MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
MtG Alternate Reality Challenge: "Instant" as a Supertype
What would Magic look like if its original mechanics had been different?
The Background:
Richard: "I'm very interested to hear that, as we are at the beginning. What should Magic do that it didn't? It is very strange talking about Magic's future in its past tense."
Mark: "I'm glad you asked. First, I would make instant a supertype rather than a card type. There wouldn't be instants and sorceries. All nonpermanent spells would be sorceries. Then the subset that now are called instants would be instant sorceries. Permanents wouldn't have to have flash. Oh, that's another keyword I forgot to mention. It allows you to play permanents when you can play instants. They would just have an instant supertype. There would be instant creatures, instant artifacts, and instant enchantments. This would allow us to have one less keyword, make rules text less wordy and finally have a single word for nonpermanent spells."
Richard: "That would be very easy to do."
Mark: "Exactly. In the future, there are just too many cards referencing instants and sorceries that the change would be too confusing. But if the game just started that way…"The above is a section of an article called Starting Over, written by Mark Rosewater in 2015, wherein he discusses the changes he would make to Magic's core design were he able to travel back in time and implement them from the start. (Full article Here)
Although many of the changes he discussed in that article have since come to pass, such as changing the "Hound" type to "Dog" (yay!), this "instant as supertype" change is one he's explicitly said will never happen.
That is, it'll never happen in official Magic design...
Down to Business:
I personally liked the idea of this change, so I made some mockups of how it might look. Turns out...
...They look pretty good!So, with...all of that out of the way, the challenge is simple: make a card that uses these format changes in some way! It could be a card that uses the instant supertype, a card that references instants or sorceries in terms of their new definition, etc. You can use the cards above as examples of the formatting differences (I tried to hit on as many weird corner cases as possible), and feel free to @ me with any questions you have!
Max 3 entries per Cardsmith, every submission should have a link to this discussion in the comments in order to explain what's going on, and though I doubt anyone has any old cards using this format already kicking around, I'll say only new cards (made after January 16) anyways.
Prizes are as follows:
1st Place: 5 favorites plus a follow
2nd Place: 4 favorites
3rd Place: 3 favoirtes
4-8th Place: 1 favorite
That's all! (he said, as if this post were short...) Now get out there and make some cards!
Comments
No offence.
Wait, so that wasn’t a bit? You actually think the game would be better off without instants?
Actually, I think maybe I could design a new type of removal for blue to replace counterspells.....
For example, a card that says "Players can't cast instant spells." (which would function the same as "Players can't cast instant spells or spells with flash" in the regular formatting.) That would be a totally valid entry!
(also when's the end date for this contest?)