by Finite
DaviddesJ wrote:
vonklaude wrote:
There are some quite elegant alternatives to this, but they are not 'simpler'.
My "ludology" is vastly simpler. Crystal Mastery gives me back the crystals I spend, therefore I can spend crystals. Take the crystal, use it as mana, it's spent. Problem solved.
Your ludology goes on for pages and seems to mostly generate wrong answers. It just seems like not very good ludology.
Klaude makes a point that his approach is simpler than in electronic format so it actually might be what Vlaada intended. "Immediate use" concept is at least awkward in cases where you need to use crystals to play several cards to produce mana for a single effect, like to "pay" on a ruin.
That said, the absolutely simplest way would be to have Crystal Mastery return whatever crystals you had at some point in the turn but no longer have. The second simplest way is to count out some cases of losing crystals out of this, like them getting stolen or used on Sacrifice.
I feel that all the 4 options I listed earlier are possible so it is down to official word (and outside those options, in theory also crystals getting stolen could count as spent in the most uniform approach).
Do not read this unless vague theorizing about rules/wordings interests you:
Even if you two agree on word "spend", we could also consider what usually is covered by that word... Like is burning money considered "spending" it? I do know that there are applications to word "spend" that translate to expenditure/consumption without considering if you get something in return or not (like government spending)... But discussing this is indeed not going to lead to any solution =)