Good Riddance Damage on the Stack by Sam Stoddard
bdm | June 11, 2009 | 4:51 pmEditor’s note: Sam Stoddard is a PTQ and PT veteran who has done some terrific writing about Magic, most notably Creating a Fearless Magical Inventory. He has been one of the few advocates from the Pro side of the Magic community to embrace the rules changes in M10 and has posted as such on Twitter and his own blog. He has graciously granted us permission to include the following from his own blog for the Top8Magic readership to chew on.)
Posted this a few places, so might as well post this here:
I’ll admit it, I freaked out when I first saw the rules announcements. 1-4 and 6-7 seemed fine, but #5 seemed like the point where Magic stopped being Magic and became something else - WoW or Pokemon. After talking to people and thinking about it more, I’m excited about the change, and I’m ready to see stacking combat damage go.
We’ve been far too complacent for too long in abusing damage on the stack tricks to win our games for us. In talking with people, many people believe that removing this ability will dumb the game down. How much are we relying on these tricks to succeed in magic? Damage on, sac, bounce, champion, pump, whatever, it’s an easy way to gain an advantage against opponents who don’t know the tricks.
If you show up at an FNM or a PTQ and know all your damage on the stack tricks, you have a huge advantage over an opponent who doesn’t understand that just by using these tricks. There isn’t as much incentive to mulligan properly, work on mana bases or otherwise playing better when knowing one trick can get you by. This doesn’t mean that there will be no way for a more skilled player to win, it just means that It’s going to require new and different strategies. I truly believe that you learn more in a draft where your deck trainwrecks and you have to fight every second of every game to pull anything out than one where you end up with a constructed deck. The constructed matchups where you go in as a dog and mulligan to 5 and are forced to make every play perfectly teach you more than a series of great matchups with god hands. Winning does not make you better at magic. Working for your wins, and even your loses, makes you a better magic player.
Under 5e rules succeeding at tournament magic was largely about being one of the 3 people in the room (judges included) who actually understood how the batch and damage prevention stops worked and knowing how all the mish-mash of awkwardly templated cards in your deck actually read. When they released 6th edition rules, there were hundreds of complaints by players who couldn’t fathom wining in a world where you couldn’t cast balance, know it wouldn’t get countered, then sac all your lands to Zuran Orb. Or why people weren’t being punished for not understanding how to use damage prevention step correctly or how to pump your pestilence so that 4 damage happened all at the same. Magic playskill was as much about knowing the rules perfectly as it was about making good decisions.
Ten years later, with the crutch of rules-lawyering somewhat behind us, tournament players have gotten much better. They were forced to learn every other aspect of the game twice as well to get half as much return, but when they did, those gains compounded. While no single aspect of the game was as powerful as tricking your opponent into giving you permission you to cast a lightning bolt (which you didn’t want to, but thanks for passing the turn), exploring other avenues to gain advantages has led to a massive improvement in the quality of professional and non-professional play.
Damage on the stack is gone, and we are going to have to evolve or die. A lot of cards we love are no longer good. That’s a good thing. Things are going to be really rough at first. Everyone’s card valuations are going to be way off for a while. Combat tricks are going to be riskier. Bounce spells will need to be used offensively rather than just to gain card advantage in blocking. People who want to compete at any level are going to have to find new ways to gain advantages in games. The people who do will succeed, and those who don’t will blame the dumbing down of the game. New strategies will emerge and everyone is going to work harder on previously ignored aspects of their game in order to improve.This is going to be a hard and painful process, especially for those of us who are so set in our ways, but we will be better players for it.
More so than taking away from being able to beat bad players, this will create a divide between the mediocre players and the good players. Both those groups used to have damage on tricks an the like to take advantage of, and the players who are better will have access to more tricks in the coming months, and make better decisions in combat. This is the group that will struggle to adapt or die. They clearly have an idea of what’s going on in the game, but they may not have the depth to compete when their one tried-and-true trick is gone.
You attack with a 5/5. Opponent blocks with a 3/3 and two 1/1s. How do you order the blockers?
3/3, 1/1, 1/1 gets destroyed by a Giant Growth.
1/1, 1/1, 3/3 gets in trouble with a damage prevention spell of 1 or more
1/1, 3/3, 1/1 doesn’t get as blown out by giant growth, but a +2/+2 is now the same as a +3/+3 in terms of saving the 3/3. This is probably ideal in a format like Shards.
But lets say you do have nothing and you know your opponent has a pump spell. He has chosen to block like that probably in an attempt to trade in the event you have a giant growth. You might order them 3/3, 1/1, 1/1 baiting it. Your opponent thinks. Why did he order them like that? He clearly wants me to use the pump spell here. He must have a burn or bounce spell. If I try and pump, I’m getting 3 for 1′d. Let damage resolve.
Bam, you just got 3 for 1 because you tricked your opponent into thinking he was smarter than he really was by broadcasting a card you didn’t have. This is a new type of decision that did not exist before the rules change.
what? if someone has a giant growth and a 3/3…why wouldnt they just block and use it rather than risking any 1/1s?
Taking damage off the stack… Mmkay
You don’t need to change asignment to remove damage from the stack.
Screwing with damage assignment is not okay. If it was okay the. Deathtouch wouldn’t need exception rules. Deathtouch is not the only time assigning non lethal range matters.
Further I want to point out that all examples of how cool the new system is are going to favor the defender (the attacker is the only player losing choices). I know we’re all thrilled at the idea of more ground stalled limited games.
Bittersting, I agree with pretty much all you said. I’d argue removing “damage on the stack” from the game(or should I call it exiling now?) doesn’t add or subtract any complexity, it just changes where the complexity exists. It also does dramatically change the state of combat in favor of the defending player, even more than it had been before, in creature combat.
But I’d actually say that the new type of damage assignment is the biggest issue for me. I guess it’s more intuitive to a non-player, but the ramifications are messy and plentiful.
“We’ve been far too complacent for too long in abusing damage on the stack tricks to win our games for us. ”
Playing within the confines of the rules is not abusing the rules.
Learning and using a rule explained in the basic rulebook is not abusing the rule.
Playing cards and abilities specifically *designed* with the assumption this rule is in place (P/T switching, blinking to an extent, flash/bounce, etc.) is not abusing the rules.
Sorry, try again.
Also, the reason presented by Wizards seems to be “intuition.”
At least 2 articles I’ve read, 8 forum posts, and my dear friend who plays at a competitive level automatically assumed the defender ordered his blockers, despite having read Forsythe’s article firsthand. It’s intuitive to think so, and unintuitive to think the attacker chooses how those creatures block (why should the berserker running at your party decide who’s standing in front of one another?). However, that’s how it is. The ordering and lethal rule is needed to not let the attacker have a huge advantage, and the attacker doing the ordering is to keep the defender from having a huge advantage. Layer upon layer of rules added to justify something that was supposedly unintuitive, replacing it only with more non-intuition.
Even if the level of intuition and complexity was *exactly the same* it does not justify a rules change. Only a clear benefit would, and trust me… It is *not* clear.
Sorry, try again Forsythe. Oh wait, we have no say since not only are complainers more vocal than those who accept change, but we are also likely overreacting. Basic logic dictates Wizards really should never listen to their playerbase.
Ok, the point that awful players can still find ways to beat themselves is valid, but irrelevant. Blocking a 5/5 with a 3/3 and 2 1/1s isn’t a good block if you have the pump, and you’re offering the 3 for 1 by making that block anyway, no congratulations necessary.
Losing opportunities to interact is never a good thing. While I agree that the changes will (for a short time only) give good players chances to outplay opponents who don’t know the new rules, once most players catch on, the jig will be up and we’ll be left with an overall less interesting game. I, for one, am not interested in playing a fantasy themed game of war, so Wizards should be careful about how far they dumb down Magic.
I never complained about 6th Edition rules because the changes made perfect sense to me - the game was needlessly complex, and I’m sure the majority of players in that time didn’t understand why you could respond to Terror with Unsummon but couldn’t do the same in response to Nekrataal. The change in combat does not make this kind of sense.
While I’ve used my share of “damage on” tricks, and lost to them as well, it hasn’t given me as much of an advantage as simply minimizing errors, drafting well, constructing a good mana base, testing against other decks, plain old luck, or any other number of things that make a good player. My problem with the rule change isn’t that it makes the game any less complex, or, as some have argued, more complex, but simply that the rules we had in place were already fine, and while these revisions may open up new avenues of strategy, it closes just as many. The old system wasn’t broken, and didn’t need fixing, or at least not this fix.
I have to agree with those above, this seems like a complete reach, trying to defend something that is universally being regarded as a bad change.
The first two paragraphs were basically spent arguing that we, as players, have been “Abusing” a rule to help us win, as if it was some crazy loophole that almost nobody else knew of or understood. EVERYONE knows and understands how damage on the stack works. Everyone who’s ever played a Fanatic, or an Elder, or an Unsummon knows how it works. It wasn’t hard to understand, and as Zvi pointed out, worked great because it was the EXACT same system that the rest of the game used. It wasn’t some kind of unintended rules abuse that a few elite players were using to gain an advantage. So you’re obviously wrong.
Now, we have combat that works completely differently than anything else in the game, and yet it’s supposed to be “Intuitive”?
It’s fine to be excited by the new possibilities that are always present when rules are changed, but that doesn’t change the fact that under the old system, combat was strategically deep, and well-understood by almost everyone. We now have a new system that presents some different strategic decisions, but overall far less, a system that neuters MANY cards that were player-favorites, and a system that may slow combat down significantly because of how heavily it favors blockers. That is NOT a good thing.
Why should the berserker running at your party NOT be able to decide who to attack first? I mean, unless one of the guys has first strike, it’s hardly a given to have the choice to either way. Against a random group of creatures standing in its way, it makes since that it would have free range to choose which to attack first. I mean, if the blockers were an especially well organized phalanx of soldiers (Read: special ability of some kind) I could see them setting up strategically advanced formations or something. But three random guys thrown together by fate and an uncaring planeswalker? There is no way they are well organized enough to mount a coordinated defense. Like Orlando.
I have issue with the changes being “intuitive.” Sure, some new player is going to come along and learn these new rules, so they will be all they ever know. The stack is still the biggest thing in the game to learn and it’s still in the game. I’ve played against the casual players at FNM’s and PTQ’s that show up, not having a clue as to how the stack works in the first place. It’s never, in my experience, been an issue where they didn’t understand the rules within the combat step, it’s that they didn’t understand the game at all. These people are just dumb and will never understand the stack in any step, if they ever learn the rules at all. These are the kind of people that forget to untap every turn until they start playing spells. These new rules may be simpler to some, but these players that have always had issues with figuring out how the game works will still have these issues. I know WOTC makes their money off of these players and wants to keep them around, but these are the players that quit playing by every third set in an expansion and pick up again with the large set in the fall occasionally. These aren’t the people that stick with the game. They’re hurting the people that have an excellent grasp of the rules and at the same time, they’re not helping a lot of the players that don’t have an idea as to how the rules work. These people more often than not are beyond help. Why bother?
Why do people always assume you’re blocking with a bunch of rando 1/1s along with a real dude to prove that this system requires skill?
@Children’s card games:
But he can’t choose to deal his damage as he chooses? How come an attacker could hit creatures nonlethally for 15 solid years, and now suddenly he is forced to? Now instead of “how to deal damage” combat is “which creature to kill first.” Strategic depth lost. =/
However, without windows where you can prevent damage or regen (pre 6th rules) since those effects use the stack and set up shields now, the old combat system wouldn’t work. So we get all this unintuitive junk thrown into the combat rules to make sure combat is fair for both the attacker and defender.
@Eric:
Why is the only “strategic upside” that people side the “lol now there’s no obvious choice, Stack and Sac!” Yes, no sac’ing with damage on is the one single only strategy “benefit.” Which a lot of players want to keep the old way as far as I’ve read, and what Wizards has designed in mind for a decade, longer than when we played with pre-6th rules.
Even the oft-cited Mogg Fanatic (omg it returns to its original functionality!!!1!one) was designed within the 2 year development time before they released 6th edition. They probably knew about the rules change when they printed Moggy. Sorry guys.
This change just seems so arbitrary. It came out of the blue and doesn’t seem to have a real upside. =/
I never see this situation brought up:
You have a Mogg Fanatic. Your opponent attacks with 3 Savannah Lions. Under the current system, you have two choices. Under the new system, you have only one choice. Additionally, under the current system, your decision may change if he instead attacks with 1/1s or 3/1s. Under the new system, it’s still always the same one choice.
Actually, you know what? Considering most of the hardcore end of Magic players dislike change 5, I’m wondering if they did it for any real strategic expansion or to open up additional design space. I mean, they want new players to play Magic, but did they really get that many complaints specifically about damage on the stack? I mean, they say people were turned off by difficult combat math with the old system, but were there enough comments about this that it made this change necessary?
Also, Wizards must have tested these changes. In fact, in Forsythe’s article, they said that they’d been playing with these new rules for a while now. Do the new playtesters feel like these new changes help grow the game, or even the brand? This is probably the wrong place to ask this, but I feel like, since this is such an unpopular change, Wizards really needs to address these issues.
Damage on the stack adds complexity in a good way. Removing strategy strips interest from the game. The change moved MtG a step away from chess, towards checkers. It dumbs down the rules to appeal to a broader audience. I expect the change was made because someone made the case it would increase revenue.
Typically, I buy 1-2 boxes of each set. I’m thinking about boycotting M10.
I agree 100% with bdm. There’s really no point arguing on way or the other right now — in 2 months we will adapt or quit or whatever and then we can look back and say whether we’re worse off or better, but until then why not practice under the new rules so you don’t get blown out when they go live? Seems like a way better plan than bitching to people who’ve already made up their minds.
“Combat damage resolves as split second”,
should have been enough to prevent damage on the stack abuse.
But then new players would need to learn one additional complex rule
I wrote an email to Forsythe and Gottlieb, and I strongly suggest that anyone else opposed to the changes to Combat does the same. MaRo’s archive on daily mtg has some good tips on how to get your letter read at WotC. Every other change is livable, if annoying, but the combat damage change is just waaay too much. It feels to me like a betrayal. We were told ten years ago that we could forget about the old way things work, and it was a difficult transition. Now they want to go back? No thanks, we’re very attached to our damage-on-stack tricks.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/give-stacked-combat-damage-a-chance
Say no to the change!
I’ve been teaching Magic to 4th and 5th graders for many years now and they never had problems understanding “damage on the stack” and then sac/etc. I’ve always said to think about what happens in a real war. Two soldiers shoot each other and are badly wounded. It looks like they are going to die. One soldier is lucky enough to have a doctor nearby who treats his injuries and he lives (just like the creature who is Unsummoned, regenerated, Bandaged, etc.). The other soldier isn’t lucky and realizes he is going to die so his last efforts are to reload his weapon and empty it at the enemy before taking his dieing breath (just like the Fanatic who sacs himself to help his Planeswalker or any other creature who has a similar effect.). If 9 and 10 year olds playing the game for fun can understand it then why are older people wanting to go to FNMs unable to figure it out?
re: Bryant Cobarrubias
Actually, it’s moving magic from poker and aproaching it to chess, as now you have more visibility over the options your opponent has, but there is no clear optimal play and you have to think of the different scenarios of his decisions.
Mr. Stoddard,
While it is always interesting to take an unpopular position, the arguments for your viewpoint are very weak.
Your first point suggesting that players who understand and utilize stack rules are somehow “abusing…stack tricks” to win games against newer or less skilled players is arguably your most absurd asertion. You’re basically waving a socialist flag on magic when you suggest that rules should be altered to even the playing field for beginners. Come on - should the Olympic Diver be penalized because his 12 year old understudy hasn’t yet mastered the tuck roll-off trick? As a newer magic player, what motivation is there for me to learn more about the game and its rules if I can go head to head with a pro and face no new challenge or surprise? Some of the best memories I’ve had playing this game have been when I thought I had the attack in the bag and my opponent surprised me with something on the stack I hadn’t anticipated. Not only does the element of surprise make the game more fun, it forces me to be a more forward thinking and aware player.
On to your next point…it is one thing to ban certain cards from the game when they are broken because they are too powerful but it is quite another to change the entire framework of play with rules changes that are unecessary. If Wizards really wanted to make the game more streamlined they could control the future of limited events by printing new types of cards and not introducing as many 2 for 1s. If you recall, Wizards did attempt a dumbed down version of the game to appeal to the newer player back in 1997 with the Portal expansion which was unpopular with veteran players. I’d much prefer to see an occaisional ‘expansion outreach’ to newbies than to see the rules of a game I enjoy altered so a newer player doesn’t have to work as hard to compete.
To your third point which is really a series of emotional pleas to the conscience of the ‘big bad pro player’ these rule changes will make the term ‘combat trick’ an oxymoron. The only thing I agree with you on here is that decks will have to adapt if by adapting you meaning pulling out all your instants and replacing them with big ass creatures until Wizards gets around to printing some cards that will make combat interesting and (oops!) complicated again.
At first i thought you were being satirical/sarcastic, then i realized you were just being an idiot.
I agree with Sam. While this change isn’t necessary, it actually INCREASES the effect of skill between good players and the best players. Average knowledgeable players won’t be able to annihilate bad players as easily. Knowing how to sacrifice a Mogg Fanatic after damage doesn’t take much skill. Those decisions are obvious. What makes a great player is the difficult decisions. The problem with damage on the stack is that it makes it too easy for average players to make strong plays. There’s no risk. Now I think there will be more possibilities for outplaying people. Damage on the stack is a safety net that keeps okay players from getting wrecked. With it gone, players will have to rely on situational reads and analysis to decide if and how a trick should be played. That style of thinking isn’t present when the correct choice is 99% of the time to wait for damage to be on the stack and avoid any risk. I think it’s laughable that the removal of this safety net will somehow reduce skill disparities in the game.
I actually think it’s disrespectful to rant and rant about these changes that have been thoroughly tested by some very talented people who are looking out for us players, without having tried them yourself.
Lastly PLEASE stop using the pyroclasm example… I play a LOT of magic and it’s been at least a year since someone has assigned 1, 1, and 1 then clasmed me, and it’s almost never something I play around so there’s not much skill to making that play.
Alas, the rules have been changed, and Power Sink still isn’t as good as when I first learned to play. This is honestly my most immediate reaction to the rules changes.
The changes that have come up definitely warrant adjustment in card valuation and the way that various cards are used. Am I sad that my 1/1 one drop doesn’t give me the potential to get a 2 for 1? Maybe a little. Maybe I’ll just switch to Festering Goblin instead. I’m definitely not sad that Aquamoeba is no longer a functional 3/3. Does it make sense to me that my creatures now have to kill off creatures, rather than plinking each of them a little to set up for a Pyroclasm? Yes, it absolutely does. Warriors don’t fight to injure, they fight to kill.
What is going to happen to combat tricks now? Well, in practice, how many combat tricks do you see in most constructed games? How many double blocks? The majority of stack and sac tricks were effectively a ‘free move’, which led to less overall decisions. If I know my Sakura Tribe Elder represents a free block before setting up my mana, I will take it 100% of the time.
Limited will be the place rocked harder. Call to Heel is definitely not as exciting as it was, and here the tension of multiple blocks and the tricks that could cause them to come undone were palpable. The tension hasn’t gone though. It has just shifted around a bit. Now combat tricks are more of a gamble, and go down in value compared to honest to goodness removal spells, but they still have the potential to mess up combat math as they always have. Instant speed removal remains the best combat trick. Will regular pump/prevention get sidelined in favour of other picks? Maybe. Everyone has the memo on auras now as being likely sources on card disadvantage, but the good ones still see play, and I would imagine that the same will be true of giant growth effects.
Sure, things have changed, but seriously, quitting the game because of it? Boycotting releases? If the only thing in Magic that you found fun was tricks involving the stacking of combat damage, then you were doing something wrong.
And is it wrong to have found any simile of fun in that?
Yeah, it might be the focus of a lot of decks, but guess what? Stack and sac is so abundant BECAUSE they were the top cards of most formats!
Creatures ARE their abilities, and once you take away a fundamental ’skill’ of the creature, then the creature is useless, and will be replaced with something that hasn’t been neutered.
PS - Can’t WAIT for all the slow play rulings that result from this …
@ Children’s Card Games
In reality, No creature in mtg (unless they have provoke) ever attacks another creature.
The berserker in your scenario is actually charging toward the plainswalker (IE your opponent), and the person in turn summons up his defenders to protect him/her self. In this sense, choosing the order of blockers makes more sense. This is why when you don’t block, you lose life.
Apparently you don’t have to be intelligent to be a PTQ and PT veteran.