Well, let's see. You know, when the rules changed a decade ago, I was really thrown off by it, although I ultimately got over it. These changes look like they'll be a bit easier, although I'll still find myself using the old terminology out of habit, I'm sure...
Simultaneous mulligans. Well, that makes sense.
Zone name changes. I'm sure I've used the old names far too much to use the new ones by default, but really, these are probably good. Although...
Wish cards and Ring of Ma'Ruf will no longer be able to grab cards that were in your initial deck but were removed from the game during course of play. Quite simply, this is bad for casual play. The fun of these cards has been being able to grab so much stuff. I don't like this change at all.
Exiled cards are not outside the game (and you could argue that they never really were), so these cards will no longer be able to access cards in that zone.
Yeah, I suppose you
could argue it. You could also argue that Magic cards are made out of bronze. Technically, for casual play, you could still just use Ring to grab another copy of the "exiled" card that wasn't being used in your deck, but cards do cost money. It's not likely to come up, but if all four of copies I have of a card have been "exiled" and I want to use Ring to grab that card, under the new rules, I'll have to have a fifth copy of that card in my collection. And why? Why change it? Keeping it the same wouldn't even have had to involve modifying the changes they wanted to make. Just define the "exiled" zone as still being outside the game or don't bother doing that and errata the affected cards to include the exile zone.
As for tournament play, well, I'm not sure. Never been too huge of a wish sideboard player, although I don't know why not, since I'm so bad with sideboarding and a wish sideboard makes the sideboard more of an in-game toolbox and less of an actual sideboard. Players don't seem to use the wishes much to grab removed cards because all the targets are already in the sideboard. They will be weakened slightly, but enough to matter?
Making the ends step loophole stuff intuitive. Awesome. This was a much-needed change. When I saw the heading for this section, I was worried that the loopholes would be closed. Instead they're just making them obvious. I wonder if Waylay will be affected by this...
Mana pools emptying between steps. Good. It might be important to keep this change in mind when piloting certain decks, but ultimately, this simplifies things.
Eliminating mana burn? No! Poor Eladamri's Vineyard. We'll miss you. I had no idea that many players were unaware of mana burn. Maybe I'm out of touch. I really dislike this change. And man, this is huge. I can see myself emphasizing cards that over-produce mana now, at least.
In 99.9% of Magic games, of course, you'll never even notice mana burn is gone.
Some people just don't understand math. This is the equivalent of saying, "In 999 out of 1,000 Magic games, of course, you'll never even notice mana burn is gone." I don't know about the rest of you, but I've lost some games to mana burn, won some games because of opponents getting mana burned, and had to take mana burn or the possibility of it into consideration for even more. I'll grant that all of those combined are still the minority of games, but there are not a thousand other games for each one game in which one of those three things happened.
Anyway, this significantly weakens some cool cards and even renders some classic cards totally useless. Power Surge comes to mind. Good luck ever using that again. One of my favorite decks in the old Microprose game that I still sometimes play is a CandelabraSurge deck.
And the funny thing is that the cards this will make more powerful are already too good, like Mana Drain. The more I think about this change, the more I hate it.
Token ownership. Oh great, another one I don't like. No more Brand hijinks. Curse you, Wizards. And is the excuse for every rules change that ruins something, "lots of players didn't even know about this anyway"?
Combat damage no longer using the stack. I am so confused and that wall of text with numbers all over it isn't helping one bit. Pretty sure I understood the way combat damage used to work, so I already resent them changing it to whatever this new thing is.
Deathtouch. Meh.
Lifelink. Meh.
I am prepared to defend all of these decisions and can say with a straight face, a clear conscience, and months of firsthand experience that Magic will be improved as a result of them.
You should be forced to use only Power Surge decks for the rest of your life.
