3 ms·

My biggest beef with Magic isn't the lands system, but that the game is fundamentally stingy with cards, leading to many non-games, and/or turns where you pray

by lukifer 5mo ago

My biggest beef with Magic isn't the lands system, but that the game is fundamentally stingy with cards, leading to many non-games, and/or turns where you pray for the right top-deck and don't get it. (This is one major reason I play Netrunner instead, where your action economy can be spent on draw. You might have weak turns, but never non-turns.) Given the huge cardpool, there's no real way to "fix" MtG that couldn't be exploited in the metagame (aside from limited, or social formats like Commander). But that aside, I think there are two relatively minor fixes which would go a long way: - You can spend your "land for turn" to exile the land instead, and draw a card. - Before your starting draw, Scry 1.

mjamesaustin 5mo ago
[dead]
the_af 5mo ago
> (This is one major reason I play Netrunner instead, where your action economy can be spent on draw. You might have weak turns, but never non-turns.) Is Netrunner something you can get into these days, or is it hopelessly OOP? I remember hearing good things about it.
- vtbassmatt 5mo ago
  There’s a community keeping it alive with fresh content: https://nullsignal.games/ https://nullsignal.games/ I sadly haven’t convinced my MtG playgroup (or family or other friends) to try it with me.
- lukifer 4mo ago
  It's alive and well, and the community is welcoming and happy to teach: https://nullsignal.games/players/around-the-world/ https://nullsignal.games/players/around-the-world/ Cards release more slowly than the FFG era, but the current stewards (Null Signal) have been doing a great job for the last eight years. There's a community app to play against an AI, which has a good tutorial if you want to dip your toes in: https://chiriboga.sifnt.net.au/ https://chiriboga.sifnt.net.au/
butlike 5mo ago
The "land for turn" concept is genius. I'd say only once though. If you draw another land, that's the nuts.
- moate 5mo ago
  Well that's your "land for turn" not "replace playing a land". You can only play one land each turn, if other cards let you play extra lands...you can play extra lands!
  - butlike 4mo ago
    I understand, I just meant it wouldn't be good to let the player cycle through their cards if they kept drawing a land with this rule specifically. You still play lands as normal if desired, and you can still play extra lands if other cards let you play extra lands.
dfxm12 5mo ago
Magic isn't really stingy with card draw, if I understand what you're saying. It might be a drawback in a specific strategy, but that's how the game balances itself. If weenie or burn decks had card draw (or selection) on par with control decks, they would be too good...
vikingerik 5mo ago
Love that "land for turn", although I think it might shift the balance a little too much, in that you can make a deck with too much land and high cost spells and know you can cast them reliably. There needs to be a risk factor in building up to high mana to make low mana spells matter. Possible tweaks, maybe it has a cost (all lands have cycling 1 or 2 mana or life.) Or delay that draw until end of turn, which feels like about the right power level, but does have memory and execution issues.
- lukifer 4mo ago
  My thinking is that there's a tradeoff, that you slow your ramping in exchange for cycling (replacing your land for turn). You trade your acceleration towards big spells for more consistency (or just fewer dead draws).
jwatte 4mo ago
> the game is fundamentally stingy with cards Just play blue, that's not a problem then.
ticulatedspline 4mo ago
I don't play any IRL magic but I know it can be hard to "fix" and maybe isn't broken. Casually those rules would probably be good house rules to balance play, though even small changes like this could change balance and lean all decks towards exploiting the rule to point, your land for draw is kinda implemented with trade routes https://gatherer.wizards.com/9ED/en-us/108/trade-routes https://gatherer.wizards.com/9ED/en-us/108/trade-routes And that has an additional mana cost to balance it (though it does have additional bonus). So you could kinda say "everyone gets trade-routes already in play" but like any "free card" fix does it simply skew deckbuilding into a new "broken" ?
- lukifer 4mo ago
  > does it simply skew deckbuilding into a new "broken" exactly, that's why it probably isn't feasible other than casual/social play: there's no change to the fundamental rules that doesn't end up warping the meta-game. (Particularly if the fix relates to mitigating mana flood/screw with consistency: I suspect it rewards combo lists, whose win-cons are indistinguishable from "find three specific cards".)

by lukifer 5mo ago

mjamesaustin 5mo ago

[dead]

the_af 5mo ago

> (This is one major reason I play Netrunner instead, where your action economy can be spent on draw. You might have weak turns, but never non-turns.) Is Netrunner something you can get into these days, or is it hopelessly OOP? I remember hearing good things about it.

vtbassmatt 5mo ago
There’s a community keeping it alive with fresh content: https://nullsignal.games/ https://nullsignal.games/ I sadly haven’t convinced my MtG playgroup (or family or other friends) to try it with me.
lukifer 4mo ago
It's alive and well, and the community is welcoming and happy to teach: https://nullsignal.games/players/around-the-world/ https://nullsignal.games/players/around-the-world/ Cards release more slowly than the FFG era, but the current stewards (Null Signal) have been doing a great job for the last eight years. There's a community app to play against an AI, which has a good tutorial if you want to dip your toes in: https://chiriboga.sifnt.net.au/ https://chiriboga.sifnt.net.au/

butlike 5mo ago

The "land for turn" concept is genius. I'd say only once though. If you draw another land, that's the nuts.

moate 5mo ago
Well that's your "land for turn" not "replace playing a land". You can only play one land each turn, if other cards let you play extra lands...you can play extra lands!
- butlike 4mo ago
  I understand, I just meant it wouldn't be good to let the player cycle through their cards if they kept drawing a land with this rule specifically. You still play lands as normal if desired, and you can still play extra lands if other cards let you play extra lands.

dfxm12 5mo ago

Magic isn't really stingy with card draw, if I understand what you're saying. It might be a drawback in a specific strategy, but that's how the game balances itself. If weenie or burn decks had card draw (or selection) on par with control decks, they would be too good...

vikingerik 5mo ago

Love that "land for turn", although I think it might shift the balance a little too much, in that you can make a deck with too much land and high cost spells and know you can cast them reliably. There needs to be a risk factor in building up to high mana to make low mana spells matter. Possible tweaks, maybe it has a cost (all lands have cycling 1 or 2 mana or life.) Or delay that draw until end of turn, which feels like about the right power level, but does have memory and execution issues.

lukifer 4mo ago
My thinking is that there's a tradeoff, that you slow your ramping in exchange for cycling (replacing your land for turn). You trade your acceleration towards big spells for more consistency (or just fewer dead draws).

jwatte 4mo ago

> the game is fundamentally stingy with cards Just play blue, that's not a problem then.

ticulatedspline 4mo ago

I don't play any IRL magic but I know it can be hard to "fix" and maybe isn't broken. Casually those rules would probably be good house rules to balance play, though even small changes like this could change balance and lean all decks towards exploiting the rule to point, your land for draw is kinda implemented with trade routes https://gatherer.wizards.com/9ED/en-us/108/trade-routes https://gatherer.wizards.com/9ED/en-us/108/trade-routes And that has an additional mana cost to balance it (though it does have additional bonus). So you could kinda say "everyone gets trade-routes already in play" but like any "free card" fix does it simply skew deckbuilding into a new "broken" ?

lukifer 4mo ago
> does it simply skew deckbuilding into a new "broken" exactly, that's why it probably isn't feasible other than casual/social play: there's no change to the fundamental rules that doesn't end up warping the meta-game. (Particularly if the fix relates to mitigating mana flood/screw with consistency: I suspect it rewards combo lists, whose win-cons are indistinguishable from "find three specific cards".)