I'm not sure how exactly this ties in to the 301/422 debate or the purple expansion symbol debate, but every since I saw 301, I've been thinking. 301 is exactly 5 cards less than previous base sets. Yes, maybe it has to do with the rarity shift... but maybe there's something more. What 5-card cycle appears in every single base set? Basic lands. Stay with me here...
Now take this quote from MaRo's "State of Design Article:"
Quote from "MaRo" »
One of the joys of Magic design is finding new ideas that break conventions of old. And note that I don't mean breaking them for the sake of breaking them. What I'm talking about is finding design space that, on purpose and for a good reason, explores areas that were previously considered off limits. This is dangerous territory as forbidden areas are usually forbidden for a reason, but Magic design demands an explorer mentality. You have to be willing to venture into areas that have little dragons written on the edge of the map.
Now, I've been recently following the development of the World of Warcraft TCG, and one of the designers made a statement that really struck a chord with me. I'll paraphrase here: "WoW is a next generation cardgame, so obviously we can't have issues like 'mana screw.'" That rings pretty true. Modern CCGs shy away from Magic's resource model.
Magic is a great game, but that doesn't mean it's design is perfect from the get-go. In the WoW TCG, you can play any card face-down as a "land," but some cards, called quests, have an simple, one-time use effect aside from producing "mana." The most basic one essentially reads: "Pay 3: Draw a card." So once per game, when you have three free mana, you can draw a card. The quest is then flipped over and just becomes a basic "land" again.
I have a hard time figuring out how they'd do it without either being really wordy of making some big rules changes, but imagine those principles applied to Magic: Spells that you could play as lands, or lands that had one-time use effects like drawing a card or something. No more losses to mana issues and some extra depth to the game. Maybe I'm dreaming, but a lot of other games are doing resource models better than Magic, and I certainly don't want to see my favorite game become obsolete.
Peace,
Kultcher
EDIT: These lands could look like this:
Bear Cave
Land - Forest
(T: Add G to your mana pool.)
Bear Cave comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2G, Remove a charge counter from Bear Cave: Put a 2/2 Green Bear token into play under your control.
Forest Bears - 1G
Creature - Bear
At the beginning of your main phase, you may put Forest Bears into play as a Forest land (it is not a creature). If you do, you can't play lands this turn.
2/1
They'd perhaps be able to use the an underlay of the mana symbol under the latter, like what they did with guild symbols in Ravnica block.
One of these days, they'll just eliminate basic lands, since everything basic lands can do, nonbasic lands can do better. I really thought they would finally do it in Ravnica block, but they went in the other direction entirely. (A mistake, IMO.)
However, lands in general are integral to Magic, and will never be obsoleted within the game.
The easiest way to turn lands into powerful permanents or spells is to give lands morph, and add the phrase "you can't play this card face up". Add a few optional morph triggers and, voila, you can have ridiculously powerful lands.
Mana screw, despite its problems, is neccesary to the health of the game. Theres a reason why basic lands exist and cards cost varying amounts of colored mana. Eliminating the system would make all cards playable in any deck.
As far as set size being 301, thats 5 less cards, but there are 20 basic land.
EDIT:
Bear Cave
Land - Forest
(T: Add G to your mana pool.)
Bear Cave comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2G, Remove a charge counter from Bear Cave: Put a 2/2 Green Bear token into play under your control.
Forest Bears - 1G
Creature - Bear
At the beginning of your main phase, you may put Forest Bears into play as a Forest land (it is not a creature). If you do, you can't play lands this turn.
2/1
This has some merit, and could even be templated as a split card, though the mana cost would likely be a little higher and the land would come into play tapped.
A simple way to do it would be to have creature (or other cards) with a special ability - it would basically be a zero-cost version of current Landcycling cards eg Noble Templar - whereby instead of putting that card into play you could remove it from game and bring a specific basic land card into play from your library.
The current landcycling cards are big creatures; can make the zero-cost versions small creatures.
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:symw::symu::symb::symr::symg::symtap:
Five colors to rule them all One tap to drain them
Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun.
Mana screw, despite its problems, is neccesary to the health of the game. Theres a reason why basic lands exist and cards cost varying amounts of colored mana. Eliminating the system would make all cards playable in any deck.
As far as set size being 301, thats 5 less cards, but there are 20 basic land.
Ah, right. D'oh! Colored mana does present an issue, given that most "play any card as a resource" games have a generic resource, no colors or other restrictions. Still, it would be nice to be able to have cards that, in the early game, you could play as lands in a pinch, or lands that weren't dead cards in the late game. And I think you could do that without fundamentally breaking the game.
The card I theorized above is different from most man-lands (excepting Stalking Stones), however - it doesn't require a consistent mana investment to maintain the creature, and unlike even Stalking Stones, you can continue to use the land for mana while attacking with your random guy.
But it doesn't have to be creatures, what about this:
Scrying Pool
Land - Island
(T: Add U to your mana pool.)
Scrying Pool comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2U, Remove a charge counter from Scrying Pool: Draw a card.
Yes, it's strictly better than basic island, but to truly evolve the game, it might require that kind of shake-up.
the part in blue is relevant to this topic. from ask wizards on august 12, 2002:
Q: "The Star Wars TCG currently uses an arrow ( -> ) symbol for activated abilities, instead of the colon ( : ). Since this is much clearer visually, are there plans to add this feature to Magic or not?"
-- Koen Braspennincx, Antwerp, Belgium
A: From Robert Gutschera, Research & Development:
"We aren't planning to add the arrow to Magic mainly because everyone is so used to the colon. We often come up with things in our newer games that are based on the experience we've gained in Magic... another interesting example is our game DuelMasters (made only for the Japanese market) in which we eliminated mana problems by allowing you to play any card upside-down as a basic land. We were pretty happy with how that worked out (it also means all the cards in your deck are interesting -- you don't need to have a third of your deck be cards that do nothing but provide mana), but changing Magic in such a radical way would be too much!"
mana producing basic land is at the heart of magic. that will never (and should never) change.
So basically, you are just wanting more non-basic lands? Cards like Mouth of Ronom, Scrying Sheets, Ghost Quarter, the aforementioned manlands, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and many, many others function as lands as well as artifacts, creatures, spells, and enchantments. The reverse is also true as different types of cards such as Llanowar Elves, Signets, Heartbeat of Spring, and Dark Ritual can act in a manner similar to lands. Not every card can be used that way of course, but there is a sizable selection from which to choose.
I do not understand why you think it might be necessary to print cards which are strictly better than basic lands.
It is a policy of R&D not to print lands strictly better than basic lands, and since the inception of this policy this has been the case. The closest to strictly better were the kamigawa lands, and they still had the drawback off being legendary, so most decks only ran 1 copy per.
And the reason there are 301 cards is that there are 121 commons, 80 uncommons, and 80 rares, plus the normal 20 basics. This has been confirmed.
It is a policy of R&D not to print lands strictly better than basic lands, and since the inception of this policy this has been the case. The closest to strictly better were the kamigawa lands, and they still had the drawback off being legendary, so most decks only ran 1 copy per.
And the reason there are 301 cards is that there are 121 commons, 80 uncommons, and 80 rares, plus the normal 20 basics. This has been confirmed.
I know it's always been the case, and I know it's a radical idea, that's why I titled the topic as such. But I point back to my original post, where I quoted MaRo. All these references against the theory refer to a time before crazy MaRo was at the helm of design.
Those who believe that basic lands are some sort of holy grail have apparently never played a game where you can't lose to mana flood/screw. Lands are fundamentally flawed - absolutely required in the early game, and often useless in the late game. Fixing those problems would be good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
But takes away the fun in the game, where your topdeck can win or lose the game for you. Other games, and I've played many, just aren't as much fun because their is less risk invovled, if you know what I mean.
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As I have played V.S., I can honestly say it has an interesting resource system. However everything is essentially colorless. You can play just about everything you want with few drawbacks. (there are a few exceptions) Lands in Magic make sure that even a person who only has access to Grizzly Bears and Raging Goblin can still win against a person with an all foil Goblin Bidding deck. Is this such a bad thing? Poker is very similar in this regard. Even an idiot can win a poker game now and again by sheer luck. The system of lands makes deck builders think carefully about how to build a deck. It's hard to throw all 5 colors into a deck and have a sucessful, reliable deck. I will say though that lands that border on being better, if not better than basic lands are probably needed sometime in the future. Here's an example of what one could look like.
(Cardname)
Legendary Land - Plains
(T: Add W to your mana pool.)
When (Cardname) comes into play, you gain 1 life.
In my opinion. Non-basic lands have to have a drawback of some sort. This land's drawback is being legendary. The new duals either come into play tapped or you take 2. Barbarian ring makes you take one when you tap it for mana. The painlands make you take one when you tap it for color mana. Scrying sheets only taps for colorless mana. I do think that Time Spiral probably will push the boundarys on how far they can go with non-basic lands. Possably even with something similar to my suggestion.
It is probably way too late in Magic to get rid of mana screw and mana flood. Not impossible, but certainly not easy.
The trick would be to find a way to allow a face-down card from your hand to generate only a specific colour of mana. This can be done by saying that playing cards in your "mana zone" face-up instead of face-down, that way a red card in your "mana zone" could only geneate red mana. Hecatomb, another game by WotC, does this and it has four factions, but players draw two cards per turn.
This would be a huge rules change and non-basic land would have to be really good to be played since any card could generate mana as a land, whereas the remaining non-basic land can't act as that creature you couldn't afford at the beginning of the game. Non-basic lands like the urzatron would probably not be played, but Scrying Sheets probably would be.
Living Forest GG
Creature
Landmorph 3(You may play this face down as a land that has "T: Add 1to your mana pool". Turn it face up any time for its landmorph cost.) 2/2
Outside of something like the above it's too late to change the base of 1/3 deck of land, mana screw, etc...
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"Why should I boast? The bards will do it for me-and with music"-Ertai, wizard adept
I like big creatures and I cannot lie
You other players can't deny
That when a beast walks in with an itty bitty cost
And your blockers are all lost
You get removal!
Those who believe that basic lands are some sort of holy grail have apparently never played a game where you can't lose to mana flood/screw. Lands are fundamentally flawed - absolutely required in the early game, and often useless in the late game. Fixing those problems would be good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Actually you're wrong; the reason other games don't do it the same way is because Magic has already stolen the best way. Lands serve a very important game function, and are not fundamentally flawed - bad play is fundamentally flawed. Lands are a fundamental part of the game, and are a major part of deckbuilding. Mana balance is key to this game. Universally, those who whine about manascrew are those who don't understand the theory of the game of Magic. Land balances the game, it balances the decks, it balances the strategies. It makes things work correctly.
They are a holy grail; they are essential to the game of magic. There is a reason they are called basic lands. One of the major reasons other games are not as good as Magic is because they can't use Magic's land system.
(Cardname)
Legendary Land - Plains
(T: Add W to your mana pool.)
When (Cardname) comes into play, you gain 1 life.
This is totally printable, the same way the kamigawa legendary lands were printable - they give you a marginal benefit by running them as a 1-of, and are nowhere near powerful enough to really be worth running too many. The colorless ones, such as Miren and Mikokoro, were more worthwhile, and some decks did run multiples of them. But the normal ones were 1-ofs, fixtures in decks with legendary creatures (and some without, to act as wastelands or just to confuse people and make them think you were running more legendary cards).
As for the landmorph idea - it is interesting but doesn't work. The reason is that face-down cards in play already represent something - 2/2 creatures. As such you cannot do landmorph. I mean, it could have been done, but now it is too late.
Flip-lands are also problematic for the same reason - it would be too confusing as to which way was up.
Manascrew is a good thing, not a bad one; if a deck consistantly feeds you bad hands, then it is a badly built deck.
They are a holy grail; they are essential to the game of magic. There is a reason they are called basic lands. One of the major reasons other games are not as good as Magic is because they can't use Magic's land system.
I totally agree, changing the basic land system is like playing another game called , "magic 2, like magic but no mana issues " Of something like this happens, the game would lose players,
in the other hand, there is nothing bad about thinking in new radical ways
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Take my desire, my will and even my soul, but grant me in exchange one last wish.
Actually you're wrong; the reason other games don't do it the same way is because Magic has already stolen the best way. Lands serve a very important game function, and are not fundamentally flawed - bad play is fundamentally flawed. Lands are a fundamental part of the game, and are a major part of deckbuilding. Mana balance is key to this game. Universally, those who whine about manascrew are those who don't understand the theory of the game of Magic. Land balances the game, it balances the decks, it balances the strategies. It makes things work correctly.
They are a holy grail; they are essential to the game of magic. There is a reason they are called basic lands. One of the major reasons other games are not as good as Magic is because they can't use Magic's land system.
Maybe in dream land, decks with good mana bases never get screwed. I've been playing a lot of Magnivore lately - a deck with 24 lands (+2 Karoos) and a healthy amount of card drawing. I've still lost a handful of games to mana screw (sometimes, mulligans to 5) and mana flood.
The assertion that players who complain about mana screw are bad players who don't understand the game is arrogant at best. Mana screw happens, no matter how well you've built your deck, sometimes it just happens, as does mana flood.
Magic is a fantastic game, but that doesn't mean that it does everything perfectly. To not think about changing something because "that's the way it is" is close-minded. You spat out alot of rather meaningless hyperbole about how lands "make the game work", but you didn't actually make any points.
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Now take this quote from MaRo's "State of Design Article:"
Now, I've been recently following the development of the World of Warcraft TCG, and one of the designers made a statement that really struck a chord with me. I'll paraphrase here: "WoW is a next generation cardgame, so obviously we can't have issues like 'mana screw.'" That rings pretty true. Modern CCGs shy away from Magic's resource model.
Magic is a great game, but that doesn't mean it's design is perfect from the get-go. In the WoW TCG, you can play any card face-down as a "land," but some cards, called quests, have an simple, one-time use effect aside from producing "mana." The most basic one essentially reads: "Pay 3: Draw a card." So once per game, when you have three free mana, you can draw a card. The quest is then flipped over and just becomes a basic "land" again.
I have a hard time figuring out how they'd do it without either being really wordy of making some big rules changes, but imagine those principles applied to Magic: Spells that you could play as lands, or lands that had one-time use effects like drawing a card or something. No more losses to mana issues and some extra depth to the game. Maybe I'm dreaming, but a lot of other games are doing resource models better than Magic, and I certainly don't want to see my favorite game become obsolete.
Peace,
Kultcher
EDIT: These lands could look like this:
Bear Cave
Land - Forest
(T: Add G to your mana pool.)
Bear Cave comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2G, Remove a charge counter from Bear Cave: Put a 2/2 Green Bear token into play under your control.
Forest Bears - 1G
Creature - Bear
At the beginning of your main phase, you may put Forest Bears into play as a Forest land (it is not a creature). If you do, you can't play lands this turn.
2/1
They'd perhaps be able to use the an underlay of the mana symbol under the latter, like what they did with guild symbols in Ravnica block.
However, lands in general are integral to Magic, and will never be obsoleted within the game.
The easiest way to turn lands into powerful permanents or spells is to give lands morph, and add the phrase "you can't play this card face up". Add a few optional morph triggers and, voila, you can have ridiculously powerful lands.
As far as set size being 301, thats 5 less cards, but there are 20 basic land.
EDIT:
See any man lands.
This has some merit, and could even be templated as a split card, though the mana cost would likely be a little higher and the land would come into play tapped.
Werd,
The current landcycling cards are big creatures; can make the zero-cost versions small creatures.
Five colors to rule them all One tap to drain them
Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun.
:sunny::weird2::kitty::crazy::uhh:
Ah, right. D'oh! Colored mana does present an issue, given that most "play any card as a resource" games have a generic resource, no colors or other restrictions. Still, it would be nice to be able to have cards that, in the early game, you could play as lands in a pinch, or lands that weren't dead cards in the late game. And I think you could do that without fundamentally breaking the game.
The card I theorized above is different from most man-lands (excepting Stalking Stones), however - it doesn't require a consistent mana investment to maintain the creature, and unlike even Stalking Stones, you can continue to use the land for mana while attacking with your random guy.
But it doesn't have to be creatures, what about this:
Scrying Pool
Land - Island
(T: Add U to your mana pool.)
Scrying Pool comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2U, Remove a charge counter from Scrying Pool: Draw a card.
Yes, it's strictly better than basic island, but to truly evolve the game, it might require that kind of shake-up.
Q: "The Star Wars TCG currently uses an arrow ( -> ) symbol for activated abilities, instead of the colon ( : ). Since this is much clearer visually, are there plans to add this feature to Magic or not?"
-- Koen Braspennincx, Antwerp, Belgium
A: From Robert Gutschera, Research & Development:
"We aren't planning to add the arrow to Magic mainly because everyone is so used to the colon. We often come up with things in our newer games that are based on the experience we've gained in Magic... another interesting example is our game DuelMasters (made only for the Japanese market) in which we eliminated mana problems by allowing you to play any card upside-down as a basic land. We were pretty happy with how that worked out (it also means all the cards in your deck are interesting -- you don't need to have a third of your deck be cards that do nothing but provide mana), but changing Magic in such a radical way would be too much!"
mana producing basic land is at the heart of magic. that will never (and should never) change.
I do not understand why you think it might be necessary to print cards which are strictly better than basic lands.
And the reason there are 301 cards is that there are 121 commons, 80 uncommons, and 80 rares, plus the normal 20 basics. This has been confirmed.
I know it's always been the case, and I know it's a radical idea, that's why I titled the topic as such. But I point back to my original post, where I quoted MaRo. All these references against the theory refer to a time before crazy MaRo was at the helm of design.
Those who believe that basic lands are some sort of holy grail have apparently never played a game where you can't lose to mana flood/screw. Lands are fundamentally flawed - absolutely required in the early game, and often useless in the late game. Fixing those problems would be good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
—Szadek
I'm a proud member of the Online Campaign for Real English. If you believe in capital letters, correct spelling and good sentence structure, then copy this into your signature.
Arguing over the Internet is like winning the special olympics.
(Cardname)
Legendary Land - Plains
(T: Add W to your mana pool.)
When (Cardname) comes into play, you gain 1 life.
In my opinion. Non-basic lands have to have a drawback of some sort. This land's drawback is being legendary. The new duals either come into play tapped or you take 2. Barbarian ring makes you take one when you tap it for mana. The painlands make you take one when you tap it for color mana. Scrying sheets only taps for colorless mana. I do think that Time Spiral probably will push the boundarys on how far they can go with non-basic lands. Possably even with something similar to my suggestion.
The trick would be to find a way to allow a face-down card from your hand to generate only a specific colour of mana. This can be done by saying that playing cards in your "mana zone" face-up instead of face-down, that way a red card in your "mana zone" could only geneate red mana. Hecatomb, another game by WotC, does this and it has four factions, but players draw two cards per turn.
This would be a huge rules change and non-basic land would have to be really good to be played since any card could generate mana as a land, whereas the remaining non-basic land can't act as that creature you couldn't afford at the beginning of the game. Non-basic lands like the urzatron would probably not be played, but Scrying Sheets probably would be.
Cheethorne
Land
morph
*is targeted by 10 Seals of Fire*
Living Forest GG
Creature
Landmorph 3(You may play this face down as a land that has "T: Add 1to your mana pool". Turn it face up any time for its landmorph cost.)
2/2
Outside of something like the above it's too late to change the base of 1/3 deck of land, mana screw, etc...
I like big creatures and I cannot lie
You other players can't deny
That when a beast walks in with an itty bitty cost
And your blockers are all lost
You get removal!
Actually you're wrong; the reason other games don't do it the same way is because Magic has already stolen the best way. Lands serve a very important game function, and are not fundamentally flawed - bad play is fundamentally flawed. Lands are a fundamental part of the game, and are a major part of deckbuilding. Mana balance is key to this game. Universally, those who whine about manascrew are those who don't understand the theory of the game of Magic. Land balances the game, it balances the decks, it balances the strategies. It makes things work correctly.
They are a holy grail; they are essential to the game of magic. There is a reason they are called basic lands. One of the major reasons other games are not as good as Magic is because they can't use Magic's land system.
This is totally printable, the same way the kamigawa legendary lands were printable - they give you a marginal benefit by running them as a 1-of, and are nowhere near powerful enough to really be worth running too many. The colorless ones, such as Miren and Mikokoro, were more worthwhile, and some decks did run multiples of them. But the normal ones were 1-ofs, fixtures in decks with legendary creatures (and some without, to act as wastelands or just to confuse people and make them think you were running more legendary cards).
As for the landmorph idea - it is interesting but doesn't work. The reason is that face-down cards in play already represent something - 2/2 creatures. As such you cannot do landmorph. I mean, it could have been done, but now it is too late.
Flip-lands are also problematic for the same reason - it would be too confusing as to which way was up.
Manascrew is a good thing, not a bad one; if a deck consistantly feeds you bad hands, then it is a badly built deck.
I totally agree, changing the basic land system is like playing another game called , "magic 2, like magic but no mana issues " Of something like this happens, the game would lose players,
in the other hand, there is nothing bad about thinking in new radical ways
Maybe in dream land, decks with good mana bases never get screwed. I've been playing a lot of Magnivore lately - a deck with 24 lands (+2 Karoos) and a healthy amount of card drawing. I've still lost a handful of games to mana screw (sometimes, mulligans to 5) and mana flood.
The assertion that players who complain about mana screw are bad players who don't understand the game is arrogant at best. Mana screw happens, no matter how well you've built your deck, sometimes it just happens, as does mana flood.
Magic is a fantastic game, but that doesn't mean that it does everything perfectly. To not think about changing something because "that's the way it is" is close-minded. You spat out alot of rather meaningless hyperbole about how lands "make the game work", but you didn't actually make any points.