Rulings from the Design Team: Interpreting Cards in Multiplayer Play
Thomas R Wylie
While Wizards of the Coast is not releasing any rules for multiplayer play, we
recognize that several multiplayer variants exist, and it is unclear how to
interpret certain cards in such a context, notably those cards which say
"opponent". To help solve disputes, we are releasing the following set of
rulings on how to interpret certain cards in multiplayer play; these rulings
also extend to normal two-player play. Future printings of these cards will
be rewritten to accomodate multiplayer play, most likely using the rulings
below. While we don't want to issue strong rulings on team play at this point,
we recommend that "opponent" never include one's teammates.
These effects apply to "target opponent". If a continuous ability, choose
that opponent when the permanent is played. You may not choose another
opponent later, so if that opponent leaves the game, the permanent becomes
useless, and changing control of the permanent will not change who it targets.
If an activated abilty, choose an opponent each time the permanent is
activated. If a spell, choose the target as normal.
Arena
Black Vise
Citanul Druid
Cuombajj Witches
Cursed Rack
Demonic Attorney
Dwarven Catapult
Eternal Flame
Festival
Gaea's Avenger
Glasses of Urza
Invoke Prejudice
Jihad
Lifeblood
Lifetap
Mirror Universe
Nebuchadnezzar
Nova Pentacle
Powerleech
Preacher
Psychic Allergy
Rack, The
Rag Man
Rainbow Vale
Siren's Call
Tempest Efreet
Underworld Dreams
These effects apply to "target player". Follow the same rules as for "target
opponent" cards as to when the target is chosen.
Ancestral Recall
Disrupting Scepter
Drain Power
Kismet
Jovial Evil
Mana Short
Mind Twist
Storm Seeker
Word of Command
These effects apply to all players.
Balance
Eureka
Mana Flare
Pestilence
Timetwister
Wheel of Fortune
These effects should be read as saying "any opponent".
Bronze Tablet
Farrel's Mantle
Fellwar Stone
Hyperion Blacksmith
Land Equilibrium
Land Tax
NafŐs Asp
Psychic Purge
Relic Bind (this ruling applies to the errata)
Whirling Dervish
Witch Hunter
Choose a different opponent each time the effect applies.
Clergy of the Holy Nimbus
Demonic Hordes
Ernham Djinn
Rogahh of Kher Keep
These cards require a coin toss. Target an opponent each time the coin is
flipped.
Bottle of Suleiman
Goblin Artisans
Goblin Kites
Mijae Djinn
Orcish Captain
Ydwen Efreet
The following cards should say "defending player" instead of "opponent":
Dandan
Delif's Cone
Delif's Cube
Farrel's Zealot
Giant Shark
Goblin Rock Sled
Goblin War Drums
Island Fish Jasconius
Merchant Ship
Orgg
Pirate Ship
Sea Serpent
Vodalian Knights
Water Wurm
Special Cases
Aladdin: Targets an artifact not controlled by you.
Ghazban Ogre: Add "If you are tied for highest life total, Ghazban Ogre does
not change controller. If other players are tied for highest life total and
you or not, choose randomly which player gets control of Ghazban Ogre."
Nettling Imp: Targets a creature not controlled by you. Forces that player
to attack and may only be used during that player's turn. It does not target
that player.
Remove Enchantments: Read the second sentence as "If cast while an opponent is
attacking you..."
Scarwood Bandits: Can take control of any artifact not controlled by you.
The controller of that artifact would be the one to pay to counter the effect.
Sharazad: Whoever wins the subgame loses no life. Each other player loses
half of his or her life. If a draw, everyone loses life.
Sorrow's Path: Only usable if you are not the defending player.
Wall of Dust: Read "your opponent" as "their controller".
David E Gildemeister
time, or once it enters play? And is its ability continuous or "activated"
each upkeep?
Dave G.
Syielvasj Shratdeshm
>... To help solve disputes, we are releasing the following set of
>rulings on how to interpret certain cards in multiplayer play; these rulings
>also extend to normal two-player play. Future printings of these cards will
>be rewritten to accomodate multiplayer play, most likely using the rulings
>below. While we don't want to issue strong rulings on team play at this point,
>we recommend that "opponent" never include one's teammates.
Just what many of us have been waiting for; of course, there are going
to be a few gripes. If these rulings affect how cards will be worded in
future printings, I'd like them to be discussed now.
>These effects apply to "target opponent". If a continuous ability, choose
>that opponent when the permanent is played. You may not choose another
>opponent later, so if that opponent leaves the game, the permanent becomes
>useless, and changing control of the permanent will not change who it targets.
I have trouble swallowing this. Until now, I've been able to steal an
opponent's Black Vise to escape its damage and turn it upon its caster.
The Vise and both Racks seem much more wicked with this defensive option
taken away. I can accept Jihad and Psychic Allergy targetting an opponent;
it's reasonable for the other enchantments in the group to be there as well.
>If an activated abilty, choose an opponent each time the permanent is
>activated. If a spell, choose the target as normal.
I have no problems with this. I did note, however, that this usage
of "spell" implies that permanents with continuous effects target a player
only when they have been successfully played, not while they are still
spells. This affects counterspell decisions in free-for-alls, as well
as the effect of the Reflecting Mirror in a duel.
[first of many lists excised for brevity]
>These effects apply to "target player". Follow the same rules as for "target
>opponent" cards as to when the target is chosen...
My gripes here are less important, since they only affect multi-player
games, but it does seem odd that you can now Word of Command an ally, but
not use Glasses of Urza to look at his/her hand.
>These effects apply to all players...
My group has always treated cards that affect both players as affecting
all players in a multi-player game. I would still like to see the proposed
new wording for Balance.
>These effects should be read as saying "any opponent"...
A few of these don't seem to belong in this category. Nafs Asp says
"your opponent" twice; it is reasonable to interpret the "If..." case as
"any opponent", but not the "...must spend 1..." case. I also wonder why
Farrel's Mantle is here, while Farrel's Zealot is listed under "defending
player".
>Choose a different opponent each time the effect applies...
This statement is vague. Clarify?
>These cards require a coin toss. Target an opponent each time the coin is
>flipped...
I can't object to this.
>The following cards should say "defending player" instead of "opponent":
I really don't see how Water Wurm belongs here. All of the other cards
have text that is only checked when a creature attacks.
What bothers me most is the loss of defense againt the Vise and the
silliness with the Water Wurm. I'd like to see a few clarifications as
well, notably on the reflectability of Jihad and the "Choose a different
opponent..." sentence. Despite this, and a few instances where apparently
parallel cards fall in different categories, I'd like to applaud the release
of these rulings. It's nice to see the Design Team acknowledge that many
people prefer to play multi-player games, and to have something official to
settle disputes when we do. I hope that this is just the beginning, and
that this discussion will lead to more consistent multi-player rulings in
the future.
Syielvasj
Lutz Hofmann
Thomas R Wylie <aa...@cats.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>Future printings of these cards will
>be rewritten to accomodate multiplayer play, most likely using the rulings
>below.
>While we don't want to issue strong rulings on team play at this point,
>we recommend that "opponent" never include one's teammates.
>These effects apply to "target opponent".
>If a continuous ability, choose
>that opponent when the permanent is played. You may not choose another
>opponent later, so if that opponent leaves the game, the permanent becomes
>useless, and changing control of the permanent will not change who it targets.
This needs discussion. I quote below all cards with a continous ability, which
would be affected by this rule.
>If an activated abilty, choose an opponent each time the permanent is
>activated. If a spell, choose the target as normal.
This is good.
> Black Vise
> Citanul Druid
> Cursed Rack
> Gaea's Avenger
> Invoke Prejudice
> Jihad
> Lifeblood
> Lifetap
> Powerleech
> Psychic Allergy
> Rack, The
> Underworld Dreams
>These effects apply to "target player". Follow the same rules as for "target
>opponent" cards as to when the target is chosen.
All cards use the word opponent. WotC is free to word future cards differently
as they already did for Fungusaur. But old printings should function according
to their old wording. Therefore all these cards should go in the category
above.
> Ancestral Recall
There may be case for AR to remain here in regard to team-play, as AR
may be targeted on its caster. An expansion to all opponents as eligible
targets could draw all teammates with it.
> Kismet
Kismet would suffer under the continous effect rules above.
>These effects apply to all players.
These cards seem to be in the right list except as noted below.
> Timetwister
Could remain here for reasons of team-play, otherwise it should only
refer to any or each _opponent_. q.v. 'Ancestral Recall'
Timetwister always affects its caster.
> Wheel of Fortune
Already talks about all players, and does not need a multiplayer-ruling.
>These effects should be read as saying "any opponent".
All cards seem to be in the right category. Some cards need special
mention.
> Farrel's Mantle
text:' ... deals no damage to opponent this turn.'
This is the only reference to opponent on this card. IMHO this opponent can
only be the defending opponent. FM should go into the 'defending opponent'
category below. There should be risk in this ability in team-play.
> Land Tax
does not need to be on the list. Land Tax already says 'an opponent'
(singular), leaving open the player as any does. Both wording work the same.
> Naf's Asp
2nd reference should be to the the same opponent as in the damaging part.
> Psychic Purge
3rd reference should be to the the same opponent as in the forcing part.
>Choose a different opponent each time the effect applies.
Why must one choose each time a different opponent. Nothing on the
cards (unsurprisingly) supports this. As cards are played according to their
wording WotC would need to reprint these in further editions with a wording
to this effect. And the existing ones would play differently in multiplayer
than the new ones. Until such time these cards should be in the pre-
ceding category 'any one opponent' or in 'target opponent'.
Interesting sideeffect: Would they fall under the 'continous effect'
ruling there?
I can hear many questions:'I duels I only have one opponent, i cannot
choose a different one. What should i do?' :)
>These cards require a coin toss. Target an opponent each time the coin is
>flipped.
No problem here. This is similar to the above category as the effect is
ever the same 'coin toss + another'. But the requirement to choose a different
opponent each time is dropped.
>The following cards should say "defending player" instead of "opponent":
All but one look ok.
> Water Wurm
I prefer 'attacking opponent' or 'any opponent'. The Water Wurm got
its bonus for the existance of an opponent with an island. Therefore
it should not be restricted to be effective in an attack. 'any opponent'
seems the way to go.
After examining all cards above i propose to handle the continous effects
in the 'target opponent' category as follows:
Choose an opponent each time the effect applies.
This lets us get rid of choosing a target at playing time of the
permanent. There is the distinct advantage, that no impact on two-player-rules
would be generated. Furthermore it allows to uphold: 'cards talk to their
controllers', i.e. opponents mentioned on the card are their controller's
opponents. No additional rule for change of control is needed as the
opponents for a controller are known.
This puts the continous-effects-cards together with the 'choosing a different
opponent' and the 'coin-toss' cards in the same category. And this is not that
different from the activated effects in the 'target opponent' category.
an example:
Lifetap: Anytime any opponent taps a forest the controller gets a lifepoint.
Gaea's Avenger: Counts up the artifacts any opponent controls.
Citanul Druid: Anytime any opponent casts an artifact, it gets a counter.
All cards would all work similarto a lucky charm.
For Black Vise, The Rack and Cursed Rack work the same as Demonic Hordes,
Ernham Djinn and Rogahh of Kher Keep as they are effects bound to a phase
(upkeep. discard) of any opponent.
Summary:
New categories (members as detailed above)
- Choose an opponent each time the effect applies.
- any opponent
- all players
- defending player
- target opponent (permanent special abilities and Eternal Flame, Dwarven
Catapult)
- target player (just for Ancestral Recall)
Two-player play should not be changed.
Cards should talk to their controllers.
Cards are played according to their text.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>Special Cases
>Aladdin: Targets an artifact not controlled by you.
>Nettling Imp: Targets a creature not controlled by you.
>Scarwood Bandits: Can take control of any artifact not controlled by you.
All three should refer to any opponent as the card says opponent. (future
printings)
>Sharazad: Whoever wins the subgame loses no life. Each other player loses
>half of his or her life. If a draw, everyone loses life.
This should depend on the win-conditions of the particular multiplayer-game.
We _do_ play multiplayers until the first player dies. These are most often
three-player games.
Yours Sincerely Lutz Hofmann
l...@cs.tu-berlin.de
--
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jeff wilder
--
=============================================================================
| Jeff W. Wilder | Look, I'm sorry, | Anybody that hates kids and dogs |
| wil...@mik.uky.edu | but you're wrong. | can't be all bad. -- W.C. Fields |
=============================================================================
Kyle Nishioka
: M. Costalas <doi...@er7.rutgers.edu> wrote:
: >Am I reading this correctly? If so, then if a black vise is targeted at me
: >and I steal that artifact, I can't redirect it? Is it still affecting ME?
: Yes, exactly.
: Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
: aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Won't that make a contradiction since you cannot be your own opponent
(you know, the reason you may not attack yourself).
--
Kyle
nk...@uhunix3.uhcc.hawaii.edu
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
Frederick Scott
>My only concern is the change in ruling on Black Vice, Rack, etc. Under
>the multi-player ruling, a Steal Artifact would make no difference on a Black
>Vice, even though it seems obvious (in a duel) who should be affected by it.
>Is the only-one-target-player-ever ruling the official ruling for sanctioned
>tournaments?
It sounds like it.
>I believe this pretty much eliminates the usability of Steal Artifact.
I've never notice Steal Artifacts to have been a very popular card for
sanctioned tournaments anyway - it costs too much mana. But I think you're
overstating the situatation. The vast majority of artifacts are still
quite vulnerable to it.
Fred
Michael G Schmahl
: I really wish you would stop saying "target when played" when you mean
: "target when cast". A card isn't in play till it is on the table but you
: have to name a target when you cast it (to see if it will be counterspelled
: etc.) according to these new rules.
"Play" and "cast" are almost synonymous. There are other ways,
though, of playing a card besides casting it. Such as bringing it
directly out of the graveyard (I don't think this is currently
possible for Artifacts, yet), or playing during Eureka. "Target
when played" I think is exactly what he means. "Target when played"
doesn't imply that it targets when it enters play, but rather when
played out of the hand.
--
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AGLA | Michael Schmahl (fx...@acf-lab.alaska.edu)
M:tG | Math / CS / Theater / Philosophy
Rich Shipley
: M. Costalas <doi...@er7.rutgers.edu> wrote:
: >Am I reading this correctly? If so, then if a black vise is targeted at me
: >and I steal that artifact, I can't redirect it? Is it still affecting ME?
: Yes, exactly.
This is pretty horrible. Any other permanent would have its text
re-interpreted when it changes controllers. Why not just require the
opponant to be re-chosen when one of these changes controllers in a
multi-player game so that these rulings don't affect normal duels?
I really appreciate WotC trying to come up with standard multi-player
rules, but they shouldn't change the basic game. I don't think we need
"targetted" artifacts, just make a special case for multi-player games.
Rich
Joseph W. DeVincentis
jeff wilder <wil...@mik.uky.edu> wrote:
>What about Winter Orb?
What about it? It's been ruled for a long time now that "A player" on
Winter Orb means "Each player, on his or her turn." You could put it on
the "affects all players" list. You could put a lot of other stuff
there, too, like Earthquake, Hurricane, etc. that WotC did not include.
Sam Pullara
: "target when cast". A card isn't in play till it is on the table but you
: have to name a target when you cast it (to see if it will be counterspelled
: etc.) according to these new rules.
"Play" and "cast" are almost synonymous. There are other ways,
though, of playing a card besides casting it. Such as bringing it
directly out of the graveyard (I don't think this is currently
possible for Artifacts, yet), or playing during Eureka. "Target
when played" I think is exactly what he means. "Target when played"
doesn't imply that it targets when it enters play, but rather when
played out of the hand.
What if I transmute artifact a black vise into play?
--
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AGLA | Michael Schmahl (fx...@acf-lab.alaska.edu)
M:tG | Math / CS / Theater / Philosophy
--
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Northwestern University | Astrophysics Graduate Student
ave...@merle.acns.nwu.edu | "Everything I say is completely
Finger for PGP public key | hypothetical, hypothetically."
A visitor to Adam Cerling's WWW project
..
> Actually, we consider it acceptable behavior that, for example, you can
> Reflect a Black Vise back at the caster.
..
> Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
> aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
I don't like this either. Basically, you end up controlling a
permanent that does nothing but harm you. *You* will be trying to
destroy it, and your *opponent* will be trying to keep it in play.
It might as well be in his or her territory.
Fortunately for me, I never see a Reflecting Mirror. Neither do I see
an alternative better than the established "targeting" rules, though.
But answer me one question... why would it not be an acceptable
alternative to have a target chosen for such cards whenever they come
into a player's control? It would redeem the use of Steal Artifact.
Adam Cerling
Daniel J Barkalow
>The Rulings post said specifically such stuff was targetted upon entering play;
>this, at least, rules out the use of Reflecting Mirror on *any* of it (and thus
>we get a wholesale change that stems from a change not kept in the final
>version at all). The Black Vise's effect has long been ruled to be an upkeep
>effect, not a continuous one; unfortunately, they only gave rules for picking
>"opponent" for continuous abilities, activated abilities, and spells.
>Even now, saying "Oops, we forgot - for things that give upkeep effects on
>an opponent, choose an opponent to affect on each of *controller's* upkeeps"
>would place the Single Most Used Way to play Vise in multiplayer games firmly
>into WotC Recommendations, and would affect (let me see):
>Black Vise
>Cursed Rack
>The Rack
>Psychic Allergy
>(wow, *four cards* total). Of the others on that "opponent" list, clearly
>Citanul Druid, Gaea's Avenger, Invoke Prejudice, Jihad, Lifeblood, Lifetap,
>Powerleech, and Underworld Dreams fall under "continuous/pick one opponent
>when brought into play",
> Arena, Cuombajj Witches, Glasses of Urza, Mirror
>Universe, Nebuchadnezzar, Nova Pentacle, Preacher, Rag Man, Rainbow Vale,
>and Tempest Efreet fall under "activated ability/pick an opponent each time
>you use it",
> and Demonic Attorney, Dwarven Catapult, Eternal Flame, Festival,
>and Siren's Call fall under "spell/target as normal".
>For the "target player" list, none fall under "upkeep effects", and the rest
>either apply to all players or don't otherwise matter. The only surprise is
>that Kismet picks only one opponent to curse.
>So not counting upkeep effects, the only cards affected by the "stealing it
>doesn't change opponent" would be Citanul Druid and Gaea's Avenger (since
>enchantments can't be stolen). A far shorter list than I feared. Would you
>guys (Tom/Design Team) like to consider including the "change during
>controller's upkeep" option for the four upkeep-effect-giving things (3
>artifacts and one enchantment), and consider also including an "if 'opponent'
>gains control of the permanent, a new 'opponent' is immediately chosen" rule?
How about the idea that opponent cannot be the controller; only if the
target becomes the controller can it change. So if I steal his Rack
targeted at you, I can't target it at him, because you are still a valid
target. On the other hand, if I steal his Rack targeted at me, I get to
pick who will be the new target, because I can't be the target.
>I'd also like to know where the "choose a *different* opponent each time"
>list comes from; is that just "different from the last choice", or is it
>"different from each previous choice for this permanent", and if the latter,
>if one runs out of opponents can one not use the ability any more or does
>one start again with a fresh slate?
I think this should be an opponent who might not be the same one, i.e.
different as in the non-picky sense of not necessarily the same.
-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*
John R Davis
Thomas R Wylie <aa...@cats.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>
>M. Costalas <doi...@er7.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>>Am I reading this correctly? If so, then if a black vise is targeted at me
>>and I steal that artifact, I can't redirect it? Is it still affecting ME?
>
>Yes, exactly.
>
>
>aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
>
Oh dear. Storm warning - this is going to be unpopular. I quote from
the original (Tow Wylie) posting: "To help solve disputes, we are
releasing the following set of rulings on how to interpret certain
cards in multiplayer play; these rulings also extend to normal
two-player play." So, in a two-player game, even if I still steal my
opponent's black vise, it still affects me? This is going to be really
hard to justify to players who don't follow the net...
-jrd
--
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External: J.R....@bnr.co.uk - +44 (0)279 403618
Russ Allbery
>
>Hmmm - you must be reading something in these rulings I'm not seeing. When
>the (January) Reflecting Mirror thread started, I specifically asked Tom
>whether or not you could reflect an Underworld Dreams and his reply was
>in the affirmative. Some general enchantments, like Underworld Dreams and
>Invoke Prejudice are in the same list with Black Vice, The Rack and so forth.
I don't agree with that ruling either. Underworld Dreams as a spell does
not target anything. Underworld Dreams as a permanent targets when your
opponent draws a card; at least, I would consider that to be a much better
way of interpreting it, and much more obvious from the text than having it
target the opponent continuously. Underworld Dreams and Black Vise don't
*do* anything continuously; Underworld Dreams is triggered, and Black Vise
activates during your opponent's upkeep.
I could buy a ruling that said that the target became fixed when it entered
play, and that anything that caused it to change controllers would mean the
target changed. It still would be an annoyance in the targetting rulings,
but it would at least be logical. But they should target as *permanents*,
not as spells.
The whole idea of the fixation on opponent being a targetted effect is just
ridiculous to me. As I said, the logic behind "opponent" on the Vise
meaning that it is targetted as a spell seems to imply that such cards as
the Sea Serpent are also targetted, at least when the check occurs (and
since the Vise is targetted constantly even when it isn't doing anything,
that would imply that the Sea Serpent may be the same). That makes no sense
at all to me. The ruling implies that resolving the word "opponent" on Vise
is a targetted effect.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
Dennis F. Hefferman
|Actually, we consider it acceptable behavior that, for example, you can
|Reflect a Black Vise back at the caster.
Nobody I game with does, and very few of the people posting on the
topic here seem to.
This one gets filed with the Clockwork ruling.
--
Dennis Francis Heffernan IRC: FuzyLogic heff...@pegasus.montclair.edu
Montclair State University #include <disclaim.h> Computer Science/Philosophy
"They feed you on the guilt to keep you humble, keep you low/Some man and myth
they made up a thousand years ago." -- "Silent Legacy", Melissa Etheridge
SnowDog
[about black vise]
][ Yes, well, we basically decided it would be too complex to write it up
][ as changing target periodically should it be reprinted, so just
][ "standardized" it to target when played. Same for the racks.
Hrm. I don't have any cards in front of me, but perhaps changing steal
artificat to treat the stolen artifact as if just cast might "fix"
this...I'm trying to think of any times you wouldn't want this to
happen, but I can't off the top of my head...but that isn't saying much :)
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David DeLaney
>>If you're gonna have spells-that-make-permanents targetting players at
>>casting time, you're gonna have Reflecting Mirror usable on them, and that
>>is Not Acceptable Behavior...
>
>Actually, we consider it acceptable behavior that, for example, you can
>Reflect a Black Vise back at the caster.
Black Vise says "opponent". Always has. A player *cannot* be their own
opponent, because (among other things) then the ruling "Your creatures may
only attack opponent, not you" no longer makes any sense whatsoever. Stuff
that says "opponent" cannot affect the person controlling it; there's even a
ruling about this re: Specter damage from you yourself, overruling the old
(last February) "if redirected opponent must discard" ruling.
I'd be willing to consider that a Vise might be redirectable somehow to a
different opponent; this is the current "most standard method" in multiplayer
games (the other standard is "it affects everyone else; kill its controller
quickly"). I cannot accept that it can affect the person currently controlling
it in *any* way, shape, or form. Not until the "Reversal of Fortune: Interrupt.
Cost U. Target permanent or spell being cast has the words 'opponent' and
'you', and the words 'opponent's' and 'your', interchanged wherever any of them
may appear in the text" spell gets issued.
And this proposed rulingl has more serious flaws than you think:
Up until now, there have only been two types of spells which create permanents
that *target* something: Enchant <foo> spells target the <foo> that the
permanent is going to be placed on, and "Copy an X" spells target the original
X (and even then they only half-target it). *Every other type of permanent
spell* simply puts a permanent into play *on the side of the caster*; he cannot
choose to put it anywhere other than in his territory, and thus this cannot
be targetted. (A hypothetical permanent placed by itself in an opponent's
territory would target that opponent; there aren't any yet.)
It is also long-established that spells making permanents *do not have the
text apply until the permanent enters play* (unless something needs to be
decided during the casting of the spell: Kobolds, for example, need to be red
as spells, and "Copy an X" spells need to target the X). Thus a Black Knight's
protection does *not* kick in until the Knight is in play, an Ivory Guardians
spell can be Thoughtlaced and then Red Elemental Blasted even though the
Guardians-to-be would have Protection from Red upon becoming a creature,
etc. If you're going to start saying "Okay: *These* items have texts that
take effect during the casting, even though they don't say so on the card",
you're gonna have to start explaining why *every* text doesn't take effect
during casting, and you're going to lose even more credibility.
The answer is simple: Spells that make a permanent whose text needs you
to choose an opponent target the opponent *when the text takes effect* -
that is to say, when the permanent appears in play. The spell itself only
makes a permanent, and doesn't target anything, as there are no questions
of *where* the permanent will be made, or *which* permanent will be made;
if the text on the permanent needs to choose a target, it doesn't do so
*before the text takes effect*, but only as the text takes effect.
Thus, *as the Ruling's text itself says*, you would only decide the
"target opponent", "target player", etc., at the very soonest *when the
permanent came into play*; there's no need to decide it earlier, and trying
to do so not only produces counter-intuitive *and* counter-to-play-intent
results, it conflicts with a good deal of the already-established structure
of the rulings and rules.
Please note that, as usual, I'm not mad at you personally, Tom; I'm directing
this through you at the Design Team and their incredible loss of touch with
the actual game environment. Even now, saying "oh, okay, we'll stand by
what we wrote: the stuff targets when it comes into play" would help
Immensely. (And the companion ruling that "any permanent which specifically
says that 'opponent' is affected cannot ever affect the current controller of
the permanent; if it would do so, controller instead picks an opponent of
theirs to be affected" is also Necessary.)
To reiterate: Black Vise, The Rack, and Cursed Rack cannot be Reflected at the
controller, positively absolutely, and should not be Reflectable at all,
since the *only* possible result of that ruling is that you'll either be
massively ignored *or* that people will start trying to use Reflecting Mirror
on all other upkeep costs and effects. Stuff that makes a permanent whose
text needs to pick a player in multiplayer games should do so when the
permanent comes into play if the effect is continuous, when the ability
is used if it's an activated ability, and during the controller's upkeep
if it's an upkeep effect.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. Disclaimer: IMHO; VRbeableWIKTHLC
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ / CanterSiegelKibozeBait!!
Cpaths
and pha...@west.darkside.com (Phantom of the InterN)
begun about Jan 2, 1995.
In the fifth turn, things look very bright for the phantom, whose deck
opened very quickly even though he did not go first. The black vise has
caught me with a full hand. In the fifth turn I'm attempting to
summon a seasinger to stop the onslaught:
TURN 1:
Toby plays a sand silo.
TURN 2:
Phantom plays 1 Island
Tap the Island and play a Sol Ring (T:2 Colorless Mana)
Tap the Sol Ring and play a Black Vise
Takes 1 damage from mana burn.
Life: 20 (toby) to 19 (phantom)
TURN 3:
Toby loses 3 life points to the black vise.
Place one mana counter on the sand silo, which remains tapped.
Play an inland sea.
Done. (life: toby 17, phantom 19)
TURN 4:
Phantom plays an Island (gasp).
Taps two islands and a Sol Ring and play a Phantom Monster (I really
like being able to do that).
Done. (life: toby 17, phantom 19)
TURN 5:
Toby untaps the sand silo,
takes 3 more damage from the vise and attempts to play a swamp
and summon seasinger (tapping all three lands including the sand silo counter).
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIFTH TURN, AFTER THE UNTAP PHASE:
In toby's hand: 7 cards
In phantom's hand: 4 cards
ON THE TABLE:
TOBY (17 life)
sand silo with one counter
inland sea
PHANTOM (19 life)
island (T)
island (T)
sol ring (T)
black vice
phantom monster
- toby robison Critical Paths, Inc. p01...@psilink.com
Thomas R Wylie
The question of whether those people not on the net will believe those of
us who are is not a factor when making ruling decisions.
The question of how quickly tournament judges are made aware of rulings
is not a factor when making ruling decisions.
Basically the design team is just concerned with what the proper solution to
a problem should be. The dissemination of information will take care
of itself. We are workingon speeding up the process, but such concerns
don't have any bearing on the rulings themselves.
Thomas R Wylie
At this point we would like to remove bandaids from the rules system,
not add them. Sticking in a "changing controller changes the target
by default" rule would be bandaid enough; tacking a "... but only
if it's an upkeep effect that was targetted" would be even worse.
While this particular bandaid might fix these four cards, it would
break others, or at least some hypothetical cards: Suppose there was
an interrupt which changed the controler of a sorcery. I cast Drain
Life at you; you want to use this hypothetical interrupt so you will
gain the life from the effect. Would you want to be forced to change
the target of the Drain Life just because someone wanted that bandaid
stuck onto the rules for the benefit of Black Vise?
And enlarging the bandaid with "but you could just target the old target"
doesn't make it any better.
Garry Handelman
: a problem should be. The dissemination of information will take care
: of itself. We are workingon speeding up the process, but such concerns
: don't have any bearing on the rulings themselves.
: Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
: aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Could you please clarify how, exactly, the Design Team descides
what is "proper"?
-Ghandel@Uclink
Aaron Mandelbaum
>At this point we would like to remove bandaids from the rules system,
>not add them. Sticking in a "changing controller changes the target
>by default" rule would be bandaid enough; tacking a "... but only
>if it's an upkeep effect that was targetted" would be even worse.
So don't do that.
>And enlarging the bandaid with "but you could just target the old target"
>doesn't make it any better.
I'd see it more as shrinking the bandaid to 'you may retarget effects if you
become the controller', that's already mostly the case. Such as (for
instance) Fork. *Technically* that's not what it does, but that's certainly
what it looks like, and how most people think of it.
A ruling like that would look like common sense, not a kludge. Effectively,
you're having to put a bandaid on saying 'you may NOT retarget effects when
you gain control of a permanent'.
>Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
>aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
--
Aaron Mandelbaum
Stetler
>
>The question of whether those people not on the net will believe those of
>us who are is not a factor when making ruling decisions.
>
>The question of how quickly tournament judges are made aware of rulings
>is not a factor when making ruling decisions.
>
>Basically the design team is just concerned with what the proper solution to
>a problem should be. The dissemination of information will take care
>of itself. We are workingon speeding up the process, but such concerns
>don't have any bearing on the rulings themselves.
>
This last paragraph probably points out the biggest issue of contention
with the new rulings. WotC is apparently taking the stance that various
cards have problems in multiplayer games. And they also seem to be taking
the stance that they have the best solutions to those problems are. But
multiplayer games is not something new for many players; sound, balanced
rules for multiplayer games and how certain cards are handled in such
games have been in use and have been continually perfected by players
since the Alpha edition was still available. On the other hand, WotC
until recently was stating they have no official rules, and as recently
as The Dark expansion were printing cards ambiguously referring to
"opponent" when experienced multiplayer game players know such wording
is ambiguous and confusing, and have already come up with solutions for.
Summed up, WotC is a relative newcomer to the concept of multiplayer
MTG - they have designed the basic two player game and defined its rules,
but multiplayer games is something hundreds if not thousands of players
worldwide have been putting thought into since the game was first
published, while WotC officially regarded the concept as an interesting
option. Objection to these new rulings by players on the net cannot
simply be dismissed as the complaints of people unhappy with change.
Several of these official rules have already been independantly conceived
and tested by others months ago and found problematic. Multiplayer games
is an issue that WotC could have utilized Usenet as a vast resource
of knowledge from *experienced* play testers on the subject. Instead they
have issued a set of rulings they insist are "the best way" and told
us to live with it. It should come as little suprise there would be
arguement over the rulings, it is somewhat surprising that WotC
either did not expect such or doesn't seem to consider such arguement
as valid or important enough for consideration.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Robert Stetler, k...@netcom.com "Listen to KGB Radio Moskow, where we -
- play all the top 40 hits whether you like them or not" -
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- "I remember there was a time - "I had this weird dream. -
- When dead and buried meant just that - Electric eels were biting -
- Underneath the cold dark ground - my butt !" - Heifer, -
- Things stay put !" - Oingo Boingo, - Rocko's Modern -
- Dead or Alive - Life -
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yusuf Budeiri
In article <wilder.7...@mik.uky.edu>,
wil...@mik.uky.edu (jeff wilder) writes:
>What about Winter Orb?
I believe the Winter Orb affects _all_ the players, including yourself.
Makes the game more interesting, particularly if noone has any alternative
mana sources.
> Od <
har...@ulogic.com
To us, "oppnonent" in the multiplayer games always meant "all players
other than the controller" Note, however, that we always play melee
and not teams. I'd be willing to accept "all players other than
allies of the controller".
"Target Player" means one player.
If there were such a thing as "target opponent", then it would mean
"one player, not an ally".
Black Vise has (to us) affected ALL players other than the controller.
(Note: controller != caster, since Steal Artifact can be used).
Does anybody else think this makes more sense than the WotC posting?
-rmh
David DeLaney
>that there's haven't been any up until now is not an argument for saying
>they shouldn't be able to exist at all.
Agreed.
>It is possible that the Reflecting
>Mirror ruling will be reversed.
Hope so - but it's not Top Essential Priority to me anymore; as I said in a
longer post, there's a more basic metarule that seems to me to be applicable,
which is (or should be) "effects that say 'opponent' specifically should not be
able to affect any current controller of a permanent which makes them".
>It is less possible that the ruling on what
>happens when Black Vise is stolen will change, but it won't be changed to
>"you get to retarget the Vise".
It *better* change in *some* respect, especially in the case when the target of
the Vise steals it; this falls, or would fall, under the above metarule. I
could live with "A Vise targetting its current controller doesn't do
anything"; I can't accept "A Vise targetting its current controller treats
him as an 'opponent'".
>The ruling that the Vise is targetted at all will not be reversed.
That's not what I was on about - I was unhappy about *when* in the casting
process they decided it would be targetted, is all.
Michael O'Brien
>Black Vise has (to us) affected ALL players other than the controller.
>(Note: controller != caster, since Steal Artifact can be used).
>
>Does anybody else think this makes more sense than the WotC posting?
I think your way makes more sense in a three player game.
However, with five or more players, it would make Black Vise the most
powerful card in the game.
Maybe they should go your way and restrict Black Vise. I don't understand
why Ivory Tower is restricted and Black Vise isn't.
Mike
Frederick Scott
>If there were such a thing as "target opponent", then it would mean
>"one player, not an ally".
>
>Black Vise has (to us) affected ALL players other than the controller.
>(Note: controller != caster, since Steal Artifact can be used).
>
>
>Does anybody else think this makes more sense than the WotC posting?
I think you can make the argument that it makes more semantic sense given
the card text but even if one agrees with that, it's not important. Lots
of cards work differently than one might expect just reading card text.
Like it or not, there have to be metarules and occasionally they'll contravene
the sense of card text for some reason or another.
In this case, I'd hate to see your way of playing the BV since it would
multiply its power in multiplayer play by number of opponents. Certain
other cards also do that (Syphon Soul is the obvious one) but the Black
Vise was already a fairly powerful card in its own right.
Fred
Frederick Scott
>Maybe they should go your way and restrict Black Vise. I don't understand
>why Ivory Tower is restricted and Black Vise isn't.
Convocation rules were cretated for Convocation tournaments. Tournaments
have time constraints. Therefore, certain of the cards on the restricted and
banned lists are there because they make games last too long (and/or
encourage the construction of decks that make games last too long), not
because they're considered too much of an advantage. If you're wondering
about Ivory Tower, didn't you ever wonder why Shazarad and Divine Intervention
were banned?
Paul Andrew King had one suggestion I like. He mentioned once that he'd
proposed that the Convocation issue _two_ restricted lists, to distuinguish
between the two sorts of cards. (And likewise, two banned list...) That way,
you could take a deck that violates the "restricted because it takes too long"
restrictions to informal play and not feel like you're pulling a fast one (or
rather a _slow_ one :) ) on your opponent.
Fred
Trevor Barrie
>Yes, but the new target should be valid for Wanderlust. Here's
>another point. Reflecting Mirror (IMO) should only be able to
>retarget the Vise (and other "target opponent" effects" to another
>opponent of the caster. If Wanderlust were (for example) were cast
>upon my Clockwork Beast, should I be able to use the interrupt
>"Magnet: change the target of one enchantment from one artifact to
>another" to retarget the Wanderlust to a Sol Ring? Or a Green-Warded
>Obsianus Golem?
If that's all it said, then yes, I would say you should be able to. Unlike, of
course, Enchant Alteration, which specifically states that the new target must
be a valid target. Your hypothetical spell, like Reflecting Mirror, makes no
so provision, so it can be retargetted to an invalid target.
Of course, doing so will cause the Enchantment to be discarded as soon as it
hits play, because it's not on a valid target. Similarly, it seems to me that
the Black Vise should become inert when it's pointed at its' controller.
Jim Thevenot
Thomas R Wylie <aa...@cats.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>
>M. Costalas <doi...@er7.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>>Am I reading this correctly? If so, then if a black vise is targeted at me
>>and I steal that artifact, I can't redirect it? Is it still affecting ME?
>
>Yes, exactly.
>
>
>Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
>aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
>
Michael G Schmahl
: >On a more general note, do you really think it makes any sense at all to
: >allow an artifact to be reflected? Can you justify it?
: Do think someone shouldn't be able to change the target of an enchantment
: as it is being cast? For example, that I shouldn't be able to change the
: target of a Wanderlust as it's being cast? Granted there's no card that
Yes, but the new target should be valid for Wanderlust. Here's
another point. Reflecting Mirror (IMO) should only be able to
retarget the Vise (and other "target opponent" effects" to another
opponent of the caster. If Wanderlust were (for example) were cast
upon my Clockwork Beast, should I be able to use the interrupt
"Magnet: change the target of one enchantment from one artifact to
another" to retarget the Wanderlust to a Sol Ring? Or a Green-Warded
Obsianus Golem?
By the same token, I should not be able to reflect a Black Vise
(which arguably targets an opponent [card text]) to a non-opponent
player.
--
Insert witty saying here.
Andrew Stefanski
> In article <onetouchD...@netcom.com> har...@ulogic.com writes:
> >Black Vise has (to us) affected ALL players other than the controller.
> >(Note: controller != caster, since Steal Artifact can be used).
>
> However, with five or more players, it would make Black Vise the most
> powerful card in the game.
True, except that playing it in a game like that is sure death
for the caster. You may hurt others, but getting totally wasted by
everyone else probably isn't worth it in a free-for-all.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Andrew Stefanski | / Help, I'm a Pentium, \
stef...@evansville.edu | < and I can't divide! >
Computer Science | \ "Bug Soup!" -- AvP /
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hall Moore
>
>
>To us, "oppnonent" in the multiplayer games always meant "all players
>other than the controller" Note, however, that we always play melee
>and not teams. I'd be willing to accept "all players other than
>allies of the controller".
We have always applied the latter interpretation to all continuous
"opponent" effects. Sorceries and effects with an activation cost that
said "opponent" get interpreted as "Target player".
>"Target Player" means one player.
Aggreed
>Black Vise has (to us) affected ALL players other than the controller.
>(Note: controller != caster, since Steal Artifact can be used).
We ruled that it affects all players not allied, due to the continuous
effect ruling above.
>Does anybody else think this makes more sense than the WotC posting?
I think this makes a lot more sense, especially as stealing a Vise in a
multi player game currently has no effect. Many people in this thread
seem to think this makes the Vise too powerful in a multi player game.
I'd aggree that it does become powerful, but this is not without its
drawbacks. Just try dropping a Vise on your first turn in a 7 player
melee and see how long you last. Having a Vise the way we play makes you
very unpopular and you'd better be ready to defend yourself. Personally,
I find it counterintuative that the Vise is targeted at all, but WotC
seems decided on that point.
Just my $0.02
--
* For purposes of complying with the New Jersey Right to Know Act, contents
of this post partially unknown.
GS d-- H++ s++:-- g+ p? au>>* a- w+ v+(*) c++++ UA+ N+++ K W-- M++ -po+ t+(--)
jx R+ G++ tv++ b++ D+ B-- e++>++++(*) u---* h-(*) f r* n---(----) y? v. 2.1
Trevor Barrie
>My vote: "opponent" refers to "every player except the controller"
>in the case of continuous effects. For Sorceries (such as Drain
>Life" it should be read as "target opponent", and one opponent is
>selected.
>Fellwar Stone and Black Vise should be treated in the same manner,
>either way.
So you want to limit Fellwar's Stone to only providing mana that
_every_ player's land can produce? What about Sea Serpent? It can
only attack if every opponent has islands? Both of these strike me
as being considerably more counter-intuitive than a Reflectable Vise.
The way I see it, the only way this could be done was to issue a list
of "these cards work like this, these cards work like that". We now
have such a list that, for the most part, seems to work perfectly well.
What's the problem?
HOLT A
>The question of whether those people not on the net will believe those of
>us who are is not a factor when making ruling decisions.
It should not be an over-riding factor, but the principle that
rulings should be within the range of common-sense should be a major factor.
>The question of how quickly tournament judges are made aware of rulings
>is not a factor when making ruling decisions.
Fair enough.
>Basically the design team is just concerned with what the proper solution to
>a problem should be.
Yes, the problem is that they seem to be deciding "proper" on the basis
of legalistic semantic examination of existing wording when they should
be working on the basis of "what makes the best balanced and playable
game". There seems to be a feeling that we will change the way the game
plays to match the wording of the (second edition) rules rather than
accepting that those rules may not lead to the best version of the game.
To give a couple of examples from "mainstream" games, the rules of
Monopoly have been revised several times since first publication - most
of the revisions _changing_ the game with the intent of improving it.
Risk has had at least three sets of rules with major differences.
I will also put forward the rather heretical view that a game designer
can sometimes be too close to his creation to be the best person to
maintain it.
When you have masses of messages on the net suggesting that a change is
_wrong_, and AFAICT none seriously supporting it you should rethink.
> The dissemination of information will take care
>of itself. We are workingon speeding up the process, but such concerns
>don't have any bearing on the rulings themselves.
Agreed!
Andy
har...@ulogic.com
Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>har...@ulogic.com writes:
>
>>If there were such a thing as "target opponent", then it would mean
>>"one player, not an ally".
>>
>>Black Vise has (to us) affected ALL players other than the controller.
>>(Note: controller != caster, since Steal Artifact can be used).
>>
>>
>>Does anybody else think this makes more sense than the WotC posting?
>
>I think you can make the argument that it makes more semantic sense given
>the card text but even if one agrees with that, it's not important. Lots
>of cards work differently than one might expect just reading card text.
>Like it or not, there have to be metarules and occasionally they'll contravene
>the sense of card text for some reason or another.
Sure there have to be metarules ... but why do you presume they must
be as obtuse as possible? To me "opponent" being the "other guy" re.
the current controller makes more sense than re. the original caster.
Artifacts such as the black vise are not targetted, they are continuous
effects that affect something ... in this case the "opponent", each
upkeep. WotC has said basically "ok, in order to accomodate this to
multiplayer play we have to make it targetted" and this has serious
repercussions back to two-player games.
>In this case, I'd hate to see your way of playing the BV since it would
>multiply its power in multiplayer play by number of opponents. Certain
>other cards also do that (Syphon Soul is the obvious one) but the Black
>Vise was already a fairly powerful card in its own right.
I just see no reason to shake thing up so damned much. And, as somebody
else has said: even if the BV becomes incredibly powerful in a large
multiplayer game, I don't think it would survive very long as there are
that many more hands available for a Disenchant or Shatter to come from.
Not to mention the "let's all get him!" effect even after the vicious
thing has been taken care of. Seems to me that it would be self-limiting.
And it's not just the BV, it's _all_ continuous artifacts, how
about Winter Orb? (I'm sure there are others).
Or how about Enchantments? Does "Mana Barbs" now also have to
be targetted to one opponent? Used to be that Enchantments were
general effects, and that's how continuous effect artifacts have
been, and should be.
Now an enchantment like "Drain Life" is inherantly one-ended, and a
"target opponent" (pick one) seems much more appropriate. But changing
a fundamental aspect of the game such as "ok, all artifacts now have
to have a target declared when cast" is just too extreme to be
justifiable, imho.
-rmh
har...@ulogic.com
John Palmer <jpa...@infinet.com> wrote:
>Devin Ben-Hur (dra...@qiclab.scn.rain.com) wrote:
>: In article <3f6ngo$q...@bigboote.wpi.edu>,
>: >this...I'm trying to think of any times you wouldn't want this to
>: >happen, but I can't off the top of my head...but that isn't saying much :)
>
>: counters played on them. They may be tapped. If Steal artifact said,
>: treat as just cast, the enchantments would fall off, they would untap,
>: and they would lose or reset their counters. All new and not desireable
>
>
> That's why I suggested that stolen artifacts should retarget. Stealing
>a black vice should at least allow you to turn it off and then turn it back
>on.
If you dropped the idea of it being targetted at all, none of this
would be an issue.
It is a Continuous Artifact. It's effect is continuous, and "opponent"
is resolved in reference to the current controller, not the caster.
There, isn't that much easier?
-rmh
har...@ulogic.com
Well said!
Imho, the "design team" has been making more questionable rulings
in the recent months than before. I think it's time for a major
design team review, to see if these people are really thinking about
their decisions, or just taking the first thing that comes to them...
-rmh
Rich Shipley
: sb...@city.ac.uk (HOLT A) writes:
: >There seems to be a feeling that we will change the way the game
: >accepting that those rules may not lead to the best version of the game.
: I don't know. I still think a lot of people are yelping around here
: because it's not the multiplayer game they _currently_ play. Like a lot
: of other things, "different" can be annoying to have to accept but if you
: give it a chance, eventually you might find you like it.
I've played multi-player a few ways (including choosing an opponent to
affect), and like the fact that WotC is attempting to make some
standard multiplayer rules. I just don't think they should change the
two-player game when they do it.
: The kinds of complaints we're looking at now aren't really worth listening
: to because they're coming from people who haven't really tried the game
: the WotC design team has proposed. If they stick to their guns, people
: will try it - and THAT'S when they should start worrying about "support
: from the masses" or lack thereof.
I've played just like this except for the part about opponent-affecting
artifacts being able to affect the controller. Other permanents assume
the perspective of the controller ("opponent has islands in play", etc.)
why are these permanents different? I think a reasonable change would be to
have the artifact have no affect when the controller is the target.
I guess they will change the wording of the cards in the next version. I
think its important to show that many people don't like this aspect of
the ruling and lobby for change before it is set in stone (or printing
plates).
Rich
har...@ulogic.com
>generate any appropriate type of mana. You don't "point" it at anyone.
I don't have my Fellwar Stone with me right now, but doesn't it just
say "opponent"? Isn't "opponent" now a target selected when an artifact
is cast and unchangable? If not, then what's all this fuss about the Black
Vise?
We net a way to consistantly interpret the text on the cards in the
context of a multiplayer game, not a list of "this card is done this
way but that card is done that way".
My vote: "opponent" refers to "every player except the controller"
in the case of continuous effects. For Sorceries (such as Drain
Life" it should be read as "target opponent", and one opponent is
selected.
Fellwar Stone and Black Vise should be treated in the same manner,
either way.
-rmh
har...@ulogic.com
"opponent" in the context of a multiplayer game! WotC should now
deal w/ the conflicts raised by this simple and widespread WotC
rule, rather than coming up w/ a couple of K of new rules...
-rmh
noone
Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>har...@ulogic.com writes:
>
>>In article <fred_sD2...@netcom.com>,
>>Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>>har...@ulogic.com writes:
>>>
>>Sure there have to be metarules ... but why do you presume they must
>>be as obtuse as possible? To me "opponent" being the "other guy" re.
>>the current controller makes more sense than re. the original caster.
>
>timing rules. But the answer is that they seemed to feel the need to do it
>the way they have in order to make the multiplayer games and the duel game
>as similar as possible. It was a tradeoff and a bit of simplicity fell
>victim to it.
Again we have a slight difference of opinion. Why does the goal
of "making the multiplayer game and the duel game as similar as
possible" involve changing the rules of the duel game? Can't the
multiplayer adaptation be made w/o "backflow"? This idea of the BV
being targetted now _does_ affect the duel games: Steal Artifact used
to be a useful card against BV, now it isn't. Again I say: interpret
"opponent" in the context of the current controller and none of this
is an issue. Making up a rule that now continuous artifiacts are really
targetted items just louses things up. So far I have seen no real
justification for this _fundamental_ change.
>Since Winter Orb and Mana Barbs say they affect all players, they should.
You're right ... I don't have my cards at work. I thought they were
"opponent" cards...
>And keeping the "all players" usage of the duel game in the multiplayer
>game maintains their personality nicely. The challenge of such cards is
>to design your own deck well enough to get sufficient advantage from them
>to make them useful to play - even though they affect you as well as your
>opponents. This doesn't change in multiplyer play so there's no reason to
>alter how they work.
I throw this entire argument back at you re. my definition of "opponent"
in the multiplayer context: the challenge of such cards is to design your
deck well enough to get sufficient advantage from them when their mere
presense is likely to get everybody on the table ganging up on you...
>Permanents like Black Vice and Underworld Dreams DO have targets in duel
>play and they always have.
Well ... no. Some Sorceries, Enchantments, and Activated Effects
have targets. Artifacts, like Creatures, do not. They just are.
Continuous artifacts just sit in the corner and generate a "field
of effect", kinda like a smoker in a restaraunt: he isn't targetting
you with his smoke, but it still bothers you and doesn't seem to
bother him very much...
In addition, changing this to make them targetted has _major_
repercussions, that I do not think have been clearly thought
out. The negation of "Steal Artifact" is one of them. There
may be others (although that first one is big enough).
Hacking in patches on top of patches ("ok, it gets retargetted
every time it switches sides") just makes things more complex.
There is well known a design goal: KISS - Keep it Simple, Stupid.
Well ... it may be a bit too late for that as far as MtG goes,
but how about: Keep It As Simple As Possible? Don't go making
fundamental changes when there is a simpler possibility around.
What is simpler than "'opponent' is everyone other than the
controller of the card"? This interpretation has worked well
for me, and apparently a few other people that have posted
replies. Aside from cutting down the number of rules, patches and
exceptions that WotC comes up with, what's wrong with it?
-rmh
Frederick Scott
>In article <fred_sD2...@netcom.com>,
>Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>har...@ulogic.com writes:
>>
>>>In article <fred_sD2...@netcom.com>,
>>>Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>>>har...@ulogic.com writes:
>>>>
>>>Sure there have to be metarules ... but why do you presume they must
>>>be as obtuse as possible? To me "opponent" being the "other guy" re.
>>>the current controller makes more sense than re. the original caster.
>>
>>Yes, I can see your point. In fact, I feel the same way about some of the
>>timing rules. But the answer is that they seemed to feel the need to do it
>>the way they have in order to make the multiplayer games and the duel game
>>as similar as possible. It was a tradeoff and a bit of simplicity fell
>>victim to it.
>
>Again we have a slight difference of opinion. Why does the goal
>of "making the multiplayer game and the duel game as similar as
>possible" involve changing the rules of the duel game? Can't the
>multiplayer adaptation be made w/o "backflow"?
In a word - no - not completely.
>This idea of the BV
>being targetted now _does_ affect the duel games: Steal Artifact used
>to be a useful card against BV, now it isn't. Again I say: interpret
>"opponent" in the context of the current controller and none of this
>is an issue.
But what happens when a Black Vise is stolen in a multiplayer game?
None of the solutions I've heard proposed don't completely change the
character of the Black Vise when you move from a duel game to multiplayer.
The trouble is the the formerly trivial targetting of the Vise becomes
far more crucial and profound in a multiplayer game because there is
suddenly a choice of targets. WotC's is the only solution I've heard of
yet that maintains the inherent limitation of the Vise (once its target
whittles his hand down it becomes essentially useless) in the multiplayer
game.
>Making up a rule that now continuous artifiacts are really
>targetted items just louses things up.
Well, it _changes_ things. I don't share your view that it's necessarily a
bad change and in any event, it's not big change. If it drastically
affected the game, I'd probably agree with you but it's just not.
>So far I have seen no real justification for this _fundamental_ change.
Well, term it "fundamental" if you like, it's still not a biggie, IMHO.
>>And keeping the "all players" usage of the duel game in the multiplayer
>>game maintains their personality nicely. The challenge of such cards is
>>to design your own deck well enough to get sufficient advantage from them
>>to make them useful to play - even though they affect you as well as your
>>opponents. This doesn't change in multiplyer play so there's no reason to
>>alter how they work.
>
>I throw this entire argument back at you re. my definition of "opponent"
>in the multiplayer context: the challenge of such cards is to design your
>deck well enough to get sufficient advantage from them when their mere
>presense is likely to get everybody on the table ganging up on you...
I don't get your point, here. If you mean that it's OK to let the power of
the Vise (or any other card) get pumped up by your proposed version of the
interpretation of "opponent" because in multiplayer play, alliances are
possible so any over-powerful card is not the play-balance problem it would
be duel play, I disagree. That's a cop-out. It still becomes a completely
different card in multiplayer play and that's not a good thing. When I
sit down to an MP game, I would like to play something that's a least vaguely
similar to duel play. At least, the cards should do more or less the same
thing.
>>Permanents like Black Vise and Underworld Dreams DO have targets in duel
>>play and they always have.
>
>Well ... no. Some Sorceries, Enchantments, and Activated Effects
>have targets. Artifacts, like Creatures, do not.
Sure they do. If I lay down a Black Vise and you're my opponent, then
you're it's target. It was that way and it will continue to be that way.
Make up terminology like "field of effect" all you want, but it's still
targetting you, not me. (This, by the way, is where your "smoker" analogy
fails. A smoker breathes his own smoke.) There's just no targetting
_decision_ to make in duel play since there's only one choice.
>They just are.
>Continuous artifacts just sit in the corner and generate a "field
>of effect", kinda like a smoker in a restaraunt: he isn't targetting
>you with his smoke, but it still bothers you and doesn't seem to
>bother him very much...
>
>In addition, changing this to make them targetted has _major_
>repercussions, that I do not think have been clearly thought
>out. The negation of "Steal Artifact" is one of them. There
>may be others (although that first one is big enough).
Obviously we're not going to agree on this. If I could ever even
_remember_ when I got my last artifact stolen, I might begin to see
your point. I used to stick an Aladdin in my tournment deck, oh, some
6 months ago but he was too pricey, mana-wise, to ever save me from
things like the Black Vise. So I got rid of him and just stick things
like Crumble, Shatter, and Disenchant in the deck to handle artifacts.
Anyway, there's the rub. What you insist is a fundamental change is a
blip on the ocean to me. I don't suppose we're going to approach any
sort of consensus on this under the circumstance.
>What is simpler than "'opponent' is everyone other than the
>controller of the card"? This interpretation has worked well
>for me, and apparently a few other people that have posted
>replies. Aside from cutting down the number of rules, patches and
>exceptions that WotC comes up with, what's wrong with it?
I've answered this - it makes things like Vises much more powerful than they
should be in the multiplayer game.
Fred
Thomas R Wylie
David DeLaney <d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu> wrote:
>The only time
>a permanent-spell should target a *player* is if it has to choose a player
>for some reason, and the only real reason for it to have to do so is if it
>would have to decide in which territory to be placed.
That strikes me as a needless restriction on the sorts of effects
which could target players.
> Yes, Black Vise says it affects opponent; that's card text...
And we are saying that the card texts should be read differently given
that we are giving multiplayer rulings on them.
>have to kick in (and *shouldn't*, according to previous interpretations of
>how card text works) until the Vise itself actually appears. The Design Team
>has, currently, decided that this is not the case, and hasn't explained very
>well *why* they're saying this; thus my objections.
Take the Black Vise (rapidly becoming the "classic" example on this
topic...). In the two-player game originally envisioned, ti's simple
enough: you plunk it down, and it damages your opponent. There's no
particular reason someone would play it on themselves, and the conception
doesn't really allow for it, so it says "opponent" rather than "target
player". All fine and dandy.
Now people start playing Magic in multiplayer mode. Given that the game
was not designed for this, things start to break down a little bit.
One example of this is Black Vise. What the heck does "opponent" mean
in a multiplayer game? Does it mean everyone but you? Just one person?
If it does mean just one person, what happens if that person leaves the
game, or if they empty their hand while there's a nice juicy hand I could
be squeezing sitting on their left? Because expanding Magic to multiplayer
play brings up various nasty tangles, WotC basically left these questions
alone, and merely offered suggestions here and there.
Recently, we decided it was time to start supporting multiplayer play
a little bit better. While me might not worry too much about the rules,
whhe should at least gear the cards towards that mode of play. Unfortunately,
there are all these cards alrready in print which are pretty much broken
in multiplayer play. Do we leave those alone? Do we issue errata?
It was decided that it would be better to simply retrofit all existing
cards with a series of rulings, and then plan on rewriting the cards
accordingly if/when we reprint them. This is why some of the rulings don't
quite match what is on the cards: rather than issuing the ruling one way
now and changing the ruling when we went to reprint the cards, we simply
issued what we consider to be the ideal ruling right now.
Furthermore, because we are effectively changing what's on the cards,
the changes backtrack to twoplayer play. "If a two-player game, opponent
takes damage each upkeep. If a multi-player game, target opponent takes
damage each upkeep" would just be ridiculous. Again, this is a question
of "do we wait until the new printing to change how it works, or just
change/set how it works right now?" comes up, and our preferred answer
is to simply change the card now and get it over with.
Now the question becomes what each ruling should be. In general, we
assumed each "opponent" effect would say "target player" or "any opponent",
as appropriate, unless there was a game balance or card conept reason for
it to say "target opponent" instead. Black Vise is (in our opinion) way
too overpowered if it reads "any opponent", and it has a conceptual reason
to not be able to affect the caster, so we decided it should say
"target opponent", and thus the ruling. While we could get into messy
things about being able to retarget the Vise periodically, the bottom line
there is that it makes a simple card way too complex, so we simply say
you pick the target and that's it.
There were a couple of side rulings on this which were maybe ill-
considered at first, for example the fact that stealing the Vise accomplishes
absolutely nothing (and so on for similar cards). It may be that stealing
it causes the effect to shut down until the target becomes an opponent of
the Vise again. It's even vaguely possible that it would cause the effect
entirely. (The basic question here is whether the Vise ruling should synch
with the Wretched/Aladdin ruling, and if so, how much.) It definitely should
not retarget; again, that would require a complex rule on what should be
a simple card.
>Sorry. Yes, this is My Opinion; I put it forcefully because I can see no
>reasons what-so-ever for having these three cards in particular be Reflectable
Given that the Vise and the racks target a player, there is no reason why
you can't Reflect them back to the caster. The Reflecting Mirror doesn't
say it requires the new target to be "valid", it just resets the target
to a different player. Therefore you can reset the target to any player you
want. The rule on Enchantment Alteration is a specific rule about EA, not a
general rule about cards which retarget things.
Thomas R Wylie
<har...@ulogic.com> wrote:
>And it's not just the BV, it's _all_ continuous artifacts, how
>about Winter Orb? (I'm sure there are others).
The rulings were intended to fix cards which are broken, or have no
clear reading, when used in multiplayer play. "a player" means that
the card affects any given player, and nothing about multiplayer
play changes this.
>Or how about Enchantments? Does "Mana Barbs" now also have to
>be targetted to one opponent?...
Manabarbs just says it triggers on lands being tapped for mana.
Again, the reading is quite clear in multiplayer play.
>Now an enchantment like "Drain Life" is inherantly one-ended, and a
>"target opponent" (pick one) seems much more appropriate....
Again, Drain Life has a clear interpretation in multiplayer play:
it still affects "a target". If we had wanted to prohibit Drain Life
from targetting its caster, we could have easily said so long ago;
that is not a consideration new to multiplayer play.
Thomas R Wylie
noone <onet...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Again I say: interpret
>"opponent" in the context of the current controller and none of this
>is an issue.
That would be much easier of the Black Vise was an artifact which did
something during its controller's upkeep, rather than during someone
else's upkeep. If we tried to invert it in this manner, we might
very well go to microtext trying to get the card right. And it would
be a rather drastic change to make without introducing a "new" card
to take the place of the Vise.
>Making up a rule that now continuous artifiacts are really
>targetted items just louses things up...
The rulings were not about continuous artifacts in general. They were
about how most opponent cards should be handled assuming multiplayer
play, and this happened to include some continuous artifacts.
>Continuous artifacts just sit in the corner and generate a "field
>of effect", kinda like a smoker in a restaraunt: he isn't targetting
>you with his smoke, but it still bothers you and doesn't seem to
>bother him very much...
This, by the way, is definitely not true, since the Black Vise was a
Continuous Artifact, and its effects are very clearly directed at
a certain player rather than being a "field of effect". The only thing
being Continuous really means is that the effect isn't paid for.
>There is well known a design goal: KISS - Keep it Simple, Stupid.
>Well ... it may be a bit too late for that as far as MtG goes,
>but how about: Keep It As Simple As Possible? Don't go making
>fundamental changes when there is a simpler possibility around.
We don't want to break cards simply for the sake of simplicity.
Saying that Black Vise was a broadcast effect would, in our opinion,
break it.
Thomas R Wylie
Stetler <k...@netcom.com> wrote:
>sound, balanced
>rules for multiplayer games and how certain cards are handled in such
>games have been in use and have been continually perfected by players
>since the Alpha edition was still available.
People have been playing with rules that they like for quite a while,
true. This does not mean that we consider those rules to be the
most balanced.
> Summed up, WotC is a relative newcomer to the concept of multiplayer MTG
We are not newcomers to the concept of multiplayer MTG. We have simply
chosen not to comment on it, particularly. We have also been wincing
at several popular decisions on how to handle certain cards, such as
making Black Vise an "any opponent" card.
>Objection to these new rulings by players on the net cannot
>simply be dismissed as the complaints of people unhappy with change.
>Several of these official rules have already been independantly conceived
>and tested by others months ago and found problematic...
Such as? For example, some people consider it "problematic" that given
the rulings, a Black Vise doesn't do anything if its target gets killed off.
This isn't particularly "problematic"; people simply don't like their
cards being useless. A Black Vise hanging around doing nothing really
isn't any more problematic than an Oubliette hanging around doing nothing
because it targetted a token creature. It might look strange, but I
wouldn't call it "problematic".
>is an issue that WotC could have utilized Usenet as a vast resource
>of knowledge from *experienced* play testers on the subject. Instead they
>have issued a set of rulings they insist are "the best way" and told
>us to live with it. It should come as little suprise there would be
>arguement over the rulings, it is somewhat surprising that WotC
>either did not expect such or doesn't seem to consider such arguement
>as valid or important enough for consideration.
It is not surprising at all that there were objections to the rulings.
But there is no particular reason we should have taken a poll on what
the rulings should have been, especially since we've had several people
watching the net for months (e.g. myself) who have seen the traffic
on the subject. If people point out problems in the rulings then we'll
reexamine them, but for example we were well aware that some people
wouldn't like the Black Vise ruling. That doesn't change the fact that
we think the ruling which appeared to be more popular was imbalanced,
and it doesn't mean that we should have ruled the other way simply
because lots of people played that way.
Thomas R Wylie
HOLT A <sb...@city.ac.uk> wrote:
>Yes, the problem is that they seem to be deciding "proper" on the basis
>of legalistic semantic examination of existing wording when they should
That is what happened, actually. We tried to make "opponent" effects
be target player, but made them "target opponent" if there were game
balance or conceptual reasons for doing so.
>There seems to be a feeling that we will change the way the game
>plays to match the wording of the (second edition) rules rather than
>accepting that those rules may not lead to the best version of the game.
We are assuming that people will follow the updates of the rules, yes.
We are not going to support several versions of the rules, which
contain contradictory rules, all at once. In this case, we are
anticipating the next printings of the cards, rather than ruling one way
now and then reversing those rulings when we update the cards.
>When you have masses of messages on the net suggesting that a change is
>_wrong_, and AFAICT none seriously supporting it you should rethink.
As far as that goes, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the people
who agree with rulings or decisions never come out of the woodwork to
support the rulings or decisions, but rather let WotC and anyone else
who feels like it respond to the objections. The lack of response not
a reliable indication of how popular a given ruling or decision is.
Thomas R Wylie
<har...@ulogic.com> wrote:
>I don't have my Fellwar Stone with me right now, but doesn't it just
>say "opponent"? Isn't "opponent" now a target selected when an artifact
Depends on the artifact (or other kind of permanent). We tried to make
cards be "any opponent" or "target player" unless there was a game balance
or conceptual reason to say otherwise. Fellwar Stone doesn't really qualify
on either count, so should be read as "any opponent", the default.
>We net a way to consistantly interpret the text on the cards in the
>context of a multiplayer game, not a list of "this card is done this
>way but that card is done that way".
Well, there isn't going to be an entirely reliable way to guess that,
unfortunately. It would be nice if there was, but deciding whether
a given effect is imbalancing written one way as opposed to another is
rarely a scientific task, and factoring in card concept is even less so.
Since the public can't read the design team's mind, some of the rulings
are going to seem a little inconsistent.
Frederick Scott
>
>Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>Paul Andrew King had one suggestion I like. He mentioned once that he'd
>>proposed that the Convocation issue _two_ restricted lists, to distuinguish
>>between the two sorts of cards. (And likewise, two banned list...) That way,
>>you could take a deck that violates the "restricted because it takes too long"
>>restrictions to informal play and not feel like you're pulling a fast one (or
>>rather a _slow_ one :) ) on your opponent.
>
>Except that the Convocation rules are intended for tournament play, and
>just for tournament play. It is assumed that sanctioned tournaments, at
>least, have a time constraints. Nothing says that the rules have to be
>adopted in private play, or that they have to be adopted exactly. If you
>want to unban Shahrazad and unrestrict Ivory Tower in private play (since
>the primary reason for their restriction doesn't really apply), then
>by all means, go for it.
Of course, that's always possibility. Unforunately, it's difficult to merge
expectations with opponents you causually meet during open play sessions at
various sites. The default way of doing this has been - for some time - to
follow the only set of deck construction rules (aside from the original ones,
which are demonstratably unbalanced) that has any semblance of legitimacy:
Convocation rules. I can see why the Convocation might not care to take
responsibility for filling this need for such a set of rules, but the need
exists none the less. I hope some day they have a change of heart about this
issue.
Fred
Stetler
>
>> Summed up, WotC is a relative newcomer to the concept of multiplayer MTG
>
>We are not newcomers to the concept of multiplayer MTG. We have simply
>chosen not to comment on it, particularly. We have also been wincing
>at several popular decisions on how to handle certain cards, such as
>making Black Vise an "any opponent" card.
>
The group I game with has been playing multiplayer MTG almost
exclusively every weekend for over a year (I know, we should probably
get a life), and our multiplayer MTG group is fairly new compared
to what I've heard from others I've talked to. I stand by my statement -
WotC is a newcomer to this issue, saying "they've heard of it and
thought about it" hardly qualifies as a voice of experience.
>>Objection to these new rulings by players on the net cannot
>>simply be dismissed as the complaints of people unhappy with change.
>>Several of these official rules have already been independantly conceived
>>and tested by others months ago and found problematic...
>
>Such as? For example, some people consider it "problematic" that given
>the rulings, a Black Vise doesn't do anything if its target gets killed off.
>This isn't particularly "problematic"; people simply don't like their
>cards being useless. A Black Vise hanging around doing nothing really
>isn't any more problematic than an Oubliette hanging around doing nothing
>because it targetted a token creature. It might look strange, but I
>wouldn't call it "problematic".
>
Such as...the situation with Steal Artifact and set targetted artifacts.
Our group tried that approach back in July and hit the same snag - we
couldn't resolve the issue without changing the way the rules effect
two player game play, something we refused to do just to fix something that
wasn't broke. There were other *problems* with the rulings, I'd have to
review the list again and think it over to point them out.
I see the above as another example of attempting to pass off contention
over the rulings as simply complaints about changes in playing style. I
would hardly regard a set of rulings that changes the dynamics of the
existing 2 player game simply "strange". Please don't dismiss objections as
simply grumblings of the masses, asside from sounding elitist and insulting
it ignores the idea that there are valid concerns being expressed.
>It is not surprising at all that there were objections to the rulings.
>But there is no particular reason we should have taken a poll on what
>the rulings should have been, especially since we've had several people
>watching the net for months (e.g. myself) who have seen the traffic
>on the subject. If people point out problems in the rulings then we'll
>reexamine them, but for example we were well aware that some people
>wouldn't like the Black Vise ruling. That doesn't change the fact that
>we think the ruling which appeared to be more popular was imbalanced,
>and it doesn't mean that we should have ruled the other way simply
>because lots of people played that way.
There is no requirement to "take a poll", but as for a particular
reason there is a good one - experience. Usenet is the largest easily
accessible group of playtesters WotC could possibly find, and its free.
Much of the ground WotC is treading with the new multiplayer game
rules has been walked over already by many of us - we've seen the
problems and the benefits of the proposed rules. Look at what people
on the net have disagreed with (there really isn't much), and what
they've agreed with (quite a bit - for a reason, many of us have
tried it already, and it worked). No one says WotC has to utilize
this resource, just that it might be beneficial to do so.
Since the subject of the Black Vise and its play balance under
different methods of usage keeps coming up, I'll use it to point
what in my opinion (and all associated disclaimers that go with that
word) seemed to be a general problem with the rulings. That problem
being WotC seems to be applying a two player mentality to the rules
of a multiplayer game. Two player games are games of striving to
get the upper hand, they tend to be fairly straight forward,
brutal, and quick. Surprises happen, but generally you know who
your enemy is and know a fair degree of what they are capable of.
Multiplayer games are games of sleath and diplomacy. The focus
is gaining the upper hand without looking like you are getting the
upper hand, of nailing other players just enough to keep them under
control without looking like a threat when you do it. What you
are capable of is not only often held back waiting for the perfect
moment, its often held back waiting for the perfect target. Or set
up in pieces, to hide your strategy (a tactic that occurs in two
player games but is taken to an extreme in multiplayer games). Or
simply held back because the retribution costs could be too high.
Because if the other players decide you're dangerous its unlikely your
deck can survive a combined assault no matter how good it is.
Multiplayer MTG often has more in common with Illuminati than it does
with two player MTG.
Consider the Black Vise example, in which WotC decided such spells and
effects that would have a detrimental effect on all or several players
were considered "imbalanced" (perhaps because the effect seems out of
proportion to the spells casting cost, availability, or lack of side
effects). Experienced multiplayer MTG gamers will point out that
playing a Black Vise that effects all other players does not result
in an easy victory, it usually results in its caster's lifespan in the
game being measured in minutes. Our group has had a Black Vise thrown
out on the first turn, sometimes multiples, sometimes with an
Underworld Dreams, all affecting every player except their caster.
The result has always been a concerted effort to remove those
obscenities and the player that cast them. After several *hundred*
multiplayer games I've yet to see an instance where those efforts
failed. I feel that this example demonstrates that the dynamics
of a multiplayer game should be considered carefully before ruling
a card's use as imbalanced, and certainly before changing the two
player game rules to match.
I intend to post the multiplayer rules our group uses to the net soon,
perhaps there will be some interest in them as an "alternative" to WotC's
official rules. Better yet, they may get some comments and additions from
others, I'm always open to new ideas. To use the same viewpoint of
people who have stated we should give the WotC rulings a chance, I say
give the same consideration to our efforts. I feel confident it will
be worth the effort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Robert Stetler, k...@netcom.com "Listen to KGB Radio Moskow, where we -
- play all the top 40 hits whether you like them or not" -
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walter Goodwin
>Given that the Vise and the racks target a player, there is no reason why
>you can't Reflect them back to the caster. The Reflecting Mirror doesn't
>say it requires the new target to be "valid", it just resets the target
>to a different player. Therefore you can reset the target to any player you
>want. The rule on Enchantment Alteration is a specific rule about EA, not a
>general rule about cards which retarget things.
>Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
>aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
This is extremely confusing. Having a legal target is one of the
basic rules of the game. And now we have a card that breaks that rule.
I can accept the targetted when cast/target never changes bit, but
letting something pick invalid targets is too much. If enchantment
alteration didn't have the bit about picking a valid target, does anyone
think that it would be ruled that it can move a tacklemaggot onto a
white knight? I don't think so.
Jason Goodwin
Rich Shipley
: considered at first, for example the fact that stealing the Vise accomplishes
: absolutely nothing (and so on for similar cards). It may be that stealing
: it causes the effect to shut down until the target becomes an opponent of
: the Vise again. It's even vaguely possible that it would cause the effect
: entirely. (The basic question here is whether the Vise ruling should synch
: with the Wretched/Aladdin ruling, and if so, how much.) It definitely should
: not retarget; again, that would require a complex rule on what should be
: a simple card.
Thanks for this Tom. I'm glad this is being considered.
Rich
James Buster
>the changes backtrack to twoplayer play. "If a two-player game, opponent
>takes damage each upkeep. If a multi-player game, target opponent takes
>damage each upkeep" would just be ridiculous.
Sure, but the phrase "affects target player, target player may be changed
during controller's upkeep" is simple, obvious, works the same
in two- and multi-player games, and has the advantage that you don't have
to come up with strained rulings to cover every contingency. So what if you
can target yourself, no sane player will do so. For permanents like
Disrupting Scepter, where you might not want people destroying their own
hands to avoid a Black Vice's damage, just say "target player other than
you". For permanents that are intended to affect multiple players,
like "all oponents" you can say something like "choose a set of players in
play. X will happen to each named player." Assume that players are sane
and will do the right thing in choosing targets. If a player leaves the game,
ignore the effect.
>While we could get into messy things about being able to retarget the Vise
>periodically, the bottom line there is that it makes a simple card way too
>complex, so we simply say you pick the target and that's it.
When did "retarget during upkeep" become complex?
--
James Buster
bit...@netcom.com
Andrew Stefanski
> Once its target (or targetS, as your version of the rules essentially
> creates) whittles his (or their) hand(s) down, it becomes essentially useless.
> That's an extremely important implication of the card, and I believe this
> weakness is the tradeoff for the card being very cheap to cast. Actually,
> your version of the opponent ruling doesn't really violate this, per se,
> (after all, the list of "all opponents" remains the same...) but it just
> makes it way too powerful for a one-mana artifact by making it act on all
> the players in the game save one.
I would think that having it affect all the players in the game
besides you is balanced off by the fact that you are highly likely to be
killed after playing the card.
Every time we've used a Vice/Rack/etc in a multiplayer game,
we've played that it affects everyone but the caster. Nobody has ever
thought it was too powerful.
> The main reason I wrote what you quoted above was in response to the
> retarget-each-upkeep and retarget-on-change-of-possession proposals.
> Retargetting the thing essentially allows a player to conveniently choose the
> juiciest new target after it has already done its work on the orginal target,
> forcing him to whittle his hand size down possibly against his will. The
> tradeoff for the single point of mana casting cost should be that its opponent
> stays the same throughout its life. For multiplayer purposes, it's quite
> enough that the caster has his choice of targets at casting time and can
> choose the opponent likely to be most uncomfortable with limiting his hand
> size to four (e.g., a player using Counterspells).
I agree that re-targetting the Vice every turn offers too much.
If you want to make it target one person, at least do away with the idea
that if you steal a Vice affecting you, that the card does not follow
what it says it does, and it still affects you. Let the new owner
retarget it.
It keeps two-player games working correctly, and leaves a
weakness in the vice. It seems to coincide with the idea of a weakness
for a one casting cost artifact.
> Come on, that's really rather dense to deny that there's a multiplication of
> the Vises power by number of opponents in a multiplayer game by your proposed
> ruling. It would simultaneously act on however many there are instead of
> one. If I wanted to throw a Lighting Bolt and expect it to act on all of my
> opponents and tried to argue to you that that's correspondingly equal in
> power to the two player game, would you let me get away with it? I think not.
It increases in overall power, yes. If you only look at the two
people that it is currently affecting (the controller and the current
player), then it hasn't.
> Most cards are basically all right in the MP environment. Changed or not
> changed, more powerful or less powerful, all in all most of them play
> just fine. But cards like the Vise and Underworld Dreams and the like
> just gain too much to ignore if you permit them to act directly on everybody
> else instead of just one opponent. In the latter case, they're quite
> comparable to a direct damage spell or a tapping creature or artifact
> effect that can (normally) be used only one per turn. This keeps the
> focus from changing in the game to these types of cards.
Almost ALL the cards in the game are inherently weaker in a
multiplayer game. Any creature is weaker, since you only get one attack
compared to many defenses. If we are going to change these cards for the
multiplayer game, why not change all of them to try and conserve this
two-player feel that it appears they are trying to keep.
Is it wrong to allow some cards to become stronger with more
players unless the card practically states they do? And I don't think
the cards gain too much since they almost always guarantee that caster
will be killed.
> Why is simplicity the best way to accomplish this? Simplicity is in no
> way equivalent to consistency between the two games. And, as I've pointed
> out, simplicity damages this end by ignoring abrupt changes in the power
> of certain cards in the MP game over the duel game. Your conclusion does
> not follow your premise, here.
The abrupt power changes do not only occur with a select group of
cards. Almost EVERY card has quite the difference in the entirely
different realm of multiplayer magic.
Wayne Yuen
C'mon people! In the PPL it gives a list of rules. We all know that
the rules are basically printed on the cards, and sometimes rules change,
or cards interact strangely and we need a ruling on them. Now WOTC gives
a ruling on multiplayer games, and for not the first time everyone seems
to go ballistic on WOTC. Now you want them to change the cards, change
the PPL, change the rules.
What happened to Ante? Isn't it just a usual house rule that ante isn't
played? Isn't it just a usual house rule that you play with a
Tourney-legal deck? Isn't it just a usual house rule that says you don't
play with thicket baslisks and lures in the same deck?
WOTC can issue all the rulings they please. They can say that all lands
now are 1/1 creatures that can tap to provide mana. But it really boils
down to how you and you're circle of friends play magic. Granted that if
you enter a tourney, you have to conform to certain rules, but thats
always been that way, so just live with it. If you don't like a ruling,
don't listen to it and play however you want to. Just be glad that WOTC
is here, and they have this neat card game that lets you fill the boring
time that you have, with something somewhat time consuming and fun!
my .02 cents, that I could have saved to eventually by another booster pack
--
Wayne Yuen <jo...@rahul.net>
Frederick Scott
>On Thu, 19 Jan 1995, Frederick Scott wrote:
>
>> Once its target (or targetS, as your version of the rules essentially
>> creates) whittles his (or their) hand(s) down, it becomes essentially useless.
>> That's an extremely important implication of the card, and I believe this
>> weakness is the tradeoff for the card being very cheap to cast. Actually,
>> your version of the opponent ruling doesn't really violate this, per se,
>> (after all, the list of "all opponents" remains the same...) but it just
>> makes it way too powerful for a one-mana artifact by making it act on all
>> the players in the game save one.
>
> I would think that having it affect all the players in the game
>besides you is balanced off by the fact that you are highly likely to be
>killed after playing the card.
...
> Is it wrong to allow some cards to become stronger with more
>players unless the card practically states they do? And I don't think
>the cards gain too much since they almost always guarantee that caster
>will be killed.
This is just to say that unbalancing cards may be less of a problem in MP
play than duel play because you can always form alliances and gang on the
caster who's getting ahaead of everyone. That may be true, but that doesn't
mean unbalanced cards are a "good thing" (tm). Should we unrestrict Time
Walks and Lotuses in MP play since whoever plays them will get ganged up
on by his opponents? No - better to restrict the inherently unbalanced
cards and keep the others from becoming unbalanced in MP play if possible.
And in this case, it's possible.
>> Why is simplicity the best way to accomplish this? Simplicity is in no
>> way equivalent to consistency between the two games. And, as I've pointed
>> out, simplicity damages this end by ignoring abrupt changes in the power
>> of certain cards in the MP game over the duel game. Your conclusion does
>> not follow your premise, here.
>
> The abrupt power changes do not only occur with a select group of
>cards. Almost EVERY card has quite the difference in the entirely
>different realm of multiplayer magic.
Most cards either fall under the category of affecting one target of an
(increased in MP play over duel) number of players or are general effects,
like Winter Orb, that don't really become that much more powerful since the
caster still has to deal with the effect himself. Just about the only ones
that are problematic are permanents that work on one's opponent but not one's
self. And making them work on only one opponent reigns in their power just
about perfectly.
Fred
David E Gildemeister
In article <kgbD2n...@netcom.com>, Stetler <k...@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <3fkkl0$d...@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> aa...@cats.ucsc.edu (Thomas R Wylie)
writes:
>>
>>> Summed up, WotC is a relative newcomer to the concept of multiplayer MTG
>>
>>We are not newcomers to the concept of multiplayer MTG. We have simply
>>chosen not to comment on it, particularly. We have also been wincing
>>at several popular decisions on how to handle certain cards, such as
>>making Black Vise an "any opponent" card.
>>
>
> The group I game with has been playing multiplayer MTG almost
>exclusively every weekend for over a year (I know, we should probably
>get a life), and our multiplayer MTG group is fairly new compared
>to what I've heard from others I've talked to. I stand by my statement -
>WotC is a newcomer to this issue, saying "they've heard of it and
>thought about it" hardly qualifies as a voice of experience.
If they were basing all their decisions on conjecture, sure, it would
be bad. But come on, do you really think the MTG *Design Team* hasn't
played their share of multiplayer Magic games? There are lots of us
without lives who spend our time on Magic, but to a certain extent (and
no insult intended) it *makes up* their lives.
>>>Objection to these new rulings by players on the net cannot
>>>simply be dismissed as the complaints of people unhappy with change.
>>>Several of these official rules have already been independantly conceived
>>>and tested by others months ago and found problematic...
>>
>>Such as? For example, some people consider it "problematic" that given
>>the rulings, a Black Vise doesn't do anything if its target gets killed off.
>>This isn't particularly "problematic"; people simply don't like their
>>cards being useless. A Black Vise hanging around doing nothing really
>>isn't any more problematic than an Oubliette hanging around doing nothing
>>because it targetted a token creature. It might look strange, but I
>>wouldn't call it "problematic".
>>
>
> Such as...the situation with Steal Artifact and set targetted artifacts.
>Our group tried that approach back in July and hit the same snag - we
>couldn't resolve the issue without changing the way the rules effect
>two player game play, something we refused to do just to fix something that
>wasn't broke. There were other *problems* with the rulings, I'd have to
>review the list again and think it over to point them out.
Well, the example you picked is kinda the big one. Even Tom has said that
they may end up reversing it, proving that the Team is at least open-minded.
Pointing out other serious problems that result from the rulings would
help me see your point better.
> I see the above as another example of attempting to pass off contention
>over the rulings as simply complaints about changes in playing style. I
>would hardly regard a set of rulings that changes the dynamics of the
>existing 2 player game simply "strange". Please don't dismiss objections as
>simply grumblings of the masses, asside from sounding elitist and insulting
>it ignores the idea that there are valid concerns being expressed.
I agree that the absolutely unapologetic tone WotC takes when presenting
rulings makes it seem as if the players are receiving the Law from On High.
Check out what Tom is really saying, though:
>>It is not surprising at all that there were objections to the rulings.
>>But there is no particular reason we should have taken a poll on what
>>the rulings should have been, especially since we've had several people
>>watching the net for months (e.g. myself) who have seen the traffic
>>on the subject. If people point out problems in the rulings then we'll
>>reexamine them, but for example we were well aware that some people
>>wouldn't like the Black Vise ruling. That doesn't change the fact that
>>we think the ruling which appeared to be more popular was imbalanced,
>>and it doesn't mean that we should have ruled the other way simply
>>because lots of people played that way.
The team is trying to *do its job*--make a balanced game. No one's trying
to stop you from playing however you want with your friends, but if WotC is
ever going to run multiplayer tournaments--and this is the first step--then
they're going to have to make sure that Official Multiplayer Magic meets
certain standards for fairness. Do you know *anyone* who doesn't think
a multiplayer Vise [or *especially* Underworld Dreams] is just ludicrously
powerful?
> There is no requirement to "take a poll", but as for a particular
>reason there is a good one - experience. Usenet is the largest easily
>accessible group of playtesters WotC could possibly find, and its free.
Maybe there are a lot of us, but most of us are *not* professional
playtesters. They are. No blind obedience to authority here, just
pointing out that I do this, what, maybe a couple days a week as a
social activity. I'm interested in *enjoying* the game, not pushing
all of its definitions to their limits long after doing so has become a
chore; the Design Team does that, and it consists of the most experienced
players there are (if not *necessarily* the best). I'll admit that the team
can be slow to act--and occasionally frustrating (Disk, Clone and protean
interrupt timing rulings esp.)--but almost always, there are good reasons
for the decisions it makes.
>Much of the ground WotC is treading with the new multiplayer game
>rules has been walked over already by many of us - we've seen the
>problems and the benefits of the proposed rules. Look at what people
>on the net have disagreed with (there really isn't much), and what
>they've agreed with (quite a bit - for a reason, many of us have
>tried it already, and it worked). No one says WotC has to utilize
>this resource, just that it might be beneficial to do so.
Point well taken, but so is Tom's (the whole world isn't on Usenet).
Also, Tom has said that Wizards *does* try to use the boards for
feedback. What more can they do? And again: I think implying that
the team members haven't really played much multiplayer magic is a little
silly. It *would* be irresponsible of them to release rulings if
they hadn't, but I think it's safe to assume they have.
[snip]
>Multiplayer games are games of sleath and diplomacy. The focus
>is gaining the upper hand without looking like you are getting the
>upper hand, of nailing other players just enough to keep them under
>control without looking like a threat when you do it.
[snip]
>
> Consider the Black Vise example, in which WotC decided such spells and
>effects that would have a detrimental effect on all or several players
>were considered "imbalanced" (perhaps because the effect seems out of
>proportion to the spells casting cost, availability, or lack of side
>effects). Experienced multiplayer MTG gamers will point out that
>playing a Black Vise that effects all other players does not result
>in an easy victory, it usually results in its caster's lifespan in the
>game being measured in minutes.
You are absolutely right, but this is not the point. What if there were
a sorcery, costing two red, that read "Do 5 damage to all players except
caster"? If you ever cast it, yes, everyone would hate you and a combined
effort could certainly bring you down. This card might not even be
imbalancing in two-person play. But in multiplayer games it'd do a heck
of a lot more for the casting cost than any other card does, and I'd sure
load up with it. Just because it isn't always *smart* to play early global
Vises in multiplayer doesn't mean they aren't ridiculously effective.
Overpowered stuff finds ways of being abused: a bunch of Vises in a fast
Hurricane/Quake deck kick big multiplayer butt. Too big. Heck, I think
Stasis, Hurricane/Earthquake, Syphon Soul (in a giant melee? ugh), and
maybe even Pestilence pose serious multiplayer problems too, and will have
to be fixed if sanctioned m-p tournaments ever appear.
>I intend to post the multiplayer rules our group uses to the net soon,
>perhaps there will be some interest in them as an "alternative" to WotC's
>official rules. Better yet, they may get some comments and additions from
>others, I'm always open to new ideas. To use the same viewpoint of
>people who have stated we should give the WotC rulings a chance, I say
>give the same consideration to our efforts. I feel confident it will
>be worth the effort.
Always good to get new ideas. But Wizards is Wizards, and even if I think
the stuff you propose *is* better than WotC's, I doubt I'm going to be
able to get a lot of people to do it my way if it's not "official."
Dave G.
John Palmer
: In article <3fjg9n$2...@rigel.infinet.com>,
: John Palmer <jpa...@infinet.com> wrote:
: > That's why I suggested that stolen artifacts should retarget. Stealing
: >a black vice should at least allow you to turn it off and then turn it back
: >on.
: If you dropped the idea of it being targetted at all, none of this
: would be an issue.
Yes, but it's been my experience that when someone starts trying to
'regulate' something, especially something they have no apparent business
regulating, you can't get them to decide "gee, whiz, I guess we should just
not do anything because there's no problem after all.", generally speaking.
At that oint, the best solution is to influence the form of regulation.
John
Lazlo
> reexamine them, but for example we were well aware that some people
> wouldn't like the Black Vise ruling. That doesn't change the fact that
> we think the ruling which appeared to be more popular was imbalanced,
> and it doesn't mean that we should have ruled the other way simply
> because lots of people played that way.
i'm sure I missed one or 2 messages in this thread....but whhy is having
the Black Vist Target the controller's Opponents (everyone else) considered
unbalanced. I have never played with the Black Vise as a "targetted'
affect. I have never encountered anyone play with it in this manner. Here
is the reason that I don't see it as unfair.
1) your object in the group game is to kill off everyone else (obviously).
this would mean that everyone else is your opponent and that the vise
should apply to all.
2) there are more people that can now attempt to counter the vice (saving
himself and helping all).
If someone could either point me to the "unbalanced" post or emila me it
i'd appreciate it. I realize that popularity isn't going to make WoTC
change its mind...but sound logic and a decent explaination might. just
out of curiosity...has anyone been playing The Vise (in a group game) using
the "target specific player" ruling from the start?
just my 1/50th of a $
Lazlo...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lazlo | "It's a moral imperative"
Phi Kappa Psi | -Chris Knight 'Real
Genius'
NY Theta @ RIT |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My other .sig is in the shop
har...@ulogic.com
>>har...@ulogic.com wrote:
>>: If you dropped the idea of it being targetted at all, none of this
>>: would be an issue.
>>
>> Yes, but it's been my experience that when someone starts trying to
>>'regulate' something, especially something they have no apparent business
>>regulating, you can't get them to decide "gee, whiz, I guess we should just
>>not do anything because there's no problem after all.", generally speaking.
>> At that oint, the best solution is to influence the form of regulation.
>
>shlock theories of politics.
>
>Stick to the issue. Your problem is that you're assuming they simply have
>an urge to regulate when the real problem is that you haven't _convinced_
>them (or me) that there is, in fact, "no problem after all".
Actually, Fred, YOU have not convinced US that there IS a problem.
Define the problem before shooting off solutions like making a formerly
untargetting card into a targetting card w/ all the new conflicts that
arise from that decision.
-rmh
George W. Bayles
[snip]
: Sure, but the phrase "affects target player, target player may be changed
: during controller's upkeep" is simple, obvious, works the same
: in two- and multi-player games, and has the advantage that you don't have
: to come up with strained rulings to cover every contingency. So what if you
: can target yourself, no sane player will do so. For permanents like
: Disrupting Scepter, where you might not want people destroying their own
: hands to avoid a Black Vice's damage, just say "target player other than
: you". For permanents that are intended to affect multiple players,
: like "all oponents" you can say something like "choose a set of players in
: play. X will happen to each named player." Assume that players are sane
: and will do the right thing in choosing targets. If a player leaves the game,
: ignore the effect.
: >While we could get into messy things about being able to retarget the Vise
: >periodically, the bottom line there is that it makes a simple card way too
: >complex, so we simply say you pick the target and that's it.
: When did "retarget during upkeep" become complex?
: --
: James Buster
: bit...@netcom.com
IMHO this is the best set of suggestions I've seen so far - it's simple
to understand and implement, and doesn't compromise play balance. My
congratulations to you, James.
Thomas R Wylie
noone <onet...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Please give an example of the "microtext" you have to get into
>in order to use this interpretation. I just don't see it. Or
>perhaps it just depends upon what you mean when you say "to
>get the card right"?
Well, OK, "microtext" is an exaggeration. (Especially since I just
now remember exactly how small microtext really is...) The point is,
it overcomplexifies what ought to be a simple card.
>If it were guidelines to handle most cards, I wouldn't be so
>fussy about it. But you've got a bunch of different lists w/
>different sets of cards that each interpret "opponent" differently.
The guidelines we used were more or less straightforward: we stuck
with "target player" or "any opponent" unless there was a game balance
or conceptual reason to change it to "target opponent". Unfortunately,
since it's not possible for customers to read our minds, we have
to give instance lists and not clear guidelines.
>>This, by the way, is definitely not true, since the Black Vise was a
>>Continuous Artifact, and its effects are very clearly directed at
>>a certain player rather than being a "field of effect". The only thing
>>being Continuous really means is that the effect isn't paid for.
>How is it "clearly directed at a certain player"? I've always
>considered it to be "directed _away_ from a certain player",
>the controller. I don't see anything that makes your statement
>obviously "clearer" than mine. "Opponent" is opposite of "you"
>(and "you" is synonymous w/ "controller").
Well, to uss it's clear the effect is focussed to someone, not away
from someone. Vises focus on a narrow field, after all, and it's
"Black Vise", not "Black Garden Sprinkler". Maybe it's just more
obvious to us than to most, since we're closer to the conception.
>>We don't want to break cards simply for the sake of simplicity.
>>Saying that Black Vise was a broadcast effect would, in our opinion,
>>break it.
>Please explain why.
See above. As for game balance, we simply feel that the "hose everyone"
interpretation is overpowered for a 1 casting cost artifact. We've
heard of the "well, that's balanced by the fact that everyone gangs up
on you" argument, but, well, call us odd, but we prefer to write cards
assuming players want to stay in the game rather than see how quickly
they can get themselves killed (or how long they can hold out).
Thomas R Wylie
Walter Goodwin <goo...@elsun165.cc.purdue.edu> wrote:
>This is extremely confusing. Having a legal target is one of the
>basic rules of the game. And now we have a card that breaks that rule.
We're sorry if people find this distressing or what have you, but
there are already cards that break basic rules (like having an
untap phase) so we're not particularly concerned about it.
>If enchantment
>alteration didn't have the bit about picking a valid target, does anyone
>think that it would be ruled that it can move a tacklemaggot onto a
>white knight? I don't think so.
Well, there's no general rule saying that a retargetted effect would
have to be moved to a valid target, so that rule had to be on Enchantment
Alteration for it to work that way. I suspect most people assume that
it's just a reminder, but this isn't actually the case.
Bruce T. Brodnax
>rule and saying, "come what may..." about it, you wind up ignoring some
>bad implications.
Nevertheless, K.I.S.S. still applies. The new m-p rulings change the
regular duel unnecessarily, as well as violating the K.I.S.S. protocol.
>
>Well, of course, keeping in mind that our judgements about these things
>are different, my answer would be that the change to the two player games
>are rather trivial and the good to be gained in terms of consitency
>(both in rules and in the value of the various cards) is well worth it.
But they aren't trivial. And the consistency of values is irrelevant and
illusory.
>>>The trouble is the the formerly trivial targetting of the Vise becomes
>>
>>*bzzt* -- formerly there was no targetting
>
>There was no targetting _decision_ to be made but there was targetting.
No, it has an untargetted effect.
>
>
>Come on, that's really rather dense to deny that there's a multiplication of
>the Vises power by number of opponents in a multiplayer game by your proposed
>ruling. It would simultaneously act on however many there are instead of
>one. If I wanted to throw a Lighting Bolt and expect it to act on all of my
>opponents and tried to argue to you that that's correspondingly equal in
>power to the two player game, would you let me get away with it? I think not.
Of course the power of the Vise is increased in a m-p scenario! That
doesn't mean the card is broken: Syphon Soul was *intended* for m-p
games, and is correspondingly "stronger" vs. its utility in a duel. As
for the Lightning Bolt, you're comparing an untargetted effect (the Vise)
to a targetted one. Not quite the same thing, even in a duel.
>Soul is the obvious one. However, I don't think any cards exist that
>become so distinctly unbalanced as cards like the Vice and Underworld
>Dreams would become under your proposal. Syphon Soul isn't worth munch
Isn't Underworld Dreams an "enchant world" card? So it effects everyone?
Just checking...
>Most cards are basically all right in the MP environment. Changed or not
>changed, more powerful or less powerful, all in all most of them play
>just fine. But cards like the Vise and Underworld Dreams and the like
>just gain too much to ignore if you permit them to act directly on everybody
>else instead of just one opponent. In the latter case, they're quite
>comparable to a direct damage spell or a tapping creature or artifact
>effect that can (normally) be used only one per turn. This keeps the
>focus from changing in the game to these types of cards.
>Why is simplicity the best way to accomplish this? Simplicity is in no
>way equivalent to consistency between the two games.
Ah, but simplicity is the key to consistency! The more convoluted and
Byzantine the rules, the less likely they will be *interpreted*
consistently or be familiar to all players.
My complaint with the new rules are that they have restructured the game
to no good purpose. It would have been far simpler (and wiser) to say
that "cards that non-specifically affect more than one opponent only apply
to those opponents to the controller's immediate right and left." Thus
the intrinsic nature of non-targetted cards like the Vise are left
unchanged, yet they don't "grow" beyond a certain reasonable power in
multi-opponent gameplay. Simple, consistent, and fair.
Play on,
Bruce Brodnax "I am _not_ crazy! MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE!!!" <tm>
Dennis F. Hefferman
|Interesting. I would have said _exactly_ the opposite. The design team is
|going for the better game but ignoring somewhat the semantics of some of the
|text on a few of the cards.
There is no consensus that the design team's ideas produce a better
multiplayer game. And this isn't the first time they've gone with scripture
over sense (Clockwork ruling, Serendib Djinn, etc.)
|I don't know. I still think a lot of people are yelping around here
|because it's not the multiplayer game they _currently_ play. Like a lot
I'm not yelping about any multiplayer game. I'm yelping because
they're fucking up the two-player game in the name of a variant that is _STILL_
officially unsupported.
|of other things, "different" can be annoying to have to accept but if you
|give it a chance, eventually you might find you like it.
Other people have indicated that they've tried playing multiplayer
games using rules like this in the past, and that it didn't work. It is
incumbent upon the advocate of change to _show_ that said change is
preferrable.
--
Dennis Francis Heffernan IRC: FuzyLogic heff...@pegasus.montclair.edu
Montclair State University #include <disclaim.h> Computer Science/Philosophy
"They feed you on the guilt to keep you humble, keep you low/Some man and myth
they made up a thousand years ago." -- "Silent Legacy", Melissa Etheridge
Thomas R Wylie
<har...@ulogic.com> wrote:
>It would be easier to do this (that is, agree among people you meet
>and with whom you wish to have a game) if the _reasons_ for the cards
>being banned/restricted were listed with the cards. Otherwise it just
>comes down to going over all of 'em and finding out which ones you can
>both agree on. If there were a few categories (unbalancing, delaying,
>oop) then you could just say "ok, convocation rules w/ delaying cards
>unrestricted".
Well, I keep reminding the Convocatin people that something like this
should be done, and they keep allowing as to how it probably should be,
tbut there are (apparently) lots of things with higher priority. It might
be time to rattle the cages aain, though.
Thomas R Wylie
Jamie Wadell <wad...@rintintin.Colorado.EDU> wrote:
>...but if not tourney rules, why listen to errata?...
Well, there's the fact that errata is intended to fix a broken card, or
to correct a simple printing mistake...
Thomas R Wylie
<har...@ulogic.com> wrote:
>"opponent" is reinterpreted re. the new controller. Almost any other
>card works that way, f'r example Preacher, which lets you gain control
>of an opponent's cards (ok, maybe that one is really a "target opponent"...)
That's because the Preacher's ability is activated, and thus the
characteristics of the Preacher (including its current opponent) are
read in when the ability is activated, not when the Preacher is
cast. Saying that the opponent was locked in when the Preacher was
cast wouldn't make any more sense than saying that Tracker is locked
into doing 2 damage with its stab.
>I really think that a _primary_ consideration in these recommended
>adaptations for multiplayer play be that the normal (two player)
>game not be affected by them...
We simply are not going to write the cards to care whether they are
being used in a multiplayer game or not. All of the cards inthis
ruling will be rewritten in the future, and the rewrite won't care
whether a given game is multiplayer or not. We very deliberately
issued the rulings based onw how we would reprint the cards, so that
we don't reverse rulings en masse when we do reprint those cards.
>The "you"
>or "controller" on most cards. But if a card says "controller", that isn't
>considered to be targetting ... or has that changed too?
That has not changes. It's quite clear how such cards work in
multiplayer play.
>It removes completely a formerly valid defense from the Black Vise.
>It opens the question of "is _this_ targetted? is _this_ targetted?"
>to all cards that previously just had general effects.
No, only for those cards which are vague in multiplayer play.
Thomas R Wylie
Garry Handelman <gha...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>: Basically the design team is just concerned with what the proper solution to
>: a problem should be. The dissemination of information will take care
> Could you please clarify how, exactly, the Design Team descides
>what is "proper"?
Depends on the problem. Some can be solved by going back to the rulebook.
Some require a new rule, or deciding *not* to add a new rule. When it
came to the 'proper' solution to a given "opponent" card, it basically
came down to judgment calls.
har...@ulogic.com
>have to be moved to a valid target, so that rule had to be on Enchantment
>Alteration for it to work that way. I suspect most people assume that
>it's just a reminder, but this isn't actually the case.
Really? I had thought that Enchantments were considered to be
"continuously retargetting" and if their target somehow became
invalid they would fall off. This is why the Green Ward has to
have errata, so that if you LifeLace it's target the Ward does
not fall off, no? Are you saying now that Enchantment Alteration
negates this continuous targetting? Or that it gets retargetted
to an invalid target then immediately falls off?
-rmh
Cavalier
>This, by the way, is definitely not true, since the Black Vise was a
>Continuous Artifact, and its effects are very clearly directed at
>a certain player rather than being a "field of effect". The only thing
>being Continuous really means is that the effect isn't paid for.
An interesting point. The only thing being continus really means is that
the effect isn't paid for.
Let's look at that for a second.
If the card said T: target opponent takes one point of damage for each
card above four in their hand during their upkeep.
It would be clear that once stolen, the new controller could select
a new target. Of course the controller could also pick a new target
each turn, which is not something that should be done (though a few
people play that way).
Tom, I completely agree with you that reading the Black Vise as "all
opponents" would make it much more powerful than it was ever intended
to be. I simply cannot understand, however, why it is such a problem
to redefine "target opponent" when the card changes control. This is
how everybody I know plays, and it has always worked well and provided
for a well balanced card that acted pretty well the way the card text
said it did.
I also want to add, because I'm pretty sure that my earlier post didn't
go through, a response to the person who asserted that none of this mattered
because stealing black vices wasn't all that a common thing anyway and it
was no big deal. Maybe where you play and with the people you play with,
that is true. Here, with the people I play with, there was a time when
stealing a persons black vise (vice? I've really confused myself) and
putting it on them so they would take the damage instead of me was an
extremely regular thing. It still would be, except I took the steals out
of my deck as an experipiment. If we accept this ruling, I can gurantee
they won't be going back in.
I'm glad to see you've agreed that this perhaps needs to be reconsidered at
least a bit, Tom. Think about it. We all want is best for the game.
-Tim
The Blue Mage
--
##############################################################################
# Tim Crall cr...@usc.edu #
# -)------- ---'---,---<@ #
##############################################################################
Frederick Scott
>In article <fred_sD2...@netcom.com>,
>Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>Well, of course, keeping in mind that our judgements about these things
>>are different, my answer would be that the change to the two player games
>>are rather trivial and the good to be gained in terms of consitency
>>(both in rules and in the value of the various cards) is well worth it.
>
>But they aren't trivial. And the consistency of values is irrelevant and
>illusory.
To you perhaps. To me, it's very important. One of the reasons I've tended
to avoid multiplayer is because of things like Vise targetting rules like
this that make the Vise more powerful than a Sengir Vampire, in my estimation.
>>>>The trouble is the the formerly trivial targetting of the Vise becomes
>>>
>>>*bzzt* -- formerly there was no targetting
>>
>>There was no targetting _decision_ to be made but there was targetting.
>
>No, it has an untargetted effect.
It affects one player and not another. This is the only definition of
targeting that means anything.
>>Come on, that's really rather dense to deny that there's a multiplication of
>>the Vises power by number of opponents in a multiplayer game by your proposed
>>ruling. It would simultaneously act on however many there are instead of
>>one. If I wanted to throw a Lighting Bolt and expect it to act on all of my
>>opponents and tried to argue to you that that's correspondingly equal in
>>power to the two player game, would you let me get away with it? I think not.
>
>Of course the power of the Vise is increased in a m-p scenario!
(Thank you. Mr. Hartman is of yet unconvinced of this.)
>That doesn't mean the card is broken: Syphon Soul was *intended* for m-p
>games, and is correspondingly "stronger" vs. its utility in a duel.
Yes, of course. But its costs were set for MP play. It's simply a useless
card in duel play, but that doesn't hurt anything. It's the situation
where a balanced card in one type of play becomes too strong in the other
that we're worried about.
>As for the Lightning Bolt, you're comparing an untargetted effect (the Vise)
>to a targetted one. Not quite the same thing, even in a duel.
The difference is purely semantic. Your definition of "targetted" vs.
"untargetted" has no relevance in this issue, as far as I care.
>>Soul is the obvious one. However, I don't think any cards exist that
>>become so distinctly unbalanced as cards like the Vice and Underworld
>>Dreams would become under your proposal. Syphon Soul isn't worth munch
>
>Isn't Underworld Dreams an "enchant world" card? So it effects everyone?
>Just checking...
No - it's a general enchantment acting on the opponent of the caster, like
Kismet.
>>Most cards are basically all right in the MP environment. Changed or not
>>changed, more powerful or less powerful, all in all most of them play
>>just fine. But cards like the Vise and Underworld Dreams and the like
>>just gain too much to ignore if you permit them to act directly on everybody
>>else instead of just one opponent. In the latter case, they're quite
>>comparable to a direct damage spell or a tapping creature or artifact
>>effect that can (normally) be used only one per turn. This keeps the
>>focus from changing in the game to these types of cards.
>
>>Why is simplicity the best way to accomplish this? Simplicity is in no
>>way equivalent to consistency between the two games.
>
>Ah, but simplicity is the key to consistency! The more convoluted and
>Byzantine the rules, the less likely they will be *interpreted*
>consistently or be familiar to all players.
Note that I did _not_ say, "consistency for consistency's sake". This just
goes back to the worship of and obsesssion with K.I.S.S. Simplicity, in
this case, works against the play consistency between duel play and
multiplayer play by ignoring how a simple rule distorts the power of
certain cards in relation to other cards.
>My complaint with the new rules are that they have restructured the game
>to no good purpose. It would have been far simpler (and wiser) to say
>that "cards that non-specifically affect more than one opponent only apply
>to those opponents to the controller's immediate right and left." Thus
>the intrinsic nature of non-targetted cards like the Vise are left
>unchanged, yet they don't "grow" beyond a certain reasonable power in
>multi-opponent gameplay. Simple, consistent, and fair.
Differing judgement justified with meaningless semantics. Whether it's
"wiser" or not, depends on one's point of view and what one likes in a
game. I don't mind you're coming to a different conclusion than I would
based on what you deem important and not important. I have to say, though,
that indulging in phrases like "the intrinsic nature of non-targetted cards"
is just a gratuitious stab at painting over an obvious problem with B.S.
It's simple...period.
Fred
Tony Nardo
>[...] As for game balance, we simply feel that the "hose everyone"
>interpretation is overpowered for a 1 casting cost artifact.
This argument I can live with, although one can also argue that Black Vise is
overpowered even in a two-player game...
> We've
>heard of the "well, that's balanced by the fact that everyone gangs up
>on you" argument, but, well, call us odd, but we prefer to write cards
>assuming players want to stay in the game rather than see how quickly
>they can get themselves killed (or how long they can hold out).
Ah, but in a multi-player game (one in which players are eliminated, that
is) there's a third option: hold the Black Vise in reserve until you work
your way down to the equivalent of a two-player game.
Any sufficiently powerful card, regardless of the appropriateness of its
casting cost, will arouse the ire of the other players in a multi-player
game. For the multi-player forum, the only way to write cards assuming players
don't want to see how fast retribution can be leveled on them is to write
nothing but low-cost, low-power cards -- and that wouldn't necessarily provide
for a fun game, either.
--
Tony Nardo, INET: t...@strdev.jhuapl.edu, t...@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu
Johns Hopkins Univ./APL UUCP: {backbone!}mimsy!aplcomm!trn
Matt Dimmic
The wording on the Rainbow Vale seems a bit ambiguous to me. Does control
of the card pass to the opponent at the end of every turn, or only when the
card is tapped and mana drawn?
Adam Cerling
Black Vise 1
Artifact
T: Do 1 damage to target player for each card in his or her hand
above 4. This ability can only be used during target player's upkeep.
It won't be as "unbalanced" (according to WotC's definition) in
multiplayer play, although it will be slightly stronger. More
importantly, it won't change duel play at all. (I play for fun. I
_traded_ for a Steal Artifact to put in my deck.)
The same sort of wording could apply to the Rack and the like.
Just my UU.
Adam Cerling
Craig Allen Campbell
We've been playing it that control of the Vale passes to the opponent at the
end of a turn when mana is drawn from it. The logic is this: The "Control
of Vale passes to opponent at end of turn" comment is all part of the
directions after the tap symbol. Therefore it is what you do when you tap
it, just like the drawing of one mana of any color is. If the "control
passes to opponent" part was its own separate phrase not connected with the
tapping description, then it would pass at EVERY turn regardless of use.
/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~\
-craigc | And Josiah did go to the mountaintop |____|
| for forty days and forty nights. And |
@alpha1 | there he sat upon pillows of silk and | player 1: forest,
.csd | contemplated his request. And when the | mox, mox, lotus,
.uwm | Lord came to him in a dream, Josiah did | channel, fireball,
.edu | say unto the Lord, "where might I find | healing salve
| a mint Black Lotus?" -book of Erg |
/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/ | player 2: chaos
\_________________________________________\__/ table
Templar
After reading most of the articles in this thread, three things occur to me:
1) Why doesn't WoTC make some special cards that would extend the effects of
regular cards and apply them to other players? (e.g. for artifacts,
create a `Re-Targeting' spell that would allow the owner, if they had just
stolen someone's targetted artifact or if they wanted to redirect their
own targetted artifact, to pick another victim?)
2) Barring that, why doesn't WoTC create a multiplayer version of magic
(complete with new cards) instead of trying to adapt the exisitng two-
player setup?
3) Barring that, if the players don't like what WoTC has proposed, then don't
play with the WoTC rules (seems like most RPG companies are saying that
nowadays). If you've been playing with something that has worked for
years, and if you're going to continue playing with that setup -
regardless of what WoTC says, then fine; by all means, please do so.
However, if you are going to do your own thing, I don't think you really
have the right to tell WoTC that they're doing things the wrong way;
after all, technically it is their product, and you aren't and probably
will never play according to their rules anyway...
Just some observations...
Templar
(who's a little tired of seeing the WoTC Magic design team bashing in this
thread)
Jason L Spangehl
Hurd) writes:
> In article <3f1hme$2...@news.bu.edu>, James Falco <ed...@bu.edu> wrote:
> >Thomas R Wylie (aa...@cats.ucsc.edu) wrote:
> >
> >: M. Costalas <doi...@er7.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> >: >Am I reading this correctly? If so, then if a black vise is
targeted at me
> >: >and I steal that artifact, I can't redirect it? Is it still
affecting ME?
> >
> >: Yes, exactly.
> >
> >
> >: Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative
> >This has got to be the single worst ruling I have ever seen come out.
An
> >artifact is simply an object for a player to use. WotC should abandon
this
> >inane quest to clarify multiplayer play, and simply allow the cards
which
> >state opponent to affect all opponents. If you have a teammate, they
are not
> >your opponent, by definition. Yes, Black Vise sucks that way, but in a
> >mulitplayer game, I doubt such artifacts would be allowed to exists for
very
> >long. This is going to be a very disregarded rule in most groups, I
predict...
> >
> >Guys, some excellent rulings in the past, but this one is silly.
> >
>
> i agree. we've been playing multiplayer with the ruling that if the
vice or
> rack comes out, it affects all other players (even teammates). so if
someone
> stole the artifact, it would only protect them from the effects (because
they
> would be the owner) we had thought about the ruling of having them just
effect
> members of the opposing team but then it made them too powerful - both
teams
> would get out as many as they could - atleast one per team mate - and
the
> opposing teams didn't last long at all. by having it effect everyone
except
> the person playing it, it seemed to make playing one a lot more
dangerous and
> balanced...
>
> by having to select the target player you want it to effect, you vstly
limit
> the usefulness of the card - once the player is out of the game, the
card is
> useless (except to sacrifice)...
>
> have fun,
>
> matt h.
>
>
> --
> matt hurd m...@wlv.iipo.gtegsc.com /\ "I am not a man ... I am
a
> these opinions were brought to you by me. \/ magician without magic,
and
> "Aiyeee! It's a Ballhog!" /\ that's no one at all."
> - Legolam \/ - Schmendrick the
Magician
JESUS, this is a stupid ruling.
Evan Simpson
>>The only time
>>a permanent-spell should target a *player* is if it has to choose a player
>>for some reason, and the only real reason for it to have to do so is if it
>>would have to decide in which territory to be placed.
>
>That strikes me as a needless restriction on the sorts of effects
>which could target players.
I quite agree. No reason a permanent can't target a player if it needs to.
[...]
>
>Take the Black Vise (rapidly becoming the "classic" example on this
>topic...). In the two-player game originally envisioned, ti's simple
>enough: you plunk it down, and it damages your opponent. There's no
>particular reason someone would play it on themselves, and the conception
>doesn't really allow for it, so it says "opponent" rather than "target
>player". All fine and dandy.
>
[...]
>Now the question becomes what each ruling should be. In general, we
>assumed each "opponent" effect would say "target player" or "any opponent",
>as appropriate, unless there was a game balance or card conept reason for
>it to say "target opponent" instead. Black Vise is (in our opinion) way
>too overpowered if it reads "any opponent", and it has a conceptual reason
>to not be able to affect the caster, so we decided it should say
>"target opponent", and thus the ruling. While we could get into messy
>things about being able to retarget the Vise periodically, the bottom line
>there is that it makes a simple card way too complex, so we simply say
>you pick the target and that's it.
>
I am curious about this reasoning. I regularly play Melee Magic with a
large group, and we have never discovered any unbalancing effects or
problems with the following simple ruling:
Any card which affects "opponent" (as opposed to "opponents", "both
players", "all players", etc.) is considered to require a targetting
choice at casting time, and can be reaimed as a fast effect during the
controller's upkeep. If the card's controller changes, the new
controller can immediately reaim.
This allows the owner of Vice to strafe all the other players, making
everyone keep their hand down, but in our opinion this makes it no worse
than it is in two-player games.
>There were a couple of side rulings on this which were maybe ill-
>considered at first, for example the fact that stealing the Vise accomplishes
>absolutely nothing (and so on for similar cards). It may be that stealing
>it causes the effect to shut down until the target becomes an opponent of
>the Vise again. It's even vaguely possible that it would cause the effect
>entirely. (The basic question here is whether the Vise ruling should synch
>with the Wretched/Aladdin ruling, and if so, how much.) It definitely should
>not retarget; again, that would require a complex rule on what should be
>a simple card.
>
As I say, I don't understand this. We have never had a problem with
retargetting, and the rule applies to half a dozen cards.
>>Sorry. Yes, this is My Opinion; I put it forcefully because I can see no
>>reasons what-so-ever for having these three cards in particular be Reflectable
>
>Given that the Vise and the racks target a player, there is no reason why
>you can't Reflect them back to the caster. The Reflecting Mirror doesn't
>say it requires the new target to be "valid", it just resets the target
>to a different player. Therefore you can reset the target to any player you
>want. The rule on Enchantment Alteration is a specific rule about EA, not a
>general rule about cards which retarget things.
I find this a little disturbing, but valid. It says that the only reason
you can't Reflect a Vise onto a creature is that the *Mirror* requires a
target player, not that the *Vise* doesn't consider a creature a valid
target. The design team should be very careful about making target
redirectors in the future, or we might end up with absurdities such as
redirecting the effect of a Tracker onto a player.
Brian Cash
: Hello!
: After reading most of the articles in this thread, three things occur to me:
: 1) Why doesn't WoTC make some special cards that would extend the effects of
: regular cards and apply them to other players? (e.g. for artifacts,
: create a `Re-Targeting' spell that would allow the owner,if they had just
: stolen someone's targetted artifact or if they wanted to redirect their
: own targetted artifact, to pick another victim?)
Rules cards? Ick, no!
: 2) Barring that, why doesn't WoTC create a multiplayer version of magic
: (complete with new cards) instead of trying to adapt the exisitng two-
: player setup?
Not needed. 80% of the games I play are multi-player.
: 3) Barring that, if the players don't like what WoTC has proposed,then don't
: play with the WoTC rules (seems like most RPG companies are saying that
: nowadays). If you've been playing with something that has worked for
: years, and if you're going to continue playing with that setup -
: regardless of what WoTC says, then fine; by all means, please do so.
: However, if you are going to do your own thing, I don't think you really
: have the right to tell WoTC that they're doing things the wrong way;
: after all, technically it is their product, and you aren't and probably
: will never play according to their rules anyway...
YES! YES! LORD YES!!!!!!!!
It is EASY to make a multiplayer game out of magic!
Quit bothering WoTC and just -think-!
Brian /-|-\ "TOM: am I supposed to put my cards in glass or cardboard boxes?"
--
My greatest hope is that people will try to learn who I really am.
My greatest fear is that they might succeed.
Goldman of Chaos
>Artifacts such as the black vise are not targetted, they are continuous
>effects that affect something ... in this case the "opponent", each
>upkeep. WotC has said basically "ok, in order to accomodate this to
>multiplayer play we have to make it targetted" and this has serious
>repercussions back to two-player games.
What about the target can only be changed during your upkeep phase?
That way you wouldn't be able to change it until your next turn.
Matt
--
Matthew Goldman E-mail: gol...@orac.cray.com Work: (612) 683-3061
My day today? Nothing major, just Xenon base gone, Scorpio gone,
Tarrant dead, Tarrant alive and then I found out Blake sold us out.
John O'Callaghan
> Walter Goodwin <goo...@elsun165.cc.purdue.edu> wrote:
> >This is extremely confusing. Having a legal target is one of the
> >basic rules of the game. And now we have a card that breaks that rule.
> We're sorry if people find this distressing or what have you, but
> there are already cards that break basic rules (like having an
> untap phase) so we're not particularly concerned about it.
Yes, but other cards that break the rules tend to have some effect
which explicitly breaks the rules. Reflecting Mirror is different
in that it can function without breaking any rules other than the
explicit change in who chooses the player to be targetted.
Faced with a situation in which some, but not all, possible uses
of a card would break the rules, I would expect those uses to be
illegal unless the card says otherwise. How is the uninformed
player supposed to realize that the Vodalian War Machine doesn't
break the Summoning Sickness rules, but a Reflecting Mirror
breaks the Targetting rules.
If you really want the Reflecting Mirror to break the rules, please
issue errata saying so. Before the multiplayer/Black Vice ruling,
there was nothing Reflectable that could not legally target the
caster, so there was no need to explicitly demand a legal target.
It still looks like a simple case of overlooking possible types of
spells, such as "target opponent" or "target ally."
> >If enchantment
> >alteration didn't have the bit about picking a valid target, does anyone
> >think that it would be ruled that it can move a tacklemaggot onto a
> >white knight? I don't think so.
> Well, there's no general rule saying that a retargetted effect would
> have to be moved to a valid target, so that rule had to be on Enchantment
> Alteration for it to work that way. I suspect most people assume that
> it's just a reminder, but this isn't actually the case.
If you're going to stick with this, can we at least use the rule that
if a spell's target becomes invalid the spell fizzles to make a Black
Vice Reflected at its caster fizzle?
> Tom Wylie rec.games.trading-cards.* Network Representative for
> aa...@cats.ucsc.edu Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
--
John O'Callaghan
j...@rahul.net
joca...@scudc.scu.edu
Mark A. Havener
Tom Wylie <aa...@cats.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>HOLT A <sb...@city.ac.uk> wrote:
>>Yes, the problem is that they seem to be deciding "proper" on the basis
>>of legalistic semantic examination of existing wording when they should
>>be working on the basis of "what makes the best balanced and playable...
>
>That is what happened, actually. We tried to make "opponent" effects
>be target player, but made them "target opponent" if there were game
>balance or conceptual reasons for doing so.
Gee Holt, why don't you read this thread again? It's pretty obvious
that it's the rulings' OPPONENTS who are trying to use a "legalistic
semantic examination of existing wording when they should be working
on the basis of 'what makes the best balanced and playable (game)".
The rules team has obviously thought it well through and made a good
decision based on game balance. Opponents of the rulings seem to be
using the (rather weak) arguments of "That's not how our group
understood these cards to work" or even better "that's not how our group
plays". If that's not how your group plays, then by all means continue
to play differently (WoTC has always encouraged house rules for use with
your regular group). That's not how my group plays either, but it WILL
be the way we play, if I have anything to say about it (and I will).
The new multiplayer rulings aren't perfect, but they go a ways towards
restoring some balance to some cards that were previously unbalanced in
multiplayer play. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that the Water
Wurm got mistakenly placed on the wrong list. :) There is absolutely no
reason that the Black Vise should be as powerful as it is in multiplayer
games (in most groups) for its cost of 1 colorless. Now it's a much more
reasonable card.
To be honest, I HATED the "Black Vise Ruling" (that's what I'll call it
now, I don't know about ya'll) when I first read it. Then I thought
about it, and thought about it some more, and it made sense to me. Just
because we haven't been thinking about the Black Vise's effect as being
targetted doesn't mean it hasn't been all this time. We just didn't think
of it that way. We were wrong. The card text was written for 2 player
duels. What we have all done in our multiplayer games is take that text
and try to read it directly, without translation, in an arena for which
it was never intended. The rules team has done better than that now,
"translating" the text of the cards for multiplayer games. What these
translations reveal is that we have been thinking about certain cards
incorrectly, for example--the Black Vise. I never knew that this was
a targetted effect, (though it's pretty obvious that it is) but that's
because I never really *thought* about it. I never had to; the targetting
decision was made for me. That still doesn't change the fact that the
effect is targetted at my opponent. It is pretty obvious that this is what
the designers *intended* for the card to do anyway. Who cares if that's
not easy to read in the text? It's pretty clear now, I think.
I think we all need to investigate why these rulings bother us so much.
Is it just because it's different than the way we play, and will involve
changing the way we think about certain cards and how they work? If so,
that's a pretty poor reason to reject the ruling.
>
>>There seems to be a feeling that we will change the way the game
>>plays to match the wording of the (second edition) rules rather than
>>accepting that those rules may not lead to the best version of the game.
>
>We are assuming that people will follow the updates of the rules, yes.
>We are not going to support several versions of the rules, which
>contain contradictory rules, all at once. In this case, we are
>anticipating the next printings of the cards, rather than ruling one way
>now and then reversing those rulings when we update the cards.
>
>>When you have masses of messages on the net suggesting that a change is
>>_wrong_, and AFAICT none seriously supporting it you should rethink.
>
>As far as that goes, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the people
>who agree with rulings or decisions never come out of the woodwork to
>support the rulings or decisions, but rather let WotC and anyone else
>who feels like it respond to the objections. The lack of response not
>a reliable indication of how popular a given ruling or decision is.
>
>
Well, here I am Tom, out of the woodwork. For the record, I am in support of
this ruling, and will try to disseminate it to my group. "Game balance"
works over "intuitive" any day in my book. Also for the record, I would
have stayed "in the woodwork" if it hadn't been for this post. Just had to
add my 2 cents, and show the rules team that they have more than one supporter
on this issue.
Mark
"Real Men Play Black"
hav...@ecst.csuchico.edu
(Yes, I *do* play a lot of multiplayer games. No, this is definitely *not*
how my group has played in the past. No, I do *not* agree with everything
the rules team hands down to us.)
har...@ulogic.com
>now remember exactly how small microtext really is...) The point is,
>it overcomplexifies what ought to be a simple card.
I think we are operating with different definitions of "complexity"...
>The guidelines we used were more or less straightforward: we stuck
>with "target player" or "any opponent" unless there was a game balance
>or conceptual reason to change it to "target opponent". Unfortunately,
>since it's not possible for customers to read our minds, we have
>to give instance lists and not clear guidelines.
I am not certain that I agree that the BV (in particular) and other
"affects opponent" cards (in general) _are_ that unbalancing in MP
play w/ the other interpretation. At least they haven't been. Did
you guys reach your determinations w/ theoretical guessing, or did you
actually try playing a bunch of games both ways to see just how things
worked out?
>Well, to uss it's clear the effect is focussed to someone, not away
>from someone. Vises focus on a narrow field, after all, and it's
>"Black Vise", not "Black Garden Sprinkler". Maybe it's just more
>obvious to us than to most, since we're closer to the conception.
This is too good to pass up: "it's Magic, it doesn't have to
be logical" ... or do we want to go back to discussing why the
Whipporwill can't fly?
>>>We don't want to break cards simply for the sake of simplicity.
>>>Saying that Black Vise was a broadcast effect would, in our opinion,
>>>break it.
>>Please explain why.
>
>See above. As for game balance, we simply feel that the "hose everyone"
>interpretation is overpowered for a 1 casting cost artifact. We've
>heard of the "well, that's balanced by the fact that everyone gangs up
>on you" argument, but, well, call us odd, but we prefer to write cards
>assuming players want to stay in the game rather than see how quickly
>they can get themselves killed (or how long they can hold out).
Again, in practical experience (admittedly, only in a 3-player
environment) we have not found this card to be overpowered. Heck,
we don't even always gang up on the guy that seems to get it out on
the first turn _way_ too often...
The main point (that is being lost by focussing on the discussion
of the power of this particular card) is that the _method_ you guys
chose to fix this alters the dynamics of the 2P game. Now it's
targetted, can be reflected, and stealing it doesn't affect it's
affect. These are _major_ flaws w/ your proposal as far as I am
concerned. There are a number of ways that have been put forward
since the announcement that could take care of this, such as the
proposal to allow retargetting when it's controller changes. Or
the one I read just today about merely limiting the effect of
"opponent" cards to the players immediately to the right & left
of the controller. Really, it's not the loss of strength of the
BV that is my major gripe, although it's the easiest one to talk
about -- it's the seemingly random disruption of the 2 player game.
I really think that these MP adaptations could've been done w/o
this. Perhaps your rules were based on a few basic guidelines
as you describe .. but the way it was _written_ it looks like an
arbitrary series of lists. Perhaps just saying (as you just did)
that most "opponent" cards are to be treated as affecting all opponents
with the following exceptions (a, b, ...) wouldv'e taken care of
that objection. Apparently you _had_ such guidelines, but you
just hid 'em behind the series of lists...
But again the major complaint is the seemingly arbitrary changes
in the "targettingness" of some of these things, and how it
will affect the 2P game by the "backflow" of these decisions.
I'm sorry if this idea got lost in the constant discussion of the BV.
-rmh
noone
>
>>In article <fred_sD2...@netcom.com>,
>>Frederick Scott <fre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>>jpa...@infinet.com (John Palmer) writes:
>>>
>>>>har...@ulogic.com wrote:
>>>>: If you dropped the idea of it being targetted at all, none of this
>>>>: would be an issue.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but it's been my experience that when someone starts trying to
>>>>'regulate' something, especially something they have no apparent business
>>>>regulating, you can't get them to decide "gee, whiz, I guess we should just
>>>>not do anything because there's no problem after all.", generally speaking.
>>>> At that oint, the best solution is to influence the form of regulation.
>>>
>>>Great. We start a debate about rules and wind up arguing about some guy's
>>>shlock theories of politics.
>>>
>>>Stick to the issue. Your problem is that you're assuming they simply have
>>>an urge to regulate when the real problem is that you haven't _convinced_
>>>them (or me) that there is, in fact, "no problem after all".
>>
>>Actually, Fred, YOU have not convinced US that there IS a problem.
>
>"trying to regulate something" and couldn't be convinced to refrain from it
>for some unspecified reason (they're power hungary perhaps?). I suggest
>that that reason was because they - THE DESIGN TEAM - have not been convinced
>that "there is, in fact, no problem after all". This has not a thing in
>the world to do with whether you are or are not convinced of anything.
You can not justify such regulation w/o showing that there is
a problem that needs to be regulated. The Design Team has come up
with some complicated regulation w/o showing a need for it in the
first place. Show us a problem that needs this complex a solution,
or admit that this is all unnecessary.
-rmh
Thomas R Wylie
Scott Hoffman <shof...@acca.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>"Similarly, any card with effects that influence your 'opponent' is
>considered to affect *all* players other than you. Thus, Black Vise
>would deal damage to all of your opponents and all of your partners...",
>(PPG, p.155)
>I'm not certain how long the PPG has been in publication, but it sure
>seems like everyplayer has one. It would seem a reversal of this
>magnitude would invite a lot of, "Yeah, the PPG is wrong on that one,
>too!", arguments.
Nothing in the multiplayer magic sections of the PPG should have been
considered official rules/rulings, but merely suggestions for play.
The first section on multiplayer magic makes it clear that the rules
are just things one might want to try; it looks like the section you
quoted from is less clear on this point, but the same holds true of it.
Thomas R Wylie
Templar <ez00...@cassatt.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>1) Why doesn't WoTC make some special cards that would extend the effects of
> regular cards and apply them to other players? (e.g. for artifacts,
> create a `Re-Targeting' spell that would allow the owner, if they had just
> stolen someone's targetted artifact or if they wanted to redirect their
> own targetted artifact, to pick another victim?)
Well, that's certainly a possiblity, but it's one which wouldn't have
occurred to us to actually include until now, since there would have
been no reason for it, really.
>2) Barring that, why doesn't WoTC create a multiplayer version of magic
> (complete with new cards) instead of trying to adapt the exisitng two-
> player setup?
Because there are a bazillion ways to do multiplayer magic, and we can't
write up all of them "officially", and people will just keep playing the
ones we don't write up, anyway. Any multiplayer rules are probably just
going to be variants presented in the Duelist or PPG or whatever. The
closest thing we're likely to see to official multiplayer rules is if the
Convocation sets up any multiplayer formats.
>3) Barring that, if the players don't like what WoTC has proposed, then don't
> play with the WoTC rules...
We have always tried to make it clear that the only place you *have* to
use official rules is in official tournaments. People can do whatever
they want in private play, or unofficial tournaments. What we're mainly
concerned with is that people know what the official way *is*, so they
aren't surprised when they play in an official tournament, have a common
baseline to work with when meeting new players, and so on.
Thomas R Wylie
<har...@ulogic.com> wrote:
>Really? I had thought that Enchantments were considered to be
>"continuously retargetting" and if their target somehow became
>invalid they would fall off. This is why the Green Ward has to
>have errata, so that if you LifeLace it's target the Ward does
>not fall off, no? Are you saying now that Enchantment Alteration
>negates this continuous targetting? Or that it gets retargetted
>to an invalid target then immediately falls off?
Enchantment Alteration specifically says that you must move the
enchantment to a valid target. If it didn't have this clause, then
you could move it to an invalid target fine, which would result
in the enchantment's destruction.
Thomas R Wylie
Robert Osborne <rob...@isgtec.com> wrote:
>Exactly, is there anybody else tired of playing "Magic: The Moving
>Target"? Seems like every play session I'm telling my offline friends
>that that rule that changed has changed again (Yes, I meant to say
>that that many times :-). If we played for ante I'd have had my
>throat cut by now.
>Anybody else sick of dismantling decks because of fundamental changes
>in the way the game or a card works.
Yes, well, we wince every time we reverse something, but in our opinion
doing so is better than playing with broken rules. *someday* the rules
will settle down, but who knows when that will actually happen. Sooner
or later we are probably going to spend more time biting our tongue and
leaving changes for the next release of the rules than simply reversing
things as they prove to be unworkable. The hope is that we can do this
starting with 5th edition, but then, we thought we could do it starting
with Revised :)
And my margins line up, so that must be a good plan ;)
>Anybody else waste their money on the now obsolete PPG?
The PPG is being revised, by the way. It's clear that it will have
to be revised for the next edition of Magic, if nothing else, and it
was probably due for a rewrite anyway.
Thomas R Wylie
Bruce T. Brodnax <bbro...@orion.oac.uci.edu> wrote:
>My complaint with the new rules are that they have restructured the game
>to no good purpose. It would have been far simpler (and wiser) to say
>that "cards that non-specifically affect more than one opponent only apply
>to those opponents to the controller's immediate right and left."
What exactly would "immediate right and left" mean? Sure, it makes perfect
sense in a grand melee or in emporer play, but that's probably not what
you want in emporer play, and it doesn't have a *clear* definition in
freefrom group play, or in most two-on-two systems. We could not have made
such a ruling without setting up general rules for multiplayer play, and
we still do not want to do that; the multiplayer rulings very carefully
make it (largely) irrelevant as to what sort of multiplayer rules you
are using. The only question, really, is how one would define "opponent"
in a team game. (BTW, we were assuming it would mean anyone not on your
team.)
Thomas R Wylie
<har...@ulogic.com> wrote:
>>Well, OK, "microtext" is an exaggeration. (Especially since I just
>>now remember exactly how small microtext really is...) The point is,
>>it overcomplexifies what ought to be a simple card.
>I think we are operating with different definitions of "complexity"...
Quite possibly :)
>I am not certain that I agree that the BV (in particular) and other
>"affects opponent" cards (in general) _are_ that unbalancing in MP
>play w/ the other interpretation. At least they haven't been. Did
>you guys reach your determinations w/ theoretical guessing, or did you
>actually try playing a bunch of games both ways to see just how things
>worked out?
I wasn't there for the specific Black Vise ruling, but I believe it was
a combination of the two.
>>Well, to uss it's clear the effect is focussed to someone, not away
>>from someone. Vises focus on a narrow field, after all, and it's
>>"Black Vise", not "Black Garden Sprinkler". Maybe it's just more
>>obvious to us than to most, since we're closer to the conception.
>This is too good to pass up: "it's Magic, it doesn't have to
>be logical"....
That maxim applies more to playing with cards in production than to
designing cards, by the way. If we come up with a "gargoyle" concept
of a creature which flies and can get tougher and tougher, it wouldn't
make any sense for us to write it as just pumping up its power. While
there's no reason a gargoyle shouldn't be able to pump up its power, we're
clearly not writing the card we had in mind. A Vise which clamped down
on potentially six or more people at once is not what we had in mind
the Vise was written.
>Again, in practical experience (admittedly, only in a 3-player
>environment) we have not found this card to be overpowered. Heck,
>we don't even always gang up on the guy that seems to get it out on
>the first turn _way_ too often...
Well, why exactly don't you think the Vise is overpowered in broadcast
mode? The usual answer given is that everyone tends to gang up on
the player and kill them off, and to our minds a) that is not a good way
to balance a card, and b) we're not writing cards which encourage people
to get themselves killed off.
>The main point (that is being lost by focussing on the discussion
>of the power of this particular card) is that the _method_ you guys
>chose to fix this alters the dynamics of the 2P game. Now it's
>targetted, can be reflected, and stealing it doesn't affect it's
>affect. These are _major_ flaws w/ your proposal as far as I am
>concerned...
Well, we just don't consider these to be major flaws. And if they *are*
major flaws, most people think the Vise is too cheap for what it does
anyway, so maybe it needs the Reflecting flaw built into it, for example.
>Really, it's not the loss of strength of the
>BV that is my major gripe, although it's the easiest one to talk
>about -- it's the seemingly random disruption of the 2 player game.
Remember that the rulings are basically how the cards will be rewritten
should they be reprinted. I'm not sure why presenting this ruling
today should be any more disruptive than if we present the Black Vise
ruling in 10th edition Magic (or whatever). The main problem the rulings
had (in my opinion, anyway) was not adequately explaning why the
rulings were being made.
>Perhaps your rules were based on a few basic guidelines
>as you describe .. but the way it was _written_ it looks like an
>arbitrary series of lists. Perhaps just saying (as you just did)
>that most "opponent" cards are to be treated as affecting all opponents
>with the following exceptions (a, b, ...) wouldv'e taken care of
>that objection. Apparently you _had_ such guidelines, but you
>just hid 'em behind the series of lists...
Yeah, some kind of annotations along these lines might help.
Thomas R Wylie
Cavalier <cr...@phakt.usc.edu> wrote:
>Tom, I completely agree with you that reading the Black Vise as "all
>opponents" would make it much more powerful than it was ever intended
>to be. I simply cannot understand, however, why it is such a problem
Because we certainly don't want such a general rule about changing
control of things, and don't particularly want to add a specific
rule to the Vise. Targeted permanents simply become useless if their
target disappears, in general.
>I'm glad to see you've agreed that this perhaps needs to be reconsidered at
>least a bit, Tom. Think about it. We all want is best for the game.
Well... the basics of the rulings (e.g. Vise being targetted) aren't
really subject to change. But we may have to rethink some of the consequences
of the rulings, such as stealing the Vise.
Andrew Brecher
Wylie) wrote:
>noone <onet...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>Please give an example of the "microtext" you have to get into
>>in order to use this interpretation. I just don't see it. Or
>>perhaps it just depends upon what you mean when you say "to
>>get the card right"?
>
>Well, OK, "microtext" is an exaggeration. (Especially since I just
>now remember exactly how small microtext really is...) The point is,
>it overcomplexifies what ought to be a simple card.
You mean like Earthbind? Look what they did with that.
--
- Andrew Brecher (andrew_...@brown.edu) <insert disclaimer here>
David DeLaney
>> Yes, Black Vise says it affects opponent; that's card text...
>
>And we are saying that the card texts should be read differently given
>that we are giving multiplayer rulings on them.
That's fine - but the different readings for multiplayer rulings should
*not* reflect back on the perfectly good readings used in the *two*-player game.
This is pretty much *all* that people are objecting to, in their various
fashions.
>Unfortunately,
>there are all these cards alrready in print which are pretty much broken
>in multiplayer play. Do we leave those alone? Do we issue errata?
You issue rulings saying "If you're playing multiplayer games, we recommend
this is what you do."; you *don't* issue errata for them, because for two-
player games they're *not broken* and are well-understood (stuff that says
"opponent" switches when stolen, effectively doesn't target, etc.). You
*can* say "Okay; coincident with the next Revised, we've revised the rules
a bit from considering multiplayer games; thus, stuff that says "opponent"
does target, because we're starting to consider more than just 2-player
games when thinking about future rules, and *since* it targets, there are
the following changes to what happens when things get stolen or change
controllers: (A) (B) (C) ...". There's even precedent for this (UL -> RV).
(And it might be a good idea to at least include the Rulings Summaries so
far, suitably modified for whatever new rulings appear, in the next PPG...)
>Furthermore, because we are effectively changing what's on the cards,
>the changes backtrack to twoplayer play. "If a two-player game, opponent
>takes damage each upkeep. If a multi-player game, target opponent takes
>damage each upkeep" would just be ridiculous. Again, this is a question
>of "do we wait until the new printing to change how it works, or just
>change/set how it works right now?" comes up, and our preferred answer
>is to simply change the card now and get it over with.
This is half-fine. The changes that backtrack to two-player play should be
closely examined to make sure they don't make a *difference* there; you don't
*have* multiplayer rules yet, and it may turn out that when you do they will
be incompatible with the definitions you thought right now would be in them.
You *do* have two-player rules, and if you're going to add multiplayers
rulings/recommendations, they should be *extensions* of two-player play to
the multiplayer case, not wholesale revisions of two-player rules to match
not-yet-existent multiplayer rules.
On the other hand, saying "We've rethought about 'target' and here's our
conclusions; some of this came from multiplayer considerations, and some
from thinking about what 'target' actually does and what we want it to
act like in conjucntion with, say, Reflecting Mirror in 2-player play"
would be probably acceptable. It's just the "We derived these entirely from
N-player considerations" bit that's Not Good.
Several versions have been suggested here that would keep Black Vise the
same in two-player, and extend "logically" to multiplayer; we are trying to
find out why the Design Team didn't come up with any of *them* (which seems
at present to point straight to "they haven't been playing with anyone other
than Design Team members lately", as many of the variations are fairly
widespread out here).
>Now the question becomes what each ruling should be. In general, we
>assumed each "opponent" effect would say "target player" or "any opponent",
>as appropriate, unless there was a game balance or card conept reason for
>it to say "target opponent" instead.
This I have no problem with.
Black Vise is (in our opinion) way
>too overpowered if it reads "any opponent", and it has a conceptual reason
>to not be able to affect the caster, so we decided it should say
>"target opponent", and thus the ruling.
This I also have no problem with. What I *do* have a problem with is that they
_apparently_ (from the release) didn't *think* far enough to see "There's a
situation one can get into in N-player where stuff which targets an opponent
gets stolen" and didn't say "in two-player there's an obvious answer, which we
use, thus. We should make this extend to N-player in a straightforward way".
Instead, they seemed to say, for all we could tell, "Oh gee - it's too hard to
extend the existing rules for two-player play, and nobody *we* know seems to
know a way to do it; let's change the two-player rules instead so that the way
we came up with to play N-player is an extension of the *new* rules". This is
Bad Design; "how will this change the 2-player game, and why, and is this
consistent?" should be the uppermost consideration when doing stuff like this.
>There were a couple of side rulings on this which were maybe ill-
>considered at first, for example the fact that stealing the Vise accomplishes
>absolutely nothing (and so on for similar cards). It may be that stealing
>it causes the effect to shut down until the target becomes an opponent of
>the Vise again. It's even vaguely possible that it would cause the effect
>entirely. (The basic question here is whether the Vise ruling should synch
>with the Wretched/Aladdin ruling, and if so, how much.) It definitely should
>not retarget; again, that would require a complex rule on what should be
>a simple card.
Mm. Okay. As long as they're *thinking* about it, I'll hold off (and will go
back up and un-edit some of the above <snip snip> okay, I'm back down here now).
>>Sorry. Yes, this is My Opinion; I put it forcefully because I can see no
>>reasons what-so-ever for having these three cards in particular be Reflectable
>
>Given that the Vise and the racks target a player, there is no reason why
>you can't Reflect them back to the caster. The Reflecting Mirror doesn't
>say it requires the new target to be "valid", it just resets the target
>to a different player. Therefore you can reset the target to any player you
>want.
It's the *timing* of Reflecting Mirror I am/was worried about, basically;
if the stuff targetted upon arriving in play, then RM would by card text
be too early to hit it. If the "opponent" vs. "controller" issue gets Cleared
Up, that will subsume my concerns about RM pretty much automatically for these
3 cards (as I posted elsewhere).
Dave "I'll put this all on the back burner and go back to helping answer
questions now, okay?" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. Disclaimer: IMHO; VRbeableWIKTHLC
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ / CanterSiegelKibozeBait!!
David DeLaney
>(The basic question here is whether the Vise ruling should synch
>with the Wretched/Aladdin ruling, and if so, how much.)
On an *entirely* different tack: you may want to think about "requirements
for stealing the thing" vs. "requirements for keeping the thing". Aladdin
requires that the artifact be under opponent's control to be stolen, but
obviously cannot require that it be under opponent's control to be *kept*;
The Wretched, similarly, has conditions for stealing things which cannot be
sustained the whole time it keeps them. I wanted to know earlier whether
Seasinger's "must have islands" was a stealing requirement or a keeping
requirement; it seemed to me that, in analogy with Aladdin, it was a
"stealing", but yer ruling was that it was a "keeping"...
And the Vise, when stolen, might very well have a clause which falls under
"if target opponent is keeping this then X happens"; it's not that big
a jump from "to keep stolen item, X must constantly be in effect" to "while
item is kept stolen by Y, Z is constantly in effect"...
Dave "muttering again" DeLaney
David DeLaney
>har...@ulogic.com writes:
>>>The trouble is the the formerly trivial targetting of the Vise becomes
>>
>>*bzzt* -- formerly there was no targetting
>
>There was no targetting _decision_ to be made but there was targetting.
There was no targetting. Things that do not allow a choice do not target;
that's the basic rule of targetting. If a card can only do something to
itself, that's not targetted; if an effect can't pick and choose what
to hit, it's not targetted. (And in two-player, the defense "Well, you
could pick if there was more than one opponent!" isn't valid; there's no
way to include a new opponent in a two-player game without starting a
new one, really. Whereas there can be multiple targets for things that
target permanents, or players.)
Thus Vise was not targetted in a two-player game, until this latest set of
Rulings which said "We're Ruling that it is".
It was not previously ruled whether it was targetted in multi-player, because
no previous Rulings on multiplayer at *all* had been issued.
Dave "Making the stuff targetted does change some things; making sure
'opponent' has a valid meaning leaves out much of the pathological cases"
David DeLaney
>>Tom, I completely agree with you that reading the Black Vise as "all
>>opponents" would make it much more powerful than it was ever intended
>>to be. I simply cannot understand, however, why it is such a problem
>>to redefine "target opponent" when the card changes control...
>
>Because we certainly don't want such a general rule about changing
>control of things,
Why not?
Serious question time, again: why should stuff which depends on who controls
it ("opponent", "controller") *not* have a rule about what happens when the
controller changes? Steal Artifact and Control Magic have been part of the
game since the start; it's not like this is a new situation. I'd agree that
there shouldn't be a general rule about "all targets must be recomputed for
any stolen card" - but do not see any problems, after thinking a while,
with a rule about changing "opponent" when a card gets stolen the same way
"controller" now automatically changes when a card gets stolen. (Yes,
"controller" doesn't target; "opponent" didn't used to...) Can we have
some examples of potential problems with changing "opponent" when a cards
gets stolen, perhaps straight from the Design Team?
>and don't particularly want to add a specific
>rule to the Vise.
Agreed.
>Targeted permanents simply become useless if their
>target disappears, in general.
Irrelevant in two-player for "opponent"; relevant in multiplayer. Has
nothing to do with "what happens when permanents is stolen"?
Dave "Red Herring - @@, tap: misdirect target of spell or effect" DeLaney