Rules Changes

[mtgrares]

Wizards has update the rules. There is no mana burn and combat damage isn't put on the stack (the damage is dealt when it is assigned). You can read Wizard's announcement here and I wrote about it on my blog.

I don't think that these rules changes matter much. I'll miss messing around with combat damage but the weather changes, the winds blow, and Wizards changes a few rules, nothing more, nothing less.

[Rob Cashwalker]

I was waiting for you to start talking about it....

Simultaneous Mulligans don't apply to us... yet.
The mana burn doesn't apply to us... yet.
The terminaology changes, "Cast", "Exile" and "Battlefield" should be simple, copy-paste jobs, once the Oracle is updated.
Removing the cumulative Lifelink triggers is easy, since it was hacked in as the only exception to the keyword modifiers methods.
Deathtouch was never a problem for us, since we handle it as a single trigger anyway.

But the biggest change is the combat damage... this will require some significant changes, I'm sure. The biggest, is that we absolutely need to have the ability to play instants and abilities during the Declare Attackers step, since we already have the option during Declare Blockers. It's easy to remove the step after damage on the stack.
The multiple blocker routine will just have to check that no excess damage is assigned to any given blocker unless all blockers have lethal assigned. If it fails that check, then it can just present the window again with a message box pop up reminding us about the restriction.

I've been mulling these rules over a lot for the past 24 hours... I'm not terribly happy, but what can we do?

[GandoTheBard]

Happiness is overrated...take what you can get. They didn't announce that they are shutting the whole thing down. Now that would be a frown. These rules changes are a mixed bag with some sucking (combat? , manaburn gone? , mulligans? , Beginning of the End step? )

Anyway most of what people want to say about it has been said on various blogs, forums etc. I am interested to see how it impacts the smaller programs like MtgForge. I am certain fixing the bugs here will be harder than adjusting to the changes but then again I am not one of the programmers here.

[DennisBergkamp]

Wow, I just had a look at this...
Battlefield ?!?! What the heck? Exile?

Anyway, as Rob said, in addition to changes in cards.txt, this will unfortunately require a lot of fixes in the combat code On the bright side, (that is, if I understand this change correctly), you can't give a creature protection from something anymore after combat damage has been assigned. Which I hadn't implemented yet anyway

Another small fix I noticed that would have to be done is regarding Token Ownership, Hunted Dragon and some of those cards are incorrectly setting ownership to the controller of (in this case) Hunted Dragon. Small and easy fix though.

I'm not to happy about these changes either, I love stacking lifelink.

[Almost_Clever]

And I love combat tricks (damage on the stack? Then start bouncing, saccing, pumping, etc.) that have been dramatically neutered and nerfed to the point of insignificance.
The difficulty I see in the combat damage changes for MTG Forge is that the AI must declare the order that it will assign damage to multiple blockers (kinda, sorta like trampling is supposed to work); since trample has never been properly implemented with the current rules, are we going to be able to handle the new rules?

[Rob Cashwalker]

I don't think it will be terribly difficult to implement. The AI evaluates the blocking situation in some form of order anyway.
The trouble is re-ordering when the multi-block window appears. Probably also could use a slight update with drop-down lists of numbers for us to define the order in which damage is assigned.
OR we just ignore the order, as long as lethal damage is assigned to as many creatures as possible....

[zerker2000]

***** ** ****** **************************** ********** ******* *** *********** *******!!!

Ok, steam vented (and I've checked the curse filter's efficiency ).

Autocarding links:Transcendence,Disenchant
First off,

Citadel of Pain is worse, since your opponent can basically tap all of his or her lands for free now.

Is an epic understatement, there is now basically no point to that card (which was obviously originally intended as "you get mana burn for all your lands, whether you tap them or not")
Also, I now can't use " Transcendence ; mana burn; Disenchant "

Though Cast and Activate do make sense, "Battlefield"? "Exile"???

"Beginning of the end" does actually make sense, even though they could(should) have named it better, and I cannot resist an omnious quote that comes to mind:

"The end of The End is the best place to begin the The End, because if you read The End from the beginning of the beginning of The End to the end of the end of The End, you will arrive at the end of your rope."

...

In a multiplayer game. My Hunted Lammasu creates a token under your control, then I lose the game. Under the old rule, I take my token with me when I leave the game. Under the new rule, it stays right where it is.

Meh, if I was playing paper magic and put creature tokens into play, and then lost the game, I would like my(physical) tokens that I got as a tourney reward back, thank you very much.

The new combat rules lessen the usefulness of morphs immensely, and also disable a bunch of favorite combos ... need I prove my point on that regard? At least good thing they edited lifelink and deathtouch to not be as messed up by the new combat rules, though un-cumulating them was mean.(esp. for ~2/2s that have something like "{W}: this card gains lifelink until end of turn" combined with Anthems )

What it all boils down to is that the MTG community has almost a month to convince those "High and Mighty" Wizards that(most of) these changes would be better off cancelled & forgotten.

[Mr.Chaos]

Whole lotta ouch for me with the new rules, but I will have to cope with that.
For MTGForge, there is the "multiple lifelink doesn't stack" thing to deal with.
You can only get lifelink once, no matter how many copies of Battlegrace Angel you have in play.
In MTGForge, having 2 angels means getting double the life, that will have to go.

Oh, and creatures with wither can split their damage any way they want without having to deal lethal damage to a creature before dealing damage to the next.
Because of the way damage is dealt in MTGForge, we are actually ahead of the game here and need not change wither critters.

But since damage needs to be dealt in specific order to blockers, quite a bit of change is needed there if we want to keep up with the rules.

All in all, I forsee a lot of coding ofr our techies. Good luck with it all!

[Almost_Clever]

First off,

Citadel of Pain is worse, since your opponent can basically tap all of his or her lands for free now.

Is an epic understatement, there is now basically no point to that card (which was obviously originally intended as "you get mana burn for all your lands, whether you tap them or not")

Red can still use Citadel of Pain to punish Blue for waiting until's Red's turn to play (strike that, "cast") spells during other players' turns. Of course, in that case the question becomes "How did the blue player allow the red player to resolve Citadel of Pain in the first place?"

[GandoTheBard]

"Beginning of the end" does actually make sense, even though they could(should) have named it better, and I cannot resist an omnious quote that comes to mind:(snip)

I think the name perfectly coincides with current nomenclature. At the Beginning of the Upkeep step is now echoed with At the Beginning of the End step as a reminder that this is when triggered effects go on the stack. Nothing ominous about that unless you want to confuse yourself

Meh, if I was playing paper magic and put creature tokens into play, and then lost the game, I would like my(physical) tokens that I got as a tourney reward back, thank you very much.

Silly. Of course you still own the paper tokens...it is the representative of the token that your Opponent controls since the paper is merely a visual clue as to it's existence and stats.

The new combat rules lessen the usefulness of morphs immensely, and also disable a bunch of favorite combos ... need I prove my point on that regard? At least good thing they edited lifelink and deathtouch to not be as messed up by the new combat rules, though un-cumulating them was mean.(esp. for ~2/2s that have something like "{W}: this card gains lifelink until end of turn" combined with Anthems )

What it all boils down to is that the MTG community has almost a month to convince those "High and Mighty" Wizards that(most of) these changes would be better off cancelled & forgotten.

Good luck with that. WotC doesn't rollback directives very often. (As in ever). It took them 10 years to undo 6th edition.

[Rob Cashwalker]

"Beginning of the end" does actually make sense, even though they could(should) have named it better, and I cannot resist an omnious quote that comes to mind:

"The end of The End is the best place to begin the The End, because if you read The End from the beginning of the beginning of The End to the end of the end of The End, you will arrive at the end of your rope."

Would you like to have lunch sometime? I know this lovely Restaurant at the End of the Universe....

Meh, if I was playing paper magic and put creature tokens into play, and then lost the game, I would like my(physical) tokens that I got as a tourney reward back, thank you very much.

This is a social game. If you lose, don't rush to get up and leave - wait for your tokens to die, then you can put them back in your box....

For MTGForge, there is the "multiple lifelink doesn't stack" thing to deal with.
You can only get lifelink once, no matter how many copies of Battlegrace Angel you have in play.
In MTGForge, having 2 angels means getting double the life, that will have to go.

Dennis actually had to put Lifelink as the exception to the filtering of keywords when added to cards that already had them. It's not the original intent that any keyword should "stack". So that's actually a simple change, as I noted.
I am quite ticked that my Bant deck with Battlegrace Angel, Rhox War Monk and Loxodon Warhammer will become useless... I better get to FNM to pilot it at least once before dismantling it!

[mtgrares]

I still doing quite grok (understand) the rule about multiple blockers. I know that the attacker puts the blockers in the order that he is going to assign damage, but why put them in order anyways? Can't you just assign damage without putting them in order? (I would understand putting them in order if the damage was automatically assigned according to the creature's toughness.)

I'm not sure what combat changes MTG Forge has to make in order to be complaint with the new rules because I don't quite understand the new way of doing multiple blockers.

[GandoTheBard]

attacker a) 5/5 trampler
attacker b) 4/3 flanking

blocker a)2/2 blocks attacker a)
blocker b)3/3 blocks attacker a)
blocker c)3/3 blocks attacker b) (becomes a 2/2)
blocker d)2/5 blocks attacker b) (becomes a 1/4

after blockers are declared but before anyone gets priority active player must tell the defending player which creatures he plans to damage first.

So: The active (attacking) player says first the 5/5 will assign damage to the 3/3 and then the 2/2. Then he says the 4/3 flanker will assign damage to the 1/4 blocker first then the 2/2.

Assuming no other effects happening during the after blockers step damage is dealt. If this is the case both attackers die and blockers a) b) and d) all die.

But lets say something does happen during the after blockers declared step.

Active player passes, Blocker casts giant growth on the 1/4, in response to which the active player bounces it with a boomerang.

If nothing further occurs the following creatures will die after damage is dealt: Attacker a) blocker a) and b) and c). Attacker b) is still alive with 2 points of damage dealt to it at the end of combat. Hopefully this illustrates it more clearly.

[mtgrares]

Thanks for the good explanation.

[GandoTheBard]

Yw, glad it made sense