Discussion Forum

New players and Counters


This should be an article but I'm not much of a writer so it 'll just be what I hope is a somewhat informative post to some of you. Something I've noticed while playing against new players, and most seem to do this, is that they have a tendancy to represent temporary creature modifiers with counters. For example they will attack with their 2/2 bear and cast giant growth on it and put a dice on top of the card set on 5. They do this to represent that their 2/2 creature now is a 5/5.
An other typical example are creatures that enter the battlefield with +1/+1 counters. For example they play Kazandu Blademaster and put a die on Kazandu Blademaster that shows 2 because their Kazandu Blademaster is a 2/2 creature instead of setting the die to 1 to represent the +1/+1 counter it recievces when it enters the battlefield.
To all new players who read this, try to step a away from this practise as it is very confusing. You think you make it more obvious what the current power/toughness of a creature is but you don't. If your opponent is keeping track of actual counters you'll both be playing with different rules and things get confusing fast.

Reading the current power toughness of a creature should be easy enough. You have the power/toughness as stated on the card, then you add all modifiers added by other permanents in play like equipment equipped on the creature in question or enhantments like Honor of the pure.
If counters are sitting on your creature they are either +1/+1 or -1/-1 as these cancel eachother out and you cannot have both. Use dies with a different color to seperate beween modifying counters (+1/+1 or -1/-1) and other types of counters like for instance fading counters if a creature happens to have both.

Stuff played that lasts until end of turn like damage or buffs (giant growth for instance) should be easy to remember as it was just played. also you are not playing alone so there's the two of you to help eachother remember and then there is the graveyard keeping a perfect record of everything that was played in the order it was played.

You can argue that it is a strain to keep count of all those factors all of the time and that just placing a die representing the modified P/T is easier. While this is true, the state of the modifiers impacting your creature changes from turn to turn as players play their spells and you will have to recalculate anyway. If you combine +1/+1 counters with the actual P/T of the creature and with other modifiers like equipment all with one die, mistakes are bound to happen when recalculating modifiers.

It is good practise to keep track of all variables at all time, constantly recalculating. It's an exercise that is crucial to becomming a good player and doing the exercise will improve your skill. Calculating variables is part of the game, a part you'll have to master if you want to be a magic player.


cheers

Seth