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Glagha posted:Well, this one is old and well known and not all that amazing but it's one of those goofy rules things that bears mentioning in this thread. I've tried to avoid the bizarre things that can happen through elaborate schemes in Magic (even other Magic players just stare blankly when I explain some of the tricks), but there are some great little errors in communicating between the card designers and their artists. The most famous of which is this:  A lemure is a vengeful spirit of the dead. A lemur is a cute primate that lives in Madagascar. The artist drew a lemur, and with the print deadline approaching the editors had no choice but to add claws and wings to his illustration.  Alchor was a powerful wizard living in the world of the Legends expansion. Unfortunately, the artist misread "Alchor's Tome" as "Alchor's Tomb" and drew a grave. Wizards of the Coast didn't have time to commission new art before the print deadline, so they killed Alchor off in order to keep his tomb in the set. Note that these mistakes happened a long time ago. Nowadays the designers are much more careful to communicate clearly with the artists, although we occasionally get homages to old mistakes. 
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Feb 25, 2013 22:42
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yaoi prophet posted:if there's any place these things belong, it's here. OK, here we go. To play spells in Magic, you usually have to pay for them with mana, generated by using some kind of mana ability. Island has a mana ability, Black Lotus has a mana ability, Vault Skirge has a mana ability. In 1997 Dave Mills was disqualified from the finals of Pro Tour Los Angeles for playing spells and then using mana abilities, a common practice. This led to history's only Magic riot, as a group of neckbeards stormed the stage during the award ceremony and demanded justice for Mills. The judges relented and gave Mills a second-place prize, also changing the rules so that it became legal to activate a mana ability while paying costs. Now the rules say that a player can't do anything in response to a mana ability, so nothing can disrupt a mana ability once started. This brings us to Caged Sun, a card that doesn't work. All mana abilities are activated (pay [cost]: do [effect]) except for Caged Sun, which is triggered (when [trigger], then [effect]). A ruling says that Caged Sun has a mana ability anyway, otherwise this would create some awkwardness when playing spells with Caged Sun in play. So Caged Sun has a mana ability that adds mana to your mana pool whenever a land adds mana to your mana pool. The rules break down when Caged Sun itself becomes a land, which we accomplish by playing a few cards. March of the Machines makes all artifacts into creatures, so Caged Sun is an artifact creature. Xenograft makes all your creatures a chosen creature type, so Caged Sun can become an artifact creature - Saproling. Life and Limb makes all Saprolings into lands, so Caged Sun is now an "Artifact Creature Land - Saproling Forest". Caged Sun now has a mana ability that effectively reads "Whenever Caged Sun adds mana to your mana pool, add one mana of that colour to your mana pool." Neither player is allowed to do anything until this loop completes, so the players sit there helplessly as the game repeats itself. At this point the game is officially a draw. Caged Sun is a fun example of the problems caused by type changing effects, and also the dangers of infinite loops. An infamous type change problem comes from Humility and Opalescence, which causes Humility to lose the ability that causes it to lose all abilities. Another infinite loop involves three copies of Oblivion Ring with no other targets. With one ring exiling another, the third ring comes into play and exiles one of them. The new ring exiles another, and if there's nothing else in play they loop around forever. One of the game's best players created this loop in an online tournament just to see what would happen - video. There are other ways to break the rules of Magic for fun and (not much) profit, which I'll post about later because I'm busy.
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Feb 25, 2013 23:51
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I like the stuff about individual Magic cards, keep them coming! My wheelhouse is still on the very complicated combinations, so I'll keep them coming. Korlash, Heir to Blackblade and other "Grandeur" cards has an ability that involves discarding more copies of cards with the same name. However, it's possible to discard Korlash to himself. With Suppression Field in play, his ability costs mana and a discard to activate. Activate a Words of Wind, then announce Korlash's ability. Use a Chromatic Sphere's mana ability to pay for Korlash - remember, players can't respond to mana abilities, and they can be activated while paying for costs. While paying for Korlash's ability (which costs "2, discard a card named Korlash, Heir to Blackblade), activate Chromatic Sphere, replace the draw by returning Korlash to your hand, and then discard the card you just returned to your hand to finish paying the cost. It's possible to temporarily dip below 0 life while using mana abilities to pay for something. For example, with an active Words of Worship, you can activate Tarnished Citadel and Chromatic Sphere to pay for a spell - perhaps Barren Glory - and temporarily go below 0 life until the Words replaces the draw to put you back into safe territory. A player doesn't lose if they're only dead in between the checks on state-based effects. Because of the nature of mana abilities, Chromatic Sphere leads to many odd situations. If I control one plus a way to feed it mana, a Thought Lash, and a Laboratory Maniac, I can win the game without ever giving my opponent a chance to respond. Unlike the other comboes listed, this one is good enough that I've won small Legacy tournaments with it, and I've had no end of entertaining judge calls. Chamale fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 04:55
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Plank posted:Would it be possible in Magic to have a deck entirely made up of combinations like that, with no monsters or anything, and have it be effective at all? It seems like the biggest Absolutely. In the deck building thread we've come up with a deck that uses creatures, in a sense, to summon a 60/60 giant death creature on the first turn, and there are decks built around Tendrils of Agony that win games without ever playing a creature. One popular deck in Modern (a format restricted to the cards made since 2003) has only one win condition in it, a single Pyrite Spellbomb, and once it gets going it can return it from the discard pile to play any number of times to kill the opponent. A deck in Legacy has no win condition at all, but uses Cunning Wish to bring in a Blue Sun's Zenith from outside the game. I recall reading a great  post where someone was talking about playing a Storm deck against a casual player. It went something like:quote:I cast Burning Wish, the ninth spell this turn, and moved to bring out the game-winning Tendrils of Agony. My opponent pouted, "don't you have any decks that play creatures?" I paused, smiled, and reached for my copy of Empty the Warrens.
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Feb 26, 2013 06:01
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ToxicFrog posted:Wait, how does this work? It seems that you'd have to play Thought Lash, then your opponent gets a turn (during which they can Disenchant it or something), and only on your next turn do you get to refuse to pay its upkeep and throw out your entire deck. Yaoi Prophet and Orange Fluffly Sheep explained the how, now I'll explain the why. When Thought Lash was printed, there was a damage prevention stage in which players had a chance to activate abilities to prevent damage. Now that no longer happens, so Thought Lash can be activated preemptively. I can activate Thought Lash in response to itself as many times as necessary to exile my library and put damage prevention on the stack, even if I am not going to take damage this turn.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:53
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TalonDemonKing posted:No one would play an anti-paladin with how goofy they look, though. If you don't know fear, maybe you really would light yourself on fire to help attack. Left 4 Dead had an exploit where a zombie player would light himself on fire before grabbing a human, to damage that player with claws and with fire.
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Feb 28, 2013 07:53
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Echophonic posted:Rules for what now? You're still on the ground, why would you take falling damage? If you were standing on an Earth-like planet, an object the mass of Jupiter would be the local centre of gravity, not Earth. Does D&D model reality as an infinite plane with a steady downwards pull?
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Mar 1, 2013 19:55
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Commoners posted:If you were feeling risky you could load ALL of your normal infantry into the trucks just to have a horrendous bloodbath and make the opposing player feel like he is on the brink of victory after he turns them into mobile funeral pyres. If the opposing player managed to do this he'd be feeling pretty good about himself, as doing this would call for a company HQ morale check if you lose this many guys. Soviets, luckily, get a 2+ on their morale due to being fearless, so it was fairly rare to lose if you just went balls out. So, the game design encouraged the Soviet team to suffer horrific losses in suicidal charges and drown the Nazis in their blood? That sounds like historically accurate game design, not a bug. I'm not complaining, please keep telling stories.
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Mar 11, 2013 23:04
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AgentF posted:I want to hear about the FINNISH SKI MURDER PATROL as well, please. Finnish ski patrols weren't limited to Simo Hayha, they had squads who travelled around and fought on skis. This provided a major advantage against Soviet troops trudging through snow. The Molotov Cocktail was originally meant to be a smoke bomb, blinding a tank so the Finns could ski away, until they discovered that Soviet tanks would blow up after inhaling burning fuel through their air intakes.
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Mar 12, 2013 18:29
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The Lord of Hats posted:Card type changes, you say? That sounds like a challenge! All creatures types includes fun combinations like Fish Monger and Mutant Ninja Turtle. If you play R&D's Secret Lair, he gains esoteric types such as Ali from Cairo and Uncle Istvan.
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Mar 13, 2013 21:58
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Splicer posted:If anyone can remember the full combo that allowed you to attack the opposing player with the two of clubs I'd be greatly appreciative. I know it started with using [http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=34402]Death Wish[/url] to add a playing card to your hand but for the life of me I can't remember how you got it into play. I guess you could use _____ and Retraced Image. In a world where you're allowed to play _____, you could also put into play Pokémon cards, baseball players, and other cards.
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Mar 18, 2013 18:21
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Pidmon posted:So by that R&D Secret Lair ruleset, if you ever get a situation saying 'Draw a card and play it' (I don't play magic but does that happen?) could you just jot on a peice of scrap paper the words "I WIN" and then win? If you can assemble a dumb combo in whatever format lets you play R&D's Secret Lair, you could easily do something that prevents your opponent from ever making any plays, or deals an effectively infinite amount of damage. It's more fun to screw around or win spectacularly than to simply declare you win.
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Mar 19, 2013 03:54
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The difference is that Flash+Hulk is consistent enough that it had a real impact on tournaments, while you're unlikely to draw all 4 copies of Dark Ritual in your opening hand. In the older formats, Magic has a balance of terror between aggressive decks, combo decks, and controlling decks. The SA deckbuilding thread recently developed a deck playing Undercity Informer and Balustrade Spy, two cards that say "target player reveals cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reveals a land card, then puts those cards into his or her graveyard." The deck has no lands in it, so when it plays one of those abilities, the entire deck goes into the graveyard. Narcomoeba comes into play, Dread Return brings back The Mimeoplasm, he gains all the size of Lord of Extinction and becomes a Giant Solifuge. The result is a 60/57 creature that can attack immediately, damages the defending player even if he blocks it, and can't be targeted by removal spell. The deck has about a 40% chance of playing this creature on the first turn of the game. I could make a long post about the history and types of combos in Magic, as they've always been a serious part of the tournament scene, but I think this Magic derail's lasted long enough.
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Mar 20, 2013 03:57
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, that's the thing. Like, if I have a Hoobajoob Elf "attack", I'm not sure what that represents. If I tap my elf, is my elf firing arrows to hurt my opposing wizard? Is it casting an elfy ritual to curse him? Is it hacking away with a magical wall with a sword? Magic isn't worried about actually detailing any sort of narrative; it's entirely abstracted from it. You could construct a narrative from a game of Magic, but a lot of it would be from whole cloth. In 1958, voters in Sao Paolo, Brazil elected a rhinoceros to city council because they were dissatisfied with the corruption of all the human candidates. Stubbs the Cat has been mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska since he was elected in 1997 at the age of two months. In 1967, a brand of foot powder was elected mayor of Picoazŕ, Ecuador after running ads saying "If you want well-being and hygiene, vote for Pulvapies." I do think the D&D posts and wargames posts are more suited to this thread, because those rulesets are more clearly meant as a set of laws of physics. Some of the broken combos have analogies in real life, like the locate city "nuclear bomb". Magic is just a bunch of cards that can interact in counterintuitive ways, like the fact that Headless Horseman can be killed by Neck Snap or that he doesn't have Horsemanship until you play a spell that puts him on another horse. I'll go create a thread for weird rules in trading-card games and paste everything from this thread into it.
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Mar 20, 2013 16:39
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The new thread is up for strange card games rules and interactions.
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Mar 20, 2013 17:51
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Neraren posted:I'm pretty sure labor doesn't usually take more than a day, so you can make 300 babies RAW. More if you have twins! The question at hand is whether gestation counts as a form of labour to that ability, which is a question the rulebooks probably didn't worry about addressing.
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Apr 4, 2013 19:27
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