Subject: Re: [G-TECH] Yawgmoth's Will
Date: 2 Nov 1998 15:36:05 +0100
From: nfa506@cks1.rz.uni-rostock.de (Ingo Warnke)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy

Seth Jaffee (sej@engr.arizona.edu) wrote:

: I guess you didn't get the drift of my post. I was merely saying that the
: CARD says exactly what you're supposed to do- the RULES (band-aid rulings
: to cover complaints about other "broken" cards) seem to allow for greedy,
: I might go as far as to say obnoxious, rules lawyers to find stupid
: loopholes and "break" the whole freaking game.

What distinguishes a 'loophole' from a 'clever use of a card'?. Depending on
your level of rules and play knowledge/experience, you might categorize

a) using Tim at the end of opponent's turn,
b) responding to opponent's Despondency on a 1 toughness creature with a
   Pestilence use,
c) tapping lands for mana before and between Awakenings' abilities resolving,
d) having one Angelic Renewal return several creatures sacrificed to Ashnod's
   Altar

as either a loophole or clever use of a card.

The cards *don't* explicitely say what they are supposed to do. Ask anyone
not playing Magic if they can cast a Giant Growth during opponent's upkeep
phase. He will not even know what you are talking about. Now show him the
Giant Growth. Do you think he can now answer better? I don't think so. The
fact the Giant Growth is an instant and not a sorcery isn't giving any infor-
mation to anyone unless they know the rules of the game and especially the
different times when those kinds of spells are castable.

: Over what? 1 word, that's
: what.

If I delete the first digit of the salary you get, would you still be happy?
One word more or less may make a *big* difference.

: Most Magic players (I'm guessing here... please no flames about how
: Magic is printed in 9 languages and all that- in fact, is the wording
: screwed up when translated into any of those???) can read the english on
: the card and understand it. It's not like we're playing a computer game
: here where the code has to be understood by an inanimate object.

Normal language has often multiple meanings. Many jokes depend on one
word/phrase to have different meanings. In everyday life this is usually
compensated by much redundancy. In other cases, where it is important to
be precise, a special kind/use of languange has developed, for example
in science.

When Magic grew more and more, it also turned more and more from a casual kind
of language to one which uses given templates. There is a story of the playtest
version of Time Walk that read 'Opponent looses next turn'. This was by some
playtester interpreted as 'I win next turn', which is even more powerfull than
the actual Time Walk.

Just like the instant/sorcery difference means nothing without the rules
attached to it, the way replacement abilities work means nothing without the
rules attached to it. You might think you have found the one-and-only meaning
Magic cards can have. Others have as well, but may differ widely from your
interpretation.

: No offense to anyone intended, except those who would insist on getting
: infinite mana from this combo. You people are bad for the game, and your
: rules-lawyering makes people not want to play. Even Magic fanatics who
: have been playing for 4 years non-stop.

As I said above, the question what is rules-lawyering and what not is a
very subjective one.

Ingo Warnke