If there's one thing you could have gotten Richard Garfield to change during the developement of Magic: the Gathering, what would it have been?
I would have gotten him to spread out counterspells, to make sure each color had plenty of interrupts to interact with each other's spells on the stack. It's insane that such a huge part of the game belongs overwhelmingly to blue, and other colors besides it should have gotten ways to interact with the stack.
>Red
More copying and redirection
>White
Delaying, temporary counterspells, like remand and memory lapse.
>Black
Counterspells with additional costs, or punisher counterspells that offered an additional choice, like Dash Hopes.
>Green
Counter-counter spells, things that help protect its creatures.
Most people dislike counterspells and would want to see less of them, not more.
>>46237029
Blue deserves to have bigger creatures, direct removal (Of both the damage and exile variety) and reanimation effects. Also, no one but blue gets good spells and red's damage spells are far too strong.
make a white lotus
>>46237029
I watched an anon use math to explain that blue is the worst color in modern magic's color pie.
I forget the exact details, but he gave each color a task, and rated each color based on it's ability to do all five tasks
Everyone averages because blue was the only one who had 5/5 on Counterspells while the others had 0/5
I might be explaining it retardedly, but it was pretty neat
No reserve list.
Only change you could make that would objectively improve magic.
Out of personal preference, I would of liked the original three cycle be more balanced. When was the last time you saw a Healing Salve or a Giant Growth? Lightning Bolt and Dark Ritual are staples. Ancestral Recall is ancestral recall.
>>46237296
Our LORD Richard Garfield, PHD, Creator of MAGIC, blessed be his name, had nothing to do with the decision to implement the reserve list. That was done by Wizards of the Coast.
>>46237330
That cycle is known as the "boon" cycle, and is one of the worst mistakes of His Holiness.
a better white boon. something like "W/Instant/ put 3 1/1 knight tokens into play". Would be way better than healing salve.
Also I would have made instant a supertype from the get go.
>>46237029
Instants and sorceries would have subtypes the same way creatures do, mostly for flavor, but with the option of mechanical relevance.
Lightning Bolt would be some kind of fire blast instead.
>>46237369
Worse than the Laces?
>>46237464
They had Tribal like that Lorwyn, and Arcane subtype in Kamigawa.
>>46237435
Man, I'd be all over a cheap instant for Soldier tokens.
volcanic island from the start
no bird of paradise
colorless mana symbol
a spell that is 0 cost pay 2 life cantrip to set precedent
>>46237029
Instant shouldn't be a type, just an ability. Instants would be sorceries with instant, flash creatures would be creatures with instant.
>>46237029
Keep him from using Foglio, or as I like to call him Fugly-O
>>46237029
Somone's going to post the picture, does do it already and end the charad.
>>46237672
Look, we all know that the werewolf fucks the animu clown, now shut the fuck up and whine about this children's card game with us.
>>46237654
>I hate fun
>>46237737
>Fatass Phil
>fun
The man barely qualified as an artist in the 90's.
Consistent templating from the get go.
>>46237717
I never got why the person who made the lewd version had the wolf fucking the clown, the clown is very clearly the Dom in this weird S&M thing they have going with the blindfold.
>>46237577
Supertype, not an ability. But otherwise this.
>>46238220
The wolf's got dem hips and ass, too.
>>46238220
The clown may be on the bottom, but she's still in charge.
>>46237029
Hard to talk much shit about early magic, they had nothing to base it on. Blue is probably the strangest color in magic because of card draw being so powerful and drawing extra cards with no downsides is still predominately a blue thing. I remember reading an article about instant should have been a sub-typing like flash, can't remember the reasoning behind it though. Counterspells are and aren't balanced for the same reason though and I have no clue which is right, probably both. I just want to see newer cards that bring back the fun color hate and deck interactions through the sideboard.
>>46237029
Wait....is that that one image someone on /d/ pulled a r34 on?
>>46238730
Yes.
>>46237029
Magic being a TCG.
>>46237029
Time walk wasn't colorshifted away from red
>>46237029
The one good idea Maro keeps mentioning really should have been there from the start.
>Spell Types
Fireball should be a Fire Sorcery, Counterspell should be a Arcane? Instant etc.
It would just add that bit of interaction with some types of spells and would make deck building with spells more fun.
Maro also proposed that Illusions and similar magical creatures should probably have been enchantment creatures from the start, which I'm on the fence about but could be cool.
>>46237029
Get rid of lands.
>>46237247
>Blue is bad at aggro
>Delver exists
You watched an Anon try to ruse you into thinking Blue is balanced.
>>46237105
Black had some of the best spells in the game outside the Power 9.
>>46237247
Blue has 0/5 for generating card advantage?
>>46240037
Definitely. It's like the problems GW creates for itself by refusing to own up to being a wargame company. Your goals when making a collectible item are different from your goals when making a card game, and the two are often going to be conflicting and mutually exclusive.
>>46237029
>things that help protect its creatures.
I haven't played in ages, but I was really into MtG back in middle school. I had this green deck built around big creatures with trample, which made sense on paper to 13 year old me. Some of my friends' decks had even less thought put into them than mine did, and none of us had any concept of optimization, and even then I remember thinking, "Man, all these really expensive creatures of mine die really easily."
>>46237029
Building up on that, I'd give each color a form of draw.
>Blue
Safe draw, but expensive (draw X cards, no discard required, but has a higher CMC. Mostly Sorcery speed with a few Instant speed spells).
>Green
Draw cards based on your creatures and/or lands (draw X cards where is the number of creatures/lands you control, X equals the highest power among creatures you control, etc.)
>Red
Cheaper, faster draw with discarding. Basically looting moved from Blue to Red. Lower CMC spells have higher discard amounts.
>Black
Draw with alternate costs. Basically how black draw works now.
>White
Trickiest one. I want to default to drawing to catch up with other players, but then white never really gets to use it to pull ahead, only keep up. It fits thematically though, and white does have some draw based on creatures (Mentor of the Meek, etc.)
>>46240496
White could keep it's gifting when advancing design with something like
1W: Draw 2 cards, target opponent draws a card.
>>46237105
Doesn't blue get big creatures regularly? The kraken or leviathan tpye things.
I like MaRo's idea that 'Instant' should have been a supertype like Tribal that could be applied to any kind of creature. The regular Instants that we know would have been Instant Sorceries and stuff like Instant Creature would have removed the need to type 'Flash' or something like it into the text box each time.
>>46240121
I would say some sort of type for creatures between type and supertype would be great then that card that wipes all the creatures that aren't a list of difrent sea creature types could have just said that are not an aquatic creature.
That way it does not get fucked over when they think of new creature types
>>46240496
Probably something similar for ramp, or at least print more rituals for non-green colors (or more catch up spells in white's case). Still let green reign supreme since ramp is a key part of its identity.
>>46237069
Maybe people don't like counterspells because they want to play magic and then they pick up blue and find out they're playing a different game.
That doesn't mean the other game is worse.
>>46237767
>never read Xxxenophile
>>46238278
He's generating a lot of power.
>>46237029
Make all the game cards free, except these cards have no graphics, and only the cards with graphics cost money, and a lot of it. This way we would have mysterious hobos with shitty looking cards yet could play like gods.
>Have you heard of the hobo in the park on 3rd street, son?
>No, what is it, dad?
>They say he has all of the mtg cards, and if you look at him, he will challenge you into a duel you cannot win
>waaaah
Solve the rarity in constructed problem before handing the game off to other people.
