of luck to it. From a mechanics perspective, I think it's really cool. Though one negative is it adds a bit of time to your turn (especially when it's not obvious whether the exile/draw helps you and/or what you want to get rid of).

3. One game I exiled my only answer for a card the other deck ended up playing. And I did it because I had three 3 drops in my hand and figured that wasn't going to help me, so I tossed one of them. Wrong decision. So I shot myself in the foot by being overly aggressive with the exile/draw option. That was sort of nice in a way and it made me more gun shy on using the option after that (for better or worse).

4. This is a great answer to land destruction/mana denial strategies. One game, the white weenie deck got a lead and dropped Armagedeon. That should win the game 99% of the time, and it did here too but the Golgari deck almost survived by aggressively exile/drawing into lands. I was a big fan of that actually because it was really scoop-worthy but I played it out just to see if it was possible to recover. It proved to be much less hopeless than normal.

5. Although this didn't come up in my testing, I did mention in a prior post and it bears repeating. Running more narrow cards (things like disenchant) in your main deck is more palatable because if those cards prove useless, you can simply exile them for a new card. IMO, this is a positive thing. I've never liked running side boards and this makes them a little less important.

Obviously more testing is needed (me playing against myself is limited for obvious reasons). I'm definitely going to introduce this idea to my group. The rule is super simple, so I don't see guys rejecting it on the basis of complexity. And guys in my group are casual enough to probably not pull the purist card on me (they accept that I still run 6th edition rules after all).

Long term ramifications of this rule change I simply can't foresee right now, though I believe there could be a few. One in particular is with aggressive decks. It is an obvious strategy for all decks (but aggressive ones in particular) to exile/draw away excess lands later in the game to hopefully draw more gas. I'm fine with that honestly, but it will greatly increase consistency and reach for those decks in particular. In short, I think this helps aggro A LOT (and it obviously helps combo). You might even be able to do this in the reverse by running fewer lands than normal and aggressively exiling gas to get lands early and then doing the reverse later. But I'm not sure how far you could take it without increasing your odds of screw to the point where you end up worse off than before. Speaking of which, this rule does not eliminate screw. I still was short a black mana source one game, though I did eventually draw it (and faster than I would have because of the exile/draw option). It really only softens flood/screw by not leaving that entirely to the mercy of your shuffling. It feels like a nice balance honestly.

I'll test my Tinker deck next and maybe reanimator to see how much more reliable they become with the option to exile/draw. I think both decks get better, though how much better I'm not sure. As funny as it sounds, I actually think traditional control benefits the least from the exile/draw step since they are already built to maximize card quality. This helps them obviously but I suspect less than some other decks. Whether that unbalances things to the point where there needs to be nerfing/buffing of arch types, I simply won't be able to figure out for some time.

 

[Eric Chan]

No shame in playing against yourself. I used to do this all the time when I whipped up quick brews for Standard, to see if they were remotely viable, before spending any more effort tuning it. I mean, wasn't that about four times more instructive than endless theorycrafting?

I actually think traditional control benefits the least from the exile/draw step since they are already built to maximize card quality.

I think this might help control decks the most. They're the most likely to run an assortment of answers for all sorts of various questions, and being able to cycle - er, dig - through their litany of different removal spells for the exact right one feels like it'd be useful. We were just talking about Wrath effects in the other thread, and what better tack to take against aggro than to dig for one of your three sweepers?

Anyways, keep at it. Jason ran his utility land draft with his group a handful of times before he even posted about it on the pre-riptidelab.com Google Group to solicit our feedback, so it goes to show that even the best ideas need a lot of real-world testing, evaluation, and feedback. Something about perspiration, and all that.

 

[ahadabans]

No shame in playing against yourself. I used to do this all the time when I whipped up quick brews for Standard, to see if they were remotely viable, before spending any more effort tuning it. I mean, wasn't that about four times more instructive than endless theorycrafting?

It was, but theorycrafting is very entertaining and something I don't need to set aside an hour and a half to do.

I think this might help control decks the most. They're the most likely to run an assortment of answers for all sorts of various questions, and being able to cycle - er, dig - through their litany of different removal spells for the exact right one feels like it'd be useful. We were just talking about Wrath effects in the other thread, and what better tack to take against aggro than to dig for one of your three sweepers?

I thought that too originally, but cycling one extra card per turn to get an answer really isn't as efficient as it sounds. The intrinsic value you interpret assumes that cards in your deck are much better than cards in your hands. That is simply not true most of the time. Play one game with this rule and you'll see what I mean. You will go into it thinking you are going to exile/draw like a fiend, and you will do it much less than you expected.

Because you have to give up something KNOWN WITH VALUE to get something UNKNOWN, the value is a lot lower than cards that have cycling. It sounds the same, but it isn't. When you have miscalculation in your hand and it's late in the game, the card is worthless. Cycling it is an obvious move. But if you have cloudgoat ranger in your hand on 3 lands, that card is useless right now but will it be in two turns? Are you sure you want to exile it for a random card off the top of your library? It's not like it goes in your GY and you can get it back later. It's gone forever if you exile/draw it away.

Playing the WW deck made it clear that the most powerful use of this effect is after you have all the lands you want, you can automatically just cycle away excess lands for new cards. That has way more impact on the game than any digging I did with the Golgari deck looking for answers (because I was having to toss good cards that I could play to dig for a potentially better card - it is not a very lucrative option a lot of times).

Now maybe that is different in a control deck, but I don't think it will be. This effect will be very powerful in combo though (or things like Tinker or reanimator where you need to get a single card to do something broken). Wrath is not broken though. As I've said in previous posts, aggressive decks can easily play around Wrath effects. So much of the cube has built in 2 for 1 and/or anti-wrath tech (undying, persist, etc.). So being able to dig for your wrath (at a very real cost - make no mistake about it, exiling cards is more expensive than it sounds) is not as good as you think it is (except when you have all the land you need and you can just toss them for better cards).

 

[Eric Chan]

It sounds like you haven't adapted any of your decks or your cube itself to your new ruleset, though. You're using Magic decks, but with a superset of Magic rules. What you'd actually want to do as a control deck is run a whole host of narrower answers, so that you're prepared for anything that comes your way. Miscalculation is a great example of that. Except now you can afford to maindeck, say, Crushing Vines, too. Or something.

What you've illustrated is the first step of a several mile long journey. To maximize the use of your new ruleset, you want to build your entire cube around it, just like Magic cubes are built around the Magic rules. It's on you to make sure all the various archetypes are balanced in this tweaked game, and that neither aggro, combo, control, nor midrange have a leg up. Maybe Cloudgoat Ranger is too good in this new environment, while Nature's Claim becomes the perfect power level.

 

[ahadabans]

I don't see why you want to do that though. My goal isn't to make narrower cards playable or create a meta where cloudgoat ranger is too good. You could certainly take it in that direction if you wanted and to some extend that could be a side effect, but it's not what I'm after specifically.

The purpose of this exercise for me is simply to make games feel less at the whim of random draws and more in the hands of the pilot. I want more options while playing. Adding an exile/draw step is just one approach. There are likely others (which was one purpose of the thread - not just about putting my ideas out there but getting other people to theory craft as well).

I'm not trying to reinvent Magic. I want to refine it. Take what is best about Magic (IMO anyway) and try to make games more about that and less about the stuff that isn't as good.

Simply put, the game has flaws. I indicated those in the original post (the ones I find the most annoying). I'm interested in making changes to minimize or remove them from the game while keeping the core game intact. I don't want people playing this and having to relearn how to play Magic because I've turned it into a completely new game. If I'm going to go that far, I should just make a completely new game. Instead, people should feel like this is a natural evolution of the game mechanics. In the same way people today feel like Planeswalkers as a card type are part of the game, or damage no longer on the stack is part of the game, etc. This is primarily why I'm less interested in completely undoing parts of the game (like variations with mana and spells separated, etc.). I'm more interested in small rule changes you can make that increase the number of games that feel interactive and fun versus games where you just lose because you didn't have what you needed.

If I had come on here 10 years ago and said "Hey! We should have a planeswalker card type and this is how it should play", I'd be getting the same level of resistance (You'll completely alter the game!! WE are planes walkers, it makes no sense for that to be a card type!!!). But because Wizards came up with it (the same clowns that made D&D 4 I might add), somehow its a "better" idea and everyone is on board. I'm being a little defensive here and exaggerating somewhat, but only because there is a dismissiveness that exists from the community at large when it comes to really far out ideas. I'm not saying my idea is amazing (it could end up sucking), but it could make Magic better (or other ideas like mine might anyway).

This game is not beyond improvement is the take away here. I think the gut reaction is to assume that messing with the draw step will alter the game too drastically. But will it? Did upping the standard for a 6 drop from a 3/3 flyer with 2 1/1 tokens to a 6/6 death touch with 2 2/2 tokens (and 2 more tokens each turn) suddenly make the game unplayable? It certainly changed it, but (other than me) I think the vast majority of the people here like the new version of Magic better than the old one.

Not sure if this is true for everyone, but for me the best games of Magic are ones where both guys are essentially one-upping each other. You make a solid play and get ahead and then your opponent has an answer and turns the tables. But then you have a plan B and you execute only to have it countered by something your opponent does. And on and on until someone finally runs out of answers or deals the final point of lethal damage in a very close race. That's fun. That happens a lot in cube specifically and it's what brought me back to Magic. Games where your opponent drops something and you just have no response and die... those games are very forgettable and frankly they aren't fun. So anything that can be done to make those forgettable type games less frequent IMO can only make the game better. Whether an exile/draw step does that is open for debate certainly. But I guarantee you there are changes that could be made to this game that would make it play better. This thread is really about finding them. And I can't really do it alone honestly.

Some people might feel the game is fine the way it is. And really this thread is not targetting that audience.

 

[Eric Chan]

I don't see why you want to do that though.

Because the balance of your cube changes. If, as you posit, that the new rule helps aggro more than any other archetype, you could soon find your environment overrun with small creature decks, and they might oppress every other archetype. Your goal might not be to push one archetype far ahead of the others, but it still might be a natural result of what you're doing.

This is why you'd have to rebalance and rebuild your cube around your new ruleset. I mean, Magic has done the same. The only reason planeswalkers can exist is because creatures have been and are being pushed as hard as they are. Jace, the Mind Sculptor was legal for seven months alongside Alara block, and didn't dominate because of the number of quality creatures (headlined by Bloodbraid Elf). You can say that you don't want to change anything about your cube while making a fairly major change to the rules - all cards gain cycling! - but then you wouldn't be fulfilling your role as a cube designer.

 

[ahadabans]

I get that balance may change. My point is that I'm not actively trying to accomplish that. So I'm not going to go out of my way to force it into my cube by making drastic changes to the cards in there (run Flashfreeze because now you can toss it for another card so who cares that it is useless 90% of the time, etc.). One of the ideal scenarios of any rule change (IMO anyway) would be that guys don't have to drastically revisit how they evaluate cards or build decks. It's just a house rule that guys can easily pick up, use and move on with.

I appreciate you engaging me in this discussion, but as you stated in a previous post testing is more useful than theory crafting. I could be wrong, but I suspect that you feel this rule change would turn the game upside down. You are trying to lead me to that conclusion in this exchange and that's cool, but you are doing it by theory crafting. I hate to use your own argument against you, but you don't really know how this actually plays out because you haven't done it yet.

Try the rule out and see if you feel the same way after you run a few games. I realize this seems like it should be turning the game inside out, but it's not doing that. This rule is NOT free cycling. Cycling is waaaayyyy better (as is every library manipulation card I have in my cube). Tossing a perfectly good card to draw something random is only good in certain situations (in some cases it's flat out GREAT but those are the moments when it should be because it helps keep the game competitive). Although I can see where maybe you could run more narrow cards to maximize the exile/draw rule (and maybe that line of thinking could really change the game if it were taken to the extreme), there is no reason in cube to take things there unless you really want to. And the simple reason is because you control the cards that are in the meta. I don't want to take things there because I want the game to still operate like Magic.

 

[ahadabans]

Additional testing results. I ran the WW deck against a mono red aggro deck thinking aggro really benefited from the exile/draw rule. Not really. WW won easily (which is not uncommon for these test decks - the R deck is not great and the WW deck really has a lot of broken shit in it and silver bullets - soltari priest, jitte, a sword, mystic to get said broken equipment, etc).

I then ran the same WW deck (my favorite test deck because it has game against most everything) against my mono U tinker/control deck (the one deck it can't really beat). The tinker deck cleaned house, which again is typical for this matchup (WW isn't fast enough and it just can't answer a lot of what the U deck runs - shackles, untargettable dudes, etc.).

Long story short, these matches played exactly the same way they always do. A couple games were a little closer because of the exile/draw, but the end result didn't change in these matches. A few interesting things though:

1. Matches felt more competitive even if the end result was the same. I LOVE feeling like I have options even if they really aren't changing the outcome. The best thing about exile/draw is the fact that you always benefit from it when your back is against the wall. In those situations, you either need an answer or you need that final spell to finish things, and digging is what you want to do in those scenarios. Pretty much always. And so the rule swoops in and helps you when you tend to need it most. This is flat out the best thing about it I'm finding. You look at your hand and see no way out, then you exile/draw and draw and suddenly you have options. It's sweet.

2. It is absolutely helping with land drops. There are still screw and flood situations though, but they have been muted. No game in the 10 or so I've played so far has ended because of mana issues. There have been setbacks due to not enough mana or too much or missing a color, but they did not directly lead to any scoop scenarios or games where you just felt you had no way out.

3. Certain cards are obvious exile/draw candidates. My tinker deck started the game with Inkwell Leviathan (uncastable outside games that go forever). Although it has ways to get that from the hand into the deck for tinker, those are far and few between. Against the WW deck that doesn't waste time, there was no reason to keep hope alive that I could do that, so I immediately tossed it and drew counter spell (score!) Another obvious chuck was an opening hand with Temporal Mastery for similar reasons (too expensive if not miracled). Makes these seemingly narrow/bad cards a little better for what it's worth.

4. The mono R deck digging for gas by tossing lands is nice. But it wasn't as good as I expected. It didn't do enough to beat the WW deck. Again, hard to win that matchup due to the deck compositions, so its par for the course really. I expected a better showing though, so I am a little disappointed.

 

[MCMcEmcee]

Is your cube list viewable somewhere?

As a broad concept, decks with a lot of redundant/similar cards are going to benefit less from the ability to "upgrade" random cards in their hand into new cards from the deck that decks with more context-sensitive cards. The WW deck with a bunch of crappy shadow dudes, a pro-red guy, and Jitte is going to benefit a lot more from turning excess lands/crappy shadow dudes into attempts to draw the pro-red guy or Jitte than the mono-red deck that is all shocks and Jackal Pups, for example. Likewise, the deck with Tinker is going to benefit more from turning not-Tinker into attempts to find Tinker way more than the WW deck trying to find another 2/1 for 1.
If a control deck needs to find Wrath to not die, it doesn't matter what cards it pitches to find it; in context, all of its cards are dead except for Wrath so even if the average card off the top is worse than a card in hand, the only thing that matters is that Wrath is somewhere in the library and not in hand.
Likewise, while a land is typically worse than pretty much any given spell, how much impact does finding more 2 mana 2/2s really have?

Another way angle to say the same thing: consider the power of Brainstorm in a deck like UWr Miracles in Legacy. All of its cards are wildly divergent in power level at different phases of the game and in different matchups, and the card selection from Brainstorm is invaluable in making sure you have the right cards at the right time. Meanwhile, Legacy Merfolk usually doesn't play Brainstorm despite being a blue deck because all of its cards pretty much do the same thing, and there isn't much value in card selection if you're trying to choose whether you should keep Lord of Atlantis, Master of the Pearl Trident, or Master of the Pearl Trident #2.

 

[ahadabans]

Thanks for the reply.

Is your cube list viewable somewhere?

http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/11190

As a broad concept, decks with a lot of redundant/similar cards are going to benefit less from the ability to "upgrade" random cards in their hand into new cards from the deck that decks with more context-sensitive cards. The WW deck with a bunch of crappy shadow dudes, a pro-red guy, and Jitte is going to benefit a lot more from turning excess lands/crappy shadow dudes into attempts to draw the pro-red guy or Jitte than the mono-red deck that is all shocks and Jackal Pups, for example. Likewise, the deck with Tinker is going to benefit more from turning not-Tinker into attempts to find Tinker way more than the WW deck trying to find another 2/1 for 1.
If a control deck needs to find Wrath to not die, it doesn't matter what cards it pitches to find it; in context, all of its cards are dead except for Wrath so even if the average card off the top is worse than a card in hand, the only thing that matters is that Wrath is somewhere in the library and not in hand.
Likewise, while a land is typically worse than pretty much any given spell, how much impact does finding more 2 mana 2/2s really have?

Is any of that a bad thing though? The overall side effect of the exile/draw step is consistency. Across the board. I fail to see how that is a problem (at least from a balance perspective). Even if it slightly favors some strategies (which can be mitigated if that is the case), every deck improves as a result. All 10 games I played went very smoothly and had tons of interactions and opportunities (for both great plays and mistakes). Isn't that really what we want at the end of the day? More of that and less of games where it was over before you could really do anything because of the shuffle (screw, flood, no answers, whatever)? You guys can blame those games on bad deck building if you want, but the reality is you often see less than 1/3 of your deck. Which means there is a crap ton of variance in how your deck will play out especially in limited. I've certainly argued against too much consistency (again, I hate constructed for that very reason where it becomes all about the match up sometimes). But some consistency is desirable. After all, some of you are breaking singleton to gain more consistency for some arch types. Well, here is another way we can potentially do it. And this way doesn't require running as many duplicates (in theory anyway).

One thing too that might confuse matters a little is the fact that a lot of the cards in my test decks are not in my current cube list. And that's because these test decks were assembled using a previous iteration of the cube with a more powermax design. I ran those test decks simply because I don't have time right now to rebuild them all and determine how they perform under normal magic rules - I know what these all should do and so I have something to compare them to with the new rule (which gives me more valuable data).

The take-away there is that digging for silver bullets (while applicable to some extent in these test decks) is not a scenario that will be as prevalent in my new meta. There are still some very high powered cards (and they may come out if they end up too strong - tinker is still in and it probably shouldn't be but it's a pet card of sorts). But I don't think adding an additional card filtering mechanic will necessarily take those cards over the edge if they aren't there already. Tinker isn't broken because of exile/draw, it's broken because it's broken.

Again, if this idea seems interesting, I suggest testing it and seeing how it plays. You might be suprised. I'd welcome feedback from additional testers. Again, I can't explore this entirely on my own unfortunately.

 

[MCMcEmcee]

I mean I like anything that lets me see more cards, that's why I run so many looters.