Have you ever had a Judge come over, point at some face-down card under your Fiend Hunter, and ask what it was? Have you ever had him ask you to flip it over? Here’s why. The default for things in the exile zone is to be face-up. They’re supposed to be somewhere that everyone can […]
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Fateful Hour can “turn on” in the midst of combat damage.
One of the most appealed rulings from GP Melbourne was about Fateful Hour becoming active in the middle of combat and saving creatures from dying. It’s understandable, as the interaction is a little bit more complex than your average combat trick. Let’s say I’m at 7 life and I control and . You attack me […]
How the Two-Headed Giant format works (two teams, but four players).
In the multiplayer variant called two-headed giant (2HG), two players comprise a team. While two players on a team attack and defend as a team and share a life total, they are still considered individual players. Any spells or abilities which reference an individual player only refer to one player on a team. Any spells […]
How to recognize an activated ability for Havengul Lich, Necrotic Ooze or Phyrexian Revoker
A common question that seems to pop up is how to tell the difference between Activated, Triggered and Static abilities. More specifically, what abilities will gain from dead creatures, what exactly can stop, and what abilities does get after you use him to do some necromancy. There’s an easy way to recognize different kinds of […]
Ratchet Bomb destroys most tokens, but not all of them.
Tokens created by a spell or triggered ability such as ’s golem token or ’ spirit tokens have no defined mana cost, and therefore have a converted mana cost (“CMC”) of zero. A activated with zero charge counters is more than adequate to wipe out a field of tokens generated in this manner. When a […]
The importance of proper shuffling.
Before the start of a game, it is very important to properly and sufficiently randomize (shuffle) your deck. To “randomize” means to shuffle the deck so that no player could have any knowledge about the approximate position of any particular card or the relative position of any group of cards. Usually, several mash shuffles is […]
Hellrider’s ability triggers when a creature attacks.
has an ability that triggers when a creature controlled by Hellrider’s controller attacks (this includes Hellrider itself). Like similar ‘whenever… attacks’ abilities, this ability triggers when attacking creatures are declared, and will resolve before blocking creatures are chosen. It is important to note that once this ability triggers, it will still resolve no matter what […]
Don’t offer anything in exchange for a concession or a draw.
Last week, the tournament tip explained how rolling a die to determine a game or match winner is not allowed. Just as you should not randomly determine a winner, you also should not offer anything to an opponent to connive them into conceding to you. Also, you should never accept an offer like this. If […]
The token put into play by Séance is exiled in the next end step.
is a very flavorful white enchantment from Dark Ascension that allows you to temporarily bring back creatures from your graveyard as spirits. As mentioned, this is temporary. Séance’s ability triggers at the beginning of each upkeep step. When this ability goes on the stack, the controller of Seance chooses a target creature card in his […]