You have to mention your Pardic Dragon triggers when your opponent casts a spell.

Posted on June 18, 2013 by bimmerbot

Oops, I personally may have been guilty of this myself at our kitchen table 8-man MM draft. In that case, Pat, I apologize, it was late, I had a bit to drink… I should not have crushed you that game and made you quit Magic… my bad.

Since Paradic Dragon has a trigger which does so every time your opponent casts a spell, you have to announce that trigger whenever it goes on the stack. I know, you don’t want to, and you want them to miss it, but the trigger is owned by you and you cannot miss your own triggers on purpose. There’s no “default” option when it comes to your opponent choosing something, so you don’t get to just assume the opponent chose not to add a counter when you didn’t mention the trigger. You can, however, announce it, and ask them nicely if they would like the counter to be added or not… they do get a choice since it’s stated as a “may”.

Today’s Tournament Tip written by Eddie Cheung

Posted in Tournament Rules, Triggered Abilities | Tagged | Comments Off

Responding to Deathrite Shaman with Snapcaster Mage

Posted on June 17, 2013 by bimmerbot

Ahhh, the classic “Me firs- NO ME FIRST!” scenario in Magic. Remember folks, those who respond last, get to resolve first; a concept that NONE of the people in busy lines seem to grasp at my local amusement park.

Following that principal in Magic, Deathrite Shaman’s ability states that, “Hey, pay {B} and tap me, then I’ll get to eat an instant/sorcery card from a graveyard and shoot your opponent for 2!”, so once you pay its costs (aka, everything LEFT of the colon), the ability (Everything RIGHT of the colon), goes onto the stack.

Alas, going on the stack means your opponent can respond to it. And if they cast Mr. Snappy, giving that particular instant card flashback, and they then cast that card, it’ll resolve and be exiled due to flashback; we’re now left with Deathrite’s ability on the stack, targeting something that’s not there.

Since the ability has no legal target, it will be countered upon resolution. Deathrite won’t be able to hit your opponent for 2 life.

P.S. It may be more strategically sound to target a sorcery card instead, since they will not be able to cast it once it gains flashback due to the fact that your own Deathrite’s ability is still on the stack.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Eddie Cheung

Posted in Activated Abilities, Casting / playing a spell or ability | Tagged , | Comments Off

Stony Silence and Artifact Lands

Posted on June 14, 2013 by tnunez

To finish out this week’s Modern flair, let’s talk about a deck called Robots (or back in my crotchety Old Fogey days, “Affinity”). It uses lots of artifacts to make your opponent and his life total very sad. The Legacy version (and the original Standard version) made delightful use of the artifact lands like Great Furnace and Seat of the Synod pulling double duty thanks to Affinity for Artifacts. While those particular little nasties aren’t legal in Modern, they are in other formats where [card]Stony Silence[card] is often used to mess up the deck they’re in.

So how hard does the Silence shut down decks like Affinity? Pretty hard. Silence locks down the activated abilities of all artifacts, with no exceptions for mana abilities. That means a Stony Silence will render a playset of Great Furnaces pretty worthless since they can no longer tap for mana. They’re still there, they still count for Affinity, but you can’t use them to generate mana. And for the Nexi (in both the Blinkmoth Nexus and Inkmoth Nexus varieties), common inclusions in the archetype? Well, those don’t get hit as hard. They’re not artifacts normally, so you’re free to animate them to smack your opponent around, or tap them for mana… at least, until you activate them. Once you animate your Nexus it becomes an Artifact Creature Land – Blinkmoth, and that ‘artifact’ type means Silence starts working on it. You can still attack with the land (assuming it doesn’t have summoning sickness), but you won’t be able to animate it again that turn for whatever reason, nor can you tap it for mana. And if it’s an original Blinkmoth rather than an Inkmoth, it also won’t be able to tap to make a Blinkmoth bigger, because Silence starts working on it once you animate it. So, if you want your Nexus to make some mana AND be a dude, do it in that order!

That brings an end to Modern Week here at the Rules Tip blog. I hope we’ve helped you out with your potential stream of Modern Masters games, and I hope I’ll see some of you at GP Houston this weekend!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nunez

Posted in Abilities, Activated Abilities, Continuous Effects, Effects, Mana Abilities, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing | Tagged | Comments Off

Wall of Roots and +1/+1 Counters

Posted on June 13, 2013 by tnunez

There was a time when counters didn’t cancel each other out on the same permanent; you could have a bunch of +1/+1 counters and a few -1/-1 counters on a creature and they’d just co-exist happily on that creature, in case anything cared. With the Lorwyn block, that got changed up because it was a little confusing, and it also allowed you to do cool stuff like use +1/+1 counters to cancel out the -1/-1 counters from Persist, ‘resetting’ the creatures (or using -1/-1 counters to do the same with Undying, though that came a bit later!)

But it’s worth noting that this is the ONLY time counters cancel out. Blaze counter and Ice counter on the same Dark Depths? That’s fine. Your Wall of Roots shrunk for mana production over the past few turns, and you want to try and cancel that out with Sacred Boon or Living Armor? No dice. Sleep and Awakening counters, Despair and Devotion counters, Healing and Death counters, no matter how silly they seem together, they do NOT cancel out. Only +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters cancel, and only with each other. So you’re not gonna be able to ‘reset’ your Wall of Roots with any sort of counters! Not with +0/+1, not with +1/+1, not with Fungus, etc, etc.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nunez

Posted in Abilities, Activated Abilities, Mana Abilities, State-Based Actions | Tagged | Comments Off

Blood Moon and Dryad Arbor

Posted on June 12, 2013 by tnunez

Modern Madness continues, if you hadn’t caught onto this week’s theme. Since the manabases in Modern can get greedy with their shocks and fetches and other color-providing wonder, Blood Moon is a common sideboard hate card to punish those greedy manabases. A whole board of colorfixing goodness, turned into nearly worthless Mountains for the low low price of 2R! But how does it interact with weird lands, like Dryad Arbor, the Forest whose bark IS its bite?

Well, to find out, we look at the layers! Blood Moon does its work in Layer 4, where it sets the subtype of “Mountain” to the exclusion of all others; and also in Layer 6, where it adds the ability to tap for R, and removes the ability to… do much of anything else, really. So, let’s look at Dryad Arbor. In Layer 4, the Blood Moon scratches out “Forest” and substitutes Mountain instead, and in layer 6 we swap out the ability to tap for green mana for the ability to tap for red. The end result is a 1/1 green Land Creature – Mountain Dryad that taps for red mana.

Posted in Continuous Effects, Effects, Interaction of Continuous Effects, Type & Subtypes, Type Changing, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off

Tournament Tuesday: Dark Confidant at Competitive REL

Posted on June 11, 2013 by tnunez

As expected, Modern Masters has created quite a stir, and we’re looking at GP Las Vegas in just a couple of weeks, where Modern Masters sealed will be the format. On top of that, there’s plenty of people drafting their MM boxes right now, and a lot of people looking to get into the format to see what all the fuss is about. One card you’re very likely to see a lot of in this format is Dark Confidant, Bob Maher’s invitational card. It can hurt you a ton, but in a properly built deck it’s just a great value engine. What we’re going to address today is what happens if you miss his fun little trigger at the Competitive Rules Enforcement Level (Or REL), which is the REL you’ll be seeing at events such as Grand Prix, Grand Prix Trials, Pro Tour Qualifiers, and the like.

As you may know, the rules on triggers have been tossed up a little bit in the past year or so, while the rules gurus try to tinker out a way that is intuitive as possible. It used to be that if you missed a trigger of any sort you just flat out missed it, and both you and your opponent were penalized. Nowadays, there’s only a penalty for ANYONE if the trigger is considered ‘generally detrimental’. Most anyone would agree that Bob’s trigger is something you WANT to happen most of the time, so it isn’t generally detrimental. What this means is that if you goof up and miss your trigger, you shouldn’t have to worry about a penalty for it (unless it starts happening a lot, but we’ll get to that in a moment).

The next notable difference due to policy change is WHEN the trigger is considered missed. It varies from trigger to trigger, but for Confidant’s, you have to acknowledge it pretty quickly since it changes the visible game state (life totals and cards in hand, notably). That means you’ve ‘missed’ it once you take an action that you couldn’t have taken until you move past it, like changing steps. Pretty much once you draw your card for the turn, it’s too late and you missed it. But what if your opponent would prefer you NOT miss it? For example, you’re down to 3 or 4 life and might get blasted by your own trigger. Well, your opponent can decide to put it onto the stack! A judge should be called for this to make sure everything goes down right, but whenever a trigger is missed, it’s up to the opponent to decide whether to put that trigger onto the bottom of the stack the moment it’s caught, or just not let it happen. So don’t be surprised if your opponent ‘allows’ you to have a Confidant trigger you missed if it might be bad for you. But you -cannot- ‘forget’ your trigger on purpose! It’s not an optional thing. It’s perfectly okay to space out and just rip a card from the top of your deck, people are human. But it’s not okay for you to intentionally ‘forget’ about your trigger because you’re getting low on life. That’s Cheating, and that’s bad!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nunez

Posted in Abilities, Resolving spells and abilities, Tournament Rules, Triggered Abilities | Tagged | Comments Off

Melira and Inkmoth Nexus

Posted on June 10, 2013 by tnunez

Infect! Quite the polarizing mechanic in most areas, it was either considered laughably bad or stupidly broken depending on who you were talking to. It’s gained some traction lately with eggs-in-one-basket rush decks, especially in Modern, and it’s possible you might run into a Pod deck running Melira, Sylvok Outcast and you want to know how it interacts with your guys. For the most part: badly. Melira will strip away their Infect, meaning they just do regular old normal damage to stuff. Your Blighted Agent or Glistener Elf will need to connect for 20 instead of just 10!

But wait, you may say. Why does Melira have the ‘redundant’ effect of stopping poison counters if she already stops infect? For one, it stops proliferation of counters. For two, and probably more relevant, it means that if you manage to give Infect to one of your creatures post-Melira (which, due to the magic of Timestamps, will actually give it Infect)… it’ll be even more useless than before. So, for example, Inkmoth Nexus. Nexus can animate itself, and in doing so it grows some wings and some fangs. The “I have infect” effect it creates in layer 6 is newer than “you totally don’t have Infect” from Melira in the same layer, so it ‘wins’. However, that means that the damage it deals does pretty much nothing! Since your opponent can’t get poison counters, your creature will connect and deal 2 or 3 or whatever damage (and stuff that cares about damage being dealt will see that, like lifelink); but the damage doesn’t DO anything. It’s from a source with infect so it should add poison counters rather than take away life, but your opponent flat out cannot HAVE poison counters put on him, so nothing much happens!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nunez

Posted in Abilities, Activated Abilities, Characteristics, Continuous Effects, Effects, Interaction of Continuous Effects, Keywords, Static Abilities | Tagged , | Comments Off

Punish the Enemy can resolve with only one target

Posted on June 7, 2013 by tnunez

When casting a spell, you have to select a legal target for each instance of the word “target” in that spell.  So for Punish the Enemy, you need to be able to target both one creature and one player to cast it — although the creature doesn’t have to be controlled by the player you targeted, and vice versa.  If your opponent has hexproof, you can target yourself, but you can’t choose to just deal 3 damage to your opponent’s creature.

On the other hand, when the spell tries to resolve,  the spell does as much as it can to the targets that are still legal.  As long as one target is still legal, the spell will still resolve, even if all the rest are now illegal.  As a concrete example, if you target your opponent and your opponent’s Bear Cub, and your opponent gives the Bear Cub protection from red in response, Punish the Enemy will still punish your opponent for 3.  Not bad!

Today’s Rules Tip written by Paul Baranay

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Pit Fight Won’t Trigger Blaze Commando

Posted on June 6, 2013 by tnunez

Blaze Commando is a Minotaur Soldier, which is a pretty sweet creature type you don’t see every day.  He also has an triggered ability you don’t see very often, one that triggers whenever an instant or sorcery spell you control deals damage.

 

This trigger is a little tricky to understand, but the important thing to realize is that whenever a spell or ability deals damage, that spell will specify where the damage is coming from (formally, the “source” of the damage).  For many spells, the source of damage is the spell itself, like with Pillar of Flame.

However, some spells will cause other cards to deal damage.  As an example, Pit Fight causes two creatures to fight and damage each other.  Pit Fight itself doesn’t actually deal any damage, so Blaze Commando won’t trigger.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Paul Baranay

Posted in Abilities, Triggered Abilities | Tagged | Comments Off

Understanding Possibility Storm

Posted on June 5, 2013 by tnunez

Oh, the possibilities! Possibility Storm is already a favorite of mine because of the sheer hilarity and chaos it can cause. It’s also seeing play in several EDH decks for that same reason, and even made an appearance at the most recent Pro Tour due to its ability to blank Sphinx’s Revelation in some matchups. So with the possibility that you’ll run into this card on the rise, let’s go over some weird stuff that can happen. First off: the reason it blanked those Revelations! What happens if you flip into an X spell, like Revelation? The rules tell us that if you’re casting a spell without paying the mana cost, you must declare X to be 0. It doesn’t matter if you’d rather pay than get it for free, you don’t have that option!

What do you do if there are no other cards of the type (for example, you only have one Jace in your deck and it triggers the Storm)? Simple: you flip through the whole entire deck, and then you just shuffle up the ‘exiled cards’ (which currently consists of your deck + the original spell) and put it all back. Pseudo-Hinder! And what happens if the original spell is countered before the Possibility Storm trigger resolves, or if you control 2 Possibility Storms? Fun happens, is what. The trigger doesn’t actually need the card to be present to work, so if the original spell is countered somehow before the Storm trigger, you’ll still flip through the deck using the last-known information about the spell. Ditto if you have two Storms: the first will flip through until you hit an appropriate card, and you’ll put the original spell and the other cards back on the bottom in a random order, and cast the revealed card. Then the second trigger resolves, and you flip through to get another spell (which could very well be the spell that triggered your Storms in the first place!)

Lastly, double-types. You’ll mostly see this with Artifact Creatures, but you may also see it with some Tribal cards from Lorwyn, or with Lucent Liminid in some wacky decks; the types don’t need to match exactly. If a Storm triggers off my Solemn Simulacrum, I don’t have to keep going until I hit an Artifact Creature; just until I find an Artifact OR a Creature. Ditto for the Tribals; a Bitterblossom can Storm me into a Pacifism or into an All is Dust. Speaking of dual-types, your artifact lands and your Dryad Arbors will not trigger Storm (as they aren’t spells!) and since Storm uses the “cast” wording rather than “play”, you won’t be able to play them if you reveal them off of an Artifact or Creature spell, respectively. In fact, while Storm lets you dodge some timing restrictions (such as turning a flash-creature such as Snapcaster Mage into a non-flash creature like Delver of Secrets during someone else’s turn), it won’t let you ignore restrictions like the one on Master Warcraft telling you when it’s okay to cast the spell. In a case where the revealed card can’t be cast for whatever reason, you just put it back like the original spell and the other exiled cards, and then you frown.

So, there’s some common things that could easily crop up with your Possibility Storms, and now you guys know how to deal with it! And knowing is half the battlefield.

Today’s rules tip written by Trevor Nunez

Posted in Abilities, Casting / playing a spell or ability, Resolving spells and abilities, Triggered Abilities, Type & Subtypes | Tagged | Comments Off