Today we’ll be covering Signal the Clans, a neat rare from Gatecrash that has more than a few people scratching their heads on how to properly light the Bat-Signal. When you Signal the Clans, you search through your deck for three creatures. But, you don’t get all of them, and you don’t even get to pick which one you get! You have to find three creatures with different names in order to get one of them, and even then it’s random.
Why is it worded like that? Well, you can blame the somewhat odd wording of Signal on an old favorite, Gifts Ungiven. Gifts had you search for four cards with different names, reveal them, then your opponent would pick 2 to put into your graveyard and you got the other two. Thing is, because of the rules on searching a hidden zone [like a library] for cards of a stated quality [like ‘they have different names’], you can ‘fail to find’, even if there are cards of that quality, even if your opponent knows for a fact there’s cards TO find. So, with Gifts, you could find only 2 cards and stick them both into the graveyard.
That’s why Signal is worded the way it is; it ONLY works if you find three creatures. So while it’s totally legal to ‘fail to find’ and only pick up one creature, you won’t get it. On top of that, the ‘different names’ clause means you can’t just pick up three Thragtusks to guarantee you get one.
Now, we’ll run through a quick little ‘tutorial’ of how to Signal the Clans properly. You search your library, and find three creature cards with different names [we’ll say Thragtusk, Thundermaw Hellkite, and Huntmaster of the Fells]. You reveal those three to prove that they meet the criteria, and then you randomly pick one. One good way to do this is to shuffle the three and lay them on the table, then roll a die. For this scenario, we’ll say you roll a d6, with each card having 2 numbers assigned to it [1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6]. So you roll a 5, pick the third card, and put it into your hand. Many players instinctively put the cards face-down when doing this, but there’s really no good reason to do that if you’re using a die to randomly choose a card out of three revealed cards anyway. All players get to see which creature you got anyway, and then the other two cards are shuffled into your library.
Today’s Rules Tip written by Trevor Nunez