{"id":3659,"date":"2013-08-26T18:06:45","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T01:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=3659"},"modified":"2015-02-05T15:54:03","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T23:54:03","slug":"kaalia-of-the-vast-and-master-of-cruelties-yes-it-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2013\/08\/kaalia-of-the-vast-and-master-of-cruelties-yes-it-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaalia of the Vast and Master of Cruelties — yes, it works."},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaalia of the Vast<\/a> is a very popular commander, thanks to her ability to summon hordes of Angels, Dragons, and Demons to her side.

<\/p><\/p>\n

One of Kaalia’s best Demon buddies is Master of Cruelties<\/a>, the marquee Rakdos mythic from Dragon’s Maze<\/em>. \u00a0Master of Cruelties has a very particular attacking restriction: if he attacks, he can only attack alone, which means no other creature can legally be declared as an attacker with him. (However, he doesn’t have to attack each turn.)<\/p>\n

Kaalia’s ability, however, provides savvy players a way around this. \u00a0When Kaalia attacks and her ability resolves, you can put Master of Cruelties “onto the battlefield tapped and attacking.” \u00a0Because you never declared him as an attacker, his attacking restriction is ignored.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s well and good, but what about Master of Cruelties’ last ability? \u00a0As we can see by the word “whenever” at the beginning, it’s a triggered ability. \u00a0The trigger condition is met if “Master of Cruelties attacks a player and isn’t blocked.” \u00a0We already said that Master of Cruelties was never actually declared as an attacker, so you might think that this ability cannot trigger. \u00a0However, this trigger’s wording is deceptive. \u00a0It actually cares about whether or not the Master is blocked.<\/p>\n

<\/p>If your opponent neglects to block the Master of Cruelties, his ability will trigger and promptly reduce your opponent’s life total to 1. \u00a0Then, when combat damage is dealt, Kaalia will deal 2 damage herself.<\/p>\n

Ding! One-hit KO!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Rules Tip written by Paul Baranay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaalia of the Vast + Master of Cruelties + No Blocks = One-Hit KO!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[1003,1004],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-combatphase","category-triggeredabilities","tag-kaalia-of-the-vast","tag-master-of-cruelties","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","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\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4554,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions\/4554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}