3 ms·

> What do they really have beyond their brand? People can play other games. Certainly Dungeons and Dragons has tons of competition from other systems and I won

> What do they really have beyond their brand? People can play other games. Certainly Dungeons and Dragons has tons of competition from other systems and I won't be playing it anymore, but it does have the network effect and weekly hosted games and name recognition. MTG, I think, doesn't have serious competition. It is a unique juggernaut. Playing a 5e D&D game today has no relation to old 2e adventures, but many forms of Magic make use of ancient cards with serious monetary value. Magic is also such an intricate and surprisingly balanced game and has something that other games somehow always struggle with: exactness. There is, technically, no room for interpretation on any Magic card (please correct me if I'm wrong here, I haven't played in 5+ years). Every possible interaction has a precise outcome that can be derived from the rules, or at worst from card-specific errata which are available freely and easily online. The combination of amazing art, historic value, well-known lore, a massive library, and exact gameplay makes MTG difficult to buck. I'm certainly not buying any more cards, but I don't know where I would start looking if I got the itch for a card game again.

jsmith45 3y ago
Right, assuming players have access to the oracle text (the canonical post errata text for the card), and a copy of the comprehensive magic rules, it should be possible to deterministically determine the result of any interaction (modulo any specified randomness or opportunities for human choice). The comprehensive rules are intended to be fully comprehensive, with only simply logic needed to connect the parts. If this has failed anywhere leaving something without a clear resolution this would be considered a defect in the comprehensive rules or the card's canonical text. Such defects are not especially common, as they tend to get noticed before new cards or mechanics are released. This is especially true since WOTC ends up programming these mechanics into software not once but at least twice. (First for MTGO, and then again for MTG Arena's backend, and sometimes needing to program it again for the Arena's front end code.) The need to program it into the software gives makes it much more likely than any remaining ambiguity in the Card's Oracle text or the comprehensive rules gets noticed and addressed.

jsmith45 3y ago

Right, assuming players have access to the oracle text (the canonical post errata text for the card), and a copy of the comprehensive magic rules, it should be possible to deterministically determine the result of any interaction (modulo any specified randomness or opportunities for human choice). The comprehensive rules are intended to be fully comprehensive, with only simply logic needed to connect the parts. If this has failed anywhere leaving something without a clear resolution this would be considered a defect in the comprehensive rules or the card's canonical text. Such defects are not especially common, as they tend to get noticed before new cards or mechanics are released. This is especially true since WOTC ends up programming these mechanics into software not once but at least twice. (First for MTGO, and then again for MTG Arena's backend, and sometimes needing to program it again for the Arena's front end code.) The need to program it into the software gives makes it much more likely than any remaining ambiguity in the Card's Oracle text or the comprehensive rules gets noticed and addressed.