Banding
Flying
First Strike
Double Strike
Morph
cycling
tap
defender
dredge
bloodlust
landwalk
phasing
transmute
replicate
storm
dual mana symbols
trample
protection from x
regenerate
kicker
indestructable
bushido
vigilance
aura
haste

and thats not all of it.

At least VS abilities are used mostly by specific teams.


As for YGO, a monkey could learn how to play that game.

Vs is NOT more difficult than Magic. In fact, I'd say the two are, in terms of mechanical depth and difficulty, very close to one another.

Besides, as Setzer points out, a new player learning Magic has DOZENS of abilities to learn. And if they mostly play Standard (Type II) decks, any time they play someone using older cards, they will be lost in no time. And that is BEFORE you take into account defunct terms like Bury, Interrupt and Mana Source, and it is BEFORE you take into account the current Oracle wording on literally hundreds of cards that differ from the original wording, some that change the actual function, most that bring the timing interactions and templating into alignment with the current rules of the game.

Banding alone is more confusing than the entire game of Vs (for most players). Don't believe me? Here's how we (who play Magic) know this: When Banding was phased out of the game, the number of customer service calls asking rules questions was CUT IN HALF (this is from the horse's mouth, mind you...WotC said as much when people asked WHY banding had been cut). Seriously, 50% of the calls to WotC were asking how banding worked. Scary.

You want a complicated game? Try Decipher's original Star Wars game. Talk about a learning curve. It was a great game, but MAN was it difficult to get new players to grasp.

No doubt, Magic is daunting for the new player as well. I just joine MTGO about a week or so ago and was totally lost for a while, and still see keywords Ive never seen before.

But, the difference is MTG has a huge player base and MTGO so its easier to learn the game. Its hard in some areas to find any other VS players and there is no MTGO equivalent(OCTGN and MWS are fine once you no what you are doing). So, ultimately I think while more complex in terms of mechanics, it is easier for a new player too learn Magic through game play.

You want hard? Play Decipher's LOtR. Loads of keywords there (Unhasty!)

You want to learn what VS keywords do? ask for some box toppers from the set the ability came out.

You wanna learn how a MtG keyword WORKS? Go through the Errata.

You keep those?

Or you could just go to the rules sheet that comes in every starter deck. Oh, you don't keep those either?

On the subject of keywords:

There's three types ...

The big one is the one that represents rules text ... loyalty, evasion, concealed, etc these ones people need to learn and find out all the stuff associated with them.

Second are the 'tag reference' ... vengence, leader, ally ... these ones are sort of the opposite of reminder text. Instead of the keyword needing to be explained by reminder text, the keyword is a reminder of when the power is relevant [during the build phase, for adjacent characters, when characters are being powered up, when a character is stunned, etc]. You still have to read the card to know EXACTLY what is happening, but the keyword groups similar powers together for easy identification.

Third are the 'pure' referencial ones ... Willpower and Mutant. But the mutant traits at least point out a synergy as well which can 'help' a player see strategies between cards [i.e. many of the energy mutants have endurance loss effects, while the mental mutants have card (re)cycling abilities]

Arguably ... if someone finds the concept of 'Vengence' or 'Backup' hard ... they'd find the concept of concealed and everything else just as bad.

As for 'new mechanics' that are 'limited to a single set'.

Wasn't evasion only for the Spider-Friends?

If so where did the Morlocks, and to some extent, the Secret Society come from.

Superman is the only Cosmic team?

Someone better tell that to the Heralds of Galactus ... because just seeing 1 of them spoiled seems to confirm the theory of "cosmic powers = power cosmic" ...

Not to mention they made a heavily reservist based team just one set after Avengers.

While they may limit keywords to specific TEAMS ... there's no way to know for sure that the keyword will only exist in large quantities in a single set.

With open ended cards like Ring Has Chosen ... you don't want TOO MUCH willpower running around.

Not to mention, if a team only has X number of mechanics ... you won't need to know ALL the mechanics to play on that team.

For example ... unless you are playing Villains United, you don't really need to know much about Vengence ... if you play against someone playing VU they can probably explain it to you.

Ditto evasion outside of Spider-Friends, Morlocks and Secret Society.

They could just team stamp everything ... but that would be boring. By 'trait/mechanic/keyword' stamping cards ... it's a bit more open instead of forcing you into a team ... not to mention that they can control how easy it is to get the benefits [i.e. it's easy to give someone a mutant trait, not as easy to give them any decent ammount of willpower.]

This allows them a level of control that team stamping [with all the rampant team-ups ... not to mention with Shadowpact (Detective Chimp), Synister Sindicate (Chameleon), Titans (Mirage) and Marvel Knights you don't need the other team in the deck at all to get all their team stamped goodies. While they have started to 'hard' team stamp some cards with "printed affiliation" ... they also want to encourage team ups and can't go for the printed affiliation thing too often.

The Magic key words are used like the Vs ones, we are told what they do in brackets unless it's something that's been in every recent base set, like Flying or First Strike. You can never have too many key words with the explanation given in brackets.

I agree, and you are welcome. Thank you for the Edmonton Oilers. I'll see what voodoo I can do to get you the Cup back in Canada.

Back to our regularly scheduled keyword debate, which really does happen for every new set!

I agree. Also, alexander luthor 1 drop tutors for characters with vengance.

However, if they are going to make keywords for mechanics that already exist they should just do it along with NEW mechanics in a set. Vengance and Backup are things we have seen before, let's give them keywords and make NEW mechanics for a new set in addition to the old mechanics we give keywords to. If we keep getting stuff like that released in DCR the game is gonna get boring and stale very fast.

Lets also not forget that Loyalty was a mechanic released in DOR that was already seen in MOR (though distincly differant in respects to cards such as Crisis on Infinite Earths).

Yeah, I don't see why Prof X, Thing etc can't be given loyalty errata.

They taught a lab monkey to play YGO on the T.V. show... it even wore a helmet that translated it's thoughts into human language... it made monkey jokes:grin:

What an idea?!?! I have been begging for this for over a year now! The online UDE demo game was a good start. Now, we need a few newer versions of the demo. A long game including more keywords. Every time a keyword comes out...add it to the demo game. They could also show each keyword by themselves in a demo. Not a complete game...just a short demo on that keyword. Want to learn about evasion? Click here to watch demo. Want to learn about Reservist? Click here to watch demo. Wouldn't that be great!

By the way...my rant if "Free" is so easy why does it contradict what we originally thought "Pay 0 endurance" meant. The way I was taught by TO's...Pay 0 endurance meant you had to have 0 or more endurance to pay the cost. Now, Free you can pay if you have negative endurance. So...it is not as easy as everyone is making!

Well... your TO's were mistaken. As far back as with Big Barda, it had been determined that if you'd have to pay only 0 endurance, you could meet that requirement even while in the negatives. Literally, 'Pay 0 Endurance' and 'Free' are synonymous for purposes of game play.

So, why exactly haven't they fixed Cosmic. I thought that was the point of this set. I see no reason to buy DCR at all, doesn't give me any of the DC teams I play anything at all. Makes me wonder what the point of creating them in the first place was.

I think they are over doing it with the new stuff, and on top of that Golden, Silver and Modern. Mostly new rules (Keywords, new area on the field, cosmic ect) I understand why they are doing it, I don't mind the new stuff.
I can on the other hand see where new people would get lost at first. I think if they just added something new every two or three sets, it all would feel more new, keep things fresh longer, and give people time to start, and keep up.

I played Magic from the start. I stopped at Ice Age or so, and still can't find anyone to play now. Last time I tried, the kid stood up after I set down a few cards. Told me I was not allowed to play with cards "that old" And after watching a few games, I was glad I didn't get to play. So many new things, that I had no clue what was going on. Now I see people who played MOR or came in at Web of Spider-Man, then let it go, get just as lost.

This has been a great game, where someone could do well with a starter, learn, and in no time play along. And without X number of rares, could still win. Now people have to keep a card of key terms at their side.

This is an easy game to learn, and anyone can do well. It just needs to pace itself. (Now if people would learn to keep track of their own score, and do the math on their own, I would be a happy person)