Really, the first one.

Whenever Magic involves drawing cards, it’s actually done as individual actions, so when it says to draw 3, it means “draw 1, draw 1, draw 1″ in principal. Hence, you have to reveal each of them when Future Sight is in play.

So when Blood Scrivener‘s replacement effect takes place and changes your “draw 1″ into “draw 2″, two “draw 1” actually takes place instead of the “draw 2”. So draw 1, check if it’s a miracle; if not, draw another 1. If the second card is a miracle, I’m sorry, because that’s not the first card you’ve drawn this turn.

If the first one IS a miracle, however, you can reveal it so the miracle ability triggers. Then you leave that card revealed while you draw the next card. After you’re done will all the card drawing you were supposed to do, the miracle trigger goes on the stack and can resolve.

It’s simple. Whenever you draw a miracle card, you ask yourself, “Have I already drawn a card before this during this turn?”

Today’s Rules Tip written by Eddie Cheung

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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