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@@tcgmetaslayer4202 I'm pretty sure the blightsteel colossus gets shuffled first, because in the rules at 0:18 it says "affects object or player" the blightsteel colossus is the object, so the player who owns the colossus gets to decide which one activates first
I appreciate this video. Most complaints about the rules are borne out of ignorance on the rules. I don't believe mtg is the best game ever made, but their rules system is the most robust and well made of any game I've played.
It also tends to be an unusual interaction. The vast majority of card interactions are pretty intuitive, but we don't notice when everything works fine. Then something weird happens, and it's frustrating, so we hate it. And sometimes that weird thing is abusable, or players abuse it and it becomes commonplace.
@@keepingitcasualmtg The frustration comes from the way that cards are written not lining up with how the rules work. The situation you talk about in your video would be easier to understand for people that haven't read the rules if the cards, like Ojer Axonil, said something like, "If a red source you control would deal an amount of noncombat damage less than Ojer Axonil’s power to an opponent, THAT OPPONENT TAKES damage equal to Ojer Axonil’s power instead." The edit is capitalized. When the ability is written in a way that it's emphasizing that it's modifying the source of the damage, like in the card's real text, it subtly reinforces the misunderstanding that the controller of the source of the damage gets to decide how to apply these kinds of effects. Writing this kind of effect to say that the opponent takes additional damage removes that and begins to point us in the right direction of correctly understanding the rules. It emphasizes that the opponent is what's being affected by that red source dealing damage. I don't think that the rules here are bad, I just think that the way cards are written can be misleading when they don't properly line up with how the rules are written.
When you read the entire rules index it makes you instantly understand how Arena got made so quickly. Its all elements of software and tasks and layers and selected zones, reading and targeting. Its easy to understand but hard to track.
Same with Duels of the Planeswalkers, and MTGO, often playing the video games helped people to understand the rules. For me, I especially liked the puzzles that Duels of the Planeswalkers had.@@keepingitcasualmtg
I'm a Yugioh player, I really like how Magic actually has general rules that cover everything, as opposed to Yugioh where tcg rules are basically just consensus based on ocg rulings and precedent, with no documentation, and ocg rules only describe 1 card vs 1 other card, leaving us to piece together some sort of consistent logic to apply to other cards. Did you take control of a monster with an effect when its summoned but before its effect triggered, such as by using the meta staple "triple tactics talent"? Unfortunately, there is 0 precedent or rulings about what happens during this somewhat frequent occurrence, so ask your head judge to choose how it works, preferably before you start playing.
@@rodneysmith873 It depends on what you count as a keyword, “excavate” refers to a specific game action, just like “fusion summon”, or “equip”, and I can see Yugioh deciding to add a “mill” keyword in the future. I’d argue “(Quick Effect):” is a keyword that specifies what the activation timing of the effect is, as does “If/When X:”. If you mean to bundle things like “once per turn” into a keyword, you’ll find that there’s many different kinds of once per turn restrictions, which cards are designed with in mind. You could theoretically make keywords for “can’t be targeted by X”, “can’t be destroyed by battle/X card effects”, and “unaffected by X card effects”, but those aren’t particularly long and adding keywords creates more of a barrier to entry since everyone would have to memorize what those mean. Making a more broad keyword for negation effects beyond the existing “negate X” or making keywords for different types of removal (beyond the existing “destroy” and “banish”) is a lost cause as those differ more than they are similar, by design. Part of the draw of Yugioh is that individual cards have their own unique way of interacting with the opponent’s cards, with unique weaknesses that you can take advantage of.
As someone designing a new game and is trying to think long term about the rules structure of it all, I really do appreciate these. (A lot of magic's convoluted forms come from having to fix things "ad-hoc" since they didn't think it would be this big originally.) Let me know if you ever do consulting work.
@keepingit.casual loL sometimes it's not another designer but a player's eye you need on something. (Heck we have 1 rule right now we're debating on which way to set up.)
Yeah looking at old cards the templating (or lack thereof) they used when they were still solidifying what kind of game actions and interactive should even be possible in Magic is really striking.
Magic is a code engine with tens of thousands of modules that has been in active development for 30+ years, including one major code rewrite and a handful of minor code rewrites. This engine has been built on and patched in excess of 120 times, and older modules have had to be rewritten and ported to an engine that flat doesn't support them as written. There are patches specifically built for single cards for years at a time. In cases, there have been changes to rules in the engine for safety reasons, but corner cases like these aren't going to warrant that. Think things like the Cascade loophole being patched out. The fact that the system doesn't fold in on itself more often is testament to the legacy of the game. Maybe give them a break when one function of a rule doesn't lean your way on occasion.
@@Suspinded my man! (As a programmer, I appreciated your metaphor.) Though I think there were two major code rewrites, the core of your point is spot on.
Hey, look on the bright side - we could instead have the yugioh system where any situation that isn’t clear is decided via some judge somewhere, and we get a giant list of specific interactions for every complex card with an enormous pile of other complex cards
Exactly! At least with understanding the rules system of magic it's possible to figure out the general situation rather than have to memorize a lister of interactions.
And if I'm not mistaken, A different judge could make A different ruling on The same interaction, And it would be legal for that match. Talk about Konami caring only for the business end.
@@wickd6878 The Magic Tournament Rules set out a similar precedent for Magic tournaments: the head judge always has the final say on rulings at a given event. Their ruling may not actually agree with the Comprehensive Rules or tournament policy, but this rule is in place because the show must go on and there's very little to be done about an incorrect ruling after a tournament has run its course.
The level of robustness the rules have when you consider the insane level of complexity of the game is quite impressive. People feeling so strongly about the unintuitive results also speaks volumes for how smoothly the game operates otherwise. As a side note, WotC definitely does go back and alter things to be more intuitive. One of the bigger and relatively more recent change is the interaction of Blood Moon and similar effects with tap/conditional taplands (and enters with counter(s)) lands. Also, 614.12 is one hell of a rule.
As a programmer I like to imagine the CR as a 30 year old program that’s had a few significant rewrites and many major additions over that entire time. Wait, no, I hate imagining it like that because of my job. It’s probably got a better test suite relative to its size than anything I’ve worked on though.
@@keepingitcasualmtgnot OP but 100% yes. Mtg is a Turing Complete game, meaning that it can be used like a computer. You can fashion an input, and using a deck of cards with interlinking effects (ie your program) it will give you an output. The complexity of rewriting the CR is not an insurmountable task, sure, but it would almost certainly be a multi-year endeavor if you wanted to start from scratch, and probably involve a lot of smart people (like OP :))
@@keepingitcasualmtg There's a reason there hasn't been a top-to-bottom rewrite of the rules since 6th edition in 1999 (creating the stack, damage prevention windows going away, removing interrupts & mana sources and a whole lot more), and the last BIG set of changes was last in 2009 for Magic 2010 (Renaming "removed from the game" and "in play" to Exile and the battlefield respectively, changing rules for a bunch of core keywords, removing mana burn, among many other changes) - those major overhauls take a LONG time - I believe the 6th edition rules update project started before the release of 5th edition which came out two years earlier (which in itself was a pretty big rules overhaul) And these days when they've doubled the number of new unique cards per year over the 2000-2010 era, it would be an even bigger job as there are so many more cards and weird corner cases that can potentially come up and need to be accounted for that the work increases any time you need to make any rules changes that aren't additive - and for the most part there's no need. The rules (mostly) work great 99% of the time. Its mostly just those weird corner cases that come up that cause problems.
@@keepingitcasualmtg basically what @enderdragon91 said, along with the fact that you’ve got some 22k mods to that engine in the form of cards. Granted, many if not most of those aren’t that mechanically“interesting”, but even 1/10th of them is a lot of cards to consider. I don’t even want to think about the layers system and the Brudiclad Licids deck and a rewrite at the same time, assuming you still want such a thing to work as expected. … for whatever value of “expected” you choose.
@@Enderdragon91 Being Turing-complete isn't a great measure of complexity, honestly. All you need for a system to be Turing-completeness is a way to represent or construct the natural numbers, a way to select a value from a list, a way to compose functions, a way to select the smallest number that meets a given condition, and recursion. It's almost trickier to make a large system that's provably Turing-incomplete; there's a reason why so many games end up accidentally demonstrably Turing-complete. I mean, Minesweeper on an infinite grid but otherwise using exactly the same rules to the game is a Turing-complete system ("Infinite versions of minesweeper are Turing complete", Kaye 2000), and no one would say the rules to Minesweeper are complex. Edit: Oh, I see where you're coming from; I just found the paper you're probably going off of. "Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete" Churchill et al.? Okay, the title's kind of misleading for that paper. The key feature in that paper isn't that they found a way to show that Magic itself was Turing-complete, because people were building Turing machines in Magic _ages_ ago. It's that they found an isomorphism between any arbitrary Turing machine and game states in Magic such that the first player winning the game was equivalent to the machine halting. That's _way_ different, I see what you mean now.
About the "rule 0" thing: Did you know, back before we got comprehensive rules in 6th edition, the official rules had a whole section on House Rules, with examples ranging from mulligans being allowed, deck construction limits (like a 40 card minimum, or a 5 copy maximum), to the winner being forced to contribute cash to a pizza fund. That's right, mulligans & deck size & card limits were all explicitly called out as optional rules, like cash on free parking in monopoly. We're incredibly spoiled by the current comprehensive rules, honestly.
Try to play a planechase commander game with any alternative to the current rule, and you will quickly want to go back to the current rule. A lot of planes have replacement effects, and whoever is the turn player controls the current plane. Add 4 players to the equation and it can become really stupid without that rule.
QUESTION: Are you saying that if I have “Dictate of the Twin Gods” and “Furnace of Rath” on the battlefield and I cast “Shock”, instead of doing 8 damage, the receiving player will chose which of the effects will take effect? Making it only do 4 damage?
Each replacement effect will apply when they can. So with multiple multipliers you will always get the same result. 2 damage from shock doubled with one of them to 4 then doubled again to 8. If we had a scenario like with Mechanized Warfare and Furnace of Rath and you cast Shock then the player being dealt the damage gets to choose which order to apply. So they could do 2 from shock plus 1 from Mechanized Warfare to 3 doubled with Furnace to 6 OR 2 from shock doubled with Furnace to 4 plus 1 from Mechanized Warfare to 5.
I'll do you one better: How about objects such as creatures that let you choose another creature to copy, even if that creature has shroud or hexproof? Or better yet, how prevention effects can actually keep a creature alive in combat after damage has already been dealt, including lethal damage? Because both those things exist too.
I had a Codie the code deck that did this with freed from the reel. The most storm storm deck I've ever built. I literally define my wincons as "I never stop casting cards"
The rules team is actually really good at their jobs. For example, Henzie "Toolbox" Torre. The card makes sense as it reads, but it broke a few existing magic rules, so they made his own rule that took a few drafts to get right. This is something that not many people think about when playing the card I had a friend who played Yu-Gi-Oh, and he talked about how the rules really didn't make sense, and the committee pretty much didn't make a ruling until some interaction happened in a tournament
Yes often it takes a big hubub at a tournament for rules to change. That's why we can activate mana abilities during casting a spell now 🤣🤣. I'm curious to know what rules it broke
@@keepingitcasualmtgWhen Henzie was made, the game couldn't track the card having blitz in your hand, the card on the stack and the card on the battlefield being the same card that should remember it's been cast with blitz so it would stay on the battlefield (which is not what the card intended)
I was already subscribed before this video and I mostly watch your shorts. I'm just commenting to say I appreciate your positive attitude and subtle humor. Thank you for never having your rules disputes get super salty or contentious. Negativity and positivity are both contagious, thank you for doing what you do the way you do it!
the people that say "oh just change the rules it can't be that hard" probably don't realize that the MTG Comprehensive Rules is a *287* page document. It's called the /comprehensive/ rules for a reason.
In most cases it is very easy to change the rules and wotc has done it on multiple occasions. Not all rules have ripple down effects on other rules. This rule for example could be changed quite smoothly, but it would require a lot of effort on communicating the change to everyone.
I don't think it would take that much effort to communicate the change, they make changes every addition of sets to the CR and judges often explain any new changes that take place. I do believe that none of us know the process of making the rules and we make our own assumptions on how easy it would be. It's true that they often do make changes to the rules, but we have no idea the amount of time or effort that was spent to make that change.
When people argue about this kind of stuff, I would always bring up Yu-Gi-Oh as a counter argument. Imagine if the core comprehensive rule was never invented, and every time wotc printed new stuff they need to bandaid every new mechanics with errata rules (and even so, sometimes card would stop working with old cards because there's no common functions such as layers) The MTG rule may be weird, but atleast its very consistent
That's a good comparison. From what I hear with Yugioh you have to know the interactions before hand where as with magic you're able to figure it out with understanding of the base game.
@@keepingitcasualmtg that is correct yes, for example, if you are playing a deck that happens to run some very old card, then it is basically on you to remember how it might interact weirdly with every card in meta right now, since there are no universal rule coverage like MTG does. There's also a common joke among Yu-Gi-Oh player in Asia called "調整中” (adjusting) this is a common response konami will give the player when konami isn't sure what would happen between two cards, and very often these kind of reply never get properly answered, and there are also multiple cases of the ruling of said card are given conflicting answer/changes depending on who you ask It's quite a mess.
The main issue with this example is that every single object involved is owned by the Shock player so if this is someone's first time seeing multiple replacement effects it's obviously going to seem like a weird rule. It's easier to see the problem with letting the Shock player decide just because they are casting Shock if you give opponent a Gisela. What now? If the Shock player gets to decide then the Gisela should not be allowed to half the damage just because the player casting Shock has something else that increases the damage of Shock. So in this case the Shock player gets to bypass a defensive replacement effect just because they have the same replacement effect. So in this case you could argue for either player being able to choose. So who should be able to choose? Well, allowing the affected player or controller of the affected object to choose just creates better games. In the example above Shock goes from doing 6 damage if the Shock player can choose to doing 1 damage if the Gisela player can choose. The game where the opponent can just do 6 damage without consequence is going to be a much less interesting game than one where the Shock player needs to interact with the board. You could try and rewrite the rules to check if all replacement effects are owned by the Shock player and if they are let the Shock player choose, and if the affected player owns a replacement effect they can choose that, but that's way more confusing and ripe for edge cases than just flat out saying "the affected player chooses" because it always works in all situations and creates more interactive games.
Plus I just think that, especially in the "Torbrand plus damage doubler" example everyone always uses, the game is better off letting the person being affected choose the most limiting option. It leads the the results that feel most consistently "fair." It's not like you CAN'T get the effect reversed, you just have to bounce it off a brash taunter or a stuffy doll. THAT feels like enough hoops to have to jump through to justify crazy game ending numbers, just having the 2 replacement effects does not.
My biggest takeaway is that the way the rules work accounts for replacement effects being controlled by different players the best. Sure if you control all of the replacement effects affecting damage from sources you control, it feels bad your opponent gets to stack them to benefit them. But if you start throwing in replacement effects controlled by different players, then figuring out how to apply them becomes ambiguous and all hell breaks loose. The affected object or player is always consistent no matter who controls the replacement effects
i dislike the bit of Rule zero away the rulebook of magic. Like i get that's what we are doing when someone plays their Nephilim deck and we all allow it, but when we start applying damage on the stack, or ignoring sections of the comprehensive rules we don't like it get's a nutter butters fast.
Rule 0 is just an intrinsic part of life. If people don't like how something is "supposed to" work, they just ignore that and use it how they want it. You're making a slippery slope argument, but the slope doesn't have to be slippery. Just say "proxies are ok" or "we're playing planechase *and* archenemy this week" or "so and so starts with a 5 card hand, because their deck is too strong" can be the end of rule changes.
Although you kind of lost me in the first bit, I followed along pretty well in the middle, but sir, your closing statements were absolutely on point. I've had the conversation multiple times about what the point of this, or any, game is. Is the point of any game to win? Is the point to have fun? Find what works for you and the people in your playgroup and run with it. Rule Zero is there to bend certain rules for the sake of fun. If winning is what's important to you, you better play with likeminded players. There is a HUGE gulf between competitive and casual players, and if you are treading in the wrong swimming pool, someone is bound to get upset. I've been loving this game ever since Britney took the stage with Aerosmith and N'SYNC at the Super Bowl, (yes, that is the exact timestamp of my very first game) and though the rules have been a struggle on an on and off basis, I've always given the developers the benefit of the doubt. I know that even if a rule doesn't make sense in a certain situation, it DOES make sense in the majority of applications. All that to say... MTG, maaan.
People get lost in that the game is first and foremost a game. There are settings for all sorts of levels from competitive to casual and finding your space in it is part of the fun.
I really appreciate this video. I've always hated this ruling, but your laying out exactly the difference between objects and events and what affects and is affected by what finally made it click for me. Good job!
I think this could be improved by letting the effected objects controller choose the order of whose replacement effects are applied first but each player controlling multiple replacement effects get to choose the order of those replacement effects. This way would add a little complexity in multiplayer, but in 1v1 it would be more dynamic and for example the very regularly occurring leyline of the void and dauthi voidwalker negative synergy wouldnt be an issue for players doubling down on that effect. I dont think I have ever seen more than 2 replacement effects trying to modify the same event so the added complexity would be minimal.
Magic is already incredibly complex. Having to add another thing where you'd have to track who's turn it is, calculate replacement effects of different players is more unnecessary work in my opinion.
@@keepingitcasualmtgCompletely agree. I personally am fine with added complexity via new mechanics and card design, but adding it to something as fundamental to gameplay as how replacement effects are ordered is something I'd rather not want.
@@keepingitcasualmtgI mean you choose how your triggers stack if you have multiple “cast a creature spell” effects or some other condition (while effects by other players are stacked APNAP but that just proves it works with another system on top), it feels like players being able to stack their own replacement effects from their sources makes sense.
Oh hey I was in those comments! And yeah, the rule feels dumb but it does seem the most "fair" and doesn't come up nearly as much as it may seem. Glad to see a full video discussing it!
To raise the counter-point: Wizards is fine with completely rewriting the rules for these kinds of exceptions, they did it with the Planeswalker redirection rule. But that rule was also complete garbage from top to bottom, and required directly contradicting other, more fundamental rules for how the game worked, for reasons that were impossible for me to guess at then, and haven't gotten more sensible since (even after the rule was rightfully repealed).
Could be possible and I agree with you, but that does involve somebody going through the rules and making sure that it gets rewritten properly. Then the question for them becomes, is it worth it to have this person work on this or develop other aspects of the game. It's possible that they're already working on it too, we won't know unless we work there
@@Amazementss That was 100% the reason why. Wizards *really* hates errata-ing cards if they can avoid it as they want reading the card to explain the card.
The problem with this assertion is that it presumes that errataing cards was the only option. Planeswalkers were intended to be part of the Time Spiral block which included Future Sight. It would have been entirely on-brand to just _print_ _new_ _cards_ that cared about Planeswalkers. They didn't do that; instead they chose to completely break most rules about how a small class of effects worked on a fundamental level, to justify just not printing new cards. The only really valid reason for this state of affairs is that they didn't want to have standard dominated by burn if Planeswalkers flopped.
@@ZefulStarson Fair enough, they could have done that. However then you have the awkward issue of only having burn spells printed after Time spiral being able to touch planeswalkers.
Well, no. Once the "prevent all damage" effect is applied, there's no longer a damage event for the others to replace. It would, however, allow the player dealing the damage to apply the replacement effects in a way beneficial for them, e.g. applying a Deflecting Palm first to minimize the damage they would be dealt, or against something like a Phytohydra to minimize the amount it would grow.
@@jedimindglitch89 From the rules: 615.6. If damage that would be dealt is prevented, it never happens. A modified event may occur instead, which may in turn trigger abilities. Note that the modified event may contain instructions that can’t be carried out, in which case the impossible instruction is simply ignored.
When considering all other ways that this could be, the player being effected being able to choose order of replacement effects just makes the most sense for game flow, i personally have never liked timestamping, its hard to keep track of, especially over a long game and creates weird scenarios like possibly flickering an permanent just to get a better timestamp and people forgetting can completely halt and ruin a game, active player does kinda work but having to constantly change damage or whatever the replacement effect is every turn as the active player changes so the order of operation changes is kinda annoying, this just makes the most logical sense from a ease of use and gameflow sense, especially when considering magic being a game that can be played with more then 2 people
I think the last point made is the most important one. If you aren't a competitive player, most of these finely detailed rules don't even apply to you.
The assumption that people make is that whoever made the rules was lazy or didn't think about it. But in reality, the people working on the rules at that level are taking so many things into play. And not just for table top players, but the actual logic of online play also. Rules like this one are tested and retested and tried and retried and brainstormed and rebrainstormed. It's an incredibly complex and well thought out set of rules for the most complex game humanity has every had. Instead of assuming the rules makers, who are doing it 40 hours a week in groups with specific skillsets are making mistakes. Assume the casual player who plays 3 hours a week with their friends, is just not seeing the big picture. If you spend any amount of real time studying the rules, the elegance of the rules shines. And its obviously optimized. Not lazy. When I see someone complaining, it's far more telling of their ignorant personality, than anything WoTC has done. Outrage without education is just angst.
Amen. To add to this: People really underestimate the skills required to be a good game designer. People taking the game design 101 course are hit with a hard realization that they actually know next to nothing. something about Dunning and Kruger
I hope that the sentiment changes and people can realize that this game is actually very well developed. It’s an old game that’s gone through many iterations with weird cards so the fact they can make most of them work together at all is impressive
Good final sentiments. I tried reading front to back the comprehensive rules not too long ago. The jargon-y wording is too much lol. Rather just go off case-by-case learning new rules when they come up
I'm the kind who enjoys this kind of document, so I've read it cover to cover, and I personally love the clear way the document is worded. (I also read technical specs all the time, so you can imagine it's very much in my style of reading material.) I'd only recommend it if you enjoy this kind of thing - otherwise, it's going to be an extremely dull experience that you won't get anything out of.
So to be clear, if I have two different damage doublers, eg. Two furnace of Rath. Normally it doesn't matter but technically the player receiving damage chooses the order to apply? And I have Purphoros, God of the forge Deck, so if I have a situation like this each individual opponent would get to decide how the effect applies to them?
@@keepingitcasualmtg I am building an Ojer Axonil deck out at the moment, Damage < power becomes power. Most the time this step wont even matter due to applying it at the end, where the damage is already doubled / torbranned!
I also think it's worth noting that the rules have changed a bunch over the years, to mixed feelings. The most drastic change was the infamous 6th Edition update, which came during (arguably) magic's most broken standard ever (Urza's Block). I don't know how the change was recieved (as I wasn't born yet), but I do know that it changed how magic played drastically
WOTC doesn't need to change the rules, even if some are problematic - because - *as players, we already have the ability to modify, or invent, rules as we please.* Consider how many possible ways there are to play REGULAR playing cards, from Poker to Texas Hold 'Em to Solitaire.
I literally just showed this to a dude in my pod and he said "I vote we just ignore that rule, it's dumb and makes X person's deck not as good." Like okay, we already don't play commander damage in that pod because "it's too difficult to track", where's the line? Do we just go play a different game? Because that's what it seems like, like y'all want to just play a different game.
I had a similar issue when I use my solphim deck with furnace of rath and city on fire out. My opponents thought they could apply it in a way where they took the least amount of damage.
Imagine you're studying Physics and say "well just change the voltage of the electron, what could happen?" That's what it's like to change a rule in such a complex game.
The SAME people who would be complaining about this rule would be the same ones abusing it when their OWN [Ghyrson Starn, Ketermoph] shoots them, the controller of Ghyrson. Ghyrson states that ANY Source the player Owns that deals exactly 1 damage to player, this card (Ghyrson) will deal 2 damage to that player also, and if you "happened to hit yourself for 1 exact damage" Ghyrson will shoot you for 2. So I BET people would apply all sorts of replacement effects to prevent taking 3 damage just because you managed to ping yourself for 1 to then be shot by Ghyrson for 2. Not saying people are crybabies, but when the Replacement rules that saved their opponent could also save themselves. They obviously would also keep their mouths shut then, but not before still complaining how they didnt get to "do the really cool thing they wanted to do."
Well, I had thought ojer anoxil would have been a fun commander to have but after that explanation, I wouldn't touch that shit with a 30 foot pole. Oh well, dodged a bullet there I suppose. Shame it can't be straight forward.
There's actually a pretty simple heuristic. Ojer doesn't work with damage modification effects. Sure, the technical explanation is difficult, but the end result isn't too hard to understand.
That's because Ojer Axonil is actually more busted when you focus on pumping it's power. It's actually a different build of mono red! Not all red decks need damage multipliers to be broken!
I think a good change would be a new rule involving source damage where first the damaging player decides the order of amplification modifiers, and then the damaged player decides the order of prevention.
It does add in an extra step and an exception to remember for replacement effects. It could work who knows. I'm not entirely sure what the potential downsides could be.
I wonder how many people that left a comment like that are "new". People forget that magic is an old game. Back on the day there were question if the 4x limit was ok. Changing the core of the game is never good. And let me add that rules changed a lot.
Veeery true and good point I’ve just learned about substance and it just kinda shows that the rules have made many evolutions over the years to have what we have now
@@keepingitcasualmtg i wonder what people wuold say if mana burn wuold be in the game. Or the first mulligan rule. Or the niddle like effect. There are many exemple of quality of life changes. People are not aware of them.
People get surprised by the rules a lot. It’s very complex but it has little ambiguity if you properly understand the rules. Misgivings about how cards work is due to misunderstanding or ignorance
Having made my own custom cards, you start to learn that WotC does things the way they do for a reason, and that in order to make interesting cards, edge cases are almost inevitable. For example, the line of text "CARDNAME has all keyword abilities of all cards exiled by it." seems rather intuitive and saves a lot of text space compared to writing it out, but then you start having to figure out how giving a creature enchant creature works. Maybe you limit it to creature cards only, but you go down the list, and it becomes apparent that some keywords just break things when granted to other cards.
For the record, if a creature has "enchant creature", the ability does nothing. If a creature has "enchant creature" and it also gains the Aura subtype, it cannot enchant anything (704.5p), and thus it gets put into the graveyard for being an unattached Aura (704.5m). But in the end, considering all the edge cases is very hard. At the time of writing, there are 167 keyword abilities; you have to carefully account for them all, because someone will inevitably ask you what happens if your creature gains crew (answer: you can crew it if you want, and it becomes an artifact creature if you do; it cannot crew itself) or equip (answer: nothing; you cannot use the equip ability of a permanent that isn't a noncreature Equipment artifact). On the other hand, what kills most custom cards for me is that their authors clearly cannot write custom cards like they were real Magic cards. Sadly, this is not an easy problem to overcome, because it requires both extensive knowledge of the rules and practice with the way real cards are templated. I'd honestly be happy to help someone with this, if they asked.
While I understand the rules for that interaction of damage, I just don't agree with how it plays out. The cards I play for the effects I want should never be resolved by an opponent. I'm the controller of the effect so I should get to choose how I want my effects to work with one another, not the opponent. That is the unintuitive part that which is bothersome for so many people.
In the context of the first scenario it seems like it only happens for when it’s just your permanents but when other players control the effect then who should get to apply what in which order?
@@keepingitcasualmtgit should apply from active player to passive player. That’s the most intuitive in my opinion. All effects you control should trigger in whatever order you decide before passing to your opponent (obviously only if the interaction is at the same speed)
Then depending on who's turn it is you'll have different results. Say you control Furnace of Rath and Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and your opponent also controls Furnace of Rath. Opponent bolts you on your turn you half it to 1 then double to 2 then opponent gets to double it to 4. If they bolt on their turn they get to double to 6 then you half to 3 then double to 6. Very widely different results and it makes Gisela's effect work weird.
😆😆 Basically some interactions appear unintuitive because of specific scenarios, when in the bigger picture there are reasons for why things work the way they do.
As a judge and someone who has worked in an LGS for a long time I think that the frustration with this particular rules interaction comes mostly from two places: its counter to how the game operates in other areas, and it takes a player's perception of their deck, strategy, and deck building, and completely destroys it when learned. The rules here feel like they run counter to how the game works in other areas because whenever you place triggers on the stack, you choose the order your triggers apply in, and when your creatures deal damage to other creatures in combat, you choose the order that the damage applies in because you choose how damage is assigned. In both of these cases, which are far more common in casual games, you get to decide how your stuff behaves, and that makes intuitive sense, its your stuff, you're the proactive person here, so you should have the say. In the case of replacement effects, you also choose the order they apply in in most cases, and only when interacting with an opponent or their stuff directly does this change. This means that in nearly every situation a player will have as much control of their things as is reasonably possible, except for here. Its unintuitive, and while the game needs to be robust, there are likely robust ways to handle this that get the intuitive result, I've made a suggestion at the bottom of this post for how this could be handled, but much as the video says, there are likely areas where this creates a less intuitive outcome than exists there now, I just suspect they're less common than the damage issue presented. Even as a judge its very difficult to have an actually complete understanding of the rules, as well as knowledge of every card ever. The second issue is more about how the subversion of a player's expectations. It can be heart breaking to have such a rule revealed to you, especially after getting excited about something, and likely spending both time to build the deck, as well as decent money in many cases. Commander exacerbates the problem because the high life totals have made burn harder to build, and revealing that you're actually at more of a handicap than you thought is unlikely to come at a time other than when you're in game and think you've set up for this crazy damage number, only to have things completely fall apart. After the game is over and you've lost, the effects of that game will persist though because your entire deck just became a lot weaker than you thought it was. WotC likely doesn't fix the issue here not because they cant, but because so many people already play the game wrong in more significant ways, that any rules update made would only affect a very small percentage of people. The people most affected are likely to be those engaging in high-level tournament play, who are already familiar with the way the rules currently work, meaning that there is little benefit to making such a rules update, and the possibility of a downside that would be frustrating to those players, and possibly create an opportunity for an embarrassing moment for the person responsible for the rules change. Despite this, I've put one potential solution below: Potential Solution: If two or more replacement and/or prevention effects are attempting to modify an event, then the affected object’s controller (or its owner if it has no controller) or the affected player chooses one to apply, following the steps listed below, unless all replacement effects attempting to modify the event are controlled by a single player, in which case that player chooses which one to apply instead. If two or more players have to make these choices at the same time, choices are made in APNAP order (see rule 101.4). The exact execution/wording might be slightly cludgey, but the gist is that as long as you control all of the replacement effects (or sources of them), then you get to apply the replacement effects in whatever order you'd like. Otherwise it works just as it does now. In theory this should mean that unless your opponent has something to contribute to the "conversation", your cards do what you'd expect and want them to do intuitively.
Ok so to be clear, you're saying that in a situation where initially only one player has any replacement effect, but the application of their first replacement effect may cause there to be a third replacement effect controlled by another player? If this is what you're saying, then its not really much different to what happens now, and all that the rule seeks to do is move unintuitive interactions further away in terms of how often they will happen. 616.1f already handles what to do when one is applied, so the player's first choice applies, then they and their opponent have replacement effects waiting, and the "victim" as it were decides what goes on next, then its checked to see if any new ones generate, and if not, apply the final replacement. Not super elegant, but this whole section of the rules lacks elegance cause its a cludgy part of the rules in general, lots of minutia. @@sy-py
It could be the whole "this happens this ways *unless*" part could be potentially confusing. Where the effect doesn't apply as consistent when there's multiple players or if you control them all. Like you dealing damage while controlling Torbran can yield different results whether you control the Furnace of Rath or your opponents.
@@keepingitcasualmtg Sure. The word "unless" maybe isn't the best way to word the modification. I did it that way in part so that I could change as little of the original text for demonstration. In the detailed rules, there are lots of areas where the statements could be boiled down to "if, then, else". And APNAP (specifically with triggers) already creates situations where situations dramatically change based on whose turn it is and who controls what (like two players controlling a Tergrid, and whose turn gives which Tergrid what in a 4 player game,) . So I don't think the core of the change is really adding much complexity that isn't already there. That doesn't mean its the ideal change or that the change is actually needed, but I like thinking and talking about these sorts of things, so I appreciate you engaging with it. For the fun of it, a more effective rewording might look like this: "If two or more replacement and/or prevention effects are attempting to modify the way an event affects an object or player, and all of the effects or sources of the effects are controlled by a single player, that player chooses an effect to apply. If there are multiple replacement and/or prevention effects attempting to modify an event and the effects are controlled by more than one player, the controller of the object affected by these events (or its owner if it has no controller) or the affected player chooses one to apply instead. All choices follow the steps below. If two or more players have to make these choices at the same time, choices are made in APNAP order (see rule 101.4)."
Our favorite Rule zero in our pod is the removal of Commander Damage👍 easily the most outdated rule of the format that has been powercrept to absurdity.
@@sy-pyThere are multiple ways around this. Hell they could create a “damage zone” specifically for this interaction, or even just change object to define something in a zone or damage. All it’d do is make this interaction more intuitive.
@@sy-py It’s a minor change that only affects this particular interaction. It lessens complication by making the obvious interaction the correct ruling while adding less than a paragraph to the actual rules. It’s also ridiculous to pretend that changing the rules is some massive problem when they literally just did so for MoM to incorporate dual-sided tokens.
So does this apply for +1/+1 counters? Say I have a hardened scales and master chef on the field and my opponent has Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. Would it work the same way where I as the controller of the affected creature entering battlefield get the choose the way the effects work and therefore still get one +1/+1 counter? Or would it be 0?
When we're dealing with the stack then yes we go by active player non active player order. But replacement effects don't use the stack so we go by controller of the affected object or affected player.
Replacement effects for Red ping decks is annoying ill admit i fall in that group. I had a zurzoth deck once and i then learned how it works and i felt like i bought a Solphim for nothing. But it makes sens like you said for the most amount of scenarios. Sucks but it makes sens.
one thing that needs to be redone is layers... take Ashaya, soul of the wild having a +1/+1 and blood moon. because layers all of your creatures would be mountains even tho ashaya no longer has the ability to make your creatures forests because the ability it no longer has is applied in a previous layer. So now you are stuck with all of your creatures being mountains even tho there are no abilities on the battlefield to make them lands to be affected by blood moon....
Once you understand the layers and why the order is the way it is, this makes a lot of sense. Trying to remember each layer and sublayer is a different story.
@@TheSpiritombsableyeMaybe it could be "fixed" by separating the giving and removing abilities layer into two different layers, so they could work like the classic "can't always beats can". And even then it wouldn't really be "fixed"
Yeah not every card is for every deck... just dont play city on fire in ojer. Ojers effect is the best with things like electrostatic field or gutter snipe, and it comes with a built in way to multiply, add to its power. Here have a bonesplitter axe and/or a firebrand archer. Now your shock hits for a buttload and you didnt need to spend 8 mana
The thing about this rule that infuriates me the most is how inconsistent Multiplication and modification is. Like this only applies to damage, yet having a Parallel lives and a doubling season apparently compounds into 8x token production but if I have Fiery emancipation and City on Fire the opponent only takes 7x instances of Damage as opposed to 9x
@@keepingitcasualmtg The effect does not go 3x3 as an output. Each modification is put on the stack separately and they do not see each other as "Sources". So 3 damage will end up as 15 damage rather than 27 damage. I misspoke in my original comment. t is modified 5x not 7x. The Damage tripler effectively says "Add two more instances of damage". The Source is preserved. So the first tripler goes "oh yeah 9 damage, but the second tripler also goes oh yeah 9 damage. However this does not add an additional source. 1 source + 2 additional Instances + 2 additional Instances = 5 Instances of total damage taken.
So replacement effects don't use the stack, they're applied one at a time when they can apply. So if we were to have both permanents on the field and we deal two damage we can choose to apply City on Fire first which would triple 2 to 6 then we can apply Fiery Emancipation since it can still apply to this event and it would triple the 6 into 18 damage.
most recent oppo agent gets to be the one who takes control (the oppo agent effects are applied in timestamp order) and say all players have a notion thief, then it becomes a fun mini game because each player rather than draw X cards, choose which player doesn't get to draw their card(s)
We don’t just need to look at rules from an intuitiveness level. The added dynamic is that we need judges to be able to make rulings as consistently as possible. If a rule change makes things less consistent, that makes the game worse because suddenly a consistent event becomes an arbitrary event. The one thing I disagree with is “there’s no wrong way to play the game”. There are two wrong ways to play the game - taking things personally and playing in a non-tournament setting with the sole goal of winning. It’s one thing to play a wacky mini-game at a kitchen table for fun, another thing to start to take things personally if you’re clearly ahead and have to deal with interaction or end up losing.
Yes someone did bring up a few wrong ways to play and I agree. I think being a sore loser/winner isn't the right way to play the game. Trying to make everyone else have a miserable time I feel is against the spirit of the multiplayer formats.
The rule works really well when there are antagonist effect but they are pretty bad at dealing with congruing effect. It is a choice made by the designer, but by no mean the only one, or even a good one to begin with. It s not dumb or great, it's just the state of the game. They chose that solution in particular between all the possible solutions. It is a simple one, but a bit inelegant in my mind. I'd say that a clause saying that this rule apply only if there are multiple effect controller, and if there is one controller, the controller get to choose would make a lot of sense, but it would ad a layer of complexity, albeit arelaly tiny layer though ... My two cent as a ojanil pplayer who removed all damage multipliyer from her deck
The way is simple: Don't fucking mix multiplicative increases with additive increases, saves you the trouble and it's almost never worth to keep both types on the deck anyways.
What would happen if my opponent has a Vorinclex Monstrous Raider, and I have a counter doubler on the battlefield? Could I order the effects to apply VMR first then double?
On the subject of Rule 0, Houserules, and similar, hearing that makes me wince every time, because the following statements are true: True: Nobody is going to bust into your place of gathering with friends over a casual fun game and force you to play according to a specific set of rules. True: If everyone at the table of a casual game has agreed on modifications to the rules that they enjoy, it is not wrong to enjoy playing with them. True: If you are using houserules, you often lose any ground to be upset when those rules then break other rules in ways you didn't expect and either lead to unintended consequences or more house rules True: If you are using houserules, there is no longer any unbiased arbiter of fact, as the rules are being created and maintained solely by the people modifying them, making it more difficult to actually apply modified rules fairly when tensions are high. True: If you are using houserules, your playgroup becomes less welcome to newcomers, who are likely to arrive at your table with the reasonable presumption that you are all playing the same game the same way, and will be blindsided by your houserules if you don't onboard people in a way that makes things accessible. True: If your playgroup uses houserules, and you ever want to play with anyone else that isn't part of your base playgroup, you can't take them with you - your new opponent from outside does not know them, and you have no grounds of mutual agreement to enforce them. If they don't accept your houserules, and you insist on them anyway, you become the jerk. True: If you ever opt to play in a competetive setting, your houserules are meaningless, and the techniques and skills you've learned from playing with them exclusively can easily becomes maladaptive to the new situation. Complaining about this makes you look like the jerk. I remember, back in my grade school days, learning to play Checkers. The game had a rulebook, and it was a set of very simple, straightforward rules... and yet, every single time I sat down to play against anyone else, I would have to ask them some variation on "How do *you* play Checkers?" because it was a 50/50 shot whether they played some weird houseruled variant that they saw as normal - Optional Capture; Flying Kings; Multistacking; No Multijumps; and on and on. For such a simple game, the number of variations and combinations was annoyingly large. If you didn't establish whether or not there were house rules in play from the get-go, the game would screech to a halt the moment someone did anything different. Worst, 80% of the time when someone did play using hosuerules, they didn't *realise* they were houserules, and just thought they were normal rules, so they don't actually mention them during that initial conversation, then are shocked when you have to tell them that's a houserule. The same thing happened a bit later on, when I learned chess. I got so tired of it that, every time I sat down to play with someone I hadn't played with before, I would tell them: "I play by the rules listed in the official rulebook. If we have a rules disagreement, the rulebook is the final decider." If you've ever tried to explain En Passant to a novice player, you'll know what a headache it is to try to do so in the middle of trying to do it, and being accused of making up rules they don't understand. The ubiquity of board game Rule 0 is part of what makes situations like this hard, because the person who does not like the rule that they don't normally use or play by will feel justified in *demanding* Rule 0 on this rule they weren't aware of. Monopoly. The sheer volume of house rules used in a simple game of Monopoly is staggering; the arguments produced between two people who have been raised in different-playing households is Legendary. The worst part here is that, even moreso than usual, people seem to legitimately believe that what they are doing *is* the real rules, not actually houserules, and are surprised, shocked, and even angry when they find out otherwise, especially mid-game. The deer-in-headlights look in an opponent's eyes when I bring up auctioning a property I don't want to buy... So yes. Rule 0 does exist. But Magic is not a tabletop rpg. It isn't the same thing as a cooperatively built experience - it's a competitive card game. Rule 0, at its worst, will limit the range of people you can play with, and will definitely lead to arguments when the new 'fairer' houserules suddenly work against someone sometimes and 'need to be changed' again.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don’t believe it’s just a solely competitive game. There are people who enjoy it more as a competitive game, but at the end of the day it’s just a game. Smash bros can be enjoyed at a competitive level or casually with all items on. Nothing wrong with either. I think it’s just preference at the end of the day
If you have the time, would you care to look over a specific scenario that happened in my playgroup last night? I have Torbran, Thane of Red Fell out with a Fiery Emancipation also on the battlefield. I cast Acidic Soil and we each have 5 lands out (similar to the shock in your scenario). I always thought I stacked the damage triggers in this situation? So 5 from the Acidic soil +2 from Torbran=7...then x3 from Fiery E.= 21 damage to my opponents and 15 damage to myself? If that's not the case, what's the minimum amount of damage each player should have taken? My friend even stated: "Dude, I think we pick how we take that damage" I then stated, "well it's not like we're assigning combat damage here...it's just damage dealt by resolving triggers on the stack, I don't believe you do..." Turns out he may be correct here? I'm by no means a judge, but I always felt like I had a pretty good grasp on game mechanics and rulings. Like some of the comments above...it sort of defeats the purpose of nearly my entire list if this is the case lol Appreciate your videos, content, and time! I'm definitely open for discussion, I don't want to feel like I cheated them all extra damage when that shouldn't have been the case.
So in the case of damage and replacement effects each affected player chooses they order they want to apply the effects. In your scenario the least amount of damage one could take would be applying Fiery Emancipation first to 15 then adding 2 with Torbran to 17. Doubles don’t work very well with Torbran, Solphim may be a better candidate.
Is that really how to the Ojer/Gisela interaction would play out? I would think it'd be 4 damage either way; just the amount of damage that's prevented would be different. This matters because some prevention effects refer to the amount of damage that was prevented. PS- I think no matter what the rule is, simultaneous damage to multiple objects controlled by different players with multiple replacement effects is guaranteed to be confusing.
So it would either be Gisela prevents half the damage first rounded up so half of 1 is .5 rounded up to 1 that will get prevented. Since 0 damage is being dealt Axonil won’t be able to apply. Second scenario 1 damage is dealt to 4 then half is prevented to 2
Is we’re going by current rules it’s either 0 or 2. Gisela can prevent half rounded up. Half of 1 is .5 rounded up to 1, 1 damage will get prevented. Since no damage is not being dealt Axonil will not apply. Or apply Axonil first to turn 1 to 4 then prevent half of that to 2 with Gisela.
My one gripe with the rules is on linked abilities, I think the rules around them are unintuitive. If you can read an interaction on a card and it makes sense with other compatible game actions, those should apply.
While I also agree that linked abilities are pretty unintuitive and it would be cool if you could mix and match abilities from different sources, I get why they want to avoid that to stop some pretty weird things from happening.
Kaldra Compleat equipped on an Intellect Devourer is a case where reading the cards doesn't explain the cards. Any resonable understanding of language should let you arrive at a conclusion that creatures exiled in combat by the Intellect Devourer should then be able to be played. Linked abilities says no in that very unintuitive way that is against what the two cards literally say.
Id rather replacement effects work like layers, essentially being layers for the affected thing be that a permanent or damage. A robust system that's counterintuitive is still a bad system, being stubborn in how wrong you are doesn't make you less wrong.
It's a robust system that's counterintuitive in this very scenario. I don't even know how you would begin to implement replacement effects like layers. We already have layers as it is and that's already confusing for folks already. I'm fine with admitting I'm wrong, but if I were to pick the judgement of the people who actually get paid to make the rules over a comment over the internet, I think I will trust the ones getting paid.
@@keepingitcasualmtg Devs get paid to make games, but they still listen to the people who actually have to play said games. Rules in a vacuum are all well and good, I can acknowledge that structurally the rules are very impressive and honestly considering how many moving pieces magic contains the designers did a phenomenal job while also complaining that it produces counter intuitive, game brakingly bad results. But the "comments over the internet" are how those rules evolve. We wouldn't have the current Mulligan rules if it weren't for "comments over the internet" the erratas that make cards more intuitive wouldn't have happened if we ignored those "comments over the internet" hell even game balance that then affect rules changes like the companion change happened because of "comments over the internet". Even something as recent as the deciduous standardisation to game rules functionally identical to things like surveil happened because of people on the internet complaining and sharing how unintuitive the rules the people who got paid to make them felt. Discussing systems and how those system are frustrating when they produce bad results isn't wrong simply because I don't get paid to do so. If anything, it's more valuable because I actively choose to engage in said frustrating systems and invest my time in a game I love despite not being paid for it. The rules are great, I love them 90% of the time, but that 10% doesn't just stop being a problem because the 90% is great. And as for what I meant, I primarily meant time stamps since it mirrors an existing rule in the game and while being somewhat tedious, at least produces results you can go "oh well at least that makes sense" to when someone explains it, instead of the current system which interacts nothing like what every other interaction produces typically.
That's fair, players bringing up pain points about a game is how a game can evolve and improve. I have heard that players are often good at pointing out what's frustrating with a game, but often aren't great with knowing how to handle it. So I get that it could be unintuitive and frustrating for some. I do trust the folks at wizards to have their reasons. I do believe that the people on their rules team probably would have a far better understanding of the rules than you or I, so I'd rather just trust they know what they're doing, but for all I know I could be completely wrong and there is a very elegant solution that they roll out in a future set.
Yeah no that's one rule that I will never follow. And i'm willing to lose tournaments and money to stand on this principle. Fact of the matter is that for all intents and purposes the "Object" being affected is the "Spell" thats being cast or the "Permanent" that is dealing the damage. And I'm adamant about this whether I lose the game or not. If someone stacks their effects that belong to them, I should have no say in how they affect me. The ONLY time I have a say is when I have my own effect that modifies how their effect affect me.
That's why it gets weird with multiple effects controlled by different players. You could have doublers, or things that add, or prevent damage. I think a lot of it is also for game flow purposes. Having one person just choose just seems like an easier process
@@keepingitcasualmtg That's why I just keep it simple and look at the effects individually. If you have something that doubles, and I have something that halves, they cancel each other out. If you have something that adds x amount and I have something that subtracts x amount, we go with the bigger amount. It's just simple math. If we all have the same effect (ex: exile from grave) we follow active/not active order to determine which effect applies.
Magic is definitely a complicated game the fact that some old cards still with the way they do is impressive that they managed to make it work with current rules
@@keepingitcasualmtg The game is built on a VERY solid foundation. The guy who made it has been trying to reclaim the lightning-in-a-bottle he captured every day since his departure from WOTC. He's literally worked nonstop making dozens of new card games that all fail to be as good as MTG. The problem is that Rosewater is a little bit too cavalier with his application of the master design document at times, and WOTCs goal to make money forces them to continually powercreep themselves to death, both in MTG and in D&D. I think the game is reaching its natural conclusion. I LOVE Magic and honestly I never want to make a deck anymore because I either have too many options or too few, and the game always stays the same: a race to 0.
I understand the rule, I think my issue is specific to the noncombatant damage with only your cards triggering…it is absurd that the opponent gets to decide how it plays out when they had 0 interaction previous to the decision. I agree it isn’t game breaking but it certainly takes away fun…that rule made me not even want to try a burn deck in commander…not worth it
@@sy-py oh good lord, yes yes I know the difference between triggered abilities and replacement effects. The point I am making is that the only card “interaction” is with your own cards and the fact that your opponent gets to decide how all of your cards interact is absurd.
In that scenario yes it's with the permanents that they own, but you could have a situation similar to that with none of the cards they own. In those cases who would get to apply. I believe this rule is in place to help with any disputes that could crop up and give then a final say on how it would happen regardless of who controlled what.
Folks might argue that it's the source, but I think if we delve deeper into it it's the thing receiving the damage that would be affected by it. Folks also would argue it shouldn't be that way.
@@keepingitcasualmtg Hasbro has already done enough to get people pissed at them. I don't think they'd do that. Plus they'd have to do it two years from now. That's how far in advance they work on MTG>
1:08 you've dug yourself a hole. Now you need a whole video on what constitutes an event, and why? What is an object? Why and how are they different? How to identify an event and the whole list of events that do exist in M;tG.
Well seeing as Wizards makes the game they can therefore make up whatever rule they want. Where they have to be careful is making rules that people will like enough to play their game. So we can try to pick apart every detail of the game and every flaw, but I'd rather just understand the game enough to be able to play well better. As far as all the list of events I can't tell you what all of those entails within the rules, but I can tell you they have defined what an object is 109.1. An object is an ability on the stack, a card, a copy of a card, a token, a spell, a permanent, or an emblem. 120.4. Damage is processed in a four-part sequence. 120.4a First, if an effect that’s causing damage to be dealt states that excess damage that would be dealt to a permanent is dealt to another permanent or player instead, the damage event is modified accordingly. If the first permanent is a creature, the excess damage is the amount of damage in excess of what would be lethal damage, taking into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other sources that would be dealt at the same time. (See rule 120.6.) Any amount of damage greater than 1 is excess damage if the source dealing that damage to a creature has deathtouch. (See rule 702.2.) If the first permanent is a planeswalker, the excess damage is the amount of damage in excess of that planeswalker’s loyalty, taking into account damage from other sources that would be dealt at the same time. If the first permanent is a battle, the excess damage is the amount of damage in excess of that battle’s defense, taking into account damage from other sources that would be dealt at the same time. If the first permanent has multiple card types from among the list of creature, planeswalker, and battle, the excess damage is the greatest of the calculated amounts for each of the card types it has. 120.4b Second, damage is dealt, as modified by replacement and prevention effects that interact with damage. (See rule 614, “Replacement Effects,” and rule 615, “Prevention Effects.”) Abilities that trigger when damage is dealt trigger now and wait to be put on the stack. 120.4c Third, damage that’s been dealt is processed into its results, as modified by replacement effects that interact with those results (such as life loss or counters). 120.4d Finally, the damage event occurs
@@keepingitcasualmtg the idea that someone as knowledgeable as you can't tell me even some events is concerning; not for you, but for Wizards. On another note, I didn't know that damage was implemented in a four step process. That's cool to know. Thank you.
700.1. Anything that happens in a game is an event. Object moves zones? Event. Player loses life? Event. Counters are added? Event. Counters are removed? Event. Player gains life? Event. A triggered ability is put on the stack? Event.
From what I gather yes, they max it. I run Red Ojer, Solphim, and even city on fire. Doing the math that benefits me the most, it usually picks that one. I could only imagine the amount of work the game would have to do to 'check' all 2008 subrules (as of 2014) to go yeah thats good.@@keepingitcasualmtg
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So wait, what happens in that second scenario??
What's the music?
@@tcgmetaslayer4202 I'm pretty sure the blightsteel colossus gets shuffled first, because in the rules at 0:18 it says "affects object or player" the blightsteel colossus is the object, so the player who owns the colossus gets to decide which one activates first
@@tcgmetaslayer4202Controller of the affected object chooses which effect to apply
@@lirehsa Most of it is from Harris Heller he has a lot of royalty free music on Streambeats!
I appreciate this video. Most complaints about the rules are borne out of ignorance on the rules. I don't believe mtg is the best game ever made, but their rules system is the most robust and well made of any game I've played.
100% I think frustrations come from the lack of understanding of the thing we're frustrated about. Not just for games, but also in life in general!
It also tends to be an unusual interaction. The vast majority of card interactions are pretty intuitive, but we don't notice when everything works fine. Then something weird happens, and it's frustrating, so we hate it. And sometimes that weird thing is abusable, or players abuse it and it becomes commonplace.
@@keepingitcasualmtg The frustration comes from the way that cards are written not lining up with how the rules work. The situation you talk about in your video would be easier to understand for people that haven't read the rules if the cards, like Ojer Axonil, said something like, "If a red source you control would deal an amount of noncombat damage less than Ojer Axonil’s power to an opponent, THAT OPPONENT TAKES damage equal to Ojer Axonil’s power instead." The edit is capitalized.
When the ability is written in a way that it's emphasizing that it's modifying the source of the damage, like in the card's real text, it subtly reinforces the misunderstanding that the controller of the source of the damage gets to decide how to apply these kinds of effects. Writing this kind of effect to say that the opponent takes additional damage removes that and begins to point us in the right direction of correctly understanding the rules. It emphasizes that the opponent is what's being affected by that red source dealing damage.
I don't think that the rules here are bad, I just think that the way cards are written can be misleading when they don't properly line up with how the rules are written.
No the rules genuinely suck sometimes
@@billable1861I agree but this isn’t one of those scenarios
When you read the entire rules index it makes you instantly understand how Arena got made so quickly. Its all elements of software and tasks and layers and selected zones, reading and targeting. Its easy to understand but hard to track.
Arena does pretty decent with playing how it should in paper. Often times it seems like players use Arena to verify the rules in paper 🤣
Same with Duels of the Planeswalkers, and MTGO, often playing the video games helped people to understand the rules.
For me, I especially liked the puzzles that Duels of the Planeswalkers had.@@keepingitcasualmtg
The rules are so structured and comprehensive, I wouldn't be surprised if they just have an A.I. to code 90% of it.
@@drew-id... before AI... there were lawyers 😂
@@keepingitcasualmtg I mean I've certainly used it to double check how newer cards interact with older ones before.
I'm a Yugioh player, I really like how Magic actually has general rules that cover everything, as opposed to Yugioh where tcg rules are basically just consensus based on ocg rulings and precedent, with no documentation, and ocg rules only describe 1 card vs 1 other card, leaving us to piece together some sort of consistent logic to apply to other cards. Did you take control of a monster with an effect when its summoned but before its effect triggered, such as by using the meta staple "triple tactics talent"? Unfortunately, there is 0 precedent or rulings about what happens during this somewhat frequent occurrence, so ask your head judge to choose how it works, preferably before you start playing.
That's kinda wild that at different tournaments you might get different answers depending on the judge.
I believe ninety percent of problems in ygo could be fixed with keywords. As far as I know ygo has only one keyword: excavate
@@rodneysmith873 It depends on what you count as a keyword, “excavate” refers to a specific game action, just like “fusion summon”, or “equip”, and I can see Yugioh deciding to add a “mill” keyword in the future. I’d argue “(Quick Effect):” is a keyword that specifies what the activation timing of the effect is, as does “If/When X:”. If you mean to bundle things like “once per turn” into a keyword, you’ll find that there’s many different kinds of once per turn restrictions, which cards are designed with in mind. You could theoretically make keywords for “can’t be targeted by X”, “can’t be destroyed by battle/X card effects”, and “unaffected by X card effects”, but those aren’t particularly long and adding keywords creates more of a barrier to entry since everyone would have to memorize what those mean. Making a more broad keyword for negation effects beyond the existing “negate X” or making keywords for different types of removal (beyond the existing “destroy” and “banish”) is a lost cause as those differ more than they are similar, by design. Part of the draw of Yugioh is that individual cards have their own unique way of interacting with the opponent’s cards, with unique weaknesses that you can take advantage of.
@@qedsoku849 yeah that's fair. I'm more of an mtg guy with a faint interest in ygo. The rules are waaay more esoteric it seems in ygo.
@@rodneysmith873 sure, I’d agree with that, Yugioh is a hard game, and konami’s lack of rulings don’t help
As someone designing a new game and is trying to think long term about the rules structure of it all, I really do appreciate these. (A lot of magic's convoluted forms come from having to fix things "ad-hoc" since they didn't think it would be this big originally.) Let me know if you ever do consulting work.
Thank you! Haha I don't really have much experience in game design, but now something new for me to think about!
@keepingit.casual loL sometimes it's not another designer but a player's eye you need on something. (Heck we have 1 rule right now we're debating on which way to set up.)
Yeah looking at old cards the templating (or lack thereof) they used when they were still solidifying what kind of game actions and interactive should even be possible in Magic is really striking.
Magic is a code engine with tens of thousands of modules that has been in active development for 30+ years, including one major code rewrite and a handful of minor code rewrites.
This engine has been built on and patched in excess of 120 times, and older modules have had to be rewritten and ported to an engine that flat doesn't support them as written. There are patches specifically built for single cards for years at a time.
In cases, there have been changes to rules in the engine for safety reasons, but corner cases like these aren't going to warrant that. Think things like the Cascade loophole being patched out.
The fact that the system doesn't fold in on itself more often is testament to the legacy of the game. Maybe give them a break when one function of a rule doesn't lean your way on occasion.
@@Suspinded my man! (As a programmer, I appreciated your metaphor.)
Though I think there were two major code rewrites, the core of your point is spot on.
Hey, look on the bright side - we could instead have the yugioh system where any situation that isn’t clear is decided via some judge somewhere, and we get a giant list of specific interactions for every complex card with an enormous pile of other complex cards
Exactly! At least with understanding the rules system of magic it's possible to figure out the general situation rather than have to memorize a lister of interactions.
And if I'm not mistaken,
A different judge could make
A different ruling on
The same interaction,
And it would be legal for that match.
Talk about Konami caring only for the business end.
@@wickd6878 The Magic Tournament Rules set out a similar precedent for Magic tournaments: the head judge always has the final say on rulings at a given event. Their ruling may not actually agree with the Comprehensive Rules or tournament policy, but this rule is in place because the show must go on and there's very little to be done about an incorrect ruling after a tournament has run its course.
The level of robustness the rules have when you consider the insane level of complexity of the game is quite impressive. People feeling so strongly about the unintuitive results also speaks volumes for how smoothly the game operates otherwise.
As a side note, WotC definitely does go back and alter things to be more intuitive. One of the bigger and relatively more recent change is the interaction of Blood Moon and similar effects with tap/conditional taplands (and enters with counter(s)) lands. Also, 614.12 is one hell of a rule.
I think folks don't realize how 99% of games work smoothly because of the rules.
As a programmer I like to imagine the CR as a 30 year old program that’s had a few significant rewrites and many major additions over that entire time.
Wait, no, I hate imagining it like that because of my job.
It’s probably got a better test suite relative to its size than anything I’ve worked on though.
Do you think it'd be a big project to take on to overhaul the whole rules system of magic?
@@keepingitcasualmtgnot OP but 100% yes. Mtg is a Turing Complete game, meaning that it can be used like a computer. You can fashion an input, and using a deck of cards with interlinking effects (ie your program) it will give you an output. The complexity of rewriting the CR is not an insurmountable task, sure, but it would almost certainly be a multi-year endeavor if you wanted to start from scratch, and probably involve a lot of smart people (like OP :))
@@keepingitcasualmtg There's a reason there hasn't been a top-to-bottom rewrite of the rules since 6th edition in 1999 (creating the stack, damage prevention windows going away, removing interrupts & mana sources and a whole lot more), and the last BIG set of changes was last in 2009 for Magic 2010 (Renaming "removed from the game" and "in play" to Exile and the battlefield respectively, changing rules for a bunch of core keywords, removing mana burn, among many other changes) - those major overhauls take a LONG time - I believe the 6th edition rules update project started before the release of 5th edition which came out two years earlier (which in itself was a pretty big rules overhaul)
And these days when they've doubled the number of new unique cards per year over the 2000-2010 era, it would be an even bigger job as there are so many more cards and weird corner cases that can potentially come up and need to be accounted for that the work increases any time you need to make any rules changes that aren't additive - and for the most part there's no need. The rules (mostly) work great 99% of the time. Its mostly just those weird corner cases that come up that cause problems.
@@keepingitcasualmtg basically what @enderdragon91 said, along with the fact that you’ve got some 22k mods to that engine in the form of cards. Granted, many if not most of those aren’t that mechanically“interesting”, but even 1/10th of them is a lot of cards to consider. I don’t even want to think about the layers system and the Brudiclad Licids deck and a rewrite at the same time, assuming you still want such a thing to work as expected. … for whatever value of “expected” you choose.
@@Enderdragon91 Being Turing-complete isn't a great measure of complexity, honestly. All you need for a system to be Turing-completeness is a way to represent or construct the natural numbers, a way to select a value from a list, a way to compose functions, a way to select the smallest number that meets a given condition, and recursion. It's almost trickier to make a large system that's provably Turing-incomplete; there's a reason why so many games end up accidentally demonstrably Turing-complete.
I mean, Minesweeper on an infinite grid but otherwise using exactly the same rules to the game is a Turing-complete system ("Infinite versions of minesweeper are Turing complete", Kaye 2000), and no one would say the rules to Minesweeper are complex.
Edit: Oh, I see where you're coming from; I just found the paper you're probably going off of. "Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete" Churchill et al.? Okay, the title's kind of misleading for that paper. The key feature in that paper isn't that they found a way to show that Magic itself was Turing-complete, because people were building Turing machines in Magic _ages_ ago. It's that they found an isomorphism between any arbitrary Turing machine and game states in Magic such that the first player winning the game was equivalent to the machine halting. That's _way_ different, I see what you mean now.
About the "rule 0" thing: Did you know, back before we got comprehensive rules in 6th edition, the official rules had a whole section on House Rules, with examples ranging from mulligans being allowed, deck construction limits (like a 40 card minimum, or a 5 copy maximum), to the winner being forced to contribute cash to a pizza fund. That's right, mulligans & deck size & card limits were all explicitly called out as optional rules, like cash on free parking in monopoly.
We're incredibly spoiled by the current comprehensive rules, honestly.
Haha I didn't know that about the old rules. We've come a long way and I'm sure there will be more revisions to improve the rules system as it stands.
This is why rule 0 is used so much in casual commander. It allows for alot more fun while sticking to the comprehensive rules.
Try to play a planechase commander game with any alternative to the current rule, and you will quickly want to go back to the current rule.
A lot of planes have replacement effects, and whoever is the turn player controls the current plane. Add 4 players to the equation and it can become really stupid without that rule.
😵😵 Good point. With as chaotic as planechase is already, having to add more tracking on top of it would be a nightmare
I've seen a bunch of your shorts, but this is the first longer video of yours I've seen. Really well done, and I look forward to seeing more!!
Thank you so much! I want to do more of them when I get ideas for it!
Having played magic since 1996 I can attest to the huge improvements in game play that have come with the comprehensive rules system.
It's come a loooong way. I remember having arguments about how something would interact. Thank god we don't have to do that anymore
QUESTION:
Are you saying that if I have “Dictate of the Twin Gods” and “Furnace of Rath” on the battlefield and I cast “Shock”, instead of doing 8 damage, the receiving player will chose which of the effects will take effect? Making it only do 4 damage?
Each replacement effect will apply when they can. So with multiple multipliers you will always get the same result. 2 damage from shock doubled with one of them to 4 then doubled again to 8. If we had a scenario like with Mechanized Warfare and Furnace of Rath and you cast Shock then the player being dealt the damage gets to choose which order to apply. So they could do 2 from shock plus 1 from Mechanized Warfare to 3 doubled with Furnace to 6 OR 2 from shock doubled with Furnace to 4 plus 1 from Mechanized Warfare to 5.
Make one about how auras can attach to hexproof objects if theyre put onto the battlefield without being cast
I’ve got a short on it!
I'll do you one better: How about objects such as creatures that let you choose another creature to copy, even if that creature has shroud or hexproof?
Or better yet, how prevention effects can actually keep a creature alive in combat after damage has already been dealt, including lethal damage?
Because both those things exist too.
I had a Codie the code deck that did this with freed from the reel. The most storm storm deck I've ever built. I literally define my wincons as "I never stop casting cards"
Really enjoyed this medium length format that keeps to the heart of your shorts. I'd be down for more.
Thank you so much! I appreciate this feedback. I would like to work on more variety of content in the future!
The rules team is actually really good at their jobs. For example, Henzie "Toolbox" Torre. The card makes sense as it reads, but it broke a few existing magic rules, so they made his own rule that took a few drafts to get right. This is something that not many people think about when playing the card
I had a friend who played Yu-Gi-Oh, and he talked about how the rules really didn't make sense, and the committee pretty much didn't make a ruling until some interaction happened in a tournament
Yes often it takes a big hubub at a tournament for rules to change. That's why we can activate mana abilities during casting a spell now 🤣🤣. I'm curious to know what rules it broke
@@keepingitcasualmtgWhen Henzie was made, the game couldn't track the card having blitz in your hand, the card on the stack and the card on the battlefield being the same card that should remember it's been cast with blitz so it would stay on the battlefield (which is not what the card intended)
I was already subscribed before this video and I mostly watch your shorts. I'm just commenting to say I appreciate your positive attitude and subtle humor. Thank you for never having your rules disputes get super salty or contentious. Negativity and positivity are both contagious, thank you for doing what you do the way you do it!
I appreciate that a lot. I try my best to keep it pretty light hearted!
the people that say "oh just change the rules it can't be that hard" probably don't realize that the MTG Comprehensive Rules is a *287* page document. It's called the /comprehensive/ rules for a reason.
In most cases it is very easy to change the rules and wotc has done it on multiple occasions. Not all rules have ripple down effects on other rules. This rule for example could be changed quite smoothly, but it would require a lot of effort on communicating the change to everyone.
I don't think it would take that much effort to communicate the change, they make changes every addition of sets to the CR and judges often explain any new changes that take place. I do believe that none of us know the process of making the rules and we make our own assumptions on how easy it would be. It's true that they often do make changes to the rules, but we have no idea the amount of time or effort that was spent to make that change.
"Player being affected chooses the order" makes perfect sense when considering playability.
You're saying like whether if a card is playable or not?
When people argue about this kind of stuff, I would always bring up Yu-Gi-Oh as a counter argument.
Imagine if the core comprehensive rule was never invented, and every time wotc printed new stuff they need to bandaid every new mechanics with errata rules (and even so, sometimes card would stop working with old cards because there's no common functions such as layers)
The MTG rule may be weird, but atleast its very consistent
That's a good comparison. From what I hear with Yugioh you have to know the interactions before hand where as with magic you're able to figure it out with understanding of the base game.
@@keepingitcasualmtg that is correct yes, for example, if you are playing a deck that happens to run some very old card, then it is basically on you to remember how it might interact weirdly with every card in meta right now, since there are no universal rule coverage like MTG does.
There's also a common joke among Yu-Gi-Oh player in Asia called "調整中” (adjusting) this is a common response konami will give the player when konami isn't sure what would happen between two cards, and very often these kind of reply never get properly answered, and there are also multiple cases of the ruling of said card are given conflicting answer/changes depending on who you ask
It's quite a mess.
The main issue with this example is that every single object involved is owned by the Shock player so if this is someone's first time seeing multiple replacement effects it's obviously going to seem like a weird rule.
It's easier to see the problem with letting the Shock player decide just because they are casting Shock if you give opponent a Gisela. What now?
If the Shock player gets to decide then the Gisela should not be allowed to half the damage just because the player casting Shock has something else that increases the damage of Shock. So in this case the Shock player gets to bypass a defensive replacement effect just because they have the same replacement effect.
So in this case you could argue for either player being able to choose. So who should be able to choose? Well, allowing the affected player or controller of the affected object to choose just creates better games. In the example above Shock goes from doing 6 damage if the Shock player can choose to doing 1 damage if the Gisela player can choose. The game where the opponent can just do 6 damage without consequence is going to be a much less interesting game than one where the Shock player needs to interact with the board.
You could try and rewrite the rules to check if all replacement effects are owned by the Shock player and if they are let the Shock player choose, and if the affected player owns a replacement effect they can choose that, but that's way more confusing and ripe for edge cases than just flat out saying "the affected player chooses" because it always works in all situations and creates more interactive games.
Plus I just think that, especially in the "Torbrand plus damage doubler" example everyone always uses, the game is better off letting the person being affected choose the most limiting option. It leads the the results that feel most consistently "fair." It's not like you CAN'T get the effect reversed, you just have to bounce it off a brash taunter or a stuffy doll. THAT feels like enough hoops to have to jump through to justify crazy game ending numbers, just having the 2 replacement effects does not.
I also think at the end of the day folks are dealing extra damage. A few points of damage doesn't ruin a whole archetype IMO
My biggest takeaway is that the way the rules work accounts for replacement effects being controlled by different players the best. Sure if you control all of the replacement effects affecting damage from sources you control, it feels bad your opponent gets to stack them to benefit them. But if you start throwing in replacement effects controlled by different players, then figuring out how to apply them becomes ambiguous and all hell breaks loose. The affected object or player is always consistent no matter who controls the replacement effects
I agree I think it works best for the game overall with keeping things consistent
"There's no wrong way to play Magic"
Me, combining R&D's Secret Lair with Floral Spuzzem: Challenge accepted!
Okay maybe there are a few...
This isnt making me want to change the rules, but it is making me want to play a game with you
😆😆 I appreciate that
i dislike the bit of Rule zero away the rulebook of magic. Like i get that's what we are doing when someone plays their Nephilim deck and we all allow it, but when we start applying damage on the stack, or ignoring sections of the comprehensive rules we don't like it get's a nutter butters fast.
Rule zero are for play groups that all agree on it. If someone doesn't agree then you can't really rule 0 then right?
Rule 0 is just an intrinsic part of life. If people don't like how something is "supposed to" work, they just ignore that and use it how they want it. You're making a slippery slope argument, but the slope doesn't have to be slippery. Just say "proxies are ok" or "we're playing planechase *and* archenemy this week" or "so and so starts with a 5 card hand, because their deck is too strong" can be the end of rule changes.
Thank you for having subtitles baked into the video!
Glad they help!
I like you more with each exposure to your thinking. That's worth a sub.
Thank you so much! I appreciate having support from like minded folks!
Although you kind of lost me in the first bit, I followed along pretty well in the middle, but sir, your closing statements were absolutely on point.
I've had the conversation multiple times about what the point of this, or any, game is.
Is the point of any game to win?
Is the point to have fun?
Find what works for you and the people in your playgroup and run with it. Rule Zero is there to bend certain rules for the sake of fun.
If winning is what's important to you, you better play with likeminded players. There is a HUGE gulf between competitive and casual players, and if you are treading in the wrong swimming pool, someone is bound to get upset.
I've been loving this game ever since Britney took the stage with Aerosmith and N'SYNC at the Super Bowl, (yes, that is the exact timestamp of my very first game) and though the rules have been a struggle on an on and off basis, I've always given the developers the benefit of the doubt. I know that even if a rule doesn't make sense in a certain situation, it DOES make sense in the majority of applications.
All that to say... MTG, maaan.
People get lost in that the game is first and foremost a game. There are settings for all sorts of levels from competitive to casual and finding your space in it is part of the fun.
I really appreciate this video. I've always hated this ruling, but your laying out exactly the difference between objects and events and what affects and is affected by what finally made it click for me. Good job!
Thank you! I don't fault people for understanding it and still hating it though.
I think this could be improved by letting the effected objects controller choose the order of whose replacement effects are applied first but each player controlling multiple replacement effects get to choose the order of those replacement effects. This way would add a little complexity in multiplayer, but in 1v1 it would be more dynamic and for example the very regularly occurring leyline of the void and dauthi voidwalker negative synergy wouldnt be an issue for players doubling down on that effect. I dont think I have ever seen more than 2 replacement effects trying to modify the same event so the added complexity would be minimal.
Magic is already incredibly complex. Having to add another thing where you'd have to track who's turn it is, calculate replacement effects of different players is more unnecessary work in my opinion.
@@keepingitcasualmtgCompletely agree. I personally am fine with added complexity via new mechanics and card design, but adding it to something as fundamental to gameplay as how replacement effects are ordered is something I'd rather not want.
@@keepingitcasualmtgI mean you choose how your triggers stack if you have multiple “cast a creature spell” effects or some other condition (while effects by other players are stacked APNAP but that just proves it works with another system on top), it feels like players being able to stack their own replacement effects from their sources makes sense.
Oh hey I was in those comments!
And yeah, the rule feels dumb but it does seem the most "fair" and doesn't come up nearly as much as it may seem.
Glad to see a full video discussing it!
You got a little shout out!
The most important MTG video on UA-cam today.
Thank you so much!
Well said. Game design is hard and I think players forget just the pure depth of the game and the fact that everything just works.
The 1% of weird interactions stand out because 99% the rules work so well that they don’t even notice
To raise the counter-point: Wizards is fine with completely rewriting the rules for these kinds of exceptions, they did it with the Planeswalker redirection rule.
But that rule was also complete garbage from top to bottom, and required directly contradicting other, more fundamental rules for how the game worked, for reasons that were impossible for me to guess at then, and haven't gotten more sensible since (even after the rule was rightfully repealed).
Could be possible and I agree with you, but that does involve somebody going through the rules and making sure that it gets rewritten properly. Then the question for them becomes, is it worth it to have this person work on this or develop other aspects of the game. It's possible that they're already working on it too, we won't know unless we work there
The best guess I have is that they assumed it was less friction to have a weird rule than applying errata to the mountain of cards that were affected.
@@Amazementss That was 100% the reason why. Wizards *really* hates errata-ing cards if they can avoid it as they want reading the card to explain the card.
The problem with this assertion is that it presumes that errataing cards was the only option. Planeswalkers were intended to be part of the Time Spiral block which included Future Sight. It would have been entirely on-brand to just _print_ _new_ _cards_ that cared about Planeswalkers.
They didn't do that; instead they chose to completely break most rules about how a small class of effects worked on a fundamental level, to justify just not printing new cards. The only really valid reason for this state of affairs is that they didn't want to have standard dominated by burn if Planeswalkers flopped.
@@ZefulStarson Fair enough, they could have done that.
However then you have the awkward issue of only having burn spells printed after Time spiral being able to touch planeswalkers.
Being someone who love weird rule interactions I love this channel as it shows me how it works
Thank you so much I'm glad you enjoy!
Great video! Just like in dark souls, it's OK to die in magic...
We learn from our losses
This is why we have to be eternally grateful for judges - I am just _not_ capable of shoving all the nuances and rules in my brain the way they do
Judges are great! The knowledge they know to understand the game so that we don't have to is incredible.
Anything other than affected player chooses would allow damage to be dealt to something that says "prevent all damage that would be dealt to ~"
Well, no. Once the "prevent all damage" effect is applied, there's no longer a damage event for the others to replace. It would, however, allow the player dealing the damage to apply the replacement effects in a way beneficial for them, e.g. applying a Deflecting Palm first to minimize the damage they would be dealt, or against something like a Phytohydra to minimize the amount it would grow.
@@Amazementss ohh, so "prevent all damage" completely obliterates the event so that no more replacements can apply? I didn't know that!
@@jedimindglitch89 From the rules:
615.6. If damage that would be dealt is prevented, it never happens. A modified event may occur instead, which may in turn trigger abilities. Note that the modified event may contain instructions that can’t be carried out, in which case the impossible instruction is simply ignored.
When considering all other ways that this could be, the player being effected being able to choose order of replacement effects just makes the most sense for game flow, i personally have never liked timestamping, its hard to keep track of, especially over a long game and creates weird scenarios like possibly flickering an permanent just to get a better timestamp and people forgetting can completely halt and ruin a game, active player does kinda work but having to constantly change damage or whatever the replacement effect is every turn as the active player changes so the order of operation changes is kinda annoying, this just makes the most logical sense from a ease of use and gameflow sense, especially when considering magic being a game that can be played with more then 2 people
I do agree it helps with game flow, where you don't have to halt and make extra calculations or track certain things.
The last 30 sec really hit different! Much Love
Thank you! Wanted to leave it on a positive note
this video deserves subscribes for ed purposes alone! 👍
Thank you so much! 😁 It's different from my typical videos so its a bit of a different form I'm used to working on!
I think the last point made is the most important one. If you aren't a competitive player, most of these finely detailed rules don't even apply to you.
Yes and if you are a competitive player then they would understand learning the rules is what gives you the edge in the game
The assumption that people make is that whoever made the rules was lazy or didn't think about it.
But in reality, the people working on the rules at that level are taking so many things into play. And not just for table top players, but the actual logic of online play also. Rules like this one are tested and retested and tried and retried and brainstormed and rebrainstormed. It's an incredibly complex and well thought out set of rules for the most complex game humanity has every had.
Instead of assuming the rules makers, who are doing it 40 hours a week in groups with specific skillsets are making mistakes. Assume the casual player who plays 3 hours a week with their friends, is just not seeing the big picture.
If you spend any amount of real time studying the rules, the elegance of the rules shines. And its obviously optimized. Not lazy. When I see someone complaining, it's far more telling of their ignorant personality, than anything WoTC has done. Outrage without education is just angst.
Amen. To add to this: People really underestimate the skills required to be a good game designer. People taking the game design 101 course are hit with a hard realization that they actually know next to nothing. something about Dunning and Kruger
I hope that the sentiment changes and people can realize that this game is actually very well developed. It’s an old game that’s gone through many iterations with weird cards so the fact they can make most of them work together at all is impressive
Good final sentiments. I tried reading front to back the comprehensive rules not too long ago. The jargon-y wording is too much lol. Rather just go off case-by-case learning new rules when they come up
I've never attempted to read the entire thing. I also go off case-by-case as well lol
I'm the kind who enjoys this kind of document, so I've read it cover to cover, and I personally love the clear way the document is worded. (I also read technical specs all the time, so you can imagine it's very much in my style of reading material.) I'd only recommend it if you enjoy this kind of thing - otherwise, it's going to be an extremely dull experience that you won't get anything out of.
love the style and editing
Thank you! I try to make it engaging, still perfecting it
boils down to ignorance and a lack of gratitude on the playerbase end
I think the better understanding of the game the we have the less frustrating it becomes
@@keepingitcasualmtg C'est la vie
Great video! love the editing! can't wait to see more :D
Thank you so much! I can't wait to do more!
So to be clear, if I have two different damage doublers, eg. Two furnace of Rath. Normally it doesn't matter but technically the player receiving damage chooses the order to apply?
And I have Purphoros, God of the forge Deck, so if I have a situation like this each individual opponent would get to decide how the effect applies to them?
Yes.
Usually multiplicative doesn’t matter because the result is the same but once you add in something like Torbran things get a little weird.
@@keepingitcasualmtg I am building an Ojer Axonil deck out at the moment, Damage < power becomes power.
Most the time this step wont even matter due to applying it at the end, where the damage is already doubled / torbranned!
I also think it's worth noting that the rules have changed a bunch over the years, to mixed feelings. The most drastic change was the infamous 6th Edition update, which came during (arguably) magic's most broken standard ever (Urza's Block). I don't know how the change was recieved (as I wasn't born yet), but I do know that it changed how magic played drastically
I started playing after that time period so I'm not sure myself. Hopefully it went well since we're playing with a lot of that system today!
Yup I’ve built an Ojer Axonil deck too and there are a lot of cards you can’t use because they don’t actually help your commander
I was going to build one... but this mess infuriated me... what cards would I need to avoid, in your opinion sir/ma'am, to play a "clean" deck?
Focusing on pumping Axonils power is the better route to take IMO
WOTC doesn't need to change the rules, even if some are problematic - because - *as players, we already have the ability to modify, or invent, rules as we please.* Consider how many possible ways there are to play REGULAR playing cards, from Poker to Texas Hold 'Em to Solitaire.
I say rule 0 is the best rule!
Ahahaha people complaining about rules should go play yugioh and suffer the absolute pain of not having any rules until the judge makes the call
Its nice to be able to figure our your own calls. Having a judge in magic does help a lot though.
I literally just showed this to a dude in my pod and he said "I vote we just ignore that rule, it's dumb and makes X person's deck not as good." Like okay, we already don't play commander damage in that pod because "it's too difficult to track", where's the line? Do we just go play a different game? Because that's what it seems like, like y'all want to just play a different game.
dude im so late to this but this video is SO GOOD
Haha thank you!
I had a similar issue when I use my solphim deck with furnace of rath and city on fire out. My opponents thought they could apply it in a way where they took the least amount of damage.
😆😆 Fortunately multiplication will result in the same number
Keep these videos coming man. Please
Thank you so much I will try my best!
Imagine you're studying Physics and say "well just change the voltage of the electron, what could happen?" That's what it's like to change a rule in such a complex game.
😆😆 an apt analogy
So the short of it is that the comprehensive rules is basically the equivalent of The Password Game.
🤣🤣 Probably something like that
The SAME people who would be complaining about this rule would be the same ones abusing it when their OWN [Ghyrson Starn, Ketermoph] shoots them, the controller of Ghyrson. Ghyrson states that ANY Source the player Owns that deals exactly 1 damage to player, this card (Ghyrson) will deal 2 damage to that player also, and if you "happened to hit yourself for 1 exact damage" Ghyrson will shoot you for 2. So I BET people would apply all sorts of replacement effects to prevent taking 3 damage just because you managed to ping yourself for 1 to then be shot by Ghyrson for 2.
Not saying people are crybabies, but when the Replacement rules that saved their opponent could also save themselves. They obviously would also keep their mouths shut then, but not before still complaining how they didnt get to "do the really cool thing they wanted to do."
I think context does make things appear polarizing
Well, I had thought ojer anoxil would have been a fun commander to have but after that explanation, I wouldn't touch that shit with a 30 foot pole. Oh well, dodged a bullet there I suppose. Shame it can't be straight forward.
There's actually a pretty simple heuristic.
Ojer doesn't work with damage modification effects.
Sure, the technical explanation is difficult, but the end result isn't too hard to understand.
That's because Ojer Axonil is actually more busted when you focus on pumping it's power. It's actually a different build of mono red! Not all red decks need damage multipliers to be broken!
I think a good change would be a new rule involving source damage where first the damaging player decides the order of amplification modifiers, and then the damaged player decides the order of prevention.
It does add in an extra step and an exception to remember for replacement effects. It could work who knows. I'm not entirely sure what the potential downsides could be.
I wonder how many people that left a comment like that are "new".
People forget that magic is an old game. Back on the day there were question if the 4x limit was ok.
Changing the core of the game is never good.
And let me add that rules changed a lot.
Veeery true and good point I’ve just learned about substance and it just kinda shows that the rules have made many evolutions over the years to have what we have now
@@keepingitcasualmtg i wonder what people wuold say if mana burn wuold be in the game. Or the first mulligan rule. Or the niddle like effect. There are many exemple of quality of life changes. People are not aware of them.
People get surprised by the rules a lot. It’s very complex but it has little ambiguity if you properly understand the rules.
Misgivings about how cards work is due to misunderstanding or ignorance
It's nice to know that I can show up to multiple tournaments and most of my cards will do what I think it will do
I learned this ruling when Torbran came out in OG Eldraine still feels bad
I feel you
Having made my own custom cards, you start to learn that WotC does things the way they do for a reason, and that in order to make interesting cards, edge cases are almost inevitable.
For example, the line of text "CARDNAME has all keyword abilities of all cards exiled by it." seems rather intuitive and saves a lot of text space compared to writing it out, but then you start having to figure out how giving a creature enchant creature works.
Maybe you limit it to creature cards only, but you go down the list, and it becomes apparent that some keywords just break things when granted to other cards.
It takes dabbling in game design to truly appreciate the fact that MtG functions
For the record, if a creature has "enchant creature", the ability does nothing. If a creature has "enchant creature" and it also gains the Aura subtype, it cannot enchant anything (704.5p), and thus it gets put into the graveyard for being an unattached Aura (704.5m).
But in the end, considering all the edge cases is very hard. At the time of writing, there are 167 keyword abilities; you have to carefully account for them all, because someone will inevitably ask you what happens if your creature gains crew (answer: you can crew it if you want, and it becomes an artifact creature if you do; it cannot crew itself) or equip (answer: nothing; you cannot use the equip ability of a permanent that isn't a noncreature Equipment artifact).
On the other hand, what kills most custom cards for me is that their authors clearly cannot write custom cards like they were real Magic cards. Sadly, this is not an easy problem to overcome, because it requires both extensive knowledge of the rules and practice with the way real cards are templated. I'd honestly be happy to help someone with this, if they asked.
While I understand the rules for that interaction of damage, I just don't agree with how it plays out. The cards I play for the effects I want should never be resolved by an opponent. I'm the controller of the effect so I should get to choose how I want my effects to work with one another, not the opponent. That is the unintuitive part that which is bothersome for so many people.
In the context of the first scenario it seems like it only happens for when it’s just your permanents but when other players control the effect then who should get to apply what in which order?
@@keepingitcasualmtgit should apply from active player to passive player. That’s the most intuitive in my opinion. All effects you control should trigger in whatever order you decide before passing to your opponent (obviously only if the interaction is at the same speed)
@@jamesmorseman3180 None of the relevant effects trigger.
Then depending on who's turn it is you'll have different results. Say you control Furnace of Rath and Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and your opponent also controls Furnace of Rath. Opponent bolts you on your turn you half it to 1 then double to 2 then opponent gets to double it to 4. If they bolt on their turn they get to double to 6 then you half to 3 then double to 6. Very widely different results and it makes Gisela's effect work weird.
I don't even understand the complaint.
😆😆 Basically some interactions appear unintuitive because of specific scenarios, when in the bigger picture there are reasons for why things work the way they do.
As a judge and someone who has worked in an LGS for a long time I think that the frustration with this particular rules interaction comes mostly from two places: its counter to how the game operates in other areas, and it takes a player's perception of their deck, strategy, and deck building, and completely destroys it when learned.
The rules here feel like they run counter to how the game works in other areas because whenever you place triggers on the stack, you choose the order your triggers apply in, and when your creatures deal damage to other creatures in combat, you choose the order that the damage applies in because you choose how damage is assigned. In both of these cases, which are far more common in casual games, you get to decide how your stuff behaves, and that makes intuitive sense, its your stuff, you're the proactive person here, so you should have the say. In the case of replacement effects, you also choose the order they apply in in most cases, and only when interacting with an opponent or their stuff directly does this change. This means that in nearly every situation a player will have as much control of their things as is reasonably possible, except for here. Its unintuitive, and while the game needs to be robust, there are likely robust ways to handle this that get the intuitive result, I've made a suggestion at the bottom of this post for how this could be handled, but much as the video says, there are likely areas where this creates a less intuitive outcome than exists there now, I just suspect they're less common than the damage issue presented. Even as a judge its very difficult to have an actually complete understanding of the rules, as well as knowledge of every card ever.
The second issue is more about how the subversion of a player's expectations. It can be heart breaking to have such a rule revealed to you, especially after getting excited about something, and likely spending both time to build the deck, as well as decent money in many cases. Commander exacerbates the problem because the high life totals have made burn harder to build, and revealing that you're actually at more of a handicap than you thought is unlikely to come at a time other than when you're in game and think you've set up for this crazy damage number, only to have things completely fall apart. After the game is over and you've lost, the effects of that game will persist though because your entire deck just became a lot weaker than you thought it was.
WotC likely doesn't fix the issue here not because they cant, but because so many people already play the game wrong in more significant ways, that any rules update made would only affect a very small percentage of people. The people most affected are likely to be those engaging in high-level tournament play, who are already familiar with the way the rules currently work, meaning that there is little benefit to making such a rules update, and the possibility of a downside that would be frustrating to those players, and possibly create an opportunity for an embarrassing moment for the person responsible for the rules change. Despite this, I've put one potential solution below:
Potential Solution: If two or more replacement and/or prevention effects are attempting to modify an event, then the affected object’s controller (or its owner if it has no controller) or the affected player chooses one to apply, following the steps listed below, unless all replacement effects attempting to modify the event are controlled by a single player, in which case that player chooses which one to apply instead. If two or more players have to make these choices at the same time, choices are made in APNAP order (see rule 101.4).
The exact execution/wording might be slightly cludgey, but the gist is that as long as you control all of the replacement effects (or sources of them), then you get to apply the replacement effects in whatever order you'd like. Otherwise it works just as it does now. In theory this should mean that unless your opponent has something to contribute to the "conversation", your cards do what you'd expect and want them to do intuitively.
The problem with that is that after applying one of replacement effects, other replacement effects controlled by other players may become applicable.
Ok so to be clear, you're saying that in a situation where initially only one player has any replacement effect, but the application of their first replacement effect may cause there to be a third replacement effect controlled by another player?
If this is what you're saying, then its not really much different to what happens now, and all that the rule seeks to do is move unintuitive interactions further away in terms of how often they will happen.
616.1f already handles what to do when one is applied, so the player's first choice applies, then they and their opponent have replacement effects waiting, and the "victim" as it were decides what goes on next, then its checked to see if any new ones generate, and if not, apply the final replacement.
Not super elegant, but this whole section of the rules lacks elegance cause its a cludgy part of the rules in general, lots of minutia.
@@sy-py
It could be the whole "this happens this ways *unless*" part could be potentially confusing. Where the effect doesn't apply as consistent when there's multiple players or if you control them all. Like you dealing damage while controlling Torbran can yield different results whether you control the Furnace of Rath or your opponents.
@@keepingitcasualmtg Sure. The word "unless" maybe isn't the best way to word the modification. I did it that way in part so that I could change as little of the original text for demonstration.
In the detailed rules, there are lots of areas where the statements could be boiled down to "if, then, else". And APNAP (specifically with triggers) already creates situations where situations dramatically change based on whose turn it is and who controls what (like two players controlling a Tergrid, and whose turn gives which Tergrid what in a 4 player game,) . So I don't think the core of the change is really adding much complexity that isn't already there.
That doesn't mean its the ideal change or that the change is actually needed, but I like thinking and talking about these sorts of things, so I appreciate you engaging with it.
For the fun of it, a more effective rewording might look like this:
"If two or more replacement and/or prevention effects are attempting to modify the way an event affects an object or player, and all of the effects or sources of the effects are controlled by a single player, that player chooses an effect to apply. If there are multiple replacement and/or prevention effects attempting to modify an event and the effects are controlled by more than one player, the controller of the object affected by these events (or its owner if it has no controller) or the affected player chooses one to apply instead. All choices follow the steps below. If two or more players have to make these choices at the same time, choices are made in APNAP order (see rule 101.4)."
Perhaps we'll see a change in the future someday. Wizards has changed the rules before I doubt that would be the last time that they do.
i learn about this when i was playing a deck with soul scar mage and obosh :(
Those commander that modify damage will teach you a tough lesson
Our favorite Rule zero in our pod is the removal of Commander Damage👍 easily the most outdated rule of the format that has been powercrept to absurdity.
I wasn’t questioning why Affected Player/Object controller decides, I am questioning why Damage wouldn’t be considered an object.
Because an object is something in one of the zones. What zone is the damage in?
@@sy-pyThere are multiple ways around this. Hell they could create a “damage zone” specifically for this interaction, or even just change object to define something in a zone or damage. All it’d do is make this interaction more intuitive.
@@baconsir1159 All it'd do is create more unnecessary complications, adding to what is already over 100 pages of rules.
@@sy-py It’s a minor change that only affects this particular interaction. It lessens complication by making the obvious interaction the correct ruling while adding less than a paragraph to the actual rules. It’s also ridiculous to pretend that changing the rules is some massive problem when they literally just did so for MoM to incorporate dual-sided tokens.
@@baconsir1159 They changed the rules to incorporate new mechanics. And those changes didn't really carve out any exceptions in rules.
So does this apply for +1/+1 counters?
Say I have a hardened scales and master chef on the field and my opponent has Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger.
Would it work the same way where I as the controller of the affected creature entering battlefield get the choose the way the effects work and therefore still get one +1/+1 counter? Or would it be 0?
You're the controller of the affected object, so you choose the order of all replacement effects
As for the last scenario I always thought that the last effect was at the top of the stack in terms of priority
When we're dealing with the stack then yes we go by active player non active player order. But replacement effects don't use the stack so we go by controller of the affected object or affected player.
Replacement effects for Red ping decks is annoying ill admit i fall in that group. I had a zurzoth deck once and i then learned how it works and i felt like i bought a Solphim for nothing.
But it makes sens like you said for the most amount of scenarios. Sucks but it makes sens.
Yeah not intuitive to most folks, but I think it makes sense. Who knows maybe Wizards will change it someday
one thing that needs to be redone is layers... take Ashaya, soul of the wild having a +1/+1 and blood moon. because layers all of your creatures would be mountains even tho ashaya no longer has the ability to make your creatures forests because the ability it no longer has is applied in a previous layer. So now you are stuck with all of your creatures being mountains even tho there are no abilities on the battlefield to make them lands to be affected by blood moon....
How would you remake the layers in a way that doesn't make more interactions non-intuitive?.
Once you understand the layers and why the order is the way it is, this makes a lot of sense. Trying to remember each layer and sublayer is a different story.
@@TheSpiritombsableyeMaybe it could be "fixed" by separating the giving and removing abilities layer into two different layers, so they could work like the classic "can't always beats can". And even then it wouldn't really be "fixed"
Yeah not every card is for every deck... just dont play city on fire in ojer. Ojers effect is the best with things like electrostatic field or gutter snipe, and it comes with a built in way to multiply, add to its power. Here have a bonesplitter axe and/or a firebrand archer. Now your shock hits for a buttload and you didnt need to spend 8 mana
I agree! If one effect doesn't work for someone's deck I'm sure they could find a different effect that does work to their advantage!
The thing about this rule that infuriates me the most is how inconsistent Multiplication and modification is. Like this only applies to damage, yet having a Parallel lives and a doubling season apparently compounds into 8x token production but if I have Fiery emancipation and City on Fire the opponent only takes 7x instances of Damage as opposed to 9x
I'm confused. Why wouldn't they take 9x the damage?
@@keepingitcasualmtg The effect does not go 3x3 as an output. Each modification is put on the stack separately and they do not see each other as "Sources". So 3 damage will end up as 15 damage rather than 27 damage. I misspoke in my original comment. t is modified 5x not 7x. The Damage tripler effectively says "Add two more instances of damage". The Source is preserved. So the first tripler goes "oh yeah 9 damage, but the second tripler also goes oh yeah 9 damage. However this does not add an additional source. 1 source + 2 additional Instances + 2 additional Instances = 5 Instances of total damage taken.
So replacement effects don't use the stack, they're applied one at a time when they can apply. So if we were to have both permanents on the field and we deal two damage we can choose to apply City on Fire first which would triple 2 to 6 then we can apply Fiery Emancipation since it can still apply to this event and it would triple the 6 into 18 damage.
Can you cover multiple oppo agents or multiple notion thiefs in a multiplayer game?
most recent oppo agent gets to be the one who takes control (the oppo agent effects are applied in timestamp order)
and say all players have a notion thief, then it becomes a fun mini game because each player rather than draw X cards, choose which player doesn't get to draw their card(s)
I do plan on making something on it at some point. It's on my list!
Great response!
Thank you so much!
We don’t just need to look at rules from an intuitiveness level. The added dynamic is that we need judges to be able to make rulings as consistently as possible. If a rule change makes things less consistent, that makes the game worse because suddenly a consistent event becomes an arbitrary event.
The one thing I disagree with is “there’s no wrong way to play the game”. There are two wrong ways to play the game - taking things personally and playing in a non-tournament setting with the sole goal of winning. It’s one thing to play a wacky mini-game at a kitchen table for fun, another thing to start to take things personally if you’re clearly ahead and have to deal with interaction or end up losing.
Yes someone did bring up a few wrong ways to play and I agree. I think being a sore loser/winner isn't the right way to play the game. Trying to make everyone else have a miserable time I feel is against the spirit of the multiplayer formats.
The rule works really well when there are antagonist effect but they are pretty bad at dealing with congruing effect. It is a choice made by the designer, but by no mean the only one, or even a good one to begin with.
It s not dumb or great, it's just the state of the game. They chose that solution in particular between all the possible solutions. It is a simple one, but a bit inelegant in my mind.
I'd say that a clause saying that this rule apply only if there are multiple effect controller, and if there is one controller, the controller get to choose would make a lot of sense, but it would ad a layer of complexity, albeit arelaly tiny layer though ...
My two cent as a ojanil pplayer who removed all damage multipliyer from her deck
Replacement effects aren't controlled by players
@@sy-py but their source is though.
@@MsZoeval Only when it's an object. Sometimes it's simply a game rule
your king, great video ty!
Thank you so much!
The way is simple: Don't fucking mix multiplicative increases with additive increases, saves you the trouble and it's almost never worth to keep both types on the deck anyways.
That's one solution another is to play pump effects with Ojer Axonil instead!
What would happen if my opponent has a Vorinclex Monstrous Raider, and I have a counter doubler on the battlefield? Could I order the effects to apply VMR first then double?
If a counter is placed on a permanent you control, you choose in which order to apply the replacement effects
So what's the correct ruling for the Dauthi Voidwalker vs Rest in Peace situation?
Assuming it is the controller(owner?) Of the blightsteel gets to decide, since that is the affected object
Exactly right! Controller of the affected object. So the Blightsteel owner gets to decide
The rules may not hate you, but WOTC certainly does. All of us
🤣🤣🤣 At least we're all hated equally
Could you say the same for all those WotC people Hasbro fired recently?
On the subject of Rule 0, Houserules, and similar, hearing that makes me wince every time, because the following statements are true:
True: Nobody is going to bust into your place of gathering with friends over a casual fun game and force you to play according to a specific set of rules.
True: If everyone at the table of a casual game has agreed on modifications to the rules that they enjoy, it is not wrong to enjoy playing with them.
True: If you are using houserules, you often lose any ground to be upset when those rules then break other rules in ways you didn't expect and either lead to unintended consequences or more house rules
True: If you are using houserules, there is no longer any unbiased arbiter of fact, as the rules are being created and maintained solely by the people modifying them, making it more difficult to actually apply modified rules fairly when tensions are high.
True: If you are using houserules, your playgroup becomes less welcome to newcomers, who are likely to arrive at your table with the reasonable presumption that you are all playing the same game the same way, and will be blindsided by your houserules if you don't onboard people in a way that makes things accessible.
True: If your playgroup uses houserules, and you ever want to play with anyone else that isn't part of your base playgroup, you can't take them with you - your new opponent from outside does not know them, and you have no grounds of mutual agreement to enforce them. If they don't accept your houserules, and you insist on them anyway, you become the jerk.
True: If you ever opt to play in a competetive setting, your houserules are meaningless, and the techniques and skills you've learned from playing with them exclusively can easily becomes maladaptive to the new situation. Complaining about this makes you look like the jerk.
I remember, back in my grade school days, learning to play Checkers. The game had a rulebook, and it was a set of very simple, straightforward rules... and yet, every single time I sat down to play against anyone else, I would have to ask them some variation on "How do *you* play Checkers?" because it was a 50/50 shot whether they played some weird houseruled variant that they saw as normal - Optional Capture; Flying Kings; Multistacking; No Multijumps; and on and on. For such a simple game, the number of variations and combinations was annoyingly large. If you didn't establish whether or not there were house rules in play from the get-go, the game would screech to a halt the moment someone did anything different. Worst, 80% of the time when someone did play using hosuerules, they didn't *realise* they were houserules, and just thought they were normal rules, so they don't actually mention them during that initial conversation, then are shocked when you have to tell them that's a houserule.
The same thing happened a bit later on, when I learned chess. I got so tired of it that, every time I sat down to play with someone I hadn't played with before, I would tell them: "I play by the rules listed in the official rulebook. If we have a rules disagreement, the rulebook is the final decider." If you've ever tried to explain En Passant to a novice player, you'll know what a headache it is to try to do so in the middle of trying to do it, and being accused of making up rules they don't understand. The ubiquity of board game Rule 0 is part of what makes situations like this hard, because the person who does not like the rule that they don't normally use or play by will feel justified in *demanding* Rule 0 on this rule they weren't aware of.
Monopoly. The sheer volume of house rules used in a simple game of Monopoly is staggering; the arguments produced between two people who have been raised in different-playing households is Legendary. The worst part here is that, even moreso than usual, people seem to legitimately believe that what they are doing *is* the real rules, not actually houserules, and are surprised, shocked, and even angry when they find out otherwise, especially mid-game. The deer-in-headlights look in an opponent's eyes when I bring up auctioning a property I don't want to buy...
So yes. Rule 0 does exist. But Magic is not a tabletop rpg. It isn't the same thing as a cooperatively built experience - it's a competitive card game. Rule 0, at its worst, will limit the range of people you can play with, and will definitely lead to arguments when the new 'fairer' houserules suddenly work against someone sometimes and 'need to be changed' again.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don’t believe it’s just a solely competitive game. There are people who enjoy it more as a competitive game, but at the end of the day it’s just a game. Smash bros can be enjoyed at a competitive level or casually with all items on. Nothing wrong with either. I think it’s just preference at the end of the day
If you have the time, would you care to look over a specific scenario that happened in my playgroup last night?
I have Torbran, Thane of Red Fell out with a Fiery Emancipation also on the battlefield. I cast Acidic Soil and we each have 5 lands out (similar to the shock in your scenario). I always thought I stacked the damage triggers in this situation? So 5 from the Acidic soil +2 from Torbran=7...then x3 from Fiery E.= 21 damage to my opponents and 15 damage to myself?
If that's not the case, what's the minimum amount of damage each player should have taken?
My friend even stated: "Dude, I think we pick how we take that damage"
I then stated, "well it's not like we're assigning combat damage here...it's just damage dealt by resolving triggers on the stack, I don't believe you do..." Turns out he may be correct here? I'm by no means a judge, but I always felt like I had a pretty good grasp on game mechanics and rulings.
Like some of the comments above...it sort of defeats the purpose of nearly my entire list if this is the case lol
Appreciate your videos, content, and time! I'm definitely open for discussion, I don't want to feel like I cheated them all extra damage when that shouldn't have been the case.
So in the case of damage and replacement effects each affected player chooses they order they want to apply the effects. In your scenario the least amount of damage one could take would be applying Fiery Emancipation first to 15 then adding 2 with Torbran to 17. Doubles don’t work very well with Torbran, Solphim may be a better candidate.
Is that really how to the Ojer/Gisela interaction would play out? I would think it'd be 4 damage either way; just the amount of damage that's prevented would be different. This matters because some prevention effects refer to the amount of damage that was prevented.
PS- I think no matter what the rule is, simultaneous damage to multiple objects controlled by different players with multiple replacement effects is guaranteed to be confusing.
So it would either be Gisela prevents half the damage first rounded up so half of 1 is .5 rounded up to 1 that will get prevented. Since 0 damage is being dealt Axonil won’t be able to apply.
Second scenario 1 damage is dealt to 4 then half is prevented to 2
So my conclusion in the case of Ojer vs Gisela is that the Gisela player will take either 1 or 4 damage, Gisela player's choice. Is this correct?
Is we’re going by current rules it’s either 0 or 2. Gisela can prevent half rounded up. Half of 1 is .5 rounded up to 1, 1 damage will get prevented. Since no damage is not being dealt Axonil will not apply.
Or apply Axonil first to turn 1 to 4 then prevent half of that to 2 with Gisela.
They should give Ojer burn-banding :)
🤣🤣 Bring banding back
My one gripe with the rules is on linked abilities, I think the rules around them are unintuitive.
If you can read an interaction on a card and it makes sense with other compatible game actions, those should apply.
While I also agree that linked abilities are pretty unintuitive and it would be cool if you could mix and match abilities from different sources, I get why they want to avoid that to stop some pretty weird things from happening.
I'm sure its in place to prevent other broken interactions from taking place. It would be cool if they could be broken up though...
Kaldra Compleat equipped on an Intellect Devourer is a case where reading the cards doesn't explain the cards.
Any resonable understanding of language should let you arrive at a conclusion that creatures exiled in combat by the Intellect Devourer should then be able to be played.
Linked abilities says no in that very unintuitive way that is against what the two cards literally say.
Id rather replacement effects work like layers, essentially being layers for the affected thing be that a permanent or damage. A robust system that's counterintuitive is still a bad system, being stubborn in how wrong you are doesn't make you less wrong.
It's a robust system that's counterintuitive in this very scenario. I don't even know how you would begin to implement replacement effects like layers. We already have layers as it is and that's already confusing for folks already. I'm fine with admitting I'm wrong, but if I were to pick the judgement of the people who actually get paid to make the rules over a comment over the internet, I think I will trust the ones getting paid.
@@keepingitcasualmtg Devs get paid to make games, but they still listen to the people who actually have to play said games. Rules in a vacuum are all well and good, I can acknowledge that structurally the rules are very impressive and honestly considering how many moving pieces magic contains the designers did a phenomenal job while also complaining that it produces counter intuitive, game brakingly bad results. But the "comments over the internet" are how those rules evolve. We wouldn't have the current Mulligan rules if it weren't for "comments over the internet" the erratas that make cards more intuitive wouldn't have happened if we ignored those "comments over the internet" hell even game balance that then affect rules changes like the companion change happened because of "comments over the internet". Even something as recent as the deciduous standardisation to game rules functionally identical to things like surveil happened because of people on the internet complaining and sharing how unintuitive the rules the people who got paid to make them felt.
Discussing systems and how those system are frustrating when they produce bad results isn't wrong simply because I don't get paid to do so. If anything, it's more valuable because I actively choose to engage in said frustrating systems and invest my time in a game I love despite not being paid for it. The rules are great, I love them 90% of the time, but that 10% doesn't just stop being a problem because the 90% is great.
And as for what I meant, I primarily meant time stamps since it mirrors an existing rule in the game and while being somewhat tedious, at least produces results you can go "oh well at least that makes sense" to when someone explains it, instead of the current system which interacts nothing like what every other interaction produces typically.
That's fair, players bringing up pain points about a game is how a game can evolve and improve. I have heard that players are often good at pointing out what's frustrating with a game, but often aren't great with knowing how to handle it. So I get that it could be unintuitive and frustrating for some. I do trust the folks at wizards to have their reasons. I do believe that the people on their rules team probably would have a far better understanding of the rules than you or I, so I'd rather just trust they know what they're doing, but for all I know I could be completely wrong and there is a very elegant solution that they roll out in a future set.
Yeah no that's one rule that I will never follow. And i'm willing to lose tournaments and money to stand on this principle.
Fact of the matter is that for all intents and purposes the "Object" being affected is the "Spell" thats being cast or the "Permanent" that is dealing the damage. And I'm adamant about this whether I lose the game or not. If someone stacks their effects that belong to them, I should have no say in how they affect me. The ONLY time I have a say is when I have my own effect that modifies how their effect affect me.
Neither the spell nor the permanent that is the source of damage is affected by any replacement effects
That's why it gets weird with multiple effects controlled by different players. You could have doublers, or things that add, or prevent damage. I think a lot of it is also for game flow purposes. Having one person just choose just seems like an easier process
@@keepingitcasualmtg That's why I just keep it simple and look at the effects individually. If you have something that doubles, and I have something that halves, they cancel each other out. If you have something that adds x amount and I have something that subtracts x amount, we go with the bigger amount. It's just simple math. If we all have the same effect (ex: exile from grave) we follow active/not active order to determine which effect applies.
Honestly the rules and possible interactions are too complex and convoluted by this point to properly balance.
Magic is definitely a complicated game the fact that some old cards still with the way they do is impressive that they managed to make it work with current rules
@@keepingitcasualmtg The game is built on a VERY solid foundation.
The guy who made it has been trying to reclaim the lightning-in-a-bottle he captured every day since his departure from WOTC. He's literally worked nonstop making dozens of new card games that all fail to be as good as MTG.
The problem is that Rosewater is a little bit too cavalier with his application of the master design document at times, and WOTCs goal to make money forces them to continually powercreep themselves to death, both in MTG and in D&D.
I think the game is reaching its natural conclusion.
I LOVE Magic and honestly I never want to make a deck anymore because I either have too many options or too few, and the game always stays the same: a race to 0.
I understand the rule, I think my issue is specific to the noncombatant damage with only your cards triggering…it is absurd that the opponent gets to decide how it plays out when they had 0 interaction previous to the decision.
I agree it isn’t game breaking but it certainly takes away fun…that rule made me not even want to try a burn deck in commander…not worth it
None of the cards in the provided example have triggered abilities that are relevant
@@sy-py what?
@@adamgarcia5616 None of the cards in the example "trigger".
@@sy-py oh good lord, yes yes I know the difference between triggered abilities and replacement effects. The point I am making is that the only card “interaction” is with your own cards and the fact that your opponent gets to decide how all of your cards interact is absurd.
In that scenario yes it's with the permanents that they own, but you could have a situation similar to that with none of the cards they own. In those cases who would get to apply. I believe this rule is in place to help with any disputes that could crop up and give then a final say on how it would happen regardless of who controlled what.
I think of APNAP in this scenario as Affected Player Non Affected Player in these scenarios
😆😆😆 I think typically it's not considered that way, but could be a good way to remember it. Hopefully its not confusing when it comes to the stack!
@@keepingitcasualmtg hopefully it won't 😂😂
How would the thing “affected” by damage ever NOT be the player being damaged?
Folks might argue that it's the source, but I think if we delve deeper into it it's the thing receiving the damage that would be affected by it. Folks also would argue it shouldn't be that way.
Because to judge by the last time they did, people would freak the fuck out.
We don't want to cause riots
@@keepingitcasualmtg Hasbro has already done enough to get people pissed at them. I don't think they'd do that. Plus they'd have to do it two years from now. That's how far in advance they work on MTG>
1:08 you've dug yourself a hole. Now you need a whole video on what constitutes an event, and why? What is an object? Why and how are they different? How to identify an event and the whole list of events that do exist in M;tG.
If all of it can't be explained thoroughly, yes it does look like Wizards pulls things out of their ass.
Well seeing as Wizards makes the game they can therefore make up whatever rule they want. Where they have to be careful is making rules that people will like enough to play their game. So we can try to pick apart every detail of the game and every flaw, but I'd rather just understand the game enough to be able to play well better.
As far as all the list of events I can't tell you what all of those entails within the rules, but I can tell you they have defined what an object is
109.1. An object is an ability on the stack, a card, a copy of a card, a token, a spell, a permanent, or an
emblem.
120.4. Damage is processed in a four-part sequence.
120.4a First, if an effect that’s causing damage to be dealt states that excess damage that would be
dealt to a permanent is dealt to another permanent or player instead, the damage event is modified accordingly. If the first permanent is a creature, the excess damage is the amount of damage in excess of what would be lethal damage, taking into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other sources that would be dealt at the same time. (See rule 120.6.) Any amount of damage greater than 1 is excess damage if the source dealing that damage to a creature has deathtouch. (See rule 702.2.) If the first permanent is a planeswalker, the excess damage is the amount of damage in excess of that planeswalker’s loyalty, taking into account damage from other sources that would be dealt at the same time. If the first permanent is a battle, the excess damage is the amount of damage in excess of that battle’s defense, taking into account damage from other sources that would be dealt at the same time. If the first permanent has multiple card types from among the list of creature, planeswalker, and battle, the excess damage is the greatest of the calculated amounts for each of the card types it has.
120.4b Second, damage is dealt, as modified by replacement and prevention effects that interact with damage. (See rule 614, “Replacement Effects,” and rule 615, “Prevention Effects.”) Abilities that trigger when damage is dealt trigger now and wait to be put on the stack.
120.4c Third, damage that’s been dealt is processed into its results, as modified by replacement
effects that interact with those results (such as life loss or counters). 120.4d Finally, the damage event occurs
@@keepingitcasualmtg the idea that someone as knowledgeable as you can't tell me even some events is concerning; not for you, but for Wizards.
On another note, I didn't know that damage was implemented in a four step process. That's cool to know. Thank you.
700.1. Anything that happens in a game is an event.
Object moves zones? Event. Player loses life? Event. Counters are added? Event. Counters are removed? Event. Player gains life? Event. A triggered ability is put on the stack? Event.
It's funny, this rule isn't allowed or isn't observed in Arena. I use these combos on Arena and when I add it up, it adds the way I count it.
Interesting Arena maximizes it potentially? You can change the settings to apply it how you want if it's happening towards you
From what I gather yes, they max it. I run Red Ojer, Solphim, and even city on fire. Doing the math that benefits me the most, it usually picks that one. I could only imagine the amount of work the game would have to do to 'check' all 2008 subrules (as of 2014) to go yeah thats good.@@keepingitcasualmtg