I really like the first variant. Restrictions make the game, and this is a pretty cool way to put a salary cap of sorts on the decks. There would be pushback, probably not dissimilar to when they went to the four-only rule, but having that pyramid sort of structure is cool. Here’s one problem that could arise: the evaluation of what gets to be rare or uncommon has always been a little weird to me. There have easily been as many uncommons that mop the floor with opponents as there have been rares (and doubly so for mythics). I don’t think that’s a deal breaker at all, but it could be a pothole to manage. I like “Podium” but I really like “Pyramid” ;p The 80 card idea is something I would enjoy, but the optimizer-part Of M:tG players brains will probably wrankle some at it. There are enough cards, though, to work with in a modern-style format.

Crow_Umbra is spot-on for what I was thinking. There’s still a lot of interaction in magic, but narrowing the scope of cards (only your creatures, only at sorcery speed, only once per turn, etc) makes it harder to accidentally make an infinite loop or whatever because you don’t have to expand your concerns exponentially out to include whatever the other players are doing.

As an ode to the rapidly oncoming extinction of vanilla creatures, I wanted to post (and maybe request a better version of) a colorless enchantment for them.

Meek’s Inheritance {3} Enchantment - Non-token creatures without abilities gain land walk of their corresponding color identity. This effect does not disqualify an otherwise qualifying creature from Meek’s Inheritance’s effect. “And he saw, all at once, that the world was saturated with power. From soil to clouds, the army was unending. - Sarpadian Empires Vol. VII”

I assume the second sentence is necessary to not freeze the game in an infinite error, but I also assume it could be written more clearly. I don’t know if 3 colorless is reasonable, but I would still want it to be available to all the colors. I tried to make an image of this card but failed catastrophically. It would have been awesome, though, to see what picture AI would have painted of “meek creatures lurking in the wilderness.” Lastly, I wanted to give a little link to one of my favorite creature token generators in the flavor text (even though I’m SPECIFICALLY exempting token creatures from the ability).

I think we’ve been moving in the direction of a generalized separation of triggers into one’s own battlefield. This is nice for new players, and makes it easier for the card designers (it specifically helps with the overall problems with power creep, too). I don’t personally like it, but that seems to be where we’re going.

“Zinnia” is one of those names that the person who “invented” it likely had no idea that it is also a thing in real life. I’d bet $100 of my wife's money that this person had never heard of that flower ;p

Anything with Dwarven Pony gets a like without question.

Is it possible that there’s also the problem of companies generally going in the direction of not actually selling physical media any more? Did that doom new (for lack of a better term) “old-world” systems from sprouting up? Ones we never even heard of? It’s a pretty significant shakeup to the paradigm...

I thought this when I started reading, so I’ll post it, but I’m already having second thoughts... but anyways: what if you had to have something like three curses and your opponents got to pick which one you got? It’d be tough, because you’d have to find multiple workable ones (that met the requirements) but that could wildly swing how the deck (and THEIR decks) work. Could be fun. I like it, though! Excited to hear about any fourth coming playtests or examples!

Sort of torn between some sort of plant/flower deck (because Zinnia, obviously) or doubling up into artifact creatures with the OG Zinnia: Mirrorworks ;p

If anyone ever gets the chance to play the tabletop RPG for TMNT I’d recommend doing so. We had a TON of fun with it back in the day. Not sure if it’s in print any more. Time really flies.

A good good reference for this would be Magar of the Magic Strings. SUPER fun!!

I always like mechanics like this, that have a good theme or story behind how the mechanic works. 10/10!!

I love them, as they pad my theme decks, but as power creep continues it seems like the general playerbase just doesn’t want to have them around. Also, as there’s more and more of a market for singles I think vanillas are seen as almost worse than just another land or token. It’s weird, though, because you’d think that (with the general money focus WotC has shown) adding easy to produce, with zero testing required, creatures would let them drag out their production lines. I don’t know. There has to be a lot of disdain for vanilla creatures to overcome that.

I think the sorceries, enchantments, and other non-creature/equipments look reasonable so I would probably start dropping creatures and artifacts. Cut a creature, then cut an artifact. Repeat until you’re down to 100. “But FormOverFunction, that will cut way too many creatures and equipment pieces from my creature/equipment deck!” You’re correct! You will eventually (or maybe rapidly) run into creatures and equipment pieces that you would MUCH rather have than one of the planeswalkers or enchantments or sorceries... and that will help you pick even further. The trick is to not run into something like Resolute Strike that makes the decisions even more difficult ;p At it’s core, I would approach this as a 100% creatures and equipment deck and then try to pick which of these other cards really deserve to be in the deck amongst the core cards. Those other cards should be looked at (at least while I’m building non-theme decks) as traps or bait to lure you away from what you’re actually trying to do. There will always be an enchantment that would be PERFECT for the deck... after the deck does what it’s supposed to do. The danger is you’ll get tricked into adding them up to (and past) the point where the core function of the deck begins to fail.

sergiodelrio exactly. Honestly, if any of you would want to know what it was like to be a magic nerd in the nineties it might actually work to go to somewhere like Bodrum, Turkey and attempt to buy cards (and play with them!) without the internet.

I haven’t seen anything that OFFICIALLY implies one way or the other, sergiodelrio, so your guess is as good as mine. Some of the discussions included terms like “retailers requested” which usually implies US market to me (I don’t know how many discussions WotC ever really has with pharmacies in Istanbul or toy stores in Sao Paulo).

It just occurred to me that it’s probably also that these new half-packs are less of a problem shoplifting-wise. With the ever increasing pack prices, it’s probably getting harder and harder to justify allocating shelf space to magic cards (without adding the anti-theft devices to each pack, which might be a pain or expensive).

I think Gidgetimer is right to point out that people spontaneously buying these packs might be in for a terrible surprise if they build a deck with them and show up at any sort of organized play. Having said that, this might be a good way to sort through the passively-interested group to find the few “oh wait.. I’m not PASSIVELY interested... I’m MASSIVELY interested” people in that group. It’s likely this packaging will be discontinued, as the general market starts to short-hand it as “the not-a-whole-pack” packs. I just hope we eventually end up with a core set (or something similar) so we can get some more generally flavorful cards, like Coral Eel. I recognize practically NO ONE uses them... but of all the ways to put worthless crap in the packs, vanillas at least add ambiance. More so at least than “here are the rules for some other way to play with your magic cards” cards. ;P

Do we know if there is a separate list of cards that are in those packs? As someone who is rarely interested in the “good” cards... I.... I almost wonder if I want this rather than $30 collector packs...

Just to stand up for the new player, who (probably) isn’t here: I can see how it would be confusing to a new player how someone would get upset over strip mine when there is a seemingly unending parade of lands that do all sorts of wild things (which that player likely doesn’t own yet). It’s easy to lose track of how CRAZY useful some of these new lands are. When you compare them, and strip mine, to a regular basic... none of them might look balanced.