“I played from 7th Edition, but have not played for over two years, with the implication being that I was upset about Wizards removing a card as part of their excising racism from the game” is hardly a glowing endorsement of your qualifications.

Following that up by dismissing decks and formats you don’t personally like makes it look like you are petty and want to play Magic how you want, damned to how anyone else wants to play - though I think this entire thread has been you saying that.

Coming up with “new” solutions to obvious problems indicates your idea was half baked at the time of posting.

Saying “if this was the rule from the beginning no one would want to change it” is a tacit acknowledgement of your detractor’s argument that there is utility in inertia and not fundamentally changing something that would upset the very core of the game.

Citing Alpha rules again - after you have already been told that Alpha was created under a different set of design parameters and is not relevant to modern R&D - shows you do not really understand the game’s history, but are willing to “argue” your ignorance as if it were face.

Repeating bad and already disproven arguments and ranting about decks, formats, and cards you do not like certainly sounds salty to me.

Your most recent post does an exceptional job undermining your own idea - though I think you might be a bit to wed to your own thoughts to see why. I think it is very clear that you are not willing to look at the greater health of the game - despite the unanimous multitudes speaking with one voice against you (and if your idea is unpopular enough that the disparate voices on TappedOut all are in agreement, that should say something) - nor about the repercussions such an idea would have on fundamentally altering how the game was played.

That is the reality - you can play this at kitchen table if you want, but it simply cannot function as a mainstream rule, for the myriad reasons already addressed herein.

No one is misunderstanding anything - you just lack reading comprehension and communication skills. It has been mentioned several times by several users that the handicap system has no place in the game. It wouldn’t be good for casual players, since they would need to track things they will never track. It would not be good for tournament players because it incentivises them for losing and punishes them for winning. It wouldn’t be good for the game generally, because it means you can’t pick up your deck that you love and go to another table without potentially needing to make massive changes to the deck itself because the other table does or does not use the system.

And, as you ignore every time it comes up (likely because you have no legitimate counterpoint), Magic is fundamentally different from your “but it works in these games” examples. Using your system would fundamentally change how the game is played based on handicaps - and not in a “the rules are the same basically, so I can use my same skill and strategy” kind of way. Go up or down and rank and you have to fundamentally change your deck and playstyle. That is horrible game design. Can you imagine if you were really good at Blackjack, so the dealer took out all your Aces and face cards to handicap you? Such would be equally nonsensical.

The fact that you are resorting to “lore” and personal attacks against a detractor, rather than responding to the detractor’s argument should also cause you to question the tenability of your position.

I know it was asked before, but are you new to Magic? Your examples - from saying they could reprint RL cards, to citing Serra Angel as a “good” card, to not knowing that Alpha was not subjected to the same R&D system as modern sets, to your thinking Dual Decks or bulk from a single set are an acceptable sample for real games, etc. all indicate you are either a new player, or a player with very limited experience outside of a home setting.

I do not say that to be insulting - everyone has to start somewhere, and I have been a firm advocate of kitchen table players throughout the entire thread - but to better understand where you are coming from with your design. You are clearly having a disconnect with the totality of other TappedOut users, and I expect that might be the result of an experience gap.

Part of engaging in conversation is remembering what others have said. For example, your point about making deck building more interesting is “people have to play worse cards, making them make suboptimal choices!”

Not only is that an incredibly silly point to begin with, it flagrantly ignores a problem already raised in this thread - that the higher ranked players (and thus those who have more wastes) need to play worse decks, not better. They are getting doubly screwed by your plan - they get worse land based and have to run worse cards. You are creating a system where success is punished twice, creating a system that rewards failure and is likely to drive away the best players. That is an objectively terrible way to set up a game.

You need to start thinking not only about mechanics, but the actual consequences of this change. You have brushed aside the fact it would mechanically invalidate hundreds of cards and completely ignored the actual implications it would have on player psychology (supported by the evidence of what happened last time Wizards tried to use the Elo System) - despite both issues being raised multiple times.

Just as an aside, personally I feel quite inspired reading the Magic Comprehensive Rules. As someone who professionally reads, interprets, and writes rules, Magic’s are the most beautiful I have ever seen, and I wish legislatures were a third as good at writing laws as Magic’s staff are at writing the Comprehensive Rules.

“The problem with the current system is that there are certain opening hands that are literally impossible to win with.”

That is not a problem, but a feature - and a feature that is good for the game.

It means you have to think about your opening hand when deck building, and weigh long-term strategy against the risks of having a difficult opening hand. That leads to important strategic decisions during the deck building process which make deck building choices critical.

It means you have to weigh whether you want to mulligan or not, taking the risk of a smaller hand against the playability of what you received. This is even less of a risk now, given the much more generous modern mulligan rule (which goes a long way toward fixing mana flood/screw in a manner that does not change the fundamentals of the game). That is another tactical choice your idea would eliminate.

Then there is the fun of “huh, so this is my hand? How do I make this work?” Even an “impossible” hand can become winnable - choices made in deck construction influence odds of drawing out of a bind, and resource management by a skilled pilot can turn the impossible into a victory. That is one of the fun elements of Magic - clawing your way back up to a win because you overcome setbacks.

“The problem with the game right now is that it's binary: you either make a land drop or you don't.”

Constantly changing “the problem with the game” you are trying to address really gives the impression you have a solution in need of a problem, not a solution to a real, tangible problem.

But, even ignoring that, no, this is not a problem, but again a feature. This again speaks to decisions on deck building - do you run higher cost cards and more lands, ensuring you hit your land drops, at the risk of topdecking lands you do not want? Or do you run fewer lands and a lower curve, sacrificing consistency in land drops for greater odds of drawing spells? Do you run card draw or ramp to compensate? What other synergies can you run to make your lands work? Even during the game, there are choices to be made - Do you play the cards to make your mana work better long term, or do you play something with a more immediate impact on the game?

You are only looking at the gameplay, but not at the deck building part of a deck building game. This is hardly a “binary” situation - lands in the deck produce myriad complexities both in deck building and in how the deck is piloted during the game.

Edit: You should not use Alpha cards as examples of “fair” design. Alpha was not designed to be “fair” in the way that modern sets are - it had a whole different set of design parameters which undermine the point you are trying to make with Sol Ring.

And now you see - or should see - another problem. “Here is a system for casual games (please ignore that I have talked about pro players and tournaments in prior posts) that is based on a system that will not track casual games.” You cannot have such a system in casual games - few playing kitchen table Magic will track their record. Do you really think players would welcome administrative busywork in their casual sit down games?

As for your question, as someone who collects Dual Decks, I would say none of them - Dual Decks are not representative of actual play.

As an addendum to some of my snark - evidently Wizards also uses ELO in all caps when discussing the system - which does not make it correct, but does a solve OP of what otherwise might appear to be ignorance - for that I apologise for the snide comments, and want to retroactively redirect them at Wizards, who apparently does not know the difference between a person’s name and an excellent 70s rock group.

However, it is worth noting that Magic once used the Elo system for competitive play, and it was an utter disaster. Folks were doing as one might expect - they were avoiding small tournaments to artificially keep their ranks higher for big tournaments. Wizards found that many, many players were manipulating the Elo system to get ahead, and that it just did not work for their game. This is why Planeswalker Points were introduced - a new system without the pitfalls of the Elo system was having.

Under your version, there would be the opposite problem - folks would be incentivised to enter lots of smaller ranked tournaments with low entry costs and small prizes… so they could lose games to drop their ranking, so they could play better decks at the tournaments where there were significant prizes on the line.

The fact that you keep getting the name of the system you want implemented wrong does not inspire much confidence in your design.

That said, you are again ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of play is kitchen table and not tracked. There is not a good system for tracking that kind of play - nor should there be.

And you are again ignoring that having a different land system for causal play and competitive play would be bad for the game.

And again ignoring that handicaps in other games do not cut to the fundamentals of the game itself. Here, with your idea, the handicap does not just make it harder for the better player - it might make it impossible to play the very deck that won them their higher rank. You have to fundamentally adjust your deck to offset the handicap, in a far more intrusive way than you would have to adjust to a handicap in other games.

Your post exemplifies my point - certain decks would not be playable with the handicap, but would be playable at lower tiers of play. You are essentially creating a system where powerful decks win players games and increase their rank - only to force them to play a less powerful deck at higher levels of play because their preferred style would “be impossible”, to use your words.

That is bad game design - decks should grow and get better as you the player get better. Surely you can see that designing a game where your decks get worse the better you become as a player would be bad design?

Also, just as a note, neither of those lands could be reprinted - they are both on the Reserved List and therefore Wizards cannot reprint them.

“Normally, you just play your cards in order from lowest to highest mana cost. With this change, suddenly you have to plan which color you are going to play and when, while still trying to curve out.”

Neither of these sentences are accurate.

For the first, no, folks don’t just play in order from lowest to highest mana cost, other than maybe new players. I know I will often hold a 3 drop even if I have three mana, because it would be more advantageous to play it later. Or I might play a 2-drop when I could play a 4-drop, because the 2-drop will have a greater long-term impact on the game.

For the second, players already have to think about what pips they are playing. That choice factors critically into mulligan decisions, what to grab with fetch lands, etc. Your idea actually decreases the tactical choices—at high levels of play - your idea essentially forced high level players to sidestep wastes by minimising the number of coloured pips on their spells, playing cards that only have one coloured mana symbol and the rest generic mana coats, since that provides the best chance of always being able to cast the spells.

Which speaks to a point I made earlier that you ignored - your idea fundamentally makes it impossible for someone to keep their deck as they advance through play, and even possibly as they stay at the same level but go to different organisers. Not only is that bad game design - players should be able to tune and perfect their skills with their favourite deck - it is unfair to players who have to make major financial commitments in retooling their deck for different handicaps. One could not, for example, play Tron at higher levels - the Wastes would make drawing your Urza’s harder. Do you honestly think it is good game design to tell a Tron player “Congratulations! You have been good at piloting that deck you like! In fact, you did so well with it that you cannot play it anymore!”?

“The advantage is that every tournament could dictate different manabase rules. Maybe an event randomly adds extra Contested War Zone or Zoetic Cavern.”

That is not an advantage in the slightest—for reasons that are fairly obvious. Magic is a game where building a deck is just as important as playing it… and where building a deck can be incredibly expensive. Having to reformulate your deck for each tournament because the tournament organiser has their own rules for lands is terrible game design. Not only does this mean there is not a “default rule” for the most popular playspace (kitchen table), it means you cannot reasonably expect to pick up the deck you spent hundreds, of not thousands, on without needing to retool it and have a potentially significant substitution board just to deal with whatever land system rules the particular tournament put into place.

This would not be good for the game. Though mana screw is annoying, planning around potential mana issues and trying to build the ideal mana base is an important part of deckbuilding. It inform your curve, it informs what mana symbols are on the cards you are playing, and it informs whether you keep or mulligan. The simple reality is, as much as we love to complain about mana screw/flood, their existence in the game makes for a better experience in a deckbuilding game.

Your solution to a superficial problem would inexorably change the way players make basic decisions in the game and how players design decks. This would not be a change like the removal of Mana Burn or Damage on the Stack--both of which were removed without too much in the way of gameplay alteration--this would cut to the very core of what Magic is and make the game unrecognizable from its present form.

And that is not even to mention the fact your entire idea is predicated on building a completely new system for ranking players, all the way from casual kitchen table up to pro tour that (a) does not exist and (b) could not exist. What you propose is not like chess--while chess uses the Elo Ranking System, the game is still the same game mechanically no matter where you play it. (Just a quick sidebar: It is "Elo", lowercase--it's named after Arpad Elo. ELO in all caps is the Electric Light Orchestra, whose music rocks, but who are not really relevant to this conversation).

What you have here would mean a player of Rank X would be playing a fundamentally different type of deck than a player of Rank Y. That means they would have to know their ranking to build their deck... which simply is not going to be possible due to the fact the overwhelming majority of players are kitchen table players (per WotC data) and would not be in a position to really know there rank. That means that that, in order to partake in the game, they would have to know their rank, but to know their rank, they would have to play in a different manner than the majority of players actually play.

All around, your system would create more problems than the relatively minor (yet fundamental and fairly important to the game's health) problem it would solve.

Players lose the game as a state-based action, which means they will lose after your first strike combat damage step but before the regular combat damage step. You do not deal damage to a player who has left the game. Here are the rules:

104.3b If a player’s life total is 0 or less, that player loses the game the next time a player would receive priority. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)

800.4e If combat damage would be assigned to a player who has left the game, that damage isn’t assigned.

As another note, even if you did manage to pull all those sticker sheets, your combo still would not work - stickers return to the sticker sheet when the card enters a hidden zone like the hand.

That said, I am really not fond of sticker cards being in black border (if they were just a silver bordered mechanic, I would not care). Stickers are bad game design - the random element of the sticker deck means they are not something you can really build around and their perishable nature does not mesh well with their legality in “eternal” formats.

Locking this thread at the request of the OP.

However, I will take a moment to point out something. I do a lot of work in the field of mental health and know that the word in question is rather hurtful given its historical use. However, it also is a word that has been used in modern parlance for years and years, and changes in how we view language do not happen overnight. This is a clear situation where education is warranted--the offense of the word has not quite been realized by the general population--rather than just ganging up on someone.

Here, OP seemed to realize pretty quickly that they probably should not use the word, and seemed upset about the use--then folks continued to drive the point home, in a manner that borders on either bullying or trying to shoehorn in a "defense" of OP that was neither asked for nor in line with OP's clear realization that they made a mistake.

Everyone involved here should be more mindful of their words moving forward--not just the OP.

Even looking just at the black-border legal cards, this set is infected with garbage that will be played by "that guy" at your LGS. From Space Jace to Stickers (where the random element means you are not really building a deck around them, you're just trying to be annoying) to attractions to just other cards that add "silliness" to the game... you just know these are not going to see too much in the way of legitimate play, and mostly will be used by the immature troll who thinks "hehe look how funny I am for making your game CrAzY!"

A troll card every now and then is fine; an entire set based around them... bleh.

Not that it matters--the fact it has Shocks in it will drive sales and make the set successful, and we'll all but certainly see more of these ZaNy! sets moving forward.

You probably will also want to get an enzyme spray that cleans and breaks down the chemicals which give cat waste smells. Cats are creatures of habit and will continue to use the same location for their business if it still smells like their spot. Simply cleaning the area will not always be sufficient - an enzyme spray (found at most pet stores), will work on the microscopic level to remove the scent markers from their spot.

In the future, please remember to hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since this has been answered for several days with no further follow-up, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.

In the future, please remember to hit the green "Mark as Answer" button to indicate your question has been resolved. Since this has been answered for several days with no further follow-up, I have gone ahead and marked an answer on your behalf.