Is WotC Being Cautious About Using Life as Resource?
General forum
Posted on Aug. 5, 2023, 9:58 a.m. by DemonDragonJ
Using life as a resource has been part of the game for nearly its entire lifespan, and I am especially fond of that strategy, since life is a resource that is very easy to accumulate, but it seems to me that WotC is being cautious about printing cards that allow players to use life as a resource; for example, permanents that allow a player to pay life either can be used only once per turn, require payment of mana in addition to life, or produce an effect that is redundant when used repeatedly. Furthermore, When WotC revisited phyrexian mana in Phyrexia: All Will Be One, that mechanic was severely decreased in power compared to its original appearance in New Phyrexia by appearing less frequently and being used only for activation costs, not for casting costs. Also, cards that allow a player to pay life rarely ever also allow a player to gain life, with Griselbrand being one of the are few cards that combine both effects.
I suppose that I understand WotC's reason for this, because being able to pay life too easily can easily become a very powerful effect, given how easy it is to gain life, but I still am rather displeased by that, since I like being able to gain and pay life.
What does everyone else say about this? Is WotC being cautious about allowing life to be used as a resource?
"Yes good my spikey opponent... get really greedy bring yourself to 1 life so I may then Gut Shot you!"
In all seriousness though any relevant effects that can happen without paying actual mana is powerful... phyrexian mana can almost be compared to exiling a card in hand instead of paying its mana cost kinda like Force of Negation.
I have a love and hate for this design space because I love when it's used fairly for things like Death's Shadow or even shocklands... but as the power level of the game in general just keeps climbing us as Magic the Gathering players are slowly becoming more and more like our Yugioh brethren.
August 5, 2023 11:45 a.m.
In the earliest days, there was Channel giving 19 "free" mana. Force of Will and Necropotence weren't far behind, as a "free" counterspell and "free" draw 19. Life payments then went pretty quiet for a while, until the fetchlands and shocklands came in, followed by Phyrexian mana. Gitaxian Probe and Mental Misstep stand out here. Virtually every time that life payments were allowed to gain an advantage or offset a "standard" cost, it changed the way the game was played.
Basically, you start with 20-40 of a resource that is easily recoverable and is generally spent 1-2 at a time. Even if your opponents are trying to deplete that resource in big chunks, there's no official difference between winning at 20 life and winning at 1 life. You don't get points for having more life left, so might as well use it.
On that line of thought, are there any games where your life total, or the equivalent, is the primary resource?
August 5, 2023 1:07 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
Icbrgr, I have never played the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game, so how are players of MtG becoming like players of that game?
August 5, 2023 7:32 p.m.
@DemonDragonJ I am mainly thinking/speaking from a Modern format perspective games are decided earlier and earlier...
in yugioh there isnt such think as mana but more or less timing and number of times per turn an action/card can be played restrictions. In yugioh MANY (not all) games are decided in the first turn/who goes first... if you go first in yugioh playing a combo deck and your opponent doesn't interact with you then you will succeed in setting up a pretty much unbeatable board state which has very niche outs to. Yugiohs solution to this is hand traps cards that can be played at instant speed on the opponents turn because at the end of the day a good/competitive yugioh strategy is simply a deck that doesn't allow your opponent to play yugioh. sure the game isn't technically over on turn one and you can choose to play it out but its just a waste of everyones time... The flip side is essentially playing a deck that invalidates whatever the opponent does and kill them with a lightning quick response (think of it as an infect deck with Inkmoth Nexus and Colossus Hammer thats has haste and unblockable/indestructible/hexproof/trample/double strike blah blah blah) basically yugioh is where I see modern in years in the future.
In Modern Decks are able to generate more early advantage through cards like Ragavan, Scamming, and Urzas Saga such that if you can't control it early then you will inevitably lose. This is why a combination of Aggro and Control (Midrange) describes all the dominant decks, they need the ability to control for the opponents' pieces while having the power to apply pressure when the opponent is out of gas and that combination of cards is primarily found in Modern Horizons sets like force of negation/solitude.
So when people complain that modern is fast, they don't inherently mean that the number of turns has gone down, more so that the number of turns before an unwinnable position has been reached has gone down. If a Grief Scams three cards from your hand with Ephemarate then it will still take a fair number of turns to get you dead, but your draws need to be good or you will die on turn 6/7 from just that.
also make no mistake i love modern and i also love yugioh i just feel frustrated with both at times.
August 5, 2023 9:41 p.m. Edited.
Daveslab2022 says... #7
You use your life as a resource in most games. Even if you’re not paying life.
Any time you have a blocker on the board and don’t block, you just used your life as a resource. You traded your life for the safety of your creature.
Thoughtseize uses your life as a resource. Burn decks who play Eidolon of the Great Revel use their own life whenever they cast a spell.
Just because there are less cards that utilize life as a payment method does not mean that the life as a resource strategy does not function.
August 6, 2023 12:44 a.m.
Daveslab2022 says... #8
Other people sort of hit on the other point I wanted to make.
You start with 20 life. Yet you want good, repeatable, free effects that pay life? How much life should drawing a card for no mana cost? 2? That’s 9 cards. 5? 3 cards.
The reason cheap effects like this are redundant is so they don’t become overpowered.
August 6, 2023 12:47 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #9
Aetherflux Reservoir disproves most of what you're saying '^^
August 7, 2023 12:40 p.m.
This makes me think of Star Wars CCG from back in the day, your life total was your deck, and when it ran out of cards to cycle you died. You had to take cards out of the Force cycle (that generates your 'mana' in the game) to draw cards, and damage/loss of life was symbolized by either discarding cards from your hand, forfeiting stuff from locations (for battles mostly), or milling stuff from your 'library' directly into your lost pile. Being good at the game meant you were good at managing your cards. In SWCCG, it's a bit like everyone starts with Necropotence in a way, making for a very weird play experience if you went from Magic to Star Wars (less of a problem if you're a kid and you don't really know how to play haha).
Magic still prints stuff like Wheel of Misfortune, and other life paying stuff as noted above, so I don't think they are too shy about it, they just have found out that certain types of life payment for value aren't fair, such as paying 1 life for a card (it's almost impossible to put enough hoops to make this not broken).
August 7, 2023 3:14 p.m.
This may be a little out there of a take, but I think that part of it at least is that most cards are designed with commander at least somewhat in mind now, and life point effects don't translate to EDH well for one reason or another. Either they are underpowered because gaining a few life in the land of giant creatures isn't as good, or they go towards too powerful because you can pay more life early in the game with something like Necropotence.
I think they are using the space of "if thing then other thing" like Saheeli, Sublime Artificer or Orcish Bowmasters as a play pattern rather than non-mana cost systems because it translates more 1-1 to EDH.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #2
The obvious answer is yes, and they are right with that. The easiest way to make a broken card is having it cheat on mana by paying life, even more so when you get additional ressources off of it. You'd be able to go infinite with it within the blink of an eye.
August 5, 2023 10:33 a.m. Edited.