AlexChurchill/TypeFourGenerated

• Rules
• Summary
• In detail
• Examples of becoming Utopia or not
• Variants
• Running Stand-Alone
• Bugs - Feature Requests - Issues
• BNF (Ignore this bit)

Rules

Summary

In detail

1: Players have no libraries. Your hand starts at 0 cards.

2: You start the game with five indestructible Utopias in play that can't leave play except by being sacrificed. A Utopia is a "Basic Non-basic Land - Plains Island Swamp Mountain Forest", and taps for any colour of mana.

2.1: Since the point in Utopias was to provide targets for "enchant land"s and so on, they may be targetted. However, attempting to destroy or bounce them will fail and have no effect.

3: You don't draw a card in your draw step. Instead, at the beginning of your first main phase, if you have nothing in hand, you click BNF: AlexChurchill/TypeFourGenerated once, and play the spell as described, putting it on the stack. It's considered to be the colour it says but to have zero mana cost. 

3.1: You have to give the generated card an appropriate name.

4: If the generated card would do something, you must play it as it is, even if it's detrimental. If it's an instant that can't be played during your main phase (e.g. "target unblocked creature"), you're not required to attack, but if there's a time this turn when you could play the card, you must do so. If the generated card is impossible to play this turn or could never have any effect, you may choose to either take it into your hand for playing later (as described in rule 7), or put it into play as a Utopia instead. See examples below.

4.1: If the card is really truly sick, then in the interests of fair play, draw another one and let the opponent choose which sticks...

4.2: But note that there is no way to play instants outside of your turn. Of course, activated abilities are fair game at any time.

5: Paying additional costs like Kicker or Buyback is optional, and mana in those costs must be paid with normal mana (e.g. from Utopias) if you choose to pay. However, if the generated card has Cycling, you can't cycle it, you have to play it.

5.1: If you're required to pay 3 extra for spells, that includes playing your Generated spell for the turn. If you're required to pay an extra "Discard a blue Zombie Cleric" for spells, your opponent should probably regenerate that card under the "really truly sick" rule (4.1).

6: You don't get any cards in hand until you are told to draw cards by an effect, or decide to keep a generated card that is currently impossible to play, or have something returned to your hand. If you are told to draw a number of cards, generate that many and add them to your hand.

7: At the start of your first main phase, if you have a hand, you may generate a new card and play it as above, OR play a card from your hand. All cards have a casting cost of 0 unless the text says otherwise, but you can't play more than 1 card a turn. Instant cards can only be played on your turn, and count as your one card.

8: The same applies if you have an effect which allows you to play cards even if you don't have them in hand: for example, a card in your graveyard with Flashback. You may choose not to generate a card for your turn, instead playing that card with Flashback.

8.1: On the other hand, effects which allow you to play cards at times you couldn't normally play them (like MTG: Isochron Scepter, or discarding a MTG: Basking Rootwalla to a MTG: Wild Mongrel) can let you get round this one-card-per-turn limit.

9: Ignore this rule.

10: Any time a card makes reference to searching your library for a certain card or revealing cards from your library, generate random cards until you get a card of that type. You must take the FIRST legal card of that type, even if the card says you can search for a card of your choice.

10.1: Note: It's just about possible that you could be asked for a card that the generator cannot currently make. If this happens then you get a Utopia.  But note that the generator does now generate lands, so these cases will be fairly obscure.

11: Anything referring to sorcery cards is taken to refer to instants as well, because the Type 4 Generator doesn't produce sorceries.

12: If things are put onto the top of a library you keep track of anything put there. Basically, track things sensibly. For as long as you "know the top card of your library", effects that draw or reveal cards refer to the known cards. If you start your first main phase "knowing the top card of your library", and choose not to play a card from hand, then instead of generating a new card, you "draw-and-play" the known card.

13: One commonly used variation is to start play with some cards already in play. Before the start of the game, each player generates cards until they've created 5 permanents (not instants); then when all cards are known, each player may veto one of the opponent's cards. The player is considered to start the game with the other 4 in play, as well as the usual 5 Utopias.

Examples of becoming Utopia or not

• Card is an Instant that reads "Put a +1/+1 counter on target Golem". There are no Golems in play. It can't be played this turn, and so will either become a Utopia, or be put into your hand if you want to save it for later use.
  
• Card is an Instant that reads "Put a +1/+1 counter on target Golem". The only Golems in play are your opponent's. It can be played this turn, so it must be, and you'll probably have to target your opponent's Golem.
  
• Card is an Instant that reads "Put a +1/+1 counter on target attacking Golem". You control a Golem. You may choose any of these three options:
  
  • turn it into a Utopia, as it can't be played in your main phase;
    
  • take it into your hand for later use, in which case you can't play it this turn; or
    
  • announce that you'll play it later this turn when you can. If you then attack with your Golem, you must cast the Instant this turn if you're able. If you choose not to attack with your Golem, this card disappears and is removed from the game.
    
• Card is an Artifact that reads "All Golems get +1/+1". There are no Golems in play. The card could affect future permanents, so must be played as it is, and can't become a Utopia.
  
• Card is an Artifact that reads "When this is returned to its owner's hand, put a +1/+1 counter on target attacking Golem". The card could theoretically affect future permanents, although it's pretty unlikely, so must be played as it is, and can't become a Utopia.
  
• Card is an Artifact that reads "All Golems are Golems in addition to their other creature types". This would normally become a Utopia as it can have no effect on the game (a Golem Golem is identical in all ways to a Golem). However, you may choose to play it as it is if you wish - for example, if you have something that makes an artifact into a 4/4 creature.
  

Variants

1. Before the game starts, both players place a (small) number of permanents into play (no targeting other players' cards or 'comes into play' effects) and then remove a (smaller) number of their opponents' cards. This should minimise the effects of an early lucky token generator or circle of protection.
   
2. A simpler variant of this game is to have no hands. Any cards that would go to your hand are instead removed from the game. In this variant, a lot more cards are Utopias.
   
3. A simpler variant is to not track the graveyard, just counting how many are in there, for threshold.  Since graveyard affecting cards then become illegal, more cards end up as utopias.
   
4. I  (Vitenka) also kinda likes the idea of the graveyard always considering there to be valid targets (so there'd always be a blue elf in there, for instance) and then generating them. (So 'remove target elf from graveyard' would reduce a graveyards size by one, but 'return blue card to play' would reduce by one and generate a blue card.)
   
5. Note that the Type 4 Generator has been tweaked (see below) to make all creatures have SMALL power and toughness, to try and make the game last a while longer.  (Tokens can still be large, however)  You could see what happens with P/T allowed to go higher than 3, or power and toughness each having slightly different ranges.  (Power 0-3, toughness 1-4 would produce a slower game, for instance)
   
6. Grumpfs Rule Suggestions provide features as real lands, casting cost, keeping cards in hand, several spells per turn, and staple reactive cards.
   

Running Stand-Alone

That program sounds exceedingly cool! However, generating that many cards will take quite some time whatever you do, and also use up quite some significant fraction of the toothycat.net server cycles. MoonShadow has provided the full Perl source to the generator [here]. I've used it myself - it's pretty straightforward. If you do the following, you'll be able to run the generator on your own machine, and use up as much processing power as you wish :)

• Install Perl.
  
• Make a directory on your local machine called Generator, and a subdirectory called AlexChurchill.
  
• For each of /TypeFourGenerated, /MagicCardGenerator, /MCGEffects, /MCGTargets, /MCGAbilities and /MCGTypes
  
  • Click "Edit this page". Select all the source code (with Ctrl-A). Save this as a text file in the AlexChurchill directory on your local machine, with that name (eg "TypeFourGenerated?" - no extension).
    
• Save https://www.toothycat.net/~sham/bnf-standalone.txt in the Generator directory (the parent of AlexChurchill) as bnf-standalone.pl
  
• Cd to the Generator directory and run this command:
  

 perl bnf-standalone.pl page=AlexChurchill/TypeFourGenerated

 perl bnf-standalone.pl page=AlexChurchill/TypeFourGenerated | lynx -stdin -dump

• Now you can create a simple text file called FiftyCardGenerator? (in the Generator directory - no file extension needed) which contains two lines something like
  

 option ::= include = AlexChurchill/TypeFourGenerated
 bnf ::= generatecard newline hr newline generatecard newline hr newline generatecard newline hr newline generatecard newline hr newline generatecard ...

• Now you could run your 50-card-generator by saying
  

 perl bnf-standalone.pl page=FiftyCardGenerator?

• If you want the output stored as HTML in a file on disk, you can add to the end of your command a greater-than sign > followed by the name of the file you want it to create. For example,
  

 perl bnf-standalone.pl page=AlexChurchill/TypeFourGenerated > onecard.html
 perl bnf-standalone.pl page=FiftyCardGenerator? > C:\Temp\fiftycards.html

• By "wrapper" I just meant a BNF file which has very little content and just "wraps" the Type Four generator. I've rephrased that bullet above. It just has to be a plain text file with just those two lines, and no file extension. That file is what's being referred to in the commands where they say "FiftyCardGenerator?". You could call it "FiftyCardGenerator?.txt" if you wanted, and specify "page=FiftyCardGenerator?.txt" on the perl line.
  

Current Status: Definitely playable, testers wanted. You can tell the client to use a deck with generated cards or mix  them with real cards, place the cards on the table, drag them around and do all the magic-related actions (search your library, tapping, attacking). You can assign names and token images to the cards and edit the cardtext if needed. Takes the "hilarious"-feel up another level. Some "nice to have" features like Draft generator and more-than-2-player games are on my to do i will attack when i have CopiousFreeTime. Belgarath: Grumpfs Magic Client

Bugs - Feature Requests - Issues

Teehee, yes, that does indeed sound like a bug. I thought I'd foreseen the possibility of that happening and made it impossible - I'll investigate. --AC

Yes, it does. [Here], for instance. - MoonShadow

A quick look at the BNF indicates that it will roughly 2/33 of the time. --CH

Hmm, i see ... Could you up the percentage a bit? With 2/33, one will hardly find an artifact in the course of a game. Since there are many references to artifacts as targets, i'd like them at 1/8 or even 1/6. (5 colors + multicolor + artifact). Generating an artifact doesnt mean that it cant be a creature. -- Grumpf

AC: how about type 4 with.. multiple decks! Different wrappers around the generator that give different proportions of card types generated for different flavours of deck - control-oriented vs creature-oriented vs artifact-oriented, etc; players select a wrapper each at the start of a game and must stick to that one for the duration of the game.. - MoonShadow

Well, when CH and I finish our Mana Cost Module, that's precisely what we're planning. But yes, there's actually no reason why that couldn't be done beforehand, other than that it'd have to be reworked massively when the mana cost module does get implemented. --AC

But that's not the distribution IRL. In Champions of Kamigawa, for instance, there were 22 artifacts in a 291-card set. In BOK, there were 12 in 165. In SOK, 10 in 165. 10/165 is the same as 2/33, so OK, it could maybe stand to go up a bit to match CHK and BOK; but it's not far out. --CH

Ah, now if you're searching your library for an artifact, you can use the BNF: AlexChurchill/TypeFourArtifactGenerator, and similarly BNF: AlexChurchill/TypeFourEnchantmentGenerator for enchantments. I can make more of these on request. There's no way I'm taking the proportion of artifacts up to 1/6, because artifacts are meant to be unusual things, to the extent that for the past 8 years at least, they never appear at common (the two exceptions being Mirrodin-block and guild signets). You've already got about 1/16; I could maybe take that up to 1/10 if you insist. --AC

Well.. i did a quick test with the TypeFourGenerator? and here are my results (they kind of prove my original thoughts). I generated 50 cards. I got no Artifact, but i got 6 cards that were artifact related (enchant artifact, do xyz with target artifact, ... where X is the number of artifacts in play and so on) All of these were essentially useless without an artifact in play. This is why i would vote for more artifacts generated, even if that doesnt match the distribution of cards in real magic. In my opinion, some of the (non-aura) enchantments (i didnt count them, but there were a lot) could make some space for artifacts. Functionally, global enchantments are most similar to artifacts. -- Grumpf

Lowering the probability of generating artifact-targeting cards would also address this. - MoonShadow

The thing is, that would be really quite hard to achieve. In particular, the distinction between enchantments that are and aren't Auras is not decided upfront; it just happens sometimes when generating an enchantment that it decides it wants to refer to "enchanted foo", and likewise Equipment. I've upped the frequency of artifacts a bit: out of 50 generations, I got 4 artifacts and about 4 things referring to artifacts. I might reduce the frequency of referring to artifacts or equipment a bit, but it'd be tricky. I'll bear it in mind as a possible amendment. --AC

I agree there's a problem. (Although 5/5s should only be Dragons, even a horde of 1/2s is perfectly capable of winning against the often-useless responses offered by the Generator.) The possible solutions as I see it:

• Make costs vaguely match the effect. My ideal solution, it will unfortunately need lots of work (plus getting MoonShadow to implement a feature he hasn't yet). This is an option I'm definitely looking at, but it's a way off yet. Any other option has no way to set the costs of token generation appropriately, because when the cost is being generated, the Generator doesn't know what the effect will be.
  
• Reduce the probability of token generation a lot. This might help, but when it does come up you'll still generally win as a result.
  
• Reduce the amounts of tokens generated by any given token-making effect. This might help a bit, but an effect saying "Tap a land: make a 2/2 token" is still only making one token per iteration, so it's definitely only going to be a partial solution.
  

• Remove the token-generating effects entirely, from the Type 4 only. This seems quite radical, but would certainly be an effective solution. Of course, this won't do anything about the "1: 4 damage to any target" or the "2: target player receives 4 poison counters", but that's all part of what /TypeFourGenerated is about... Hopefully, with keeping the increased removal probabilities, the games won't just get into absurd stalemates.
  

What do people think? --AC

Another suggestion - How about adding in some abilities that are a good way to combat multiple tokens?  MTG: Echoing Truth for instance. --Ultros

Well, this is based on my limited understanding of the Generator, but I think it would work.  You could split the formula for generating an activated ability into "smallcost: smalleffect", "mediumcost: mediumeffect", and "largecost: largeeffect".  Similarly, a triggered ability would be "commontrigger: smalleffect", "uncommontrigger: mediumeffect", or "raretrigger: largeeffect".  The "largecost" would include things like sacrificing multiple permanents, discarding multiple cards, or paying large amounts of both life and mana, while the "raretrigger" would include things that don't happen often, such as "Whenever this is removed from the game" or "Whenever a blue legendary enchantment comes into play".  You could then put things like token generation only in "mediumeffect" and "largeeffect", or maybe even only in "largeeffect". --Lavacamorada

Hmm. Hmm. ...You know, I think that might actually work. I'll have a go at a first implementation on Monday or Tuesday. --AC

Costs to make tokens should now be in general larger. More is planned on this issue, but after NaNoWriMo finishes :) --AC

What you've observed is some instances of the more general pattern, "(Target opponent/You?/Any? player) may pay or do X. If that player (does/doesn't), (Y happens)." And Y is totally unconnected (almost always) to the player chosen, or to the value of "(does/doesn't)" chosen. So it's coincidence that you seem to see the Y being beneficial in the "doesn't" case. Now admittedly, the way things are currently, half the time the payment option will be silly, and that's something I'd like to fix, but it would require me to teach the generator whether something is beneficial, which is not easy. I may still be aiming that way, but it's quite a challenge, distinctly non-trivial. --AC

Tapping libraries?  Is this a bug? --K

Alex added libraries as possible targets for things a while back.  It makes for some extremely silly cards, but I like it. --Ultros

It wants to get a mana cost from a card that's never seen.  Also, it has Flying twice, if you're trying to eliminate that. --Ultros

Heh. Both of those are known bugs, listed at the bottom of the /MagicCardGenerator. The form I saw was "When ~this~ leaves play, target player may Sacrifice a permanent. If that player doesn't, distribute the sacrificed permanent's mana cost +3/+3 counters on..." which is even sillier. I need to fix them, but it'll take a little work. --AC

Hmm. Yes, that probably is a bug. It should make the opponent reveal their hand first. Thanks, I'll try to fix that. --AlexChurchill

Thanks - fixed. --AC

BNF (Ignore this bit)