MTG Magic The Gathering Ask A Judge - Monday Funday Edition

Nothing happens, it stays blocked.
Also it's a sorcery, so you would have to give it flash to cast that during combat.

Anything that messes with block legality (whether it's flat "can't be blocked" like that or Thassa, or just giving flying) only actually matters for the DECLARING of blocks. Once those are declared, they're locked in, and making them 'retroactively' illegal by using an evasion effect afterwards does literal actual nothing.

You need to cast Slip Through Space before blocks, both for maximum actually-doing-stuff, and because it's a Sorcery you silly billy.

It does if they choose modes 1+2, 1+4, 2+3, or 2+4. As long as only one of the chosen modes is targeting, then it's a "target spell with a single target". So if they go for Counter-draw or counter-tap, you can use Mischief to change the target to Mischief itself to deny them their draw/tap and force your spell through. If they go bounce-draw or bounce-tap you won't be able to deny them their draw/tap, but you can make them bounce something else.

Can you, in theory, use Imp's Mischief to have Cryptic Command counter itself?

Nope. Spells can never target themselves.

could you have the counter target Imp's Mischief?

>So if they go for Counter-draw or counter-tap, you can use Mischief to change the target to Mischief itself

Yes, you can. That's how you use things like Misdirection to 'stop' counterspells, is by changing their target to the midsdirecting spell itself.

Imp's Mischief will begin to resolve, and you'll do as it says, changing the target of the spell. At this time, Mischief is still on the stack, so it is a legal choice for the new target, so you change it over to Mischief. Then you lose 4 life in this case, Mischief is done doing its thing, and goes to the graveyard. Now there's another round of priority passing, and after that's all done Cryptic Command will go to resolve. The only target it HAD is no longer legal (having left the stack), so the entire spell is countered on resolution.

sorry, I misread that

>opponent plays counterspell
>in response I play comandeer targeting his coutnerspell

Can I then use commandeer to counter his counterspell?

See A spell can never ever ever target itself, under any circumstances. What you CAN do is use Commandeer to gain control of his counter, then when you're choosing new targets, aim it at Commandeer, like with the Imp's Mischief up above. Commandeer is still a legal target at that time, but it won't be when the Counterspell resolves.

>the first and most relevant question has not yet been answered :(

I think we all know the answer.

Hey gA, how does brago resolve? Do I pick the order of things that go on the stack when they return to the battlefield?

When he pops someone in the dome, the trigger goes on the stack and you select all of the targets right then, as many as you want. Your opponent gets an opportunity to respond while that trigger is on the stack, knowing which things you plan to blink. Once the trigger begins to resolve, you'll exile all of those targets simultaneously, then put all of them back on the battlefield under their various owners' control simultaneously.

For the myriad of ETB triggers you'll surely have, we first put all your opponent's ETB triggers on the stack in the order of their choosing (maybe they had a Soul Warden), and then you place all of your own ETB triggers on the stack in the order of YOUR choosing.

When Villainous Wealth resolves, the cards that you don't cast will be exiled forever, and you will not get a chance to cast them again. Is there a specific rule in the Comprehensive Rules for this situation, or is it a "do what the cards says literally and don't be stupid" situation?

It's a "do what the card says" situation. Let's break it down sentence by sentence:

>Target opponent exiles the top X cards of his or her library.
So, they exile the top X cards. Neat!
>You may cast any number of nonland cards with converted mana cost X or less from among them without paying their mana costs.
Also neat! You look at that set of X cards you just exiled, and cast as many nonlands that have CMC of X or less that you please.

And then... that's it. That's the end of your instructions. You're not told to do anything with the cards you didn't cast (like you are with Epic Experiment), so you don't do anything with them. They just stay in exile.

If I cast Mind's Desire with stormcount 10, do I really have to shuffle my library eleven times in a row? Or can I shuffle once, then exile 11 cards?

TECHNICALLY you shuffle each time, but that instruction is there to prevent people from using like a Mystical Tutor to stack a good spell on top. In even a tournament setting, unless there was a good reason to make you shuffle it each time, I would be fine with you performing the shuffle once, and then just resolving each Mind's Desire without additional shuffles (assuming you didn't do anything to render your deck not 'randomized' in between, like activate a Top or something).

what if I'm playing with the top card of my library revealed for some reason? My opponent would have a warning on what my next spell is going to be if I don't shuffle each time.

Thanks man, I was mostly wondering if Ixidron would resolve and flip my board, but now that I know I can resolve my etbs the way I want, I'm totally running him.

Would you give someone a slow play warning for playing the card as written?

That would be a situation where you'd need to shuffle each time.

To be fair, even if you have Ixidron's trigger resolve first, that won't "turn off" the triggers already on the stack.

No. I'm not going to force someone to take that shortcut, and if they can resolve those shuffles in a timely manner, bully for them. If I think they're shuffling specifically to slow-roll, that might get me investigating.

I have a couple more questions if you don't mind:
What happens if I hit precursor golem with infinite reflection? Then, what happens if I blink that golem and enchantment with brago and a full board? Can tokens blink and if I blink precursor holes with brago and something else do the tokens blink?

Also, can I strionic resonator brago's blink trigger and put it on the stack twice?

Nontoken. So all of your nontokens will become Precursor Golems, and any nontokens that enter after that are golems. If someone casts a spell at one of your Golems, every single Precursor you have will trigger and create copies for your other Golems.

If you blink that board, the tokens will stop existing (just don't target them with Brago to avoid this), and if you hit your enchantment it'll have to come back enchanting something that you didn't blink. So, just leave your tokens and the original Golem and Aura, and all the other creatures you blink will come in as Precursors and bring Golem Token friends.

Not only CAN you, that's what the deck usually does. Trigger it, target a Sol Ring and a Resonator on top of whatever creatures. Tap those two to copy the trigger. Get a new one with the same targets. Blink all the targets and your artifacts, they come back untapped. tap them again. Repeat.

>Hanweir garrison on battlefield
>Resolve Thalia's lieutenant, giving the garrison a counter
>Attack with garrison, putting 2 1/1 humans into the battlefield attacking
does Thalia's lieutenant get counters for this or do the tokens not count?

They count.

Thanks. Friend thought that Thalia's only worked for non-token creatures.

Anyone else finding that red/white is missing card draw?

If it was supposed to only count for nontokens, it would explicitly say so, like Always Watching.

Red/White is lacking in card draw pretty much by definition. It's outside their slices of the color pie.

White has Shoulder to Shoulder (2W sorcery Support 2 Draw a card) and red has Tormenting Voice. Don't know of any others.

can I use this to draw a card if there is nothing in the graveyard? gotta find a way to stop being mana screwed or cardless

Nope. You need to have a target to cast it.

I have Frenetic Efreet and Chance encounter out. I stack 10000 triggers of his coin flip, and flip until I get 10 flips. Can I just elect to lose all the other flips, or does the ability need to resolve despite it not effecting the board state, since by that point Efreet would probably be dead to its own effect

Just use 4x evolving wilds dude. It's easy to get SOMETHING in a graveyard by turn 2-3 even if you're not using fetches, unless someone mainborded Rest in Peace.

Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings. Red can draw, ot just needs to throw stuff away first. And Daretti.

TECHNICALLY speaking we can't shortcut this because you can't tell me the exact number of iterations you need to perform and the end result when you finish. You could say "Flip until I get 10 heads", but you don't know how many times that is, and you could say "flip 10000 times" but you wouldn't know how many wins that is.

That said, you could just tell your opponent "I can put about 200 activations of this on the stack, and statistically speaking I'll get at least 10 heads. Then I'll win during my upkeep. Do you concede?"

They don't HAVE to, but they probably will.

Honestly if he's running 4x Cremate and 4x Evolving Wilds to try to get 'card draw' out of a cantrip, his deck's got bigger problems.

Agreed. Just use a different black card draw. Is necropotence banned?

It is not! Yawgmoth's Bargain is.

Can you help explain the way this scenario works? I know it does, but I can't explain the way the interactions happen properly. Only the end results.

Whip of Erebos+Liliana heretical
-Use whip of Erebos to pull Lili from the graveyard to the battlefield
-Another creature dies
-Lili is exiled, then returns to the battle field as a planeswalker.

I know that the end of turn trigger on whip can't find the creature to exile, but I don't know how to explain the initial exiling trigger stack and interaction.

If the opponent chooses not to concede, neither of them would be penalized for playing it our right?

Well, when the Whip brings something back it sets up two things: a delayed trigger to exile that thing at the beginning of the next end step, and a replacement effect that sends it to exile instead of anywhere else if it would leave the battlefield. When Lili triggers, she exiles herself, and Whip sees that she's going to exile and is fine with that. Once she gets there, she becomes a new object, but her ability knew where she was going, so it tracks her there (since it's the first public zone she went to). Then, that ability yanks her back from exile as a Planeswalker.

When the delayed trigger from Whip goes to resolve, it's looking for "The Liliana Heretical Healer I brought back a bit ago", and that object no longer exists. You're using the same physical card to represent Lili!Whipped and Lili!Flipped, but they're different objects to the game.

Does thornbite staffs ability have to kill the creature for the creature to untap. For example if visara was equipped and you used her own ability would she untap

It just needs any creature to die. It doesn't even have to be the creature that got pinged!

Alright, today was a bit of a slow day! I'm off to bed though because I feel tired as shit, so more thread tomorrow.

let's say I have a 4/4 dragon entering the battlefield and control both Crucible of Fire & Where Ancients Tread. Does WAT trigger?

Yes it will.

Ok, so the replacement effect just wants to make sure that Lili is exiled. Because Lili's effect triggers from exile, it remembers her object, so she still transforms. That makes sense. Thanks gA!

If i have flash can i process a flipwalker mid transformation, or is the flipping process all at once.

>Lili!Whipped and Lili!Flipped
How long have you been waiting to say that?

It's all at once.

Do tokens fall off if a creature is blinked? If so, I think I may have a pretty spicy combo.

I don't even understand what you're asking about.

tokens of what user?

>durr late night brain
I meant counters. Specifically, +1/+1 counters, or -1/-1 counters.

If I were tied in match points with another player at FNM or prerelease or something and I was 75% sure that I had better breakers than them, but they were given first place, would it be appropriate for me to ask for the breakers of the event and take a look at the results entry? Would I look like a butthurt sore loser?

Yes.

Yeah counters are gone if you blinked a creature.

Afaik, a sanctioned event will use the dci report program for the pairings and standing calculations. It's up to the TO whether they want to give you the results or not but yes, i think it will make you look like a sore loser.

Could a get a good definition of the block phase? I think it's weird that a creature that blocks then sacks itself let's say will stop the damage and get its effect. Also how does this work with trample.

Blinking Kitchen Finks with stuff like Flickerwisp/Restoration Angel is nothing new, user

>yawgatog.com/resources/magic-rules/#R509

This is the Declare Blockers Step. It's part of the Combat Phase of the active player's turn.

>509.1h. An attacking creature with one or more creatures declared as blockers for it becomes a blocked creature; one with no creatures declared as blockers for it becomes an unblocked creature. This remains unchanged until the creature is removed from combat, an effect says that it becomes blocked or unblocked, or the combat phase ends, whichever comes first. A creature remains blocked even if all the creatures blocking it are removed from combat.

That last bit is why a creature remains blocked even if the blocking creature is gone somehow before the end of combat. So even if they sacrifice a creature to an effect, if your creature doesn't have trample, it deals no damage. This also stops lifegain effects.

>702.19c. If an attacking creature with trample is blocked, but there are no creatures blocking it when damage is assigned, all its damage is assigned to the player or planeswalker it's attacking.

Trample changes things in that a creature with Trample must still have a creature blocking it by the combat damage step or else all its damage goes to its target (the player or a planeswalker).

The combat phase is subdivided in steps:
>Begin combat
>Declare atackers
>Declare blockers
>First strike damage (if there are first/double strike creatures)
>Combat damage
>End of combat
For each step, each player gets a round of priority, so even during "Declare blockers" AFTER blockers have been assigned (so the defending player can sac his creatures there).
After that comes the "Combat damage" step, where the active player chooses how his creaturs deal their damage. Blocked creatures must assign all their damage to its blockers, and since they're not there anymore it simply does nothing. If the creature has trample, it only has to assign lethal damage to its blockers while the rest to the opponent, and since it needs a whooping 0 damage to take down all its non-existing blockers all damage goes to the opponent's face.

Yep. The second your 4/4 hits the board, Crucible is pumping it, so it comes in as a 7/7 and triggers Where Ancients Tread. There's never a time that it's on the battlefield but not yet being pumped.

Lili triggers from the battlefield, but it knows that she's headed to exile so that's where it looks for her.

All at once. They're exiled and brought back as part of the same trigger. You CAN flash-process things Spell Queller has eaten.

Not as long as you might think.

Assuming you mean counters, yes, unless that creature is Skullbriar.

If you think that something's wrong with the standings/breakers/whatever, you should bring it up to the scorekeeper/judge/TO. Just do so politely!

Step, not Phase. And basically it starts with the Turn-Based Action of declaring all your blockers at once. Then, each player gets priority to activate abilities and cast spells. Once everyone is done and passes priority on an empty stack, we move on to the next step, which is Combat Damage. The reason you can block and sac is because once a creature becomes blocked, it STAYS blocked for the entirety of combat, no matter what happens to the blockers.

If you block a Trampler and sac, you take full damage to the face.

Lunch bump

gA, how do you handle players giving you incorrect (and signed) match slips, then complaining later? I had someone come up to me after the tournament and tell me that their match points were wrong (they'd filled out the match slip incorrectly two rounds before). I already paid out prizes, so I basically told them "tough shit, read more carefully" and gave them a spare promo.

Easily. Any time I'm handed a match slip, I verbally confirm the results written down. "Alright, so that's Chris winning in 2?", or "So that's Nathan in 3?". If there's something wrong, that verbal confirmation will usually get "Wait- what? No, Nathan LOST in 3" and we can fix it there.

Once I get it to the scorekeeper, what you signed is what you reported. In some cases I'll try to do Good Customer Service and fix it before the next round if it's possible, but if you signed a slip that says you lost 1-2 last round instead of winning 2-1, I'm not likely to repair the entire round. Read it before you sign it is good advice for life.

That makes sense, and unfortunately doesn't work well for our setup - we have players drop the slips in a box at the front and enter them when we have time. And obviously if I can fix it before the next round starts I do - it's not much of an inconvenience.

When did you start doing these? I feel like I've seen you here years ago.

You might just work in a line about "Please make sure your match slip is right before you turn it in, because once you turn in a signed slip, that's the result you reported" in your opening announcements for the next couple weeks

Oh, 5 years ago or so. It was either shortly before or shortly after I first certified.

>Oh, 5 years ago or so. It was either shortly before or shortly after I first certified.
...and you've been stuck here ever since?

That seems cruel.

"Stuck" implies that I'm here against my will. I do these threads because I want to.

I mean, it's not that I don't appreciate it, it's jst that this is basically taking away your free time.

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Some cards errata specify things happening during the Cleanup step, such as armor of thorns.

However the original card specifies at the "end of turn"

Why are some cards such as armor of thorns or cunning errataed in such a way that uses the clean up step while most others use the end step to clarify end of turn?

I resolve Replenish with Living Plane and Nature's Revolt in the yard. Do I pick what order their effects apply in?

So, things like Armor of Thorns were intended to be flash-able as a combat trick, but in exchange for the surprise, you lost it at the end of the turn. Basically an Aura with a secondary use as a Giant Growth effect. Here's the problem: after the 6th Edition rules change, the cards technically didn't work. They wore off "at end of turn", which was before the cleanup step. So if I used Armor of Thorns to save my 2/2 from a Shock, the Armor fell off during the End Step, while the damage was still marked on my creature, and it would then die. They were given a weird-ass fix called "substance" that wasn't very intuitive, and then in 2009 they yanked Substance and just gave then triggers in the Cleanup Step.

Yes. Both of those are working in layer 4 (type-changing) and layer 7b (setting P/T to a specific number). In layer 4 it doesn't terribly matter which one applies, but it does in layer 7b, because they conflict; either your lands are gonna be 1/1 or they'll be 2/2. How we normally decide that is with Timestamps- the most recently played card has the newer Timestamp in that layer, and it 'wins'. Since they're both coming back at the same time, you (the person who will be controlling them) chooses the order of their timestamps.

Thank you. Just wanting to avoid anthem shenanigans while being a cunt with Elesh Norn.

Yeah, you can just say "Replenish getting these back, I'm gonna choose Living Plane to have the newest timestamp so all lands are 1/1s"

If your opponents raise a fuss:

613.6j. If two or more objects would receive a timestamp simultaneously, such as by entering a zone simultaneously or becoming attached simultaneously, the active player determines their relative timestamp order at that time.

Note that you can fuck up by somehow getting them both out on SOMEONE ELSE'S turn, since they're Active Player and will choose the order.

So how would you recognize these type of cards? If a spell (enchantment?) Would attach to a creature at any time you could cast an instant and falls off at the "end of turn" it would be a cleanup step trigger? Or perhaps if something put +1+1 COUNTERS and then removed them, if that type of thing exist?

Just check the Oracle text.

Judge!! Just kidding. Thank you for the help with this trippy stuff