Someone posted recently that it might be better to have higher costed non-mandatory enchantments instead of mandatory enchantments. I'm really interested in that idea. I think it would open the way to fixing a lot of enchantment rules problems in one fell swoop. If all enchantments were non-mandatory, the very difficult to enforce rule of "no more than one copy of a same-named enchantment can be cast on the same target" would no longer be such an issue.
It could then be replaced with "no more than one copy of a same-named enchantment can be REVEALED on the same target". I think making it the reveal instead of the initial cast is more sensible since none of an enchantment's effects activate when it is cast, only when it is revealed. Revealing is the bulk of the work involved in casting an enchantment. However, that seems very unintuitive to me that you can cast a spell that doesn't do anything until you show your enemy that you cast it already, and showing your enemy the spell you already cast on them somehow costs so much more than actually casting it on them.
Because of this I think we should rename the two mana costs of enchantments. The cast of playing a hidden enchantment should be the initial casting cost, which would be the cost of attaching that enchantment to an object.
Then the reveal cost would be the final casting cost, which would be the cost of activating the enchantment while it is attached to an object.
That way BOTH the mana costs on the enchantment card are treated as "casting costs" rather than just the first one that has the eye closed symbol.
As it is now, all other spells cost different amounts of mana to "cast" but enchantments all cost the same amount of mana to cast, regardless of how powerful it is. This should be raising thematic alarm bells in all of our minds. It just doesn't make sense that way thematically, or in terms of how the enchantment cards LOOK. When a relatively new player sees the face of an enchantment card, they will not see one casting cost. They will see two. That is because the only difference between those two purple circles on most enchantments is the number and whether the eye is open or closed. The circles for both mana costs are the exact same size and are right next to each other. On all other types of cards, the mana cost is the casting cost unless the card text otherwise specifies extra costs to casting the spell, like with the magebind trait.
If the rules changes I've proposed here were implemented, counterspell enchantments would actually target the spell that they're countering, rather than just the spell that the spell they're countering is targeting. So it would go down something like this:
Mage A targets themself with Nullify for 2 mana. The Nullify is not countered during the counter spell step, so Nullify has now been successfully ATTACHED to Mage A.
Mage B targets Mage A with Force Push.
Mage A decides to activate their Nullify for 4 mana during the counter spell step. Nullify is now targeting Force Push and not Mage A.
Force Push is countered; it no longer has a legal target, and is discarded. Since Nullify was targeting Force Push, it also gets discarded.
I think this makes a LOT more sense. Compare to what we have now:
Mage A casts Nullify on himself for 2 mana.
Mage B targets Mage A with Force Push.
Mage A is forced to immediately reveal his Nullify for 2 mana, countering Force Push. Mage A had cast it in an earlier situation to prevent Mage B from pushing them, which did not happen earlier. However, now Mage A wants to be pushed, and Mage B doesn't know that. Mage A was hoping that Mage B would get rid of their face down Nullify first, but Mage B did not, and wasted their Force Push instead, thwarting Mage A's plan without any knowledge or suspicions of such a plan, and also losing a Force push that would have been better used in other circumstances.
From my understanding, Magic the Gathering has a very significant design flaw that could have been avoided or fixed very early on in the game's history. That flaw was putting lands and spells in the same deck, rather than in two separate decks. Putting them in the same deck causes a LOT of games to be won or lost because of contrived mana problems.
I think Mandatory Enchantments could very well be the source of that kind of problem for Mage Wars.
Also, with these rules changes, I think it would be not only possible, but far easier to prevent players from hiding, revealing, or organizing their enchantments illegally, rather than only catching them several rounds after their enchantment has come into play.
Since there aren't that many mandatory enchantments in the game yet, it's not too late to fix the enchantment problem. Please take my request into consideration. I think it is of the utmost importance to this game thematically and mechanically.
Thank you!
