This is nonsense. Not everything uses the stack. Playing lands doesn’t use the stack, paying costs doesn’t use the stack, activating mana abilities doesn’t use the stack, drawing cards doesn’t use the stack, creatures being destroyed because of having 0 toughness doesn’t use the stack, tapping and untapping doesn’t use the stack, removing combat damage at the end of turn doesn’t use the stack… Heck there are probably a hundred times more actions in the game that don’t use that stack than those that do. Making combat damage not use the stack actually makes it more in line with the majority of actions.

Having combat damage use the stack is unintuitive, both from a flavor and from a gameplay point of view. Flavorwise these are physical creatures hitting each other. It makes no sense that a creature hits another and the other hits back and then, somehow, one of them is eg. unsummoned but its hit still connects afterwards, but it doesn’t get any damage itself. How exactly does this physical hit somehow linger between the hitter being unsummoned away, and the other creature receiving the hit?

The gameplay trickery that using the stack for combat damage allows is just gimmicky (and quite unintuitive, and can feel unfair for good reasons). Removing the stack from this does not remove strategic depth, it just changes it. Now you have to decide whether you want to block with that creature you can sacrifice or not; you have a choice to make, you can’t have the cake and eat it too: Either you block and deal combat damage, or you block and sacrifice without dealing combat damage. You can’t have both, sorry, tough luck. But that’s the name of the game.

What people are complaining about is that they could do more before, and now they are more restricted. It’s not about strategic depth, it’s about the strategies being different.

I’m pretty certain that if the current combat rules had been used from the beginning up to 2010, and then they changed it to use the stack, people would still complain as much as they do now.

Thanks for casting, I’ve listened to every one, please do this more often.