There are no Game Loss penalties at Regular REL (FNM, Pre/Release Parties, Game Day, etc.).

Posted on May 8, 2012 by bimmerbot

For those of you that don’t know, there are different ‘rules enforcement levels’ (RELs) for Magic tournaments. The one we’ll talk about today is Regular REL. This is the level you can expect at most events; Prereleases, Release Parties, Game Days, FNMs, etc. At this REL, the Infraction Procedure Guide (the document that Judges use to determine penalties and fixes and all that jazz) is not used. The focus of Regular REL is fun, community and education. At this REL, there’s no mistake that gets you a Game Loss or a Match Loss (or even an official Warning).

There are basically two kinds of errors, which are spelled out by the “Judging at Regular REL” document. The vast majority of errors are simple to fix, so the judge will fix the problem, if possible, and remind each player to be more careful in the future. This is a Caution, not a Warning; it is unrecorded. While highly unusual, it is possible to earn yourself a Game Loss if you continuously make the same kind of error after the judge has asked you more than once to be careful about it. Most of the time the judge’s reminder is enough to clean up sloppy play, however.

The other category of errors are what we call VBT: Very Bad Things. For things like cheating, violence/aggressive behavior, theft, and other Very Bad Things, the player will be disqualified. The most common VBT that occurs is for new players (or players who are used to other games that encourage this behavior) who offer to roll a die or use some other random method to determine the winner of a match. This is strictly prohibited, and follows a zero-tolerance policy. Please never do this, and call a judge if you see someone else doing this!

Today’s Tournament Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM

Posted in Tournament Rules | Comments Off

You have to discard a card FIRST to activate Mad Prophet’s ability.

Posted on May 7, 2012 by bimmerbot


Mad Prophet has an activated ability that reads, “T, discard a card: Draw a card.” When activating an ability, all costs must be paid or it cannot be activated. Discarding a card is defined as moving a card from your hand to the graveyard. In this scenario, if you want to activate the ability, you must not only tap Mad Prophet, but move a card from your hand to the graveyard as well.

Remember that everything before the colon (:) in an ability is part of the activation cost, and everything after the colon is the effect of the ability. So if you can’t pay all the costs, you can’t activate the ability. If the Prophet’s ability simply said, “T: Discard a card, draw a card.” then you’d be able to pay the only cost (tapping the Prophet), and then do as much as possible as the effect resolves (you couldn’t discard a card, but you could still draw one afterwards). But unfortunately, that’s not how it works!

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Ronny Alvarado, Level 1 judge from Houston, TX

Posted in Activated Abilities, Costs | Tagged | Comments Off

A token that is “flickered” with Cloudshift is gone forever.

Posted on May 4, 2012 by bimmerbot


Yep: New Cards Week. If you haven’t guessed it by now, you don’t visit often enough! My fun card is Cloudshift. You can do a lot of fun things with it. You can chump block with a creature and blink it to keep it from taking or dealing damage; you can blink your attacker out of a sticky situation, or you can reuse enters-the-battlefield abilities.

But if you want to Cloudshift a token, you’re going to have a bad time. Normally, the thing that makes tokens not get along so well with zones other than the battlefield is that there’s a state-based action that says tokens that aren’t on the battlefield cease to exist. But SBAs aren’t checked in the middle of a spell or ability resolving, so theoretically, your token should come back… However, there’s a specific rule that says a token that’s left the battlefield cannot come back… ever. If such a token would try to return to the battlefield, it stays where it is instead, and will cease to exist the next time state-based actions are checked.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM

Posted in State-Based Actions, Zones | Tagged | Comments Off

You can’t pair your Angel’s Tomb to your Soulbond creature unless you control a third unpaired creature.

Posted on May 3, 2012 by bimmerbot


The most complicated new mechanic of Avacyn Restored is Soulbond. I had dozens of questions regarding Soulbond at my local prerelease, so I will try to explain how it works.

Soulbond basically means this: “When a creature with soulbond enters the battlefield, you may pair it with an unpaired creature you control. When another creature enters the battlefield under your control, if you control a creature with soulbond that isn’t currently paired, you may pair it with the new creature.” Note the use of the word pair — only 2 creatures can be paired; no more, no less.

An interesting situation can come up in AVR limited. Let’s say that you control a noncreature Angel’s Tomb and no other creatures. If you cast a Nearheath Pilgrim, its soulbond ability will not trigger when it enters the battlefield, because you don’t control any other unpaired. This is because the ability has an “intervening ‘if’ clause”, which stops the ability from triggering if the requirements are not met.

This scenario changes if you control a third unpaired creature and an Angel’s Tomb. If you order the triggers the right way, you can let the Tomb become a creature first, then (because soulbond doesn’t target anything, and you simply choose any unpaired creature you control as the ability resolves) you can pair the Pilgrim to the animated Angel’s Tomb. Of course, that pair will break when your turn ends and the Angel stops being a creature, but you can still gain your 3 life from the Angel’s lifelink.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Jorge Pinto, Level 1 judge from Santiago Chile

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

Desolate Lighthouse can’t work Miracles if you have no cards in your hand.

Posted on May 2, 2012 by bimmerbot


One of the most-asked questions with Miracle is whether you can cast it in the middle of a resolving spell or ability. You can’t do that because the ability that triggers when you reveal the card can’t go on the stack until a player would receive priority, which doesn’t happen until all parts of the spell or ability have been completed. If the Miracle card is no longer in your hand at that time, you can’t cast the card when then Miracle ability resolves.

So let’s say you activate Desolate Lighthouse on your opponent’s end step while your hand is empty. You eagerly look at the card you draw, and see that Bonfire of the Damned you really needed right now, and you gleefully reveal it. This triggers the Miracle ability, but you’re not done with the Lighthouse’s ability yet, so the Miracle trigger just floats in limbo. Now you discard a card. Since you have only one card in hand, you have to discard the currently revealed Bonfire of the Damned. NOW the Miracle ability can go on the stack, but you won’t be able to make any use of it, since the card is no longer in your hand.

So you probably never want to activate Desolate Lighthouse with an empty hand, unless you really just want to put the top card of your library into your graveyard!

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Josh Stansfield, Level 2 judge from Orange, CA

Posted in Activated Abilities, Priority, Resolving spells and abilities | Tagged , | Comments Off

A Miracle card must be cast in the same step you draw the card (even if it’s a sorcery).

Posted on April 29, 2012 by bimmerbot

When you draw your first card for the turn (usually in your draw step), you can reveal it as you draw it if it has the Miracle ability. When you do that, the ability triggers and goes on the stack as soon as you’re done with the action that let you draw the card. So under normal circumstances, you will be in the middle of your draw step when you get the chance to cast a Miracle card. This means you will have to use the resources you already have available to pay the Miracle cost, since you can’t play a land during your draw step or while the stack isn’t empty.

For example, if you’re on the draw, and on your first turn you draw Thunderous Wrath, you’ll be a sad panda. You can reveal the card if you want, but since you’re still in your draw step when the Miracle ability resolves, and you haven’t yet had a chance to play a land, you won’t be able to pay the Miracle cost of R… so the card will just stay in your hand. Sure, you’ll get to play a mountain once you get to your main phase, but now Thunderous Wrath costs 4RR, so it will be a while before you get to cast it.

Another example: If you draw Reforge the Soul, you’ll have to decide whether you want to cast it for 1R right away. Even though it’s a sorcery and you’re not normally able to cast those outside of your main phase, you get to ignore those pesky timing restrictions while Miracle is resolving. However, you can’t move to your main phase, cast that last creature in your hand, then pay 1R to cast Reforge the Soul. Once you pass up your chance to pay the Miracle cost as the Miracle ability is resolving, you never get that opportunity again… Reforge the Soul will cost you 3RR if you wait until your main phase to cast it.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Josh Stansfield, Level 2 judge from Orange, CA

Posted in Resolving spells and abilities, Static Abilities, Triggered Abilities, Turn Structure | Tagged , | Comments Off

Divine Deflection prevents and deals a TOTAL of X damage.

Posted on April 28, 2012 by bimmerbot


With the new card Divine Deflection, the wording can be a little misleading. While one might read it to mean that it prevents X damage to you AND X damage for each creature or planeswalker you control, then deals all that combined damage to whatever you targeted, it doesn’t quite work like that.

When you cast Divine Deflection, you choose a single target, which is what any prevented damage will then be dealt to. This sets up a “shield” for the next X damage that would be dealt to you and/or permanents you control. That’s a TOTAL of X damage, and you can decide which damage is going to be prevented the next time damage would be dealt to you or your creatures. Immediately after the damage is prevented, that same amount of damage is dealt to the target you chose as you cast Divine Deflection.

Examples help to clear things up! Let’s say your opponent casts Slagstorm, choosing to damage all creatures. You control three 3/3 creatures, and you cast Divine Deflection with X=3, and target your opponent. You now essentially have 3 “shields” to prevent 1 damage each. As Slagstorm resolves, you can choose how to divvy up those shields among your creatures. The most logical choice here is to apply 1 “shield” to each of your creatures, so they are dealt only 2 damage each and survive the Slagstorm, while your opponent is dealt 3 damage. (You don’t get to prevent 3 damage to EACH creature, and deal 9 damage to the opponent.)

When damage is prevented, Divine Deflection deals noncombat damage to whatever you targeted. So if you targeted a player, you could choose to redirect the damage it would deal to a planeswalker that player controls instead.

Another important distinction is that the source of the damage is Divine Deflection itself, rather than the source that had its damage prevented. This is different from a redirection effect, so even if damage from a lifelink or infect creature is prevented, the damage that is dealt by Divine Deflection will just be normal damage from a white source.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Josh Stansfield, Level 2 judge from Orange, CA

Posted in Planeswalkers, Prevention and Replacement Effects, Source | Tagged , | Comments Off

How the Heartless Summoning + Havengul Lich combo works.

Posted on April 27, 2012 by bimmerbot

As you might have guessed by now, we’re doing a special Combo Week this week! I got saddled with (in my opinion) the most hilarious combo in Standard right now: Heartless Lich. But how does it work?

First, you need to control Heartless Summoning and a Havengul Lich. You also need a Priest of Urabrask (either in the graveyard or in your hand).

  1. If your Priest is dead, pay 1 mana to activate the Lich, targeting your dead Priest (if the priest is in your hand, start at step 2).
  2. Pay R to cast the Priest (since Heartless Summoning makes it cost 2 less).
  3. Priest enters the battlefield as a 1/0, triggers, and dies. Its trigger gives you three red mana.
  4. Repeat steps 1-3.

Each iteration of this loop nets you a single red mana. So, you perform this loop an arbitrarily large number of times; we’ll say sixty-seven thousand. Now, you have 67,000 red mana. How does all that mana help you? The two most common ways to use it are:

  1. Cast Devil’s Play from your hand for 66,999 damage or from your graveyard for 66,697 damage. Or my favorite variant, ask him his birthday and deal that much damage. For example, I’d deal 8271990 to myself (of course, I’d have to repeat steps 1-3 another 8.2 million or so times)! Be sure to wish your opponent a Happy Birthday after killing them this way]. But that’s boring, birthday notwithstanding.
  2. Announce that you are casting Perilous Myr, for 0 mana thanks to your Heartless Summoning. It will enter the battlefield as a 0/0, die, and trigger to deal 2 damage to something. Now, use one of your red mana to activate Lich, and re-cast your Myr for 0 mana again. Boom! You have a never-ending supply of colorless shocks. Now, just use that supply to blast your opponent to death, 2 damage at a time.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM

Posted in Abilities, Activated Abilities, Shortcuts, Triggered Abilities | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

How the Phyrexian Metamorph + Leonin Relic-Warder + Suture Priest combo works.

Posted on April 26, 2012 by bimmerbot

One of my favorite cards in Standard is Suture Priest, and since this is Combo Week, I decided to talk about a combo that can make you gain an arbitrarily large amount of life using that card.

We need 3 cards to accomplish this: Suture Priest, Leonin Relic-Warder and Phyrexian Metamorph.

  • First, we must control at least one Suture Priest and one Leonin Relic-Warder.
  • The next step consists of copying the Relic-Warder with our Phyrexian Metamorph. When the copy enters the battlefield, its first ability triggers and you choose a target for it, and Suture Priest also triggers. Here is when the Artifact type of our Relic-Warder/Metamorph copy comes in handy, because it is a legal target for its own triggered ability, so it can exile itself.
  • When that ability resolves, the second ability of the just-exiled artifact Leonin Relic-Warder will trigger when it leaves the battlefield, and it will let you return the exiled card (itself) to the battlefield, allowing you to repeat the process as many times as you want.

It is important to remember that if you use a shortcut for this combo, you need to choose a number of iterations. “Infinity” is not a legal choice (but 176 quintillion is fine).

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Jorge Pinto, Level 1 judge from Santiago, Chile

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Why Knowledge Pool + Curse of Exhaustion locks your opponent out of casting spells from the hand.

Posted on April 25, 2012 by bimmerbot

As part of combo week, I’ve chosen to explain my personal favorite combo in standard: the Curse of Exhaustion + Knowledge Pool lock. First, let’s take a look at what these two cards do before we explain how the combo works.

Curse of Exhaustion is pretty simple; it restricts the number of spells your opponent can cast to just one per turn. So no Snapcaster Mage + Mana Leak shenanigans, plus it slows down aggro decks that like to quickly play everything in their hand, like Tempered Steel.

Knowledge Pool is a bit more tricky, and has a pair of triggered abilities. The first ability triggers when it enters the battlefield. Each player exiles the top three cards of his or her library, and those cards are placed under the knowledge pool to keep track of what it has exiled, since that is important for its second triggered ability.

The second ability triggers whenever a player casts a spell from his or her hand. It exiles that spell, and then then that player gets to cast another spell that has been previously exiled by the Knowledge Pool without paying its mana cost.

Together, these two cards lead to a pretty sticky situation for our opponent. With Curse of Exhaustion and Knowledge Pool on the field, any spell the opponent casts from the hand is exiled, and they may cast another spell exiled by the Knowledge Pool. Except they can’t, because of the “only cast one spell per turn” limit imposed by Curse of Exhaustion.

Just watch out for Ancient Grudge or Ray of Revelation. If the opponent manages to get one of those into his or her graveyard, that player will be able to flash it back to destroy a piece of your combo, because Knowledge Pool only triggers for spells cast from hands, not from graveyards.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Peter Golightly, Level 2 judge from Austin, TX

Posted in Abilities, Casting / playing a spell or ability, Continuous Effects, Static Abilities, Triggered Abilities | Tagged , | Comments Off