Subject: Re: How 6E will kill MTG Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 03:26:48 EST From: TParodi@aol.com To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Forgive me if it takes a minute to get to my point, but you'll appreciate the history. Magic the gathering has survived many onslaughts. No card list policy till much later. Legends selling out at retail prices in 5 days. (that was here in NY, some places didn't even see what they ordered) The Dark Fallen Empires Steve Bishop Type II No Type I regionals/national championship in 1995 Necropotence/hymm and the balance for white was to have land tax banned. Reprinting in Revised and Chronicles (Chronicles was a beating) The reserved list "Magic the Gathering I" (homelands pre-release) Removing the atog from 4e just to bring it back in 5e. Pro tour 1 in Manhattan in the dead of winter (it was only a small blizzard). Lack of a central placement of correct rules (D'Angelo was "good" but not quite perfect) Lack of a Judge system till the prerelease for Mirage. Condemning Type 1 to death by not banning cards that need to be banned. They do so much good too… A free DCI membership (it used to cost money to join back in the 4 digit days) Booster draft Rochester draft The judge certification system, and while on the topic, judge staff shirts. THE PRO TOUR The military league Boys & girls clubs support Unglued (undoubtedly the best thing to happen to magic) World wide recognition TV Commercials The state championships The phrase "failure to agree on reality" Pre-releases Card so powerful that all you want to do is play them Cards that require skill and experience in order to recognize them as playable. Urza's Saga. Finally a set that doesn't have a red X spell to finish off those long creature locked games. Necratog, Foratog, Chronotog, Auratog. 1998 DCI Penalty Guidelines An all star staff: Rosewater, Galvin, Finch, Donais, McDermott, Carl, Richard and too many more to mention. To put it in a nutshell; any one thing can't kill Magic. The only thing that can kill magic is not being able to bring in new blood. If new players stop coming, we don't have our sport. Think about what a beginner has to learn right now before dropping the guillotine on 6e: Last in first out, Trample, first strike, shadow, flying, damage prevention, instant vs. interrupt, loss of life vs. damage, untap upkeep draw a card, main phase- cast attack cast and lay a land in any order, sorceries, instants, interrupts, en kor, protection vs., the word ALL, "targeting", choosing vs. targeting, tapping, mana burn, mana sources, I could go on for days on this. After all that, they have to learn strategy? The beginning player needs a stepping stone to go from portal to "expert". Concepts such as the mana curve, or card economy, or life as a resource is not something you pick up while playing the game for the first couple of months. You either need to be trained by a pro or semi pro. While dumbing it up may not be the answer, how many of you really ever played 5e edition booster draft??? I doubt we will play 6e booster draft either (unless we're feeling really loopy). We have our sets, namely the expansions. The main editions only serve us by the contents of the sets. We already have them (probably in at least black border if not a chic Asian language). We can only pray that wotc doesn't do a 5e/visions ptq format that it pulled on us a few qualifier formats ago. I have serious doubts about wotc killing interrupts on a whole. If they had planned to do that, there wouldn't have been any in TES much less Urza's… It's probably safe to say we won't be seeing any banding in 6e though. I feel this late night rant has gone on long enough. Tony Parodi Who needs damage prevention anyway? I stroke you for 80! 02 cents, fifty dollars at a time. Comments/Flames welcome... (they are still called flames no?)