Jessi got Lyme Disease from a tick bite, although we found it very early and the antibiotics should remove it and there shouldn’t be any problems for Jessi or for Baby.
Last Saturday, Hannah took her first steps without holding on to anything. She’s been slowly walking more and more.
This coming Saturday, a bunch of guys from church will be coming over and we’re going to play paintball in our woods. I haven’t played before, and am looking forward to giving it a try. We’ll see how I feel afterward. :)
My PDA (a Palm Tungsten E2) has been on the fritz lately, sometimes not coming on, sometimes only coming on when I hit the reset button, and once it went into “flashlight mode” where the screen was all white, the power and reset buttons didn’t do anything, and I just needed to wait for the battery to run out. So, I’ve been looking at PDAs and PDA-like devices that call themselves phones, and mulling over the possibilities.
Magic recently announced a bunch of rules changes that go into effect when the next set comes out, and some of the changes are pretty substantial. I understand what they’re trying to do, but it seems like they could have done a better job at making the game more attractive to new players without alienating their existing player base as much. But, Magic is a game all about changes. I’ll be judging the Magic 2010 Prerelease (with the debut of the new rules) at TJ Collectibles on July 11, as well as Grand Prix Boston on August 1–2.
2 thoughts on “Random Life Update”
Hey, maybe you can help me understand this, since you’re most likely the only person I know well with a better understanding of the comprehensive rules than me.
The only rule change that looked ‘wrong’ to me, by which I mean I very quickly thought of a better way to accomplish the same thing under the rules was the change to deathtouch. Deathtouch creatures are allowed to ignore the new ordering of blockers and split up their damage however they like. In nearly any situation where the number of blocking creatures is <= the deathtouch creature's power, this works out as expected 'each of your guys takes 1 or maybe more deathtouch damage, and then dies'. However, in a situation (the common example I can think of is deathtouch + lure) where a deathtouch creatrue is blocked by many many creatures, some of whom might be able to survive (regen, damage prevention, whatever) if only the defending players knew which ones to protect, is very awkward for the defender. The best he can do is protect some of his men and force the attacker to kill others. Ok, that is what seemed wrong.
Here is my proposed fix - rather than allowing deathtouch creatures to ignore the ordering of blockers, just alter the definition of leathal damage to include something like 'or 1 damage from a source with deathtouch' This way the attacking deathtouch creature has to hit blockers in order, but can just deal one and then hit the next one. This allows the defending player just as much knowledge about how to protect his creatures as he had under the 'old' damage assignment rules.
Do you know of some reason why this change would not work in the context of the comp rules?
If Mark Gottlieb decreed it to be so, then I don’t see why he couldn’t word it that way to make it work that way. In fact, defining “lethal damage” that way might mean that they wouldn’t need their new state-based effect separated out, as it could be a part of the lethal damage SBE.
I would guess, though, that they considered doing more effort to make more things work the way they used to, but they were more focused on keeping it simple and easy-to-learn. They’re obviously okay with breaking current combat math and combat options, so they think that having deathtouch modify combat damage is easier to learn than changing the definition of lethal damage. They did not make all these changes lightly.
You could always email MaGo and see what he thinks.
Hey, maybe you can help me understand this, since you’re most likely the only person I know well with a better understanding of the comprehensive rules than me.
The only rule change that looked ‘wrong’ to me, by which I mean I very quickly thought of a better way to accomplish the same thing under the rules was the change to deathtouch. Deathtouch creatures are allowed to ignore the new ordering of blockers and split up their damage however they like. In nearly any situation where the number of blocking creatures is <= the deathtouch creature's power, this works out as expected 'each of your guys takes 1 or maybe more deathtouch damage, and then dies'. However, in a situation (the common example I can think of is deathtouch + lure) where a deathtouch creatrue is blocked by many many creatures, some of whom might be able to survive (regen, damage prevention, whatever) if only the defending players knew which ones to protect, is very awkward for the defender. The best he can do is protect some of his men and force the attacker to kill others. Ok, that is what seemed wrong. Here is my proposed fix - rather than allowing deathtouch creatures to ignore the ordering of blockers, just alter the definition of leathal damage to include something like 'or 1 damage from a source with deathtouch' This way the attacking deathtouch creature has to hit blockers in order, but can just deal one and then hit the next one. This allows the defending player just as much knowledge about how to protect his creatures as he had under the 'old' damage assignment rules. Do you know of some reason why this change would not work in the context of the comp rules?
If Mark Gottlieb decreed it to be so, then I don’t see why he couldn’t word it that way to make it work that way. In fact, defining “lethal damage” that way might mean that they wouldn’t need their new state-based effect separated out, as it could be a part of the lethal damage SBE.
I would guess, though, that they considered doing more effort to make more things work the way they used to, but they were more focused on keeping it simple and easy-to-learn. They’re obviously okay with breaking current combat math and combat options, so they think that having deathtouch modify combat damage is easier to learn than changing the definition of lethal damage. They did not make all these changes lightly.
You could always email MaGo and see what he thinks.