MTGNexus

Hi, This thread is for sharing the rules misconceptions // mistakes we did as a newbie to mtg.
Oh, and also mention the things that you saw other people do. ^___^

Will start by saying during my noob days, thought browbeat was an enchantment that stayed on the battefield. Which made the card broken.

Also one of my cousins taxed us with Energy Vortex, eventhough he was not even putting any counters on it.

I did this with a home brew deck round 1, game 1, turn 1 at my first ever tournament back in late '97.

Swamp, Dark Ritual, Necropotence, pay 19 life to exile the top 19 cards of my library. Declare the end of my turn. Put the 19 cards into my hand. Proceed to combo out with Lotus Petals, Mana Vaults, Dark Rituals, etc.

The game was recorded as a win for me. But once the (accidental) illegal play was realized by a judge, it was no longer permitted and I didn't win a single game from that point on.

Stolen Identity had some strange effects for me
1. When you cast a card with an Encode trigger you can then encode the copy onto a creature
2. Copies of cards had the same cards encoded onto them

A regular play pattern was Stolen Identity on an Elusive Krasis (My only unblockable creature at the time)
I still prefer the exponential type encoding tbh, much more fun.

I first started playing with my younger brother many years ago. at first we thought that we could mulligan our hands at any time we didn't like our hands and draw 7 new cards

[mention]motleyslayer[/mention]

We did something similar. At that time, no one in our playgroup knew what the official mulligan rule is.. so it became an official "house rule" that we could mulligan hands with no land at no decrease hand size.

The Fluff wrote: ↑

4 years ago

motleyslayer

We did something similar. At that time, no one in our playgroup knew what the official mulligan rule is.. so it became an official "house rule" that we could mulligan hands with no land at no decrease hand size.

We had no-land-hand and all-land-hand free mulligans.

One of my buddies told me that back in '95, he played Fireball like a creature. It would enter the battlefield and attack and could be blocked.

I remember doing the classic "tap Llanowar Elves to search your library for a forest" because that's what to add means, obviously.

Also Thorn Elemental did basically whatever we wanted because we didn't understand how it works. It often did 14 damage if it was unblocked because it does regular damage and then also damage as if it weren't blocked. 10 year old me was pretty stupid.

Someone in our group played tokens in the main deck. :laugh:

It didn't took much time until we understood that tokens were card effects, and not playable cards. But still, free 3/3 golems won a few games for him (kitchen table, obviously).

[mention]Legend[/mention]

ah, so I guess the no land hand was a legit rule?

[mention]Impossible[/mention]

haha, that's a thorn elemental on steroids. Card would be mythic if it actually did those.

[mention]Patbou[/mention]

free 3/3's will indeed stomp the kitchen table. :laugh:
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nice to see people sharing stories. I guess being a noob to mtg was fun in it's own way. But of course, we should follow the rules once we know about them.

Yeah. It's fun just to think back about those moments when we were so naive and inexperienced. But, TBH, I always get that nostalgia when I crack open a booster and see a really powerful token: 4/4 flying angel or dragon, or even that 8/8 vigilance trample green and white elemental from Return to Ravnica. Gee, I'm glad my friend never played that from hand on turn one! We started playing during the New Phyrexia block, and luckily for us, the best he could main deck was that 3/3 golem. 😅

Gee, I even remember one friendly drafts where the tokens were often the first pick, and we would dump them on the battlefield on turn one if we were lucky enough to draw some in our opening hand. God, we were so dumb!!! 🤣

I have two memorable mistakes from when I started playing.

The first one is that I used to pay to play Dark Ritual ... which I would then TAP for . I'd then untap it on my next turn. Better than a Sol Ring!

The second one is much more understandable and involves Wall of Fire and Wall of Water. If you look at the printings I've linked, they don't use the phrase "until end of turn", so my friend and I used sticky notes to indicate how much we'd pumped them. Nobody would dare to attack into these ginormous walls.

[mention]SquirrelToken[/mention]

hmm, that's one super-powered dark ritual. hehe xD

agreed. It's rather easy for newbies to make a mistake on the walls, since eot is not written.

@ squirreltoken

We did the exact same thing with frozen shades! Card would have been oppressive....if we weren't playing with decks that used every card we owned 😭

I used to think I could play Kjeldoran Dead, sacrifice it to itself, and then pay the regeneration to keep it from being sacrificed. That made it pretty damn strong.

against other cards of it's era. It is indeed strong if no creature sac was needed. bb (cmc + regen on the spot) for a 3/1 with regen is a much much more aggressive drudge skeletons.

I used to run a card called Book Burning in all of my decks, because at the time I thought that it let me deal six to an opponent and mill six cards from their library unless they had a copy of Book Burning in their hand. All of my friends thought the same thing when they read the card, so for a good five years or so I just thought I had secretly found the greatest burn spell ever printed.

Obviously, when you understand how the card actually works it's not nearly as good. Now I know that as long as they have a copy of Book Burning somewhere in their COLLECTION, they can avoid taking the damage. That makes the card basically useless now since everyone has a playset of Book Burning that they carry on around with them at all times.

[mention]Cow31337Killer[/mention]

haha, good one. that made me laugh. Honestly, we also thought it was a super powerful card when my cousin got one from a booster.. and we imagined that if the mage don't want to burn his book, the barbarian would stab him with the sword = that's where the 6 damage would come from. Your first impression of the card makes it the greatest burn spell ever printed indeed. xD

The one major misconception I can remember having is that once you chose a target for a spell or ability, you had to choose the same thing as the target for all of your other spells or abilities the whole turn.

Waaaaaayyy back in the day, I thought the protection from white on Wildfire Emissary meant that its damage couldn't be prevented by Circle of Protection: Red. My opponent thought similarly, and on game 3 someone pointed it out. The game was just a big dumb stalemate after that.

My friends and I also thought you could play cards in response to getting hit with discard spells. Like, "Oh, you Coercion my Lightning Bolt? Well how about I burn your face with it instead?" *puts on sunglasses* *is badass*.

[mention]void_nothing[/mention]

ah, so your opponent get's something like a free standard bearer. that is quite the handicap. ><

[mention]RxPhantom[/mention]

that's a strong wildfire emissary. xD

It seems the rules protections are a common rules mistake for newbies. We thought of something similar too... a pro black white creature can be blocked by a black creature with pro-white.

Not understanding how damage was split when a creature had trample. Which is doubly funny as I understood Banding perfectly from the start. Ah, the joys of early MTG.

I don't know if this counts as a mistake, but someone once tried to convince me that whenever a card refers to a name, it applies to every card you control with that name. For example, if you control two Siege-Gang Commander and sacrífice one goblin, you trigger both the commanders' abilities and can split two damage between two targets. At the time, I didn't know enough about the rules, but I always found that fishy. Eventually, I discovered things didn't work out that way. I only wished I remembered who that guy was so I could call him a cheater for trying to take advantage of my ignorance to beat me with his well-tuned goblin deck

Also, having been heavily influenced by Pokémon trading card game and Yu-Gi-Oh, and barely learning how Magic cards worked, I thought a creature's toughness worked like Pokémon HP, damage wasn't removed at end of turn, and creatures could attack each other at will

[mention]Krishnath[/mention]

whoa, understanding banding but not understanding trample. I'm 10 years into mtg, and still don't understand how banding works. One of the harder rules in the game for me. hehe ><

[mention]Maluko[/mention]

it seems the goblin player was just taking advantage of you being new to the game.

good one on the pokemon and yugi-oh. Made me imagine mtg creatures fighting each other pokemon / yugi-oh style. xD

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Oh, I remember another rules mistake that haven't said yet on the thread. This one is just last year, Had a hard time convincing one of my cousins who is a casual player that heritage druid does not "add up". He thinks that if he has two Heritage Druid in play, tapping three elves would produce gggggg.

The Fluff wrote: ↑

4 years ago

whoa, understanding banding but not understanding trample. I'm 10 years into mtg, and still don't understand how banding works. One of the harder rules in the game for me. hehe ><

I think that my first Revised Starter Deck containing a Benalish Hero and a Mesa Pegasus but no trampling creatures had a lot to do with it.

They really should bring Banding back for a time, not necessarily in a Standard Legal set mind you, but it would be fun with some new cards with the ability.

When I first started a couple years ago I thought only creatures with certain abilities could block...defender reach flying or vigilance...weird I know