Those of you who drafted Magic 2014 might have remembered kind of a weird ruling involving Frost Breath. Let’s say I cast a Frost Breath targeting two of your creatures. In response, you gave one of those creatures hexproof. When Frost Breath resolved, it wouldn’t tap the creature with hexproof, but the Breath would still affect it and prevent it from untapping during its controller’s next untap step…

That doesn’t really make much sense, right? I mean, the creature had hexproof, so why would the Breath still prevent it from untapping? Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when you were studiously browsing the Born of the Gods Release Notes (people do that, right?) and scrolled down to Sudden Storm, which is pretty much Frost Breath with some scry thrown in. When you read the rulings for that card, you might have been a little confused. One of the rulings said that if one of the targets was no longer legal when the Storm resolves, then it wouldn’t become tapped and it would untap like normal.

So what happened? Well, the rules team looked at the situation with Frost Breath and they agreed that the ruling wasn’t very intuitive. The creature wasn’t a legal target, but Frost Breath still affected it. So with the release of Born of the Gods, the rules changed a bit. Now, Sudden Storm and Frost Breath will not affect an illegal target in any way – it won’t become tapped, and it will untap like normal. So feel free to protect your creatures from Frost Breath or Sudden Storm with your Ranger’s Guile. They’ll be much more protected now.

Note that this only matters for cards with more than one target, because if a card with a single target has that target become illegal before resolution, the spell will be completely countered and it won’t do anything at all.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long