Ante Cards and Dexterity Cards

[Oath of Happy]

           With all the attention that the Shahrazad article got I thought the ante cards and dexterity cards deserved some attention.  As type 1 players, we like to have access to all black and white bordered cards based on principle, whether we would use them or not.  So, I came up with some cool options to discuss.  Note that I do not expect Wizards to read this article and say "Wow thats a good idea."  This is not a petition, its a discusion.

           One option for using the Ante Cards would be to include them, but remove them from your deck, as Ishi pointed out "Ante cards could be legal because they all have the clause, "remove from your deck if you're not playing for ante."  In other words they would be blank cards whose only purpose is to be removed from your deck."  This might actually be kind of cool, as they would get restricted and people who owned them, or proxied them would play with smaller deck sizes.  If you dont own a card, such as Black Lotus, your punishment is that you don't play it, or use one of your proxies on it.  In this case, if you don't own one of the Ante cards, you proxy it, or play with an extra card in your deck.  If the deck size stayed at 60, this would enable players to have 51 card decks, if the deck size were raised to 70, players who owned the cards, or went and got them, would be able to play a deck with as low as 61 cards.

Another option for the ante cards is just to errata them  Remove the line that reads "Remove this card from your deck before playing if you are not playing for ante." and either remove or change any other lines in the text of the card that pertain to antes.  Here are the easy ones that I have come up with:

Amulet of Quoz   6
Artifact
Tap Sacrafice Amulet of Quoz from the game: Target opponent may remove the top card of his or her library from the game.  If he or she does, you flip a coin.  If you win the flip, that player loses the game.  If you lose the flip, you lose the game.  Play this ability only during your upkeep.

Bronze Tablet   6
Artifact
4 Tap:  Remove Bronze Tablet and target non-token permanent an opponent control's from the game.  That player may pay 10 life.  If he or she does, put Bronze Tablet into your graveyard.

Darkpact   1BB
Sorcery
Remove the top card of your library from the game.

Demonic Attorney    1BB
Sorcery
Each player removes the top card if his or her library from the game.

Jeweled Bird    1
Artifact
Tap Remove Jeweled Bird from the game: Draw a Card

Rebirth    3GGG
Sorcery
Each player may remove the top card of his or her library from the game.  If a player does, his or her life total becomes 20.

Now, for the hard ones, this first one is hard because it might just make the most powerful card in the game, the second two are hard, because of their interaction with other players hands and graveyards.

Contract from Below   B
Sorcery
Discard your hand, remove the top card of your library from the game, then draw 7 cards.

Timmerian Fiends    1BB
Creature - Fiend
BBB Sacrafice Timmerian Fiends: Target artifact's controller may remove the top card of his or her library from the game.  If he or she doesn't....that player sacrafices the artifact?

Tempest Efreet    1RRR
Creature - Efreet
Tap Sacrefice Tempest Efreet: Target opponent may pay 10 life.  If he or she doesn't, he or she reveals a card in his or her hand at random.....?

Now for dexterity cards.  Dexterity cards create three problems:
1).  A judge would have to be present for every use of the card.
2).  People would then need to spend time practicing how to flip a card, rather than working on their decks and playskill.
3).  In response, people would logically rearange their cards on the table and spread them out very far...time consuming and annoying.

Heres my solution for these two cards:

Chaos Orb    2
Artifact
Flip a coin.  YOU calls heads or tails while the coin is in the air.  Destroy target permanent if you win the flip.

Falling Star    2R
Sorcery
Flip a coin.  YOU calls heads or tails while the coin is in the air.  If you win the flip, tap target creature and Falling Star deals 3 damage to it.

These new techniques of naming a single card and flipping a coin would solve the 3 basic problems that I see with dexterity cards.  Heres how:
1).  A judge wouldn't need to be present for a coin flip, just like judges don't need to take part in mana crypt flips (or 20 sided die rolls).
2).  Flipping a coin or rolling a die is always 50/50, no matter how good you are at it.
3).  Speading your cards out all over the table can pretty much make it so that your opponent will either hit 1 card that they are intending to destroy, or miss it.  It would disable 2 for 1's, and make is so that if you missed the card you wanted, you are extremely unlikely to luckily land on a different card.  The reason You would be the one to call the flip, is because it would continue along with the cards original them of you aiming at the card you want to destroy.

Let me know your thoughts and can someone can come up with a good errata for Tempest Efreet that would work in the rules it would be appreciated

[Smmenen]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af127

[Oath of Happy]

That article had nothing pertaining to ante or dexterity cards...

[Yare]

That article had nothing pertaining to ante or dexterity cards...

That article was relevant to the idea of removing or altering the text because it is too powerful.

In the alternative, this post is still about lowering or raising deck sizes, which is already being discussed in that other thread.

Finally, dexterity cards don't have a certain outcome, which is something the rules require. There are too many if's involved. That's why they're not permitted.

[LordHomerCat]

I agree with most of that Yare, except the last statement.  Coin Flipping cards exist, so the rules don't really require the outcome of a spell to be known before it is cast.

[Smmenen]

That article had nothing pertaining to ante or dexterity cards...

You are proposing a batch of errata.

That article specifically said that they do not errata cards any more like that.   They want all the cards to match the printed text as closely as possible.   

[Oath of Happy]

That article had nothing pertaining to ante or dexterity cards...

That article was relevant to the idea of removing or altering the text because it is too powerful.

In the alternative, this post is still about lowering or raising deck sizes, which is already being discussed in that other thread.

Finally, dexterity cards don't have a certain outcome, which is something the rules require. There are too many if's involved. That's why they're not permitted.

If you look at all the proposed erratad "ante" I listed, nothng has anything to di with changing the minimum decksieze.  Changing the minumum deck size was refered to in the very begining part of the article, after that I moved onto making the cards available without changing the minimum deck size

[Smmenen]

That article had nothing pertaining to ante or dexterity cards...

That article was relevant to the idea of removing or altering the text because it is too powerful.

In the alternative, this post is still about lowering or raising deck sizes, which is already being discussed in that other thread.

Finally, dexterity cards don't have a certain outcome, which is something the rules require. There are too many if's involved. That's why they're not permitted.

If you look at all the proposed erratad "ante" I listed, nothng has anything to di with changing the minimum decksieze.  Changing the minumum deck size was refered to in the very begining part of the article, after that I moved onto making the cards available without changing the minimum deck size

Read the article all the way through.

[Yare]

Coin Flipping cards exist, so the rules don't really require the outcome of a spell to be known before it is cast.

No, no, that's not what I meant. I meant that ante cards lack the rules certainty of other cards.

What constitutes completely turning over?
How flat does the card have to be, if at all, when dropped?
What constitutes touching? Does the sleeve count?
Can players move their cards around in response to the spell being played?
Do we want people taking up a ton of space for fear of these cards in general?

These are just issues we don't have answers for in reality. A coin flipping card doesn't pose these problems.

Sorry if this was not clear.

[Oath of Happy]

Yea, your right, this post sucks, lets all just discuss SO MANY INSANE PLAYS! BUDGET PIECE OF CRAP.DEC., or just argue about Shahzerad all week instead, and just turn this post down instead of discussing it for fun. Our T1 comunity is great, and open minded...thats why it thrives

A post like this adds nothing to the discussion - if anything, it's counterproductive. This is a Verbal Warning, but any more will be a Full Warning.
-Godder

[Yare]

Yea, your right, this post sucks, lets all just discuss SO MANY INSANE PLAYS! BUDGET PIECE OF CRAP.DEC., or just argue about Shahzerad all week instead, and just turn this post down instead of discussing it for fun. Our T1 comunity is great, and open minded...thats why it thrives

You brought up some points, we refuted them. Nothing we've said has somehow precluded you from arguing back.

[Demonic Attorney]

Actually, since he did such a poor job of arguing back, I'll do the honors there.  Locked for poor discussion.  -DA