I feel like you guys are harping on technicalities (and semantics and non sequiturs) because you simply don't want to play the card. Which is fine except that you're making it appear as though there are practical obstacles to playing the card when there are not.
The fact is that legalese about ante is not really applicable because CUBE IS A MADE UP FORMAT in the first place.
So the only actual explanation for the stridency on display is that you have an ulterior motive -- namely, looking for reasons to exclude the card.
It also says, "Remove Contract from Below from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante."
"Playing for ante" does not mean "putting a card in the ante if and only if an ante card shows up". It means:
407.2. When playing for ante, each player puts one random card from his or her deck into the ante zone after determining which player goes first but before players draw any cards. Cards in the ante zone may be examined by any player at any time. At the end of the game, the winner becomes the owner of all the cards in the ante zone.
So if you're doing what someone else called "starting ante of 0", it is already a change on the meaning of "ante".
So what you propose is a house-rule. Frankly you can do whatever you want, more power to whoever plays with Contract and only put cards in the ante when Contract resolves if everyone accepts this as a previously-acknowledged house-rule.
Just don't say it is how actual ante works. It is not.
A house rule is understood to imply a rule that players will not readily be aware of without being briefed on it and made aware in advance since it potentially alters things strategically. For instance, if your Cube modifies creature types extensively, that is going to be an obstacle for players unfamiliar with the intricacies of your cube.
On the other hand, a conversation about Contract goes like this:
Q: How do I play Contract?
A: Ante a card when you play it
Previous posts made it seem as though the card sowed confusion or uncertainty on the part of players. In practice that is simply untrue.
Well, different groups would have different house rules about what ante actually means in the cube, and how it's handled. Not to mention that if not all games are being played for ante, the card has to be removed from your deck before playing unless you errata the card too. Someone could say that this cube uses ante cards and every game requires players to ante first, but that still requires explanation and could vary from group to group (as could the players' understanding of what 'ante' means when you're not using cards that can exchange ownership). So, it does require a house rule (and probably an errata to the card itself) with an accompanying explanation to work as you describe. Because this:
Q: How do I play Contract?
A: Ante a card when you play it
will mean something completely different from one player/group to another.
108.3. The owner of a card in the game is the player who started the game with it in his or her deck. If a card is brought into the game from outside the game rather than starting in a player's deck, its owner is the player who brought it into the game. If a card starts the game in the command zone, its owner is the player who put it into the command zone to start the game. Legal ownership of a card in the game is irrelevant to the game rules except for the rules for ante. (See rule 407.)
I feel like you guys are harping on technicalities (and semantics and non sequiturs) because you simply don't want to play the card. Which is fine except that you're making it appear as though there are practical obstacles to playing the card when there are not.
The fact is that legalese about ante is not really applicable because CUBE IS A MADE UP FORMAT in the first place.
So the only actual explanation for the stridency on display is that you have an ulterior motive -- namely, looking for reasons to exclude the card.
There are no practical reasons to play the card other than "I want to play the card." There's no point in having a discussion at all if you won't accept that there are technical justifications for the position either way. You can't go into a thread demanding that the only two acceptable posts are "I want to do X" and "Then do X." Those are givens, and not something that people need discussion forums to resolve.
The word "ante" is a Magic game term with a definite meaning. You can't go around saying "deathtouch means you lose when I hit you because it's just a made up term and I can do what I want." If you're going to do what you want regardless, you don't need others to tell you why you shouldn't.
There are reasons to exclude this card. The very nature of this discussion gives those reasons value and asks people to dig them up. It's not an ulterior motive. It's explicitly what this thread is for.
Contract from Below was designed around the idea of ante - a very specific idea that involves giving up ownership of your cards. Providing "custom errata" and house rules circumvents this design restriction in a (IMHO) untenable way since the permanent loss of your cards is built into the design itself. That would be similar to suggesting the removal (or reduction) of echo from permanents in order to make them more cubeable. I don't consider either option (true ante or house mod) viable.
When you cast Contract from Below, in order to make its "ante", reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card that isn't a basic land. Exile that card, and shuffle all other cards revealed this way into your library.
If you lose the game, any anted cards leave your draft pool and enter your opponent's pool. For the remainder of the draft, you must replace that card with another card from your sideboard or a basic land, and your opponent may add it to his or her deck or sideboard.
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Remove ~ from the game if you arent playing ante.(requires an explanation)
add the first card drawn to the ante, (requires an explanation)
I won't say don't run it, but if you aren't running it and are thinking about it, its annoying to explain everything about this card to newer players. It requires a lot of errata, when you regularly explain everything you understand that. For an example of this look above^.
This change still ignores the fact that ante means those cards are gone forever. Not until the next draft, or next game, or whatever. Losing a card in one game is a piddling drawback when you have fifteen more cube cards to replace it with. There's really no other way to balance it. Discard your hand, lose half your life, exile permanents/library... the point where you have to bend over backwards to make this card anything remotely legitimate and the point where you're making custom cards, are too similar to make this endeavor worthwhile.
The fact that you could reveal a basic land always been part of the ante process. There is no reason to make this weird errata.
I'm borrowing from 5-color, the only semi-successful format to have incorporated Ante into their rules. To ante in 5c, you shuffle and then reveal until you reveal a rare, mythic, foil, or timeshifted card, ante that and put the rest on the bottom randomly.
But yeah, you could just ante the top card, not caring about basics, which would make it faster and smoother but remove some of the risk.
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When the Conspiracy module got added, I also added one of black's most powerful effects: Contract from Below. Even outside the context of "for-ante" games, the card has computable rules text:
Discard your hand.
The top card of your library is exiled and will be added to your opponent's draft pool permanently if you lose the game
Draw 7 cards.
It's obscenely strong, perhaps even stronger than Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall. The drawback is the potential to lose a card from your deck permanently for future games/rounds. The lost card would have to be replaced from the remaining cards in the draft pool or with a basic land. I don't see this as any different from Deal Broker in terms of its ability to manipulate card pools after the draft is done, but the power level is completely different. Thoughts?
None of the other ante cards are of sufficiently high power-level to warrant discussion. Ie. Would Bronze Tablet merit inclusion if its rules text was this instead? "4,T, Exile Bronze Tablet: Exile target permanent and its owner loses 10 life."
I saw that thread, but none of the discussion there reflects Conspiracy and the fact that other non-ante cards have since been printed that can move cards between players' draft pools. Cube and draft are the two places where cards can change ownership without changing...ownership.
To me it still looks like a house rule. If you want to play it, go ahead but why massage the rules to include an obviously broken card?
I don't see how that's a house rule: that's exactly how ante works. The only thing not going according to the rules here is the absence of a compulsory ante at the beginning of each game.
I don't really see the link with Conspiracy myself. It does nothing special during drafting, only after playing.
Deal Broker also does nothing during drafting. The other Conspiracy constructs modify the drafting process and they can cause cards to change ownership (in the legal sense, not the in-game sense). Deal Broker is unique outside the ante cards in that it allows change of ownership after drafting has ended.
Well, if your opponent loses he will have to give a card to you. Ante is not one sided.
For me Deal Brokers deal is still part of the drafting process. You have not yet started deck construction. But I understand that you could see this as a new step between those two.
Still, I don't see the appeal in trying to include a card which is broken by Cube standards. Hell it makes Ancestral Recall look mediocre.
It's a house rule. Ante means that your opponent becomes the owner of the card if you lose, i.e. he takes the card home and can do whatever he pleases with it. Changing that to mean it changes card pools for the rest of the draft is a house rule.
I think it also changes the spirit of the card: the whole point is that you might lose a random, possibly valuable card if you lose. Watering that down takes away 90% of the card's tension.
Finally, it's so ridiculously overpowered that I think it's just a bad idea to add it regardless, much like Blacker Lotus house-ruled to say 'exile this' instead of 'rip this into pieces'.
407.2. When playing for ante, each player puts one random card from his or her deck into the ante zone after determining which player goes first but before any player draws cards. Cards in the ante zone may be examined by any player at any time. At the end of the game, the winner becomes the owner of all the cards in the ante zone.
Ante is not a "house rule." Ignoring this line on the card would be the only house rule: "Remove Contract from Below from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante." That line is ignored in every limited format, though, as drafting an Amulet of Quoz in Ice Age limited doesn't entitle you to play with a 39 card deck or to play with it at all. Similarly, the failure of change of in-game ownership to change out-of-game ownership is a property of cube drafting generally, including the officially supported online variant.
The power level is quite literally on another level: it clearly outclasses Ancestral Recall and Library of Alexandria. It's not clear to me how this compares to Sol Ring or Black Lotus, but it may be the strongest card in the cube.
I saw that thread, but none of the discussion there reflects Conspiracy and the fact that other non-ante cards have since been printed that can move cards between players' draft pools. Cube and draft are the two places where cards can change ownership without changing...ownership.
Then post that information at the end of that thread. We don't need multiple [SCD] threads about the same card.
..........
Quote from The Rules »
407.2. When playing for ante, each player puts one random card from his or her deck into the ante zone after determining which player goes first but before any player draws cards.
Quote from ambivalentduck »
Ignoring this line on the card would be the only house rule: "Remove Contract from Below from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante."
Right. And since you're ignoring that line of text, it's a house rule. If you're not playing for Ante, you can't include Contract in your deck. That's kind of a big line of text to just choose to ignore.
Unless your cube is full of turn two Blightsteel Colosses' and insta win combos this card is way too good to be balanced. It's a cool card, but it's from an era in Magic where they didn't even understand their own game. I'd suggest against it.
Right. And since you're ignoring that line of text, it's a house rule. If you're not playing for Ante, you can't include Contract in your deck. That's kind of a big line of text to just choose to ignore.
Except that that "house rule" is how the card is played in sanctioned events. There are NO sanctioned formats where that line of rules ever does anything. The DCI floor rules have always gone to exotic lengths to prevent ante cards from being removed from a deck.
3.4.4 Ante cards are not permitted in the Booster-Draft format. All ante cards in initial boosters are replaced by a Tournament Official from a random stack of cards.
The ante cards were the original Conspiracy constructs and floor rules were in place to work around that line of rules text on each of the ante cards. An ante card could never end up in a sanctioned deck or draft pool until recently. In a sanctioned draft pool, ante cards cannot presently be included in a player's deck up until the point where their rules text would matter.
Also sort of interesting that nobody added this to the other thread:
3.2.1 OPTIONAL: Ante may be required at the discretion of the Tournament Officials and/or the Head Judge. If ante is required, competitors must adhere to the following guidelines:
3.2.2 Before any duel begins, players are allowed to count the number of cards in their opponent's deck and sideboard to ensure that the number of cards equals the number of cards originally issued plus any cards won or lost in ante. Any discrepancy should be reported to a Tournament Official and may be grounds for disqualification from current and future competition, at the discretion of the Head Judge and the DCI.
3.2.3 If ante is required, the ante card is the first card selected by a player's opponent after the deck has been shuffled and cut. Once it is selected, the ante card is placed face down on the playing surface before the first hand is dealt. Cards won as ante are considered part of a player's sideboard and may be introduced into a player's deck prior to the beginning of a duel.
So again, the way ante would work would be consistent with its official sanctioned use back when Ice Age sealed was actually a thing.
3.4.4 Ante cards are not permitted in the Booster-Draft format.
And the second set of rules says that if Ante is required, that both players have to do it ...and do so before the game starts.
It says nothing about ignoring any part of Contract's text.
Except that that "house rule" is how the card is played in sanctioned events.
Except that this card can't be played in any sanctioned events. And if they did sanction a Beta booster draft, ante cards would be replaced with non-ante cards.
Quote from The Rules »
All ante cards in initial boosters are replaced by a Tournament Official from a random stack of cards.
..........
So again, the way ante would work would be consistent with its official sanctioned use back when Ice Age sealed was actually a thing.
No, it wouldn't. If the judge wanted to allow ante, everybody plays for ante all the time. If the judge disallows ante, Contract would be replaced with a non-ante card. So even with the modified text and the house rule in place, it still never plays as it was intended.
If the judge disallows ante, Contract would be replaced with a non-ante card. So even with the modified text and the house rule in place, it still never plays as it was intended.
That line of rules text has no effect in either case. Either you're playing for ante and it remains in your deck or you're not playing for ante and there's no legal way to even include it in your decklist. Also, sort of ironic: Even if the format is Ice Age booster draft and ante is required, there's still no way to get an Amulet of Quoz into your deck under those rules.
You also made the bizarre claim that playing for ante implies that a card must be ante-ed in each game:
By mutual consent, players may agree not to play for ante. This is recommended until you get a feel for the game. You can also agree to reduce the stakes. For example, you could agree that one card goes to the winner of a full set, rather than risking your ante for each duel. You can also agree not to "play for keeps" but exchange ante anyway, keeping track of won and lost cards on paper so they can be returned afterwards. After all, it's fun to try to work with new spells and a shifting distribution of cards.
The use of ante cards wasn't restricted to games that started with an ante. What we call a "match" was apparently called a "set" in that rulebook.
Either you're playing for ante and it remains in your deck or you're not playing for ante and there's no legal way to even include it in your decklist.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Quote from ambivalentduck »
The use of ante cards wasn't restricted to games that started with an ante.
It says that by mutual consent players can modify the rules for ante. By mutual consent, you can modify any rule you want. But it's still a house rule if you don't use the rule as it's outlined in the book. By mutual consent, you could decide to ignore the rules for Flying if you wanted to. We deal with this kind of thing in 40K all the time, because the entire rulebook is written with that "mutual consent allows for the modifying of rules" wording. But that doesn't mean that you should just ignore all the rules. There was a clearly defined way to play ante.
Mutual consent to modify the rules is the very definition of a house rule.
..........
But honestly, this topic is so freaking boring. It's been discussed to death at least 20 times, and I just have no more left in me.
Mutual consent to modify the rules is the very definition of a house rule.
The current DCI floor rules specify that a randomization device to which both players consent should be used to determine who goes first. This isn't a house rule and still requires mutual consent.
All of this came about to dodge liability for violating gambling statutes. The Beta rulebook wasn't strictly legal to follow in the US. Once cards are changing decks but returning to a common pool at the end, you're no longer running afoul of gambling statutes. The ante cards are worded to behave like Advantageous Proclamation, but they're under de facto ban even in draft formats even though one-fifth of Advantageous Proclamation's effect hardly breaks Homelands or Ice Age limited. Again, this is about dodging gambling statutes and not about dodging Advantageous Proclamation. The rules regarding the replacement of ante cards were to prevent players from electing to ante during a tournament even where it wasn't required. Since card text supercedes game rules, ante cards were capable of changing a draft pool between rounds and required an alternative floor rules to even deal with.
People have argued into the ground ( ) what Contract from Below does, but there's been much less discussion about what Richard Garfield meant when he wrote, "Remove this card from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante." Like I showed in the Beta rulebook: "playing for ante" could mean that a card was required to be wagered every 1, 3, or even 9 games. This was in the variations sections, which comes above the mention of house rules. This was an "official" variant in the same sense that Modern and Standard are variants on real, Vintage Magic.
The fact is that legalese about ante is not really applicable because CUBE IS A MADE UP FORMAT in the first place.
So the only actual explanation for the stridency on display is that you have an ulterior motive -- namely, looking for reasons to exclude the card.
A house rule is understood to imply a rule that players will not readily be aware of without being briefed on it and made aware in advance since it potentially alters things strategically. For instance, if your Cube modifies creature types extensively, that is going to be an obstacle for players unfamiliar with the intricacies of your cube.
On the other hand, a conversation about Contract goes like this:
Q: How do I play Contract?
A: Ante a card when you play it
Previous posts made it seem as though the card sowed confusion or uncertainty on the part of players. In practice that is simply untrue.
will mean something completely different from one player/group to another.
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There are no practical reasons to play the card other than "I want to play the card." There's no point in having a discussion at all if you won't accept that there are technical justifications for the position either way. You can't go into a thread demanding that the only two acceptable posts are "I want to do X" and "Then do X." Those are givens, and not something that people need discussion forums to resolve.
The word "ante" is a Magic game term with a definite meaning. You can't go around saying "deathtouch means you lose when I hit you because it's just a made up term and I can do what I want." If you're going to do what you want regardless, you don't need others to tell you why you shouldn't.
There are reasons to exclude this card. The very nature of this discussion gives those reasons value and asks people to dig them up. It's not an ulterior motive. It's explicitly what this thread is for.
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When you cast Contract from Below, in order to make its "ante", reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card that isn't a basic land. Exile that card, and shuffle all other cards revealed this way into your library.
If you lose the game, any anted cards leave your draft pool and enter your opponent's pool. For the remainder of the draft, you must replace that card with another card from your sideboard or a basic land, and your opponent may add it to his or her deck or sideboard.
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add the first card drawn to the ante, (requires an explanation)
I won't say don't run it, but if you aren't running it and are thinking about it, its annoying to explain everything about this card to newer players. It requires a lot of errata, when you regularly explain everything you understand that. For an example of this look above^.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=484979
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Permanent exchange of ownership has always been a part of the ante process. There's no reason to make that weird errata.
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I'm borrowing from 5-color, the only semi-successful format to have incorporated Ante into their rules. To ante in 5c, you shuffle and then reveal until you reveal a rare, mythic, foil, or timeshifted card, ante that and put the rest on the bottom randomly.
But yeah, you could just ante the top card, not caring about basics, which would make it faster and smoother but remove some of the risk.
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None of the other ante cards are of sufficiently high power-level to warrant discussion. Ie. Would Bronze Tablet merit inclusion if its rules text was this instead? "4,T, Exile Bronze Tablet: Exile target permanent and its owner loses 10 life."
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/193708-contract-from-below
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I don't really see the link with Conspiracy myself. It does nothing special during drafting, only after playing.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
I don't see how that's a house rule: that's exactly how ante works. The only thing not going according to the rules here is the absence of a compulsory ante at the beginning of each game.
Deal Broker also does nothing during drafting. The other Conspiracy constructs modify the drafting process and they can cause cards to change ownership (in the legal sense, not the in-game sense). Deal Broker is unique outside the ante cards in that it allows change of ownership after drafting has ended.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
For me Deal Brokers deal is still part of the drafting process. You have not yet started deck construction. But I understand that you could see this as a new step between those two.
Still, I don't see the appeal in trying to include a card which is broken by Cube standards. Hell it makes Ancestral Recall look mediocre.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
I think it also changes the spirit of the card: the whole point is that you might lose a random, possibly valuable card if you lose. Watering that down takes away 90% of the card's tension.
Finally, it's so ridiculously overpowered that I think it's just a bad idea to add it regardless, much like Blacker Lotus house-ruled to say 'exile this' instead of 'rip this into pieces'.
Ante is not a "house rule." Ignoring this line on the card would be the only house rule: "Remove Contract from Below from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante." That line is ignored in every limited format, though, as drafting an Amulet of Quoz in Ice Age limited doesn't entitle you to play with a 39 card deck or to play with it at all. Similarly, the failure of change of in-game ownership to change out-of-game ownership is a property of cube drafting generally, including the officially supported online variant.
The power level is quite literally on another level: it clearly outclasses Ancestral Recall and Library of Alexandria. It's not clear to me how this compares to Sol Ring or Black Lotus, but it may be the strongest card in the cube.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Then post that information at the end of that thread. We don't need multiple [SCD] threads about the same card.
..........
Right. And since you're ignoring that line of text, it's a house rule. If you're not playing for Ante, you can't include Contract in your deck. That's kind of a big line of text to just choose to ignore.
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Except that that "house rule" is how the card is played in sanctioned events. There are NO sanctioned formats where that line of rules ever does anything. The DCI floor rules have always gone to exotic lengths to prevent ante cards from being removed from a deck.
Reaching back in time to when this was relevant:
The ante cards were the original Conspiracy constructs and floor rules were in place to work around that line of rules text on each of the ante cards. An ante card could never end up in a sanctioned deck or draft pool until recently. In a sanctioned draft pool, ante cards cannot presently be included in a player's deck up until the point where their rules text would matter.
Also sort of interesting that nobody added this to the other thread:
So again, the way ante would work would be consistent with its official sanctioned use back when Ice Age sealed was actually a thing.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
And the second set of rules says that if Ante is required, that both players have to do it ...and do so before the game starts.
It says nothing about ignoring any part of Contract's text.
Except that this card can't be played in any sanctioned events. And if they did sanction a Beta booster draft, ante cards would be replaced with non-ante cards.
..........
No, it wouldn't. If the judge wanted to allow ante, everybody plays for ante all the time. If the judge disallows ante, Contract would be replaced with a non-ante card. So even with the modified text and the house rule in place, it still never plays as it was intended.
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That line of rules text has no effect in either case. Either you're playing for ante and it remains in your deck or you're not playing for ante and there's no legal way to even include it in your decklist. Also, sort of ironic: Even if the format is Ice Age booster draft and ante is required, there's still no way to get an Amulet of Quoz into your deck under those rules.
You also made the bizarre claim that playing for ante implies that a card must be ante-ed in each game:
The use of ante cards wasn't restricted to games that started with an ante. What we call a "match" was apparently called a "set" in that rulebook.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Couldn't have said it better myself.
It says that by mutual consent players can modify the rules for ante. By mutual consent, you can modify any rule you want. But it's still a house rule if you don't use the rule as it's outlined in the book. By mutual consent, you could decide to ignore the rules for Flying if you wanted to. We deal with this kind of thing in 40K all the time, because the entire rulebook is written with that "mutual consent allows for the modifying of rules" wording. But that doesn't mean that you should just ignore all the rules. There was a clearly defined way to play ante.
Mutual consent to modify the rules is the very definition of a house rule.
..........
But honestly, this topic is so freaking boring. It's been discussed to death at least 20 times, and I just have no more left in me.
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The current DCI floor rules specify that a randomization device to which both players consent should be used to determine who goes first. This isn't a house rule and still requires mutual consent.
All of this came about to dodge liability for violating gambling statutes. The Beta rulebook wasn't strictly legal to follow in the US. Once cards are changing decks but returning to a common pool at the end, you're no longer running afoul of gambling statutes. The ante cards are worded to behave like Advantageous Proclamation, but they're under de facto ban even in draft formats even though one-fifth of Advantageous Proclamation's effect hardly breaks Homelands or Ice Age limited. Again, this is about dodging gambling statutes and not about dodging Advantageous Proclamation. The rules regarding the replacement of ante cards were to prevent players from electing to ante during a tournament even where it wasn't required. Since card text supercedes game rules, ante cards were capable of changing a draft pool between rounds and required an alternative floor rules to even deal with.
People have argued into the ground ( ) what Contract from Below does, but there's been much less discussion about what Richard Garfield meant when he wrote, "Remove this card from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante." Like I showed in the Beta rulebook: "playing for ante" could mean that a card was required to be wagered every 1, 3, or even 9 games. This was in the variations sections, which comes above the mention of house rules. This was an "official" variant in the same sense that Modern and Standard are variants on real, Vintage Magic.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420