User:Shard/MtG

Magic: the Gathering has been around a long time. A very, very long time. WotC (the company that makes it) has always made sure their cards don't get out of hand, at least most of the time. Until now. . .

I stopped playing shortly after Lorwyn came out. This was about two or three years ago. I quit for two main reasons:

1. Lorwyn was a terrible set (I'll get to this).
2. I started classes at a new school and didn't have many people to play with anymore.

I've played through other terrible sets before, but Lorwyn was beyond that. Before I get into details, let me explain how a game of Magic works.

You make a deck of at least 60 cards. At the start of a game, each player draws 7 cards and starts with 20 life. Each turn, you can play one land (a type of card). Lands help you play everything else. Weak spells require few lands, and more powerful spells require more lands. It's like Yugioh, but where the number of stars on a spell actually means something (ie 5 doesn't equal 8).

The goal is to get your opponent to 0 life. Most decks rely on creatures to do this. Creatures are a card type (which require lands to play) and they stay in play after you cast them. Each turn, you can attack with any number of your creatures, and the opponent can block. Unblocked creatures deal damage to the other player, making his or her life go down. Creatures have power and toughness - power determines the damage they deal, and toughness determines how much punishment they can take before dieing. So, a typical casual game is a creature battle resembling chess-like strategies.

In addition, the general balance formula for creatures was this: Mana cost = #Abilities + (power+toughness) / 2. For example, a 1/1 creature (1 power, 1 toughness) traditionally costs 1 mana to play. A 5/5 typically costs 5. A 4/2 would cost 3. You get the idea. If any special properties were added to the creature, the mana cost went up a little. So while a 2/2 usually costs 2, a 2/2 with Flying would cost 3.

Now that you're an expert at balancing creatures in Magic, let me explain how spells are balanced. Magic, like Guild Wars, has staples - cards that do very basic things (doing 3 damage or gaining 3 life, for example, each cost 1). Occasionally, they print spells that are a combination of two existing effects. For example, doing 3 damage AND gaining 3 life (which is a real spell) costs 2. Sometimes they increase the cost because you're getting a free implicit card draw. These "free card draws" are referred to as "card advantage" and it is the most powerful effect in Magic you can get. So generally (and remember, there are always exceptions and deviations), cards cost what their components cost, plus a little extra.

Now, let's get to why Magic sucks. Even if you don't know much about Magic, your jaw would probably drop from seeing this. Let me explain how it reads to those of you who don't play Magic.

Emrakul, the Broken Motherfucker of Doom
4 Mana
If you control an elf, put this from your deck directly into play on your fourth turn.
When this comes into play, you win the game.

That's exactly what he does. In an elf deck (a common deck type), you can play this guy on your fourth turn with a good hand, or on turn 5 with a bad hand. Yes, on your worst game, this guy comes into play on turn five. Normally, Wizards would balance instant-win cards by making them impossible to play that early, for example, Coalition Victory has this drawback. I'll go through all of his abilities briefly so you get an idea how stupid it is.

Emrakul can't be countered.

This doesn't mean he can't be countered (although his other abilities do mean that). There are cards in Magic that prevent spells from doing what they're supposed to do (in this case, Emrakul is a spell that puts a huge creature with his abilities into play). These are "counterspells." Emrakul's ability makes those not work on him. There is only one card in the game that goes through this ability. It costs 6.

Protection from colored spells

This translates to "Protection from all spells" because there don't exist any colorless spells that can remove this guy from play. This ability prevents you from targeting him with any spells. The only cards that go through this are "field effects." Quite a few of these exist, but you can't use them on Emrakul because of his next ability:

When you cast Emrakul, take an extra turn after this one.

You can only use each land once per turn. When you do, they become "tapped" and you can only untap them at the beginning of your own turn. When someone drops Emrakul, you don't get to do that, because they're effectively making you skip a turn. Normally, you could just wait until you actually get your turn, except his next ability ruins those plans:

Annihilator 6

Annihilator is a keyword ability that means "When this attacks, defending player sacrifices six permanents." Permanents include lands and creatures (and some other stuff that's not as common). Remember those field effects I mentioned? The cheapest ones cost 4. You just lost 6 permanents. What are the chances you had 10 things in play on your fourth turn? It's 0.

Now, you may be thinking "Shard, what in the world does this have to do with your post? This is only one card." Ha, I wish. This is just one example of cards that WotC shold never have made. I'll quickly list some other ones:

1. A 3 mana creature that makes your other creatures unkillable.
2. An ability that adds 1 power (offense) to all of your creatures for each other creature you control. (which means you can win on turn 4 or 5 every time, regardless of your opponent's blockers, unless they play emrakul)
3. Planeswalkers, cards that give you life every turn and let you play one spell every turn for free, without wasting any cards.
4. Lands that remove people's discard piles from the game forever. (discard piles, or graveyards, are an important part of many deck types)
5. A keyword that, as long as any cards with it are in your deck, your opponent starts at 10 life (instead of 20) and can't gain any life.

What do you get when you put all these things together? I'll tell you, and so will anybody who's seen or been to any recent regional tournament: Games that last fewer than six turns. No game at regionals or worlds has gotten to turn 6. Most decks win on turn 4 or 5. There's one that can win on turn three. This has never happened before in the history of Magic. Remember that six mana "super counterspell" I talked about? The only card in the game that counters Emrakul? It's unplayable in tournaments because turn 6 doesn't exist anymore.

WotC doesn't know they've destroyed Magic, but blogs and articles are popping up all over the place to bring up these issues (many more in depth than this, written for Magic audiences). Hopefully they'll realize that making uncounterable instant-win cards is a bad idea.

To anyone who's interested in picking up Magic, I have two suggestions for you.

1. Wait until the bullshit stops. I've had fun in MtG for like 8 years, and now I hate it just because of a small handful of cards that ruin the game. With any luck, they'll restrict (or ban) these cards when the blocks go out of circulation.
2. Find a group of players who play with old(er) cards. You know, where you can actually drop a sixth land. Avoid people who make their creatures unkillable on their third turn or make you insta-lose on your third turn.

Addendum - New vintage first-turn-win using Emrakul (4 cards)

Forest (basic land - everybody has at least 30 of these)

Lotus Petal (common, most older players have at least one)

Channel (rare, easy to get at stores that sell singles)

Emrakul - you just won the game, before your opponent dropped their first land.

Previously, the easiest first-turn-win also required 4 cards, one of which costs thousands of dollars:

Mountain (basic land)

Black Lotus (rarest and most expensive card ever printed)

Channel

Fireball or any other X-damage spell (everybody has one)

Yeah. Colorless instawin spells + Channel definitely isn't an obvious combo.