There are some details in Elements that you have to learn to hard way through trial and error but so what?
As someone who played many card games before, and even played on various tournament I say this :
If that hard way happens to be on an important game, like the finals of a tournament, and you lose the game for it, that's pretty bad. Enough to make you hate the game and quit.
Also, unlike a real tournament, where, if something is unsure, you yell "Judge!", and your question will be answered, in here, you have less than 60 seconds to find out the answer, without any help whatsoever.
If it's automatic, and there is no way to correct mistakes, you WANT to be 100% sure that things will happen the way it is defined by rules or cards.
Or would you enter a tournament of any kind (chess for example), knowing that they play by special, house rules, that you have no way of knowing in advance, and will find out during the game?
Of course, if you play a deck tested against an AI, you can find out how the cards work in YOUR deck, but the possible effects and interactions between them and your opponent's cards, not so much. For example, an AI will rarely if ever play an animated, adrenalined Jade staff against you, so you'll most likely find out it heals 4 times when an opponent in pvp plays it against you. Now, if you didn't destroy the staff because you didn't know it will do so, and you then lose to the extra 15 healing per turn that is nowhere mentioned in game rules, nor card text, is that really ok?
If you get killed by swarms of skeletons after reading the Phonixes' text that says they turn into ashes, and conclude that boneyards won't give the opponent any skeletons, and firestom them, is that ok?
Definitely not.
definition of sacrifice: target & kill a creature on your own side
So, sacrificed < killed
Does that mean I can't use cremation on an immaterial creature of my own?
Hmm right, you can't. I never would have guessed that one.
Come on guys, put those definitions into the game rules, I'm not a mind-reader.
It's up to you how you do it, but I think instead of wasting all that time trying to explain why the bad things are way way they are, you should work on making them better.
Think of it as and adventure into the unknown. Getting a 100 page manual that explains all the small details of the game might take out the mystery.
That's where you are wrong.
You see, this is NOT an RPG. It's not an ACTION GAME. It's not a DETECTIVE GAME.
This is a CARD GAME, one that is based on rules and strategies. Like chess. The player with a better strategy (and of course stronger cards) WINS. But for strategy,you need to know the rules first. If those rules are too complicated to explain, and you need 100 pages for the basics, then you messed up in the design phase of the project, and not just a little bit.
However, that much is not necessary.
You need a few (5-10) pages for the basic rules (turn sequence, attacking, card types, types of abilities (passive, active, triggered, replacement) etc), and a definition for keyworded abilities (1-2 page at most at the moment, but will grow larger when the card pool increases.). Everything else is a card effect, and needs to be written on the card.
If the text would be too long, you can either
-keyword the ability
-use a smaller font
-don't make such overcomplicated cards, if the text doesn't fit even in smaller font. There are thousands of better, easier to understand, and simpler card ideas, use them.
-If the card is really important/cool/special, add an entry to the rules, that explains it, and use shorter text. (Like Mindslaver in MtG, the only card that allows you to "control your opponent's turn")
However, at 99% of times, the length of the text is not the issue, the wording is.
For example, Phoenix's card :
When Phoenix dies, put an Ash into play.
(isn't longer that the original text)
: Turn Ash into a Phoenix
(original text)
Definition of "Turn", and "dies" are of course necessary in the rulebook, those are both used by many cards, so they need to be defined anyway.
And yes, you have to define basic things like "dies". Otherwise such questions will arise :
-Does a creature die when it is "destroyed" by a card effect, or only when it takes too much damage? (After adding cards that can destroy creatures too, like "destroy target Aether card in play" for example)
-Does a creature die when it is removed from play like returned to the top of the deck? (reverse time)
-Does it die when it is removed from the game and not put into a graveyard (obviously, this will only rise as a question after graveyards are introduced)
-Does it still count as dieing if it is no longer a creature (after adding effects that allow it to turn into a non-creature permanent, like a reversed animate weapon)
These are the reasons why MTG doesn't use "when the this creature dies...", and uses the much clearer "When this card is put into a graveyard from play" instead.
Oh, by the way, back to "types of abilities"...
Lobotomizer removes abilities, yet it doesn't remove Devourer's ability. It seems to be intentional, but what kind of rule is behind that? Does lobotomizer not work on triggered abilities, or what? Is there even such a thing as triggered abilities in this game? What about replacement abilities?
Ah and another one :
How is it possible that when a creature reaches 0 life when taking damage it is killed immediately, yet spark, which has 0 life when entering play doesn't die until the end of the turn? Isn't that again an inconsistency in rules?
Also think about it...
if every second card needs a written explanation on how it works, it might be ok when there are only 50-100 cards to remember, but what about later?
With 1000 different cards, and 1000*1000 possible different two-card interactions (let's not even think about what happens when there are more than two cards in play affecting each other), do you still expect players to find it out "the hard way" for every card? or read all that info on the forums?
