Magic is a game of playing spells and abilities, interacting with them, and dealing with the results of them. How does this all work, and what happens during this process?

When played, spells and abilities go into a zone called the stack until they resolve. At this point, each player can respond to that spell or ability, right? Not quite yet! Before that can happen, the game has some housekeeping to do!

The first thing that happens is that the game checks for anything that needs to be done based on the game state. These particular actions are referred to, rather unsurprisingly, as State-Based Actions (SBAs). There is a vast list of these, but the most common of these are things like a creature with zero toughness being placed into its owner’s graveyard, an aura not attached to anything is placed into its owner’s graveyard, ‘extra’ Legendary permanents or Planeswalkers being put into their owners’ graveyards,  and so on.

Now can we take other actions? Nope, not yet! Now the game looks to see what has happened since the last time a player had priority and checks whether the trigger condition for any triggered abilities were met by the preceding events–including playing the spell or ability and any SBAs that the game handled. If so, those triggered abilities are placed on the stack. Abilities go on the stack in Active Player/Non-Active Player (APNAP) order, or if there are multiple abilities controlled by a single player, that player can choose the order they go onto the stack.

Finally, after all this has happened, players may respond by playing MORE spells or abilities. Often in a game of Magic, these events are all handled transparently–but sometimes it is important to keep these processes in mind. You don’t want to be caught by surprise when things happen!

Today’s Rules Tip written by
David Hibbs, Level 3 judge from League City, TX