{"id":2883,"date":"2012-12-27T12:45:05","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T18:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=2883"},"modified":"2015-02-05T16:02:50","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T00:02:50","slug":"shortcut-directly-to-x-mas-about-the-x-spell-shortcut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2012\/12\/shortcut-directly-to-x-mas-about-the-x-spell-shortcut\/","title":{"rendered":"Shortcut directly to X-mas! (about the X-spell shortcut)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve ever played Magic Online, sooner or later you\u2019re going to experience the frustration of clicking too rapidly through an X spell, like <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Bonfire+of+the+Damned&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Bonfire of the Damned<\/a>, and ending up casting it for X=0. Luckily, in the real world we\u2019re a little more forgiving. If you cast an X spell without announcing the value for X, the Magic Tournament Rules prescribe a shortcut that assumes the value of X is whatever amount of mana is remaining floating in your mana pool. Tap a bunch of lands then say \u201cBonfire\u201d? That counts. If you&#8217;ve got mana floating in your mana pool from another effect like Battle Hymn, that counts too. If Arcane Melee\u2019s on the battlefield, factor in the cost reduction to whatever X is assumed to be. Magic is not a game of Gotcha, so no trying to be sneaky and claiming your opponent cast a spell for X=0 just because she didn&#8217;t verbally announce it!<\/p>\n<p>The other, perhaps even more important reason for the shortcut is to avoid people trying to be tricky. You can&#8217;t tap for 8 mana and just say &#8220;Fireball you!&#8221; then when they cast Mana Leak decide that you only cast the Fireball for 4 and you have 3 mana free to pay for that Mana Leak. You&#8217;re assumed to have cast it for 7. If you hadn&#8217;t, then you committed a game rule violation by not announcing your floating mana when you passed priority (yes, that&#8217;s a thing you have to do!).<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Tournament Tip written by Jen Wong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve ever played Magic Online, sooner or later you\u2019re going to experience the frustration of clicking too rapidly through an X spell, like , and ending up casting it for X=0. Luckily, in the real world we\u2019re a little more forgiving. If you cast an X spell without announcing the value for X, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29,234],"tags":[],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-2883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casting-playing-a-spell-ability","category-shortcuts","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2883"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4659,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883\/revisions\/4659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2883"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=2883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}