What Was So Difficult to Understand About Haunt?

General forum

Posted on Oct. 10, 2017, 2:58 p.m. by DemonDragonJ

Mark Rosewater has stated that the haunt mechanic is unlikely to return because players found it to be difficult to understand, but I fail to see what was so difficult about it.

Whenever my friends and I used cards with that mechanic, we would simply place those cards physically beneath the cards that they were haunting, similarly to what most players do with Oblivion Ring or similar effects, which we found to be a very easy and intuitive method for using the mechanic.

What does everyone else say about this? Why would Mark Rosewater think that haunt was difficult to understand?

I think just the concept of a card both being in the "Exile Zone" and attached to a permanent that's on the battlefield simultaneously created confusion. It's not likely that this would lead to real issues in a game, but it's a bit odd to try to explain to a newer player that the Haunt card is both exiled and attached. Same goes for Cipher, another mechanic I don't expect to return.

As an experienced player, it doesn't seem like something that would be hard to grasp, but imagine a brand new player buying a preconstructed deck that has Haunt cards in it as their first MTG product. It's not exactly cut and dry where the card "goes" after the card its haunting leaves the battlefield, because it goes nowhere, it was already in exile. It's similar to Regenerate in this respect imo. Anybody who's been playing the game for more than a few months can understand how it works, but a brand new player buying their first product will be scratching their heads for a while.

October 10, 2017 3:18 p.m.

abby315 says... #3

IMO its also just a poorly designed concept. Its weird to have the same ability trigger on ETB but then a separate die trigger later. Its weird that a ghost only DOES something when the creature dies, because thats when it should theoretically go away too (like conceptually). Youd think when it STARTS haunting itd have an effect. Its weird that the card is on the board and exiled simultaneously, like above. Its weird.

Even if people CAN grasp it eventually, new or old players, the less common-sense an ability is, the less likely it is to come back, I think. that doesnt mean they all have to be simple-vehicles arent, for example- but ideally they make thematic AND game sense. Haunt misses those marks.

October 10, 2017 3:36 p.m.

MindAblaze says... #4

Its kind of like imprint. Hoarding Dragon has a similar effect as well. Its not as though the effect isnt useful, it just needs to find a power level and a flavourful purpose that people can accept.

Exile a card/cardtype from battlefield/hand, attached to a permanent. Trigger in response to thing happening.

What would that look like in a way that people would be happy with it?

October 11, 2017 6:48 p.m.

What? If you cast Howl of the Horde and then cast Reverberate before howl can resolve you don't get any copies of Reverb. What are you on about? Howl has to resolve in order for any of its effects to go off, at which point it is no longer on the stack and not a legal target for Reverb.

October 12, 2017 2:21 p.m.

MindAblaze says... #6

Yeah, what Thanatos said. If you copy Howl you dont get anything except another Raided Howl. Once it all resolves, now cast your lightning bolt, and you should get four copies, plus the original. 15 Damage in a raid deck with six mana up should still kill them.

October 12, 2017 6:57 p.m.

True MindAblaze, but that was less what I was getting at so much as using an example of what a knowledgeable player can do and it being something you can't do lol.

October 12, 2017 7:01 p.m.

DemonDragonJ says... #8

What about Oblivion Ring? Was that card difficult to understand? I presume that it was not, because of how frequently it was reprinted.

October 12, 2017 7:49 p.m.

Oblivion Ring wasn't hard to understand in concept, but the exploits behind it were tbh. That's why they started printing cards like Banishing Light instead. It was less about understanding and more about balance.

October 12, 2017 7:50 p.m.

DemonDragonJ says... #10

Tyrant-Thanatos, in that case, how is haunt different from Banishing Light?

October 12, 2017 8:03 p.m.

Haunt is "different" because the exiled card is attached to something, as opposed to being exiled by something, and it will return when that card is gone.

Honestly I don't feel like Haunt was all that hard to comprehend, I just try to look at these things objectively and see why WotC might have felt like Haunt was a difficult mechanic for newer players. If I throw my own bias into the ring, regenerate is way more complicated than Haunt, and WotC for the longest time didn't seem to care about that throwing new players off.

October 12, 2017 8:31 p.m.

MindAblaze says... #12

MaRo uses the phrase easy to grok often enough with regards to mechanics, and he usually means something like this mechanic makes sense. I dont think that its so much that Haunt is hard to understand, so much as it doesnt make sense for the flavour/mechanic mixture. Its unpopular because it doesnt intuitively feel like youre haunting anything when you do it, so you then have to explain exiling CARDNAME when dies to have it trigger again.

Maybe if the cards with Haunt were better it might be more memorable...Graven Dominator maybe, and Orzhov Pontiff has seen some play.

October 12, 2017 9:05 p.m.

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