Rules: The "Then:" clause

Janosik

I'm just in the process of posting a bug report about the card Stolen Goods, and this issue came up, and I wanted to call attention to it.

We should talk about the 'Then:' clause in the rules text on cards.

Oktagon decided on a fixed meaning within the rules for 'Then' meaning 'If'. This is clearly contrary to the English language, and is contrary to the rules of paper MTG, but that's the terrible decision they made, and we just had to live with it.

There's no reason for this: Paper MTG has a much more intuitive card template, which is "If you do:".

So a paper MTG card might read "You may discard a card. If you do: Draw a card". And this makes sense to English language speakers. You don't draw a card unless you discard a card. Oktagon's version of this card would read "You may discard a card. Then: Draw a card". And this would work just like the previous text, even though 'Then' clearly isn't a word with identical meaning to 'If'.

We are, of course, stuck with the 'Then:" clause in MTGPQ now. Nobody is necessarily expecting the new devs to go back and rework a bunch of old cards they didn't even design themselves, and that aren't actually currently bugged. There are plenty of bugs in the game to fix.

What Webcore can do tho, is not use the "Then" clause any more on new cards. It's counterintuitive, and it doesn't work like paper MTG. We deviate the MTGPQ rules from paper MTG at our peril: paper rules are very well defined, and there is an entire team of people working at the company there to make sure the rules work and do not have inconsistencies. MTGPQ can't always follow the rules of paper MTG because of differences in the two games, but where it can, it should.

I would suggest the following text templates be used in future:

"Draw a card. If you do: Discard a card"

• this means you only draw a card if you discarded a card.

"Draw a card. Discard a card"

• this means you first draw a card, and then, whether you drew or not, you discard a card

Stolen Goods, of course, does work properly according to the current rules, but I wonder if it was designed with this in mind (the card icon certainly wouldn't change color if that was the case, and it does change color!), and it is, of course, a much worse card if it can't bounce creatures unless your opponent has nontoken supports in play.

madwren

I just want things to intuitively work as they read. For example, Demolition Field also doesn't work as one would think.

Activate 2 of Each Color Gain 4 Mana. Then: Destroy a random opposing support.

However, you don't gain mana unless Greg has supports in play, which means it's working in reverse.

Janosik

Interestingly, the "If you do:" clause already exists in MTGPQ:

Here's Oktagon using it (after they'd defined exactly what the "Then:" clause meant):

And here's Webcore using it:

Incidentally is there any way to make images less obnoxiously large within a post? With markup tags, maybe? I tried reducing the size of the actual image myself, but the code here just scaled them back up to obnoxiously large size anyway

Janosik

I notice that Pest Control does the 'Then' clause thing; if Greg has no creatures to give -X/-X to, then Pest Control doesn't kill his supports.

One more Masterpiece for the garbage can, then.