Mana Burn is dead: a rant

Magic: the Gathering is largely responsible for my first steps to becoming a game designer. I started to look games seriously in the eye around the same time that I discovered Magic, and have come to cherish the process of assembling a 60-card deck as a sort of ritual. When I get an idea for a deck, I go into a trance. Even now, several years after I bought my last Magic booster pack, Magic stays constant as my foremost example of design excellence. But now the rules are changing and I find myself lost in the confusion.I discovered Magic back around the year 2000 when Mercadian Masques was coming out, which means that I never knew any other ruleset than the post-Sixth Edition ruleset. I always admired how within the same rules framework they could make so many new cards work without damaging the game. Magic is probably the game that requires the most damage control, the most careful consideration when releasing every single card for fear that it will break the game via some other remote, long-forgotten card. Magic is controlled evolution at its best.

Of course, Magic’s constant evolution means that disconnecting from the game for even a year can totally disorient you. I never had the money or the will to keep up, so I found comfort in the legacy formats: instead of spending money on the new, I got the best of the old at bargain prices, building timeless decks that challenged me to create amazing combinations from a pool of thousands of cards. For me, Magic became an exercise on creative puzzle-solving.

And then, just a couple of days ago I found out that the rules of Magic are changing. They are shaking the foundation, touching up the framework to create what they believe is a better game. And, after reading the list of changes, I can’t help but feel at first confused, then angry and finally sad and nostalgic at the changes that will come.

My timeless decks are no longer timeless; they will slowly become abandoned children of an era when things were done differently. All my Magic stories will now become legends, myths from “back in the day, when things were different”. My decks’ battle wounds will no longer make sense in the present environment, and will eventually be forgotten. Most importantly, the careful strategy with which my current decks were masterfully crafted will lose its validity and eventually get lost as it ages.

For me, there are only two mayor changes to the way things are done now which are largely responsible for evoking this reaction in me. The first is the change in combat damage resolution: as I read the rules change I thought of my Yavimaya Elders, safe and snug in their deck sleeves, oblivious to the fact that the were losing a huge part of their punch. It’s almost as if the powers above were saying that combat is not a place for tricks. This change is nowhere near minor, and the truth is that I have been blinded by nostalgia, even refusing to consider whether this will make the game better or not. All I can think of are the casualties: among hundreds of suddenly underpowered creatures lie my Elders, suddenly wondering why they are being sent back to the binder.

However, the one that truly breaks my heart is the death of Mana Burn. If earlier I refused to consider the consequences of the change, this one actually makes me scream out “shame on YOU, Wizards of the Coast”. This feels, more than anything, like a dumbing down of the game; I wonder if Wizards of the Coast is worried that Mana Burn means that kids are having to do more math than they would like. Mana is the most precious resource in Magic, and its management should be extremely strategic. Wizards says that games are not won or lost by Mana Burn, and I beg to disagree completely with that statement. I grew up with Kai Budde’s Wildfire deck, and with it I learned to manage my resources, to tap the exact number of artifacts and to use my Voltaic Keys intelligently. A two point hit by an Ancient Tomb meant that every single point lost to Mana Burn translated into one less mana next turn. If a Yawgmoth’s Bargain, my absolute favorite card, is in play then a point lost to Mana Burn equals a card in hand. I played with enough painlands to know that every single point of life was a resource that I could not squander, for it could be translated into so much later on.

The loss of Mana Burn lets players get sloppy with their mana spending and generating, eliminates a number of choices that must be made when casting and introduces the phrase “yeah, whatever I’ll tap it for mana in response to your Rishadan Port, what’s the worse that could happen?” which means that I die a bit on the inside.

I am too confused at this point to even keep a coherent train of thought so I will cut this short (long) and close by saying that I understand that change is usually met with resistance but that these changes actually make Magic something new that does not quite resemble the game I loved. I may come to like this one too, but my heart lies with my Voltaic Keys and my Yavimaya Elders.