Do you agree with mark rosewater that mana screw and flood are necessary evils?

mtg is infinitely better than hearthstone tho

Sure, but not due to the mana system.

So you want to gut the delicate balancing act that is deciding how many lands to play and what type in a deck. There is a reason burn decks run 18 to 20 lands and control decks run 24 to 26. It balances the colors, it makes mono decks more smooth and consistent than multicolor, it makes it so that control is more likely to get flooded and aggro to be mana screwed.
Maybe it's not perfect, I'd agree to that. But what you're suggesting is throwing the baby out with the bathwater

Sovereign's Realm is a card-based form of an optional rule from a Duelist Magazine article printed when Ice Age was the new hotness, which was designed with the intention of letting people play quick goofy games by cracking two or three packs each and shuffling up.

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG 'UN (blah blah blah)

You can still have most of those things without having the possibility of not being allowed to play.

I get that you like chance, so do I. But you're really exaggerating the importance of mana screw to every facet of the game.

Generating sufficient mana isn't a first few turns only thing though, look at how many lands are played in various limited formats to understand that you can't just blanket rule mana without changing the fundamentals.

>My favorite variant is to make any card playable as any basic land. You would simply turn the card face down and declare what basic type it had for your land drop.
So Duel Masters.

Limited formats are why this needs to change. Without access to the superb mana fixing of constructed, mana screw is way more likely in limited.

Mana screw is a fundamental flaw of magic, and hurts it more than it helps.

Duel matters with the look and complexity of mtg cards would be great yeah.

Why would anyone play mono ever again if I can have as many basics of any type from my hand as I want for free. Every deck would be 5 color goodstuff. There would be no more color identities at all, red will be able to kill enchantments, blue can kill creatures, and green will counter spells.
I don't think I'm exactly exaggerating that your solution changes the game more than you are anticipating

Your opponent is in the same boat you are. Howabout a healthy dose of GIT GUD?

Not using enough land in your limited deck is a common mistake, not understanding that its a mistake is your own problem.

It adds variance to the game and a certain element of skill testing when you build decks.
According to Maro, it also gives people who want it an excuse for when they lose the game instead of admitting that they made a mistake somewhere along the way.

>Your opponent is in the same boat you are
a shitty rule/mechanic applying to both players is not a good reason to keep a shitty rule.

>mana flood is necessary
mana management is the worst part of MTG by far and what turns away most people, even people who actually like complex games

magic's strongest pro over other card games is its measure of interaction with instants, not anything to do with lands

>but lands give an extra layer to instants such as bluffing and prediction
there are other ways to implement resources that would function in the same way

you can flood out with more lands than you need, don't be retarded, it's basic statistics

you can flood out with 30 lands, 10 playables

You know I just realized how broken this can be if you used it with some island to thin your deck and win via laboratory Manic.

Lands have been the worst designed part of MtG since the beginning.
Early Magic decks, lands were boring. A third of your deck was the same shitty card that did nothing exciting.
Now they are just poorly designed. Decades of fetches, duals, and cycling, and they still flood/starve and are absolutely unexciting. Not to mention they are also the biggest hurdle for new players to get over after "ONLY 60 CARDS'.

Honestly, with how casual magic has been going. I'm really surprised we haven't seen a popular casual format that removes lands entirely.

>Honestly, with how casual magic has been going. I'm really surprised we haven't seen a popular casual format that removes lands entirely.
It's called Hearthstone.

I think losing due to no fault of my own is fun.

I once kept a seven land starting hand and won, tho

type 4

>Do you agree with mark rosewater that mana screw and flood are necessary evils?
Yes. Games where>Do you agree with mark rosewater that mana screw and flood are necessary evils?
Yes.

>What benefits does mana screw and mana flood offer the game of mtg and it's players?
An incentive to build decks with mana curves in mind.

Duel masters has great looks though

I'm not a big fan of the Land Mechanics in MtG, but it was designed with it in mind, so changing it now just isn't possible without fucking the game up severely.

That being said, I really don't get why people are so obsessed with it. If you play a properly constructed deck and know how to Mulligan, chances of getting fucked over completely are low. Not zero, but low. The remaining few percent are there to be just that; Chance. Because MtG is still supposed to be a game of chance to some capacity. Every draw you do is chance, so if you don't draw anything you need to win the game, you just had bad luck. And that probably happens just as often, if not more often than getting Mana Screwed or Flooded. The entire point of this chance element is to put more pressure on Deckbuilding. You are supposed to live with the fact that chance can fuck you over, so you need to build a more robust and consistent deck.

Just play Contingency Plan. It's a 2CMC scry 5.

>It adds variance to the game and a certain element of skill testing when you build decks.
It also possible to do that without mana screw.

Sometimes you get mana screwed or flooded but its part of the game and your deck design. If mana were always a reliable flow deck design would be very different, guaranteeing mana as you need it and to the total extent you need it would totally change how people build decks. Currently building a fast or slow deck requires you to think about cards to use to help get the right amount of lands.

Many people complain about being screwed because they got greedy for spells and didn't put enough land in the deck, or get flooded because they put in too much, and didn't use a combination of card draw, land search, cycling or filtering, to remediate these problems.

>5% chance
BWAHAHAHAHA fuck no, try 30%

If 30% of your games are lost to unreliable mana you could probably improve that by building better decks.

Should there be a rule that if you have 0 lands in hand you get a free mulligan? Or something along these lines? Cuz it sucks mulliganing to 6 or 5 and still getting 0 lands. This happens and there need to be a safety mechanism for that.

>My favorite variant is to make any card playable as any basic land. You would simply turn the card face down and declare what basic type it had for your land drop.

I hope you enjoy being dead to burn by turn 3 or dead to belcher/balustrade spy.

I know that the rule should be more strict. Like you only get 1 free mulligan. But that still doesn't take decks with no or deliberately few lands into account.

okay? that doesn't invalidate the person's suggestion to get some friends and all build sovereign's realm decks?

The problem with mulligan is that the lower you go, the smaller the chances of getting at least 2 lands become.
I personally think that is mulligan that need the fixing.

Get good.

Managing mana screw and flood is an aspect of good deck construction. While it's not an ideal mechanic, the game was designed with it in mind so changing it now makes no sense. If you really hate it nothing is stopping you from playing Hearthstone.

Deckbuilding is equal parts manabase and other cards.

There are decks that only need 17 land and there are decks that need 27 (there are some that need none at all). Having guaranteed mana is just an invitation for aggro and all in combo decks to be completely uninhibited.

Nothing is stopping a lot of people from playing hearth stone. It's gained more players than mtg has in a very short time. Some of that can be attributed to not having an archaic mana system that forces you to be unable to play a few games out of a hundred.

Mana screw is legally one of the worst feelings your can experience in gaming. If I was a new guy playing in borrowed cards and got mana screwed in the first couple of games, I probably wouldn't keep playing.

of course that those kind of cards would be banned in that format, asshole.

Why? Control decks would never flood out. They benefit just as much, probably more, than aggro or combo. Consider that control decks typically run more lands than aggro or combo. So by eliminating lands, control players gain more additional deck slots to fill with removal or threats relative to aggro or combo players.

If this basic fact wasn't obvious to you, I question your skill.

Hearthstone is a blizzard game, it was a guaranteed success regardless of quality because blizzards fans are idiots.

Yeah, Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 sure are t as king the exports scene by storm too!

"No"

Literally just play Force of Will.

Mana flood isn't so bad; it's statistically likely to end and you can come out okay if the game goes past turn 4.

It's nolandz that is a pretty much guaranteed loss for a deck that doesn't have an average cmc of 2 or less.

In a 1 for 1 removal/counter situation, the deck with more threats wins.

Diablo 3 isn't an esport, starcraft 2 was doing well before a lack of support that the other blizzard games do not suffer from caused people to lose interest in it.

That's why I like Hearthstone, you just get free mana every turn, very predictable.

No. But even if that were true, control decks get to add more removal than aggro decks do threats, making it a non one to one situation.

Please think before you post.

>in a format where aggro is literally 60 threats

>Two for one removal doesn't exist and get significantly better in a land of reliable mana.

>dying to 60 burn spells

Why would you play removal or counters at all in a format where having perfect mana lets you play all of the uncounterable and unremovable creatures without any drawback?

It takes time for people to realize how shit this idea is.

Both games are barely alive, and blizzards name isn't saving them or making them popular.

Hearthstone, according to estimates has fifty million players. If it was shit, it would have gone the easy of sc2 or Diablo 3 by now.

Think about that: Magic has maybe ten million players. In a few short years, Hearthstone has quintupled the most popular trading card game. Of course that's related to a lot of different things, such as wizards hilarious mismanagement of online gaming, lack of innovation, etc. But at least some of that can be attributed to the main gameplay difference: no lands.

I'm going to need a source on both those numbers.

There aren't as many of those as you think. And we still have 4 card limits.

>But at least some of that can be attributed to the main gameplay difference: no lands.

You're projecting pretty hard right now, if you're going to use this argument I want evidence.

The anti-land shilling needs to stop. The land resources system in Magic is way, way better than most alternatives, and leagues better than Hearthstone. It makes deck construction a lot more interesting, provides a great venue for artists, and adds a lot to the flavor of the game when your settings can be depicted.

People DO have legitimate complains about how expensive lands are. This is typical WotC jewing. Lands that only tap for mana should never be more rare than uncommon, and lands with splashy effects should never be higher than rare. It's sad that a lot of people are forced out of competitive play because they don't have significant disposable income. This is why I strongly recommend buying china fakes.

People are also much greedier nowadays with their manabases. Back when I played tournaments Ravnica-era and older, most ago decks felt like they were playing around 23, and control decks would play around 25. Now it seems like people try and get away with a lot less because much cantrips, but expose themselves to more risk.

It's hard to find the number of magic players. Estimates range from 6 million in 2006 to ten or twenty million today.

Hearthstone is fifty million as provided by blizzard.

Revenue wise it's more even. Magic supposedly brings in 300 million. Hearthstone, a new competitor is only bringing in 240. Which is still amazing. Remember, maro predicted that any game without mana screw was doomed to fail, as bad players would always lose to good players, and have nothing to blame their loss on.

Have you played both games? Lack of lands means your whole deck is tools with as little filler as possible.
There's a big difference in deckbuilding and consistent turn tempo knowing that every card draw is an enabler, rather than drawing dead and needing cycle and fetch gimicks.

But it in White side of color pie. Good card quality by means of filtering the deck out of lands when you dont need them. Every draw you take will be a relevant nonland card.

I do that, but the cards are put face up and can only add mana of their colours. Multicolour cards enter the battlefield tapped.

There's just so much chance in HS, aside from lands. All the random cards.

...

True, but the chance hs has still involves playing the game. If you get mana screwed in mtg you don't play cards.

I'll take the hs variance over mtg variance any day.

Then why are you here and not on /v/?

Losing to RNG cards like Yogg still feels better than losing to mana screw in Magic, because at least you still got to play the damn game.

That's a good way of doing it. I would be interested in seeing beta testing done.

Because I like other traditional games, and other aspects of mtg better that other aspects of hs.

Yes I have, and I consider hearthstone oversimplified and unfun due to a lack of options for interaction, and I also think the emphasis on random elements adds far more variance to the game than lands in magic ever have. Your opinion that mana in hearthstone is better does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the majority, and without evidence the popularity of hearthstone can not be used as evidence to support your argument. I understand that it's difficult to imagine that people have different opinions, but that's just how it is.

More people play hs than magic even at the highest estimates for mtg player numbers

Sure, what's your point? Where is your evidence that mana has anything to do with this?

I've only ever heard this argument from :

A. People who can't shuffle and refuse to learn.

B. People with no understanding of strategy who don't understand why they don't win with what they think are game breakers or super special snowflakes.

I have no conclusive proof that mana had anything to do with it.

However, to think it had nothing to do with it is asinine, and at the least we know MaRo is wrong that mana screw is a necessary evil.

If you have no evidence it's just your opinion.

Okay it seems to be a popular opinion, man.

This thread has a lot of mixed opinions, I'm not seeing a clear consensus either way.

More people have a hearthstone account.

The clear consensus is that mana screw sucks.

The mix is over whether lands are worth having in spite of mana screw.

Hearthstone's success demonstrates that mana screw isn't necessary to a successful have, so the only argument left is whether lands make the game more fun overall.

They've got a ton of baggage though.

If you want to say memes like"well that's just your opinion man" that's okay. But you don't add anything to any discussion.

Hearth stone is a successful game, more successful than magic going by player count. It is reasonable to attribute since if this success to its innovations, one of which is not having land.

The premise of mana in MTG is to make deck design and play order far more significant a decision.

95% of all mana errors that cost a game are the result of poor deck construction or poor play decisions. The fraction of games lost due to mana errors is trivial compared to the number lost due to misplays or bad conventional draws.

It also, conveniently, gives new or poor players something to blame their loss on. Technically, very few games can't at all be blamed on getting one more or one less land card. This is surprisingly useful.

I suspect there is an elegant solution to Land in MTG that would, had it been introduced at the start of the game design, would have improved it somewhat. But I have yet to find a game that has it.

While mana screw can be frustrating if it happens consecutively in a tournament, I'd far prefer the stack over having a game end suddenly on a turn and there is literally nothing you can do to prevent it

Or you could just play oops all spells like a normal degenerate.

Have you looked into Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn? I'm curious if anyone else in this thread has and I'm interested in opinions of the core mechanics

That's a silly statistic to make up, and impossible to verify. You could copy a pro players tourney winning list and gave him whispering when to Mulligan in you ear and still get mana screwed a not insignificant portion of the time.

Giving new players a scape goat isn't good, but the scape goat exists even without lands. "Well I would have won if I coulda drawn the exodia head I was looking for instead of a second right arm.".

Lands just focus the bad draw scapegoat on boring as fuck cards instead of interesting ones.

The funny part is that the Stack is a latter invention of the game.

The ol' Batch is used by Yu-Gi-Oh!

>If you want to say memes like"well that's just your opinion man" that's okay. But you don't add anything to any discussion.

You're the one who was implying that hearthstone being more successful than magic was evidence for lands being bad for magic, don't claim I'm memeing just because you don't have real evidence for your point. Maybe we should talk about brilliant game design like yogg-saron instead?

It's representative of the play at the game store where I ran FNM for five years. I made it a point to inquire, and the results were very consistent.

Certainly nobody else is going to produce better stats.

Why don't you try sticking to the topic of the thread rather than distracting from it.

Are you literally maro?

>mana screw is a necessary evil.
Getting unlucky is a necessary evil, getting mana screwed is just a subset of that. Card games require an element of chance and that means there will always be a possibility of losing the game for no other reason than because the other guy got lucky. It doesn't have to be mana screwing or flooding either, everyone's had a game that was won or lost on a lucky topdeck.

It's not like the lack of lands makes Hearthstone less luck based than Magic. There's so many cards in HS with effects dependent on RNG that a lot of games just come down to one or both players rolling the dice and seeing who got better results. In my experience more games of Hearthstone have been decided by random chance than games of MTG.

Okay, so the popularity of hearthstone is not something we should talk about because it has nothing to do with mana in magic.