We’re making a small change to the rules for missed triggers and how they are acknowledged in order to make them flow a little better.

Right now, the requirement is that the trigger be acknowledged some time between it triggering and having impact on the game state. That works well most of the time, but for a certain class of triggers – those in which you take some physical action on resolution – it produces a strange result. To fix this, when you have one of these triggers, it is now acknowledged by taking the action at the appropriate time.

So, for example, you have a trigger that says “At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.” Under the old rules, you could move to your turn, say “trigger” (or, for even more ambiguity, “triggers”) then forget to actually do anything and when this was realized later on (say, in the middle of combat), it would be a mess to sort out. Now, simply saying “trigger” isn’t sufficient; you have to actually add the counters.

The requirements for triggers that target, triggers that change the rules of the game and triggers that don’t do anything visible have not changed. For those, simply acknowledging them on or before the appropriate time is sufficient.

Obviously we keep a very close eye on the rules for missed triggers and we’ll monitor this change carefully. In the meantime, look forward to seeing you all at an event soon!