Magic: the Gathering. How to redesign without lands?

[RangerWickett]

A friend and I were talking about the occasional complaint that, in any given Magic deck, about a third of your cards are land, and lands are honestly pretty damned boring. Any magic player has memories of drawing your umpteenth land when you needed anything else to win the game. Likewise, both land glut and land screw are unpleasant inherent obstacles to fun gameplay, in my opinion.

I know a few other collectible card games that still have a resource management element do it without having most of your deck be one-use-only resources, and as a thought experiment I'm curious how Magic could have developed differently. Basically, I'm curious about ways that could keep the rest of the game's elements in place - the same turn phases, the same rules interactions, color flavor, etc. - but just not have lands.

One thought was that you could play any card from your hand in a 'land zone,' and cards in the land zone wouldn't have their normal abilities. Instead, they could produce one mana of any color that card was. If we did this, I think the game would value multicolor cards in a much different way, because they become slightly harder to play, but much more useful as resource generators.

Also, it is, I dunno, aesthetically displeasing to have cards in play that don't do what the card says. What's the flavor of playing cards that way? Are you drawing mana from the memory of that spell? From the idea of it?

Another idea was to have a side deck that consists just of lands, and you can choose which one you draw from. This sidesteps the mana screw issue pretty well, though you can still have a hard time if you're playing a multicolored deck. But this likewise suffers from a bit of aesthetic clunkiness.

A third option is to eliminate hand size limits, and instead of playing land, you reveal cards in your hand to produce one mana of any of the card's colors. Once you reveal the card, you set it down and don't get it back until you start your next turn. This dramatically changes the resource management and pace of the game, because you could play a six-mana spell on turn one, and if you want to play a high end spell you'd have to hoard cards for a few turns. Card drawing would become even more powerful. And it still makes multicolor cards more useful than monocolor. I don't think I like this solution.

Do you have any ideas?

 

[Siberys]

I thought about option one - based on my experiences with VS System. I came to the conclusion that making multicolor/hybrid cards count as all of their colors would be too good. Possible solutions;

• Multicolor cards played as land come into play tapped.

• Multicolored cards tap for colorless mana.

You're right though - they'd be slightly harder to play. I'd suggest essentially giving all cards reservist from VS - something along the lines of the ability to be played from the land zone as if from your hand, but you can't play a card that's been tapped for mana.

Though you never say it specifically, I'd also allow land cards to be played.

How would that interact with artifacts, and other super-and-subtypes, like creature types? Would artifact cards played to the land zone count as artifact lands? My Esper artifact deck would like to know .

 

[JiffyPopTart]

1. No basic lands are put into decks. If you want a snazzy non-basic land you are welcome to add that, but don't use any of the 5 basic ones.

2. Set a pile of basic lands next to the gaming table.

3. Initial draw phase: You take 3 basic lands and 4 cards from your library.

4. Normal draw phases: You can either draw from your library or from one of the piles of basic lands.

5. You lose if your library runs out of cards....basic land piles don't count as your library.

DS

 

[Badwe]

WoW:TCG and Duel Masters essentially play like magic without land.

In wow, there are effectively no colors because the deck constraints come during deck building (you HAVE to play cards with keywords matching your heroes as opposed to magic's you SHOULD play cards that are of your colors). In addition, quest card essentially function as a card you would always want to "play as a land" but with an upside. in this way you play with a deck that is closer to approximately 1/4th "land" cards instead of 1/3rd, but you can always play any card as a "land".

In duel masters, it does a similar thing but also has effectively the five colors of magic. An interesting design point is that it puts the mana symbols upside down on the bottom of each colored card, so playing it upside down is an immediate indicator that it is being used as a land. That game never went so far as to introduce multicolor, but it also had weaker mana requirements in that a card of a particular color required you to only pay with at least 1 mana of the appropriate color. Interestingly, it also improved on the magic life system by having fewer "chunks" of life (6 instead of 20) and having them be represented by cards which you drew when they were used up. In this way, someone who was behind would "catch up".

As for magic, pardon me for sounding like a magic purist, but I consider lands to be integral to the game. Indeed, the ability to shift one's mana curve up or down, plan lands appropriately, and use the myriad of non-basics that have come out in the last 5 years to support this is almost as exciting as choosing the actual cards. I have a deck which my friends despise playing against because it is a very powerful wizard deck, yet the deck itself uses very few powerful wizards. Instead it is aggressively curved with many 1,2 and 3 cost wizards as well as cards that key off of number of wizards in play. While my friends struggle to get up to enough mana to make their first or second play of the game i've played a puny wizard on every turn, only to finally play a wizard that turns each of them into a card draw or a counterspell.

 

[Pyrex]

Another option would be to monkey with the notion of colored mana a bit.

Ponder for the moment that instead of actually using land cards, that for each of their first & second main phases you gain colorless mana equal to the turncount (i.e., on your first turn, you gain 1 colorless mana during each phase, during your 5th turn, five, and so on). (this mana does not cause manaburn)

On your first turn, you declare one color as your Totem color, and any colorless mana you gain can be spent as if it were that color.

If you want to use a second color of mana, or you want to be able to cast spells outside of your main phases you add non-basic land and/or non-land mana sources to your deck.

 

[Gruns]

I'll refrain from the "If you take away the concept of lands, it's no longer 'Magic'" debate...

Here's a solution similar to what's been said, but a little more elegant:
Make your deck as normal, but limit it to 40 cards, and no lands. Draw and play as normal. Instead of playing a "land", you remove any card in your hand from the game, and put a basic land that shares a color with that card into play. (From a seperate, out of the game source of basic lands).
This changes things a little:
1) First, the desired effect: No more mana screw/flood!
2) Multi-colored cards are still very good, as you can get a basic land of a choice of colors, but once you make that decision, it stays as that type of land. For example, if you remove a Lightning Helix, you can get either a Mountain or a Plains for it, but not both.
3) You can play a lot more expensive spells, since early on you can just toss them for land, and you KNOW you'll have access to 6 mana on turn 6 if you want.
4) Cards like Rampant Growth and other "search you library for a land and put it into play" cards should just grab them from the basic land pile. Cards that search your library for lands and put them into your hand would also work simply by going through the basic land pile and getting them.
5) There are bound to be some cards that just wont work with this variant.
Later!
Gruns

 

[Shokbox]

Well, there's a game type called Type 4 that already exists. In essence, you just have a pile of cards, no lands, and mana doesn't matter. You play Magic like normal, but each players deck is just a split off piece of the pile, and you can only play one spell a turn, but don't have to pay the mana cost. It can lead to some pretty awesome plays.

 

[Asmo]

More information about Type 4 can be found at the Mothership:

Limited Infinity : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering

Asmo

 

[DonTadow]

I don't think the flavor o the game remains without the different colored mana. It looses that elemental base. The resource management process is about a 1/3 of what defines a CCG. As I read through the posting, there are a dozen games with different mechanics to replace magic, but colored mana is as much apart of the flavor of the game as the types of cards. Game wise it can lead to some sucky hands, but flavor wise it fits the mythos of thegame.

 

[jedavis]

The OP's solution #2 (separate land and standard piles) was actually suggested in my 1997 MtG Pocket Player's Guide. They also suggested starting with three lands in play to help avoid manascrew (also sort of messes with the early game, though).

I find Pyrex's solution to be the most appealing... it allows for multicolor nicely, reduces land use, and keeps the pace/speed of the game almost exactly the same. Mana acceleration in monocolor green suffers, and nothing else.