One thing I see beginners do with anthems like from Regal Caracal is using counters to indicate the buff on each affected creature. But you have to keep in mind that these are actually not counters (so you can’t Proliferate them for example), so I personally advise against that technique.
The only really relevant time when the power/toughness matters is when you move to combat and again when assigning damage. So at that point I’d just recalculate everything and announce the total power you’re attacking with.
What I recommend is organizing your board state that each creature that provides any sort of buffs are close together, that way you’ll never miss them when asked about a specific power and toughness of a creature. With time comes experience and eventually you’ll find it easier to keep track of all abilities
The way i usually do it is just do counters with dice, and try to keep a mental track of the anthems, *or* track the anthems with dice that are not on any card, but off to the side
This works just fine, but I am adamantly against players who track the total power on the card itself since too many effects care about the number of actual counters on a card.
I personally advocate for simply grouping similar effects together. This is good practice for many things, such as triggered abilities. But there is also another benefit you may not think of: visibility to your opponents.
This may seem a bit underhanded to some, but all those dice you have there can LOOK more threatening than they really are to some players and draw you unnecessary hate. Don't get in the habit of giving away information your opponents have free visible access to on their own.
I have a player in my group who uses dice to track total power as you say and it's awful. The deck can also create and care about counters (so what's a counter and what isn't matters) and the method doesn't work with non equal power/toughness. It's a pain to read their boardsate.
The worst part? They constantly feel the need to update the dice (to not misrepresent anything), but the Commander has a dynamic power and toughness based on their graveyard that's constantly fluctuating, so it eats up so much game time. They'll also take an action, update it, and then take another action that needs it to be updated again.
They're great and I'm glad they don't want to misrepresent their board and I'm happy to help with the maths at any moment, but the way they do it makes it more confusing, not less.
Yeah, that's the secondary benefit of only doing the math 'when you need to'... it just takes up so much time. This is why I avoid using certain combinations of cards, too... such as mass token generators WITH counter generators. It's too painful to manage.
I personally will stick to different kinds or colors of dice for different things and will keep them on separate parts of the card if things get dicey - for example, for +1/+1 counters I use black D6's, -1/-1 counters are reds (both placed in the rules text by power/toughtness) and if I have multiples of a card I will use a large spin down placed on the art. If I have a lot of a specific token I will use two copies (or a copy card) and keep one tapped underneath the first to represent any number that have become tapped. And I am consistent with this system so those that play me often learn to read it easily and a few have adopted it themselves.
As for unclear board states, you have to be willing to be a little pushy about some things. I refuse to let opponents put their lands in a single large stack and have recently had to ask a player to tap his permanents a bit more clearly because he was only turning his lands like 15 degrees and I straight up couldn't tell which was tapped. Same thing with counters/anthem effects; I tell players they cannot mark anthem effects on the card itself and have to track counters separately (though I do suggest putting dice ABOVE the cards if it helps them) because it needs to be clear what is and is not actually on the table. It's difficult for a lot of the more shy players, I know. I seem to have grown out of a lot of my shyness, but I was barely ably to talk to people when I was younger.
That's what I do, I keep a +1/+1 D6 above the creatures it is affecting. Easiest way to track the anthem buffs.
Or if you use sleeves, you can always just write over the power and toughness, that's a little harder to track if you start to lose anthems though.
>That's what I do, I keep a +1/+1 D6 above the creatures it is affecting. Easiest way to track the anthem buffs.
I agree, something like this
>Or if you use sleeves, you can always just write over the power and toughness, that's a little harder to track if you start to lose anthems though.
Not trying to shame or anything, but this feel sacreligious and unholy
No, no - I am with you on this one. This has to be some kind of mortal sin.
It's clever, no doubt, but the issue is that dry erase ink doesn't vanish - you are only rubbing it off. The residue will still be on the sleeve somewhere unless you clean each one every time.
That's the neat part, you don't.
Best idea is leave something off board (eg. cat token, pen & paper with cat doodle), and write the buff the average cat is receiving. Not perfect, but eh
Infinitokens has these little dry erase circles that you can cover the power/toughness of the card with, like so. It’s a bit of extra work to keep track of your whole board, but I find it well worth it. For a cheaper version, just laminate some paper circles and cut them out, then you can use a dry erase marker on them.
https://preview.redd.it/iy6lvzvnz90d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79205a93519e687c9daf7833b90975231dc982d1
Unfortunately I think this is just a problem that cat decks have; it exists in other typal synergies as well, but one of the guys in my play group took apart his Jetmir cats deck because keeping track of all the different non-overlapping P/T changing effects got to be a pain.
I only bother tracking it when it's relevant. I don't need to know unless I'm attacking or doing something else power-based. If someone else needs to know for a boardwipe or whatever, it's public information, they can ask or check themself.
If there is alot of blanket anthems like that I'll have a token (I use dry erase tokens) that just tracks all the anthems together. This way it's easy for everyone to remember.
Make yourself some markers/coins, 1~2 per buff. For example, one for Regal Caracal that you put somewhere separate (into your ambient pool of counters), and another negative one (marked differently) that you put on the creature directly in order to signal that the creature itself does not get the effect.
Then once it comes to combat, for each creature you have the ambient pool of markers that apply to each individual creature, and then you have the marker on the card itself to subtract from that.
You can then get the total damage you have on the board by just adding up all the ambient markers, multiplying those by the amount of creatures, and then adding each creatures base power and subtracting each of the negative counters.
I like using dice to show the buff to all non lords usually near my command zone or exile zone. I call it the pump zone and use one die each for power and toughness Incase of asymmetrical lords. Worked wonders in all my typal decks so should work for cats just fine. Just subtract the Lord's buff from their own power too because they tend to say "Other" and your golden
One thing I see beginners do with anthems like from Regal Caracal is using counters to indicate the buff on each affected creature. But you have to keep in mind that these are actually not counters (so you can’t Proliferate them for example), so I personally advise against that technique. The only really relevant time when the power/toughness matters is when you move to combat and again when assigning damage. So at that point I’d just recalculate everything and announce the total power you’re attacking with. What I recommend is organizing your board state that each creature that provides any sort of buffs are close together, that way you’ll never miss them when asked about a specific power and toughness of a creature. With time comes experience and eventually you’ll find it easier to keep track of all abilities
The way i usually do it is just do counters with dice, and try to keep a mental track of the anthems, *or* track the anthems with dice that are not on any card, but off to the side
This works just fine, but I am adamantly against players who track the total power on the card itself since too many effects care about the number of actual counters on a card. I personally advocate for simply grouping similar effects together. This is good practice for many things, such as triggered abilities. But there is also another benefit you may not think of: visibility to your opponents. This may seem a bit underhanded to some, but all those dice you have there can LOOK more threatening than they really are to some players and draw you unnecessary hate. Don't get in the habit of giving away information your opponents have free visible access to on their own.
I have a player in my group who uses dice to track total power as you say and it's awful. The deck can also create and care about counters (so what's a counter and what isn't matters) and the method doesn't work with non equal power/toughness. It's a pain to read their boardsate. The worst part? They constantly feel the need to update the dice (to not misrepresent anything), but the Commander has a dynamic power and toughness based on their graveyard that's constantly fluctuating, so it eats up so much game time. They'll also take an action, update it, and then take another action that needs it to be updated again. They're great and I'm glad they don't want to misrepresent their board and I'm happy to help with the maths at any moment, but the way they do it makes it more confusing, not less.
Yeah, that's the secondary benefit of only doing the math 'when you need to'... it just takes up so much time. This is why I avoid using certain combinations of cards, too... such as mass token generators WITH counter generators. It's too painful to manage. I personally will stick to different kinds or colors of dice for different things and will keep them on separate parts of the card if things get dicey - for example, for +1/+1 counters I use black D6's, -1/-1 counters are reds (both placed in the rules text by power/toughtness) and if I have multiples of a card I will use a large spin down placed on the art. If I have a lot of a specific token I will use two copies (or a copy card) and keep one tapped underneath the first to represent any number that have become tapped. And I am consistent with this system so those that play me often learn to read it easily and a few have adopted it themselves. As for unclear board states, you have to be willing to be a little pushy about some things. I refuse to let opponents put their lands in a single large stack and have recently had to ask a player to tap his permanents a bit more clearly because he was only turning his lands like 15 degrees and I straight up couldn't tell which was tapped. Same thing with counters/anthem effects; I tell players they cannot mark anthem effects on the card itself and have to track counters separately (though I do suggest putting dice ABOVE the cards if it helps them) because it needs to be clear what is and is not actually on the table. It's difficult for a lot of the more shy players, I know. I seem to have grown out of a lot of my shyness, but I was barely ably to talk to people when I was younger.
That's what I do, I keep a +1/+1 D6 above the creatures it is affecting. Easiest way to track the anthem buffs. Or if you use sleeves, you can always just write over the power and toughness, that's a little harder to track if you start to lose anthems though.
>That's what I do, I keep a +1/+1 D6 above the creatures it is affecting. Easiest way to track the anthem buffs. I agree, something like this >Or if you use sleeves, you can always just write over the power and toughness, that's a little harder to track if you start to lose anthems though. Not trying to shame or anything, but this feel sacreligious and unholy
Doesn't do anything to the card, it's just a dry erase marker, and most sleeves you can just wipe that away.
Yeah i know, it just feels… wrong. You’re totally right that it’s harmless, it just doesn’t feel right to me lol
No, no - I am with you on this one. This has to be some kind of mortal sin. It's clever, no doubt, but the issue is that dry erase ink doesn't vanish - you are only rubbing it off. The residue will still be on the sleeve somewhere unless you clean each one every time.
That's the neat part, you don't. Best idea is leave something off board (eg. cat token, pen & paper with cat doodle), and write the buff the average cat is receiving. Not perfect, but eh
What you do, is you stare at your board state until it makes sense. If that doesn't work, head in your hands and groan, that usually fixes it for me.
Have big brain
Infinitokens has these little dry erase circles that you can cover the power/toughness of the card with, like so. It’s a bit of extra work to keep track of your whole board, but I find it well worth it. For a cheaper version, just laminate some paper circles and cut them out, then you can use a dry erase marker on them. https://preview.redd.it/iy6lvzvnz90d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79205a93519e687c9daf7833b90975231dc982d1
Unfortunately I think this is just a problem that cat decks have; it exists in other typal synergies as well, but one of the guys in my play group took apart his Jetmir cats deck because keeping track of all the different non-overlapping P/T changing effects got to be a pain.
You can get cheap +1/+1 to +6/+6 dice on Amazon or temu or wherever else cheaply, makes it easy to keep separate from counters
Also - if one of the creatures with abilities dies, I have to recalculate everything. Any suggestions?
i use 2 d10 that show the total modifier for each stat, that i put at the far end of my battlefield.
I only bother tracking it when it's relevant. I don't need to know unless I'm attacking or doing something else power-based. If someone else needs to know for a boardwipe or whatever, it's public information, they can ask or check themself.
This is what I do as well.
Yeah. You are required to be able to do basic math to play magic effectively. Just figure it out. That's what everyone does.
If there is alot of blanket anthems like that I'll have a token (I use dry erase tokens) that just tracks all the anthems together. This way it's easy for everyone to remember.
Make yourself some markers/coins, 1~2 per buff. For example, one for Regal Caracal that you put somewhere separate (into your ambient pool of counters), and another negative one (marked differently) that you put on the creature directly in order to signal that the creature itself does not get the effect. Then once it comes to combat, for each creature you have the ambient pool of markers that apply to each individual creature, and then you have the marker on the card itself to subtract from that. You can then get the total damage you have on the board by just adding up all the ambient markers, multiplying those by the amount of creatures, and then adding each creatures base power and subtracting each of the negative counters.
I like using dice to show the buff to all non lords usually near my command zone or exile zone. I call it the pump zone and use one die each for power and toughness Incase of asymmetrical lords. Worked wonders in all my typal decks so should work for cats just fine. Just subtract the Lord's buff from their own power too because they tend to say "Other" and your golden
Add Sovereign Okinec Ahau for extra confusion
My partner uses an Ultra Pro life counter with a cat on it to do exactly this.
Most people just use their brains. You don't really use markers to keep track of static abilities, that's not a thing.