Welcome to our special Christmas Eve edition of Tournament Tuesday, and possibly the most festive entry in our Missed Trigger series! Today we’ll be going over another type of trigger and how the Missed Trigger rules work with that type: triggers that change the rules of the game. What kind of trigger would change the actual rules, you might ask? The go-to example is Pyreheart Wolf. This little fuzzball from Dark Ascension changes the rules with his trigger- once that trigger resolves, your opponent can’t block your attacking creatures unless they do so with 2 or more blockers per attacker. That’s not how Magic normally works, but Pyreheart CHANGES that!

So, how do we deal with it? We know from the past few weeks that the ‘timeframe’ you have to notice/mention your own trigger is pretty much ‘once it matters’. Well, that’s the same here, as well. You don’t need to bring up your Pyreheart’s trigger until it matters- namely, until your opponent doesn’t follow the new rules that the trigger created. You can keep mum about the trigger until your opponent tries to block, and you’re fine. Just let your opponent know that they need to be blocking with 2+ creatures and the trigger isn’t missed, because that’s the first time it MATTERED. If you let your opponent block with just one creature, you’ve missed your trigger there.

Pyreheart and other rule-changing triggers pretty much follow the same pattern as the ones we’ve already covered: you don’t need to ‘demonstrate awareness’ until the trigger would actually matter. Just remember that, and you should be fine!

Today’s Tournament Tip written by Trevor Nunez