New evergreen

ZW2007-

So I came up with an idea as a way to deal with combo decks that everyone seems to be complaining about and when looking at paper cards to use as examples I stumbled across the exact solution that this game needs. A card type that already exists in paper and comes from one of their favorite planes!

Trap

There are 20 of these cards in paper and they all hail from the original Zendikar block. They are all instants in paper with the subtype of "Trap". The majority of them read something like this "If X happened, you may pay X rather than pay this spell's mana cost." Essentially they are cards that cost less based on something your opponent does.

Here's an exact example:

Permafrost Trap  (4)  Instant — Trap  If an opponent had a green creature enter the battlefield under their control this turn, you may pay  rather than pay this spell's mana cost. Tap up to two target creatures. Those creatures don't untap during their controller's next untap step.

My thought is that instead of Traps having the cost reduction aspect, they would bypass the cast timing limitations of PQ.

So in the case of Permafrost Trap, in PQ it would say "If your opponent had a green creature enter the battlefield this turn, trap. Disable two target creature's until the end of your opponent's next turn."

The trap tooltip would say:

Trap
If this card's trap was triggered, you may cast it.

Since this card would be used to lock down attacking creatures right before they attack, it could be made with Flash instead but there are other situations where you would want to cast a paper "instant" when there are no creatures attacking. This is where Trap would come into play. Flash works by being disabled in your hand and your opponent's creatures attacking, trap would simply work by something happening. It could be simplified to have a specific trigger, one that is also already on a paper card:

Mindbreak Trap  (4) 
Instant — Trap

If an opponent cast three or more spells this turn, you may pay  rather than pay this spell's mana cost.

Exile any number of target spells.

Trap could always trigger if your opponent cast three or more cards in one turn. It could be the anti-hand dump mechanic.

Here is an example card:

Drain - U - 8 mana

Each card in your opponent's hand is fully drained of its mana.

It would also have a symbol for trap which means this card will automatically cast once your opponent casts his/her third card in a single turn. Kiora is casting a bunch of gem converters and getting ready to dump her hand and go into a loop? Nope. She casts three and then loses all that excess mana after her third card is cast.

Another example:

Aura Mutation - WG - 5 mana - Trap evergreen

Destroy an opponent's Enchantment support. Create X 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens, where X is that enchantment's converted mana cost.

This is the type of card I was originally thinking about when I came up with this idea. Instant cast support destruction that doesn't rely on creatures attacking. There are Omniscience decks and Imminent Doom decks out there that will combo off and kill you before you could even use a Flash support destruction to save yourself. In this case you could shut down the combo if you had this card in hand and it had full mana. 

Here is my ultimate Omni/ID trump card:

Deconstruct - G - 5 mana - Trap evergreen

Whenever your opponent casts a spell, this card gains 1 mana. Destroy an opponent's Non-land support.

This way you don't even need to have mana in the card to shut down Omni and ID. This card doesn't guarantee you permanently shut them down but it stops them from comboing off and killing you out of nowhere. Let me know what you all think.

madwren

Very clever, sir.

I was thrilled to see Flash implemented, but the limitations of having it rely on an attack phase are becoming more and more obvious, particularly against combo decks. Your idea's forward thinking and, I hope, something the devs are considering.

Tremayne

Looks like a very good idea. Should be able to fix some problems, but will it introduce a new problem, I wonder....

Unknown

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LordDorwin

Good idea.  This would be a great way to kill loops.  

I wonder whether loop decks are intentionally constructed or mistakes - I've encountered too many that rely on three or more cards to fully run with the mistake theory.

I don't know why someone would intentionally make such a deck (OK, if it simply empties the hand I understand, but an infinite loop benefits nobody).

My idea for stopping the nonsense was to limit the size of the deck, as it seems bottomless at present.  If I remember correctly, you also lose the match in paper Magic by running out of cards.  Simply implement such a rule here, and a lot of the nonsense stops.  As an added benefit, doing this would force making PvE bosses more realistic (eg, give them better decks, not a preposterous number of hit points to grind down).

As said above, I'm not disagreeing with the suggestion at all, just giving a somewhat different perspective.

ZW2007-

Do the devs, or really anyone for that matter, even look at this subforum?

Mburn7

ZW2007- said:

Do the devs, or really anyone for that matter, even look at this subforum?

I've spotted Brigby here a couple times (mostly to tell me to stop pestering them to bring back the mana wheel loading wheel), but yeah, its pretty dead

Kinesia

They read it but never comment. They can't afford to have someone go "That was my idea! You owe us money!"