Gifts Ungiven

Forsythe and Gottlieb have announced a palette of new rules changes coming in with M2010. Here they are as one-liners, followed by my quick review.

Simultaneous Mulligans

Instead of player A mulliganing repeatedly, and then player B doing so, player A says, "Oh, going to 6" and then play B says, "Yeah, me, too" and then player A can say, "...and down to five" and so on.

This is a good change. It'll speed up tournaments.

Terminology Changes

"In play" is now "The Battlefield," spells are "Cast" instead of "Played," activated abilities are "Activated" instead of "Played," "RFGed" becomes "Exile," and the beginning of the end of the turn is now explicitly labeled.

These are all good changes that will make the game easier to comprehend for new players. Witness the amount of confusion "playing" versus "putting into play" causes.

Mana Pools and Mana Burn

Mana Pools now empty at each phase (no floating mana from upkeep to draw) and there's no mana burn anymore.

Also a good change. Mana burn is usually inconsequential in gameplay terms, and it's yet another weird part of the game that ambushes new players. Clearing pools more often seems fine, too.

Token Ownership

If an effect puts tokens into play under your control, you now own them. Warp World decks now suck a lot more than they used to, for example.

This seems okay. Again, it'll help new players with the game. I'm a little sad to watch some Johnny opportunities go away with this change, but that's okay.

Combat Damage Doesn't Use the Stack

Oooh, this is a big one. Combat damage is now dealt as it's assigned. The upshot here is that you can no longer wait for damage to be assigned and then use some prevention effect. To deal with that, you now assign a priority among multiple blockers. Consider:

Progenitus attacks. I block (Edit: Yes, this doesn't work at all. Please pretend it's a random 10/10 instead. :) ) with a Cloudthresher, Kitchen Finks, and Wild Nacatl. Under current rules, I would say something like this:

"Assign 7 damage to Cloudthresher, and 3 damage to Kitchen Finks."

Under the new rules, I would say something like this:

"Order blockers as Cloudthresher, then Kitchen Finks, then Wild Nacatl."

This initially feels less elegant to me than damage using the stack. I'm not so fond of it. I mean, it's also an okay way for the game to work, so I'm cool with it, but I'm not excited about it.

That said, it does gain in elegance because it means you can literally line up the blocking cards in your priority order, which is easier to deal with than remembering where damage was assigned.

Edit: For a clear explanation of what I think is good and elegant about this change, and a combat example that works (no Progenitus!), click here.

Deathtouch Breaks the New Rule!

Of course, if you can't assign damage points, Death Touch doesn't work right. So, it lets you assign damage anyway. Woot.

Well, it had to be done to make it work.

Lifelink is Static

Likelink becomes a static ability, so the life gain happens immediately.

This is more intuitive for new players as well. I'm cool with it, and I've definitely seen Lifelink as a triggered ability screw up more than one new player.

Overall, I like the rules changes. They will help keep the rules from ambushing new players with nonintuitive features, and they don't screw up the game play. Good stuff.

Also, Aaron preview the new duals. More on that in the next post.