Subject: [ISSUE] How 6E will kill MtG Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 20:12:06 PST From: "Little Man From Jabootville" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com I disagree with Bill Jackson's opinion about Sixth Edition. The rules to Magic right now are really too complicated. With every new month comes new rules, errata, and clarifications, new cards and deck concepts that expose vague sections of the rules, and more inconsistent rulings from a confused and overworked set of tournament judges. Even the most experienced Pro Tour players cannot claim to know every single rule. Because rulebooks are incomplete and quickly outdated, new players must download hundreds of pages of rules information off of the Net if they are to become informed about the true rules of the game. Can you imagine becoming a chess player if the rules could change on any day, without your knowledge, unless made an effort to go out and discover those changes? The rules have become too large and confusing, and this is largely because of their initial design. The original set of rules was not designed with newer cards in mind. We must make an effort to develop a simpler set of rules which can retain the same amount of that Magic strategy we all love, while becoming stable enough to handle all card situations without the need for constant changes. I believe that a big rules overhaul such as Mr. Jackson describes is all it will take to create a simpler, cleaner, and more stable rules system. A taste of this cleaner rules system was exposed with the Urza’s Saga revision to the trample rule. Some very strange situations had arisen because of the way trample was described in Fifth Edition. For example, an en-Kor creature could prevent trample damage from “blowing over” by redirecting the damage to itself, and a player could avoid trample damage by blocking with a Blood Pet and then sacrificing it during damage prevention. Even the well-known situation where an Force of Nature is stack-blocked by 8 1/1s is intuitively confusing; why should the Force be able to run over one creature when there’s seven others standing in the way? WotC took a step in the right direction when they implemented the revision. Obviously, Wizards of the Coast will put a lot of thought into the changes in Sixth Edition. The happiness of the players is crucial to the survival of the game, so I doubt that the new rules will change the function of many cards. Bill Jackson mentions four changes which he claims will be in Sixth Edition. I’m not sure I trust the validity of his sources; since Sixth Edition isn’t released until June 1999, any rules changes are probably still in progress. But I’ll comment on the four anyway. > 1. No more interrupts. Assuming that Interrupts were changed to Instants (that’s what the post on mtgnews.com implied), this wouldn’t change the game very much at all. To counter a spell, you’d just respond to it. Assuming the change was outlined clearly, this would solve confusions about nesting interrupt windows (i.e. an interrupt interrupting an interrupt and so on). > 2. No more Damage Prevention Phase. This removes an overly complicated part of the rules (can YOU name the 6 steps of damage prevention?) without having many real strategic changes. To stop a Lightning Bolt, you just respond with Healing Salve. > 3. No more Mana Pool. I doubt that’s going to happen. I how would Mana Source spells work? > 4. Tapped artifacts will function normally. > (A tapped Winter Orb will still be turned on > and have its normal effect.) I don’t see why the tapped artifact rule ought to be removed. WotC will probably come around on this one. Anyway, on a whole, I think fixing our rules for good is a smart move on the part of WotC. A clean, stable system that’s friendly to players upgrading from Portal is just what this game needs to stay alive. -- Chris Schenectady ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com