battlefield topography

Fair warning to my fellow Magic: The Gathering players: On 11JUL09, the rules change (simultaneous with the pre-release of the new “Magic 2010″ core set, which is not the “tenth edition”, despite its misleading set icon). A quick summary of the rule changes follows:
1. Simultaneous Mulligans: Its name says it, and, honestly, most people will not notice.
2A. Battlefield: The “in-play” zone is now called the “battlefield”. Fine. Wizards has been reducing multi-word effects, abilities, and/or descriptions to one word or phrase for years now (see “deathtouch”, “shroud”, “haste”, etc.). Nothing new here.
2B. Cast, Play, Activate: Spells are cast, lands are played, and activated abilities are, well, activated. For us old players, this is actually a return to the way things were.
2C. Exile: Any card that would be “removed from game” is now, instead, “exiled”. This is only relevant for those few cards that allow you to manipulate cards “outside the game” – those rare cards can no longer affect “exiled” cards.
2D. Beginning of the End Step: Interestingly, “at end of turn” and “until end of turn” effects did not resolve simultaneously before this change. The end step is just like any other Magic step (untap/upkeep/draw, etc.), and the former category actually resolved at the beginning of that step, while the latter resolved at the end of the step, and thus the end of your turn. Now, the former is being rephrased to “at the beginning of the end step”. I guess that makes it more clear.
3A. Mana Pools Emptying: Mana pools now empty completely between every phase and step – no more carrying mana from upkeep to draw, no more carrying mana between declare attackers and declare blockers. It probably should have been this way the entire time.
3B. Mana Burn Eliminated: As in gone. If I really wanted to, I could drop a Swamp on my first turn, play a Diabolic Ritual, and then play a Foul Imp, and that extra mana floating around would not hurt me, but would just go away. I am sorry, but this rule-change is gorramed stupid, and I get the feeling they are going to regret it. Counting is part of the game, and if you are incapable of actually doing 1+1 addition, then you need to learn, and strategize appropriately.
4. Token Ownership: Unless you were a power-player, or a real stickler for the rules and ways to exploit them, you will not notice this one.
5. Combat Damage No Longer Uses the Stack: So, this one looks all complicated and stuff, but here is the basic, boiled-down definition: Mogg Fanatics can no longer kill two 1/1s on their way to the afterlife, and you cannot Unsummon a creature after it deals its damage. Attackers are declared. Spells and abilities can be played. Shiny. Blockers are declared, with the addition that if an attacking creature is blocked by more than one creature, the attacker can numerically order those creatures as he or she deems. Now is your last opportunity to play all stack-based abilities, spells, and whatnot. Shiny. Combat damage is assigned, and if things die, things die, and nothing stack-based can save them. While this ruins the utility of Mogg Fanatics and Unsummons and other similar cards, my biggest concern does not revolve around them, but rather how damage is assigned: Wizards says, “”lethal damage” is the amount of damage necessary for a creature to be destroyed, ignoring all abilities and damage prevention effects,” and that you only need to assign, at minimum, “lethal damage” to the first creature blocking an attacking creature, before moving on to the second blocker, if there is one. If the attacking creature is green, and the blocking creature is a 2/2 with “Protection from green”, you only need to assign 2 damage to it. So what happens with trample? If the attacking creature is a 10/10, does the other 8 damage roll onto the player? We have been playing, and I am fairly sure that it is right, that the pro-green creature absorbed all 10 damage, since it never actually took damage. But now? Now I am not so sure. As for the rule-change in general, just remember that if you are going to regenerate a creature (or do some other thing to buff/save it), you have to do it before damage is dealt.
6. Deathtouch: This rule-change was basically precipitated by the previous one, and allows creatures with Deathtouch to assign their damage however they see fit, regardless of the “must assign lethal damage to the first blocker, before moving to the second blocker” clause of the previous rule-change. Also, since Wizards changed the description for “Regeneration” since the last time I looked (Regeneration now reads: “The next time this creature would be destroyed this turn, it isn’t. Instead tap it, remove all damage from it, and remove it from combat.”), all you need to do is regenerate a creature once to have it survive Deathtouch (or lethal damage), but in accordance with the previous change, this has to happen before damage is dealt. In most cases, the vast majority of players will not notice the difference, apart from the way damage is assigned under the previous rule-change.
7. Lifelink: Honestly, we have been playing the way the rule proposes to change the scenario anywise, so I guess we will not notice a difference. And I do not really understand or care about the difference, so go read about it yourself if you do.
All said, all of the rule changes basically boil down to Wizards identifying where confusion about the rules exists, and rather than making people actually learn the rules, they are simply changing the rules to agree with those who were not playing with the old ones. While some of those old rules were confusing and potentially quite exploitable, if Wizards had explained that they were changing the rules because of those reasons, I would have no significant complaints. However, changing the rules simply because people are not obeying them? Yeah, that is… what is the word… stupid.