Magic: The Gathering

[Diamicles]

Wait.. they got rid of damage on the stack?!

that's very odd if they did...anyone with half a brain could understand how it worked.

edit: Well I'll be darned, they did make it so that combat damage no longer uses the stack.

I'll be logging into mtgo tonight, probably do a draft or something and get my arse kicked since I haven't played since saviors of kamigawa.

[Maguspk]

Wait.. they got rid of damage on the stack?!

No, apparently it just resolves after you've had a chance to play instants from your hand and such. Like, there is a period before the damage resolves in which you can react. I always played Magic like this was there, guess I was doing it wrong...

[Diamicles]

It's a new rule change for Magic2010 base set release.

I'm pretty certain it's still played 'on the stack' so to speak.

linky

[Yuri-G]

I think you have it backwards - right now, you can play instants and instant-speed abilities before combat damage resolves. once magic 2010 hits, you won't be able to. you can still prevent damage, but you'd have to play the damage prevention card or ability before the damage is assigned.

this also means cards like Mogg Fanatic just got a whole lot less useful. you can still block and then sacrifice, but you won't be able to block, deal combat damage, and THEN sacrifice. it's one or the other, and the whole deal with Mogg Fanatic was that he could deal two damage, one by combat damage and one by sacrificing. pretty lame change if you ask me. but I don't really like any of the magic 2010 changes.

I'm not sure if this only applies to combat damage or if you need to play damage-prevention abilities before any damage-assigning spell or ability resolves. even if it does change all damage, it wouldn't really matter for anything aside from combat damage - if you can't play a Healing Salve before Lightning Bolt resolves, you don't deserve to prevent the damage.

so to sum up combat damage, look at it this way (keeping in mind you can play instants and abilities between each numbered step):

new way:
1) attackers are declared
2) blockers are declared
3) damage is assigned, and resolves instantly.

old way:
1) attackers are declared
2) blockers are declared
3) damage is assigned
4) damage resolves

in the old way you could sac Mogg Fanatic between steps 3 and 4, after it dealt damage but before it died. now you can't, since they were condensed into one step.

[Yuri-G]

and now for a separate, non-rules post:

I play almost completely casual. I like to make fun weird decks that crush casual competition through fun combos and interactions, but are usually too slow to work in tournaments. there are just too many interesting cards out there, many of which are really cheap since they're not tournament-worthy, that are far too interesting to be left unplayed.

next thing I think I'm going to make is a Quinton Hoover deck. that should be interesting. Meekstone + a bunch of low-powered creatures and Archangel. I also want a Pixie Queen just because I've never owned a mint-condition Legends card.

funny story though: I found this combo where you use High Tide and the Urza's era "untap X lands" blue spells to generate ridiculous amounts of mana. turns out that was already a deck (three, actually) in Legacy. so now I play Legacy too, Spring Tide combo to be specific. it sucks, but it's fun as hell to play, and it will nearly always win anywhere between turns 2-4 depending on whether I draw or play, and my hand. assuming the opponent doesn't have any counters... which is a big assumption to make

I kinda want to build a UW Landstill deck which would be much more successful, but I don't want to pay for the manabase. I might do it eventually though, since I already have four Force of Wills and four Flooded Strands. I hate netdecking though, and I'd feel so unoriginal.

[Price]

I feel like I started a sweet trend. I'm a hipster fasho.

[MisterBob]

I feel like I started a sweet trend. I'm a hipster fasho.

Yes, you are certainly the first person on a board full of people playing games to talk about magic. I suspect many of us BGers have been playing for years, it's just that there are far better forums to discuss it on.

[Price]

nah mang this is the best forum out there EVER

[Tricen]

I've brought it up a few times. I used to play on Apprentice with a few guys on BG

[Olo401]

No, apparently it just resolves after you've had a chance to play instants from your hand and such. Like, there is a period before the damage resolves in which you can react. I always played Magic like this was there, guess I was doing it wrong...

Heh this is where my brief experience as a sanctioned MTG judge comes in handy..

The stack itself was one of the "official" changes that was made with the Sixth Edition ruleset, along with the adjustments to the different phases steps of a player's turn. It was really messy at first but once we figured it out it's actually a more mathematical & logical way of playing (and judging) the game. The biggest problem we had was situations where enough damage could be dealt to a player that would end the game, but if that player was able to get their life back up OR win the game before that damage resolved they don't lose. The thing I remember is people paying more life than they had to Yawgmoth's Bargain (or Necropotence before it was banned in Extended) and still won because they were able to burn, drain or stroke their opponent out before it resolved.

[Rysa]

and now for a separate, non-rules post:

funny story though: I found this combo where you use High Tide and the Urza's era "untap X lands" blue spells to generate ridiculous amounts of mana. turns out that was already a deck (three, actually) in Legacy. so now I play Legacy too, Spring Tide combo to be specific. it sucks, but it's fun as hell to play, and it will nearly always win anywhere between turns 2-4 depending on whether I draw or play, and my hand. assuming the opponent doesn't have any counters... which is a big assumption to make

I had a Blue/Green deck like that back in the day (before 7th ed.) that utilized Urza Legendary lands that gave you 1 green mana per creature you had in play. To win, I could either rape my opponent with an infinite army of 2/2 squirrels via bouncing Deranged Hermit from play to my hand and back repeatedly or have them draw their entire deck with Stroke of Genius and causing them to lose on their next turn. It took a while to set up sometimes, and any blue deck with counter spells was problematic.

[Yuri-G]

The biggest problem we had was situations where enough damage could be dealt to a player that would end the game, but if that player was able to get their life back up OR win the game before that damage resolved they don't lose.

Come to think of it, this is exactly how Solidarity wins a lot of the time, so the change kinda screws them. Although I suppose they can still win with the new changes, they just have to play all of their instants before the damage-dealing ability/spell resolves, instead of the damage itself. So yeah, Solidarity still works. Good.

[Yuri-G]

I had a Blue/Green deck like that back in the day (before 7th ed.) that utilized Urza Legendary lands that gave you 1 green mana per creature you had in play. To win, I could either rape my opponent with an infinite army of 2/2 squirrels via bouncing Deranged Hermit from play to my hand and back repeatedly or have them draw their entire deck with Stroke of Genius and causing them to lose on their next turn. It took a while to set up sometimes, and any blue deck with counter spells was problematic.

It's a fun concept for sure. I read a recent article where some guy (Mark Gottlieb, maybe?) said the one most over-powered mechanic he wishes they hadn't designed was the "free spells" from Urza's block. It's not that easy to abuse, as you just said, but when it works it's nuts. I think they just plain overlooked the fact that sometimes a land can produce more than one mana.

[Price]

A lot of my friends are playing Blue/White decks that are nothing but counterspells and enchantments. The only creature cards they have Platinum Angels (fucking pieces of shit) and an Enchantment that produces 4/4 angels every time you play an enchantment. They just Pacisfism / Arrest / Crystalization every creature you throw out until turn 7 where he can play a stupid Plat. Angel and just chill til he wins.

[Rysa]

My favorite deck was a red/artifact heavy deck. I used wildfire to destroy all the small creatures and land in play and then killed my opponent with Chimeric staves, phyrexian collossus, and covetous dragons. I won 1st place at a local standard tournament in my town using that deck.

[Zilong]

Fires is still one of my favorite deck back when it was legal.

The curve was amazing, and it's a really nice aggro deck.

Though nowadays I just read about deck archetype and new cards, hasn't played for like 4 years.

I hated the whole mythic rare bullshit though, remind me of yugioh where you have like 3 fucking class of rares faggotry.

[Yuri-G]

yeah, pretty much every change they've made from 6th edition on has been bullshit. well, maybe not foils. those are ok since you don't have to care about them if you don't want to. but mythic rares, the change in card design, the excessive amounts of reminder text, it all annoys me. most of all the reminder text, I think - I'd really rather just read the rules book once than have my cards all cluttered up with stupid crap. it's ok for excessively complex or weird cards but when every creature with trample has a goddamn sentence explaining what trample is... fuck that.

[MisterBob]

I don't see what the big deal with reminder text is. Common keywords like Trample only get reminder text if they haven't showed up in a few blocks (which pretty much never happens with trample).

It also helps new players actually join the game. It has no effect on the rules, I don't see what the big deal is.

Also, 6th edition fixed a lot of rules issues and made the game much more logical and intuitive.



Mythic Rares are a bit silly, but you do have to remember this is a company, not a charity. Thanks to Mythic Rares they ARE making more money.

[Deimos]

Anybody in here want to buy my Magic Online collection? I played heavily a few years ago but haven't touched it in a long time. Kind of an odd coincidence, I seem to have stopped playing right about the time I started playing FFXI. Never really got around to selling it, but I might as well inquire in here since I'm here anyway. Lots of good Extended cards that are quite rare now (Fact or Fictions, Onslaught fetch-lands, etc). Have a look: Magic Online Collection

To stay actually on-topic and not just spam an ad, my favorite deck to play in Extended online (which was a little different than "offline" Extended) was called "Balancing Tings" (yes, stupid name). It revolved around using lands that you could sacrifice for two mana, sacrificing all of your land for a ton of mana, and then casting Balancing Act (often fetched with Burning Wish), which causes both players to sacrifice enough lands/creatures/cards-in-hand to match up with the player that has the least. So at least in terms of land and creatures, that always meant that my opponent's entire side of the table just gets wiped into the graveyard. That gets followed up with using the remaining mana in my pool to play Terravore, which has power/toughness equal to the number of lands in all graveyards. Typically at that point, at least 10/10. Your opponent has no land, no creatures, usually about 2 cards in hand, and 2 turns to stop it. Even if I didn't have a Terravore at the time, the deck was about half land, and could recover from losing all its land much better than any other decks could. If you ever got to cast Obliterate or Balancing Act, the game was usually over.

Other than that, I played a ton of the Mirari's Wake control deck when it was Standard-legal. Extremely good deck if you were smart enough to understand how to play it properly, I won a lot of money and tournaments online during that time, had my rating over 1800 for a while (which is quite difficult online). Also played a lot of Upheaval-Psychatog in Standard, and the version with red added in Extended for Flametongue Kavu and Burning Wish.

Playing the casual format called "Prismatic" online is also a really good time. Your deck has to be at least 250 cards, and has to have at least 20 cards of each color. Pretty much all cards that let you search your deck for another card in particular are banned, so it's fun to see what sort of random situations come up in games of that. Never know what your opponent's going to have in his giant 250-card, five-color deck.

[Zilong]

Before I stop, I pretty much only draft since that's like the only format I could play competitively without spending too much money.

The game kinda stop being fun when competitive level play relies almost solely on retardedly expensive decks.