News that is surprising

[sniffnoy]

I'm feeling lazy right now, so I'm just going to supply links with little commentary.

IUPAC formally recognizes element 112. No name as yet.

Magic 2010 Rules Changes. Easily biggest change since 6th edition. If you haven't already heard about it, you will be very surprised by some of these.

-Harry

Comments

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

My most surprised reactions:

• No more mana burn!? I liked mana burn! It kept players on their toes and made them keep track of how much they were using, and it significantly affected use cases for cards like Dark Ritual or anything else that creates a minimum amount of mana.
• Combat damage no longer on the stack? That basically makes preventing and healing damage caused by creatures impossible (you have to pre-empt it now). If someone deals a killing blow to you or a creature, you can't put a heal or damage prevention effect on it.

Wow. These are big changes, and these could send some shock waves.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Well, presumably the reason blocking order has been introduced is so you have enough of an idea what's coming so as to be able to appropriately prevent damage. You can certainly see coming a killing blow to *you*, as the creature won't be blocked, or will be able to trample over. Basically in some ways it's like a return to pre-6th regarding combat damage: Damage prevention still mostly works (it really fails with multi-blocking against deathtouch, but that just means it remains dumb rather than becoming OK), but most of the other usual tricks (in particular deal-damage-and-use-a-sac-effect or deal-damage-and-save-my-guy) don't. Of course, pre-6th, the reason damage prevention worked without blocking order was because of the special "damage prevention window" that I *sure* as hell didn't understand at the time!

The other thing people have pointed out really gets nerfed is sorcery-speed damage-based sweepers; no longer can you just deal 1 to several 3/3s and then wipe them out with Pyroclasm.

Enormous amounts have already been said about whether this is a good or a bad idea, and (for obvious reasons) I don't know nearly enough to comment on whether this will actually be good or bad for gameplay. My own comment is just that I think their reasoning in this matter is dumb. Beginning players may not know the details of the stack, sure, but all you really need to know is the general principle: When stuff happens, you can respond to it. (OK, this doesn't apply to, say, declaring attackers, but it's still a good general principle if you don't know all the rules.) Whereas this instead replaces an application of that general principle, with entirely new rules about blocking order, something that fundamentally changes how combat works at a level *everyone* is going to have to relearn.

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Reading this I first kept thinking "oh this isn't a big deal" and then I got to the changes for damage dealing in attack and the changes for mana burn which are massive. Mana burn is from of the most flavorful rule elements. It doesn't come up often but it helps with the idea that magic has a price and is dangerous.

Also, some of the changes they've done seem very strange. For example, while the introduction of the "exile zone" makes some sense they are apparently moving tokens into the exile zone also (see the example with the Rakdos Guildmage) which if I'm reading it correctly can lead to all sorts of abuse. At minimum, it leads to as many counterintuitive results as it causes.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

What? "Exile" is just the new name for the RFG zone. And how could tokens being RFG'd - which is hardly anything new - at all abusable? A token that is not in play ceases to exist; it doesn't particularly matter whether a token is RFG'd or graveyarded, except for effects that look at "Whenever a (something) is put into a graveyard [from play]".

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

I mean, that example isn't even illustrating rule changes at all, just templating changes. And for that matter what it's illustrating is the new "at the beginning of the end step" templating replacing "at end of turn".

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Under this wording, cards that access the exiled zone can now bring tokens back into play after they've been removed from game. Previously, tokens were simply tokens and effects that removed them from the game kept them sort of uber removed.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Um... what are you talking about? The Exile zone is the RFG zone. There is absolutely no difference, except that how Wishes work is being changed. Anything that can get a card back from the RFG zone - of which there are very few - can get a card back from the Exile zone, because they are the same thing. Nothing can get a token back from the Exile zone, because a token that is not in play ceases to exist and cannot reenter play. What zone it might be in, other than that it's not in play, is not relevant. This is not a rule change. That is how tokens work.

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

Tokens not in play are more complicated than that. For example, a token can have phasing. When it is removed from play in the old rules for phasing it could still come into play. The issue is that there were functionally multiple forms of "removed from play" prior to this rule and they are all now becoming the same thing. It isn't clear to me completely how they interact.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

...no, that's just wrong. There hasn't been such a concept as multiple forms of removed from play since before 6th edition, Josh. I think the functional change you're talking about happened 10 years ago and is not at all a big deal. The zones are library, hand, graveyard, in play (now "battlefield"), RFG'd (now "exile"), stack, phased-out, and ante if you're playing for such. Phasing does kill tokens, yes. That may well be a change from how things used to be many years ago, but it's been that way for quite some time.

[joshuazelinsky.livejournal.com]

*Shrug* Ok then. That probably shows I haven't been paying enough attention to things then. Although I have to say, seeing phasing kill tokens seems really weird given the flavor of phasing being a skip through time.