MTG Magic The Gathering Ask A Judge - Tuesday Bluesday Edition

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what's the best way to do standard without bant or gw tokens?

I dunno dude, I don't play much Standard. From what I understand Bant CoCo is a pretty oppressive deck right now, and I don't really know enough about deckbuilding to give you a good answer.

Any deck that can comfortably run 3-4 mainboard languish (WB Control, Grixis, Abzan, GB Seasons Past, Sultai Delerium), or Rw Humans.

Here's a weird one.
>Mirrorwing dragon, goblin pile driver, and a few other goblins on my field.
>Cast pic related to boost dragon
>Thing copies for all my other creatures.
Does it affect piledriver or no? Mirrorwing dragon says the copy targets it but it can't be targeted by blue things. Which effect wins over?

Alright, I've got a weird one for you that I've been trying to wrap my head around.

My boardstate is just a Pandemonium and a Changeling Berserker, who has championed an Aven Riftwatcher.

I flicker the Changeling.

What the hell happens to the poor stack and does my Changeling ever get to see the bird hit the board?

can i check if i have this right
with melek as the commander and no other creatures, proteus staffing himself lets you order your library in whatever order you damn well please? if it works like that, shit's fucked yo

fairo slut

>Mirrorwing x hexproof/protection
the copy is created, but it doesn't have a legal target and thus does nothing.

>That the spell could target
Mirrorwing won't try to make a copy for things it wouldn't hit, whether that's because of Protection or Shroud or just not being a legal target for some other reason (if your opponent Doom Blades it, it'll make copies for all his non-black creatures, but not his black ones).

So, let's say you use Essence Flux for that sweet sweet +1/+1 counter. You'll exile your Berserker, and then immediately bring it back with a +1/+1 counter on it. You'll have three triggers to put on the stack; the Champion LTB trigger, the Pandemonium trigger, and the ETB trigger. Since they're all yours, and all wanting to go on the stack at the same time, you choose the order in which they are placed on the stack.

As long as you have the LTB trigger resolve before the ETB trigger, it'll bring back Aven Riftwatcher (who will dome something for 2 via Pandemonium, and also gain you 2 life), which you can then Champion away with the ETB trigger.

Net result if you do it right: 8 damage (7 if you use Cloudshift instead of Essence Flux) and +2 life.

Correct. You elect to ship it to the deck instead of the Command Zone, then reveal cards until you hit Melek since he's the only creature, and put him on the board. Then you put 'the rest' (your entire deck) on the bottom of your library in any order, which effectively means you can stack your deck however you want.

That was way simpler than I was thinking it was. For some reason I forgot to put the ETB Champion or die trigger on the stack. Yeah, easy as pie. Thanks!

Yeah, the Champion doesn't get popped until that trigger resolves and you don't feed it a bird. Thankfully if you stack the triggers right, you HAVE a bird to feed it by then.

>What the hell happens to the poor stack

603.3b If multiple abilities have triggered since the last time a player received priority, each player, in APNAP order, puts triggered abilities he or she controls on the stack in any order he or she chooses. (See rule 101.4.) Then the game once again checks for and resolves state-based actions until none are performed, then abilities that triggered during this process go on the stack. This process repeats until no new state-based actions are performed and no abilities trigger. Then the appropriate player gets priority.

You put on stack, in order you choose, Pandemonium's damage, old-berserker's departure effect returning bird, new-berserker's entry effect. (Remember that Flicker makes the thing it targets a new object. The new Changeling Berserker is represented by the same card, but has no memory of what the old one championed.)

you know hallowed moonlight has been in standard for a while now right?

If I flicker my spell queller who currently has a thoughtknot seer in exile will I still have a chance to exile the thoughtknot seer again if my opponent chooses to cast him for free?

No.

Even with that Bant is still kicking ass and taking names. It hurts that Moonlight just blanks a CoCo for a turn, it doesn't actually exile anything unless they're dumb.

Nope. Your Queller will get exiled and then come immediately back, just as in the above Berserker scenario. You'll have an "ETB Exile target thing" trigger, and a "LTB opponent casts the thing" trigger. The ETB trigger needs a target as soon as it goes on the stack, and their Thought Knot is still in exile at that time. So unless there's another spell you want to feed to your Queller already on the stack, you dun goofed.

Asking this before I forget it, again.

If I have Harness the Storm in play and cast something like Galvanic Bombardment or Take Inventory, with others in the graveyard of course, how does the interaction work? Does the "card with the same name" I target reside in the graveyard while being cast?

Oh dear I have indeed dun goofed. Glad I got my answer before game day though. Thanks man.

So, you cast your Bombardment and that triggers Harness the Storm. The Harness trigger goes on the stack, targeting the Bombardment in your graveyard. As the trigger resolves, you may cast that Bombardment. Assuming it was the only one in your graveyard, it'll pop something for 2 damage, then go to the graveyard as normal.

Then, the original Bombardment you cast will resolve, and see that there is a Bombardment in the graveyard, doing 3 total damage.

>Does the "card with the same name" I target reside in the graveyard while being cast?
As much as the first one 'resides' in your hand while being cast: not at all. Spells on the stack are just that: on the stack. They're in the game zone of The Stack. That said, your original Bombardment doesn't "check" to see how many Bombardments are in your graveyard until it begins to resolve.

Ok thanks. I didn't think the Stack was a valid zone for cards to exist, just their effects until they resolve. Then the card would go from "where it was being cast," i.e. hand, yard, etc. to where it ends up, i.e. yard, exile. If that confusion makes any sense.

I've always wondered, do you look up the cards after reading a question, or can you just recall or remember what a card does by reading it's name?

I mean, I know a Ton of cards off hand, but some I'm like, "Holy crap, that's a card?"

Do you ever have moments like that? Where you see a card name and go, "That can't possibly be a real card."?

You mean apart from Sylvan Library? Because that's certainly not a real card.

Nah, it makes sense. For most people, the card goes from their hand straight to the graveyard for spells, so they don't think of "The Stack" as being a zone. Totally understandable.

90% of it is just memory because instead of doing something useful with my free time I force myself to become a walking copy of Gatherer and the Comp Rules.

The other 10% is Autocard Anywhere.

I have tangle wire on graveyard and on battlefield.
On my upkeep tangle wire remove fade and tap permanents goes on stack and in response I use goblin welder and target tangle wire in GY and on battlefield and it resolves.
Do the old triggers in the stack "see" the new tangle wire or ignore it?

The triggers on the stack are from an object that doesn't exist. They don't just look for "a card named Tangle Wire", or having one on 4 counters and one on 1 counter would tap down 8 things.

The Fading trigger resolves and does nothing, because the Wire it's looking for doesn't exist.

The tap trigger will look for the Wire that it triggered from, and can't find it, so it looks back in time at how the Wire last existed on the field, and taps THAT many things.

Rite of replication kicked targeting this card. The 5 copies come in, but do they trigger each other for that massive amount of +1/+1 counters?

Did you also put Overwhelming Stampede in that combo? Otherwise you're wasting an amazing opportunity.

So in simpler sense the number of permanents that are tapped by Twire is determined on how many counters Twire has on the moment it triggers?

inb4 some very specific mtg rulings reason why this way of thinking is very very wrong.

Each Giant will 'see" the other 4 coming in with it, and trigger appropriately. The triggers don't check that creature's power until the trigger resolves, though. So let's say you put all the triggers caused by A on the stack last, so they resolve first. Then all the triggers caused by B, then C, etc.

A's triggers resolve, putting 6 counters on Hamlet B, C, D, and E (also Original).

B triggers resolve, putting 12 counters on A, C, D, E, and Original.

C's triggers resolve, putting 24 counters on A, B, D, and original.

D's triggers resolve, putting 48 counters on A, C, E, and Original.

E's triggers resolve, putting 96 counters on A, B, C, and Original.

If I did my math right, mind you. You could also have A get 24 counters (6 each from B, C, D, and E), then have B get 48 (6 each from C, D, E, and 30 from A), and so on.

It's determined by how many counters are on Wire as the trigger RESOLVES. If you were to use a Vampire Hexmage on the Wire in response to the trigger, the trigger would tap 0 things because that's the number of counters on the Wire.

The reason that popping the Wire is different is because the Wire doesn't exist, so the game can't ask how many counters it has, so it looks back at the Last Known Information to determine it. That's also why saccing a Mogg Fanatic while you control a Whip of Erebos will gain you 1 life; the Fanatic had Lifelink the last time it existed on the battlefield.

Now I have to go run a few errands, back later.!

Yes. See the rules on zone-change triggers.

> 603.6a Enters-the-battlefield abilities trigger when a permanent enters the battlefield. These are written, “When [this object] enters the battlefield, . . . ” or “Whenever a [type] enters the battlefield, . . .” Each time an event puts one or more permanents onto the battlefield, all permanents on the battlefield (including the newcomers) are checked for any enters-the-battlefield triggers that match the event.

> 603.6d Normally, objects that exist immediately after an event are checked to see if the event matched any trigger conditions.
(The exceptions being mostly leaves-the-zone triggers which look back at last known state of object.)

When multiple things enter the battlefield at the same time, they all see each other enter so they all trigger each other.

You have one Goliath in play and five more enter play. Goliath A will see the five token entering and trigger five times. Golath's B, C, D, E, and F (the tokens) will see the other four tokens entering and each trigger four times. Meaning 25 total triggers.

The number of counters given is checked as each ability resolves so if you stack them right you can end up with six Goliaths each with power/toughness in the hundreds.

Grafdigger's Cage blocks Narcomoebas coming in because they literally say "put it from graveyard into play", but what about cascades? Let's say I Bloodbraid Elf into a Bob -> I think I'm technically casting Bob from LIBRARY at this point so it should get eaten by cage saying "players can't cast cards in libraries", is this correct?

Actually, cascade exiles. I'm dumb and realized this right after pressing post.

Speculative question.

Mostly, old mechanics like "does not tap to attack" turn into a keyword like Vigilance, but in some cases, it goes the other way, and old cards like Dandân have had their keyword (Islandhome) get "unpersoned". Their functionality remains intact, it's just spelled out at length.

How would this affect things like Odric, Lunarch Marshal and Cairn Wanderer and Death-Mask Duplicant et cetera if any of their keywords get unpersoned? Are Odric and friends a quasi-guarantee against getting unpersoned because these things must stay keywords? Or might we one day see an Odric entry in Gatherer with several sentences of "As long as a creature you control can do Thing That Was Once A Keyword, each other creature can do that too." ?

No Odric does not get buffs from such abilities.

You seem to be answering a question that wasn't asked. Let me try pinning down more specifically what I am asking:

"If Wizards of the Coat were to decide that menace won't be a keyword anymore, what would likely happen to the Gatherer wording of Odric"?

why is the card in italian? Sei il cojone del quinto elemento?

I will consult the CR when that time comes.

I don't think Magic unkeywords things anymore. They just retire using the keyword.

If they decided they didn't want something to be a keyword anymore, they'd probably spell it out from then on but leave old cards that have that keyword alone.

I've got a goofy one that involves clones, oh boy.

So I have a phantsmal image copying a murderous red cap
I target it with curiosity, so it sacrifices itself
Persist trigger
It comes back as a copy of eternal witness with a -1/-1 counter thus killing it and this is my question: does the phantasmal image that is now a copy of eternal witness die before the trigger has to target allowing me to target the phantasmal image or do I have to choose the card first before state based effects.

Yes it can target itself in the yard.

Dope

Cascade exiles, then casts from there. Doesn't get hit by Cage for the same reason Cage doesn't actually stop Living End or Living Death.

Couldn't tell you, I'm not a designer. Most of the old things got un-keyworded because it was shit they didn't plan on supporting anymore and was overly narrow, so it wasn't worth having a CR entry for it. I don't really see them doing that to mechanics that are currently considered evergreen. Of Odric's things, Skulk would be the most 'in danger', and even then I doubt it.

Brand awareness.

Dunno. I'd check Gatherer in that alternate timeline to find out what Odric says, rather than speculate about it now- not much point worrying and fretting over theoretical changes.

The trigger fires, but it can't go on the stack until SBAs are checked. They get checked, see a 1/0 creature, and kill it. NOW the trigger can go on the stack, and NOW that it needs a target, the Image itself is in the graveyard and is a legal target.

bump

if i cast 2x instant sorcery in a turn
does it get 6/0 till the end of the turn?

...yes, it gets+6/+0 until end of turn, making it a 7/2

Who controls and owns the activated ability of Lethal Vapors when it's on the stack?

Yep! It triggers off of every instant or sorcery you cast in a turn. If it was meant to only trigger once, it'd say so.

Abilities don't have owners, but the controller of an activated ability is the player who activated it.

dont be a nigger

If I have a card of rarity greater than uncommon printed after m15, and the holofoil sticker fell off, is the card still tournament legal?

This may not be Judge worthy... But I have been wondering since I began playing Magic The Gathering. On the Deckmaster logo there is a slight watermark that appears to be from a ball point pen, Pic Related. What I am asking is, is this some sneaky signature or intentional marking placed on the cards by either of the two artists who designed the card back, or is it simply a mistake that was not thought of or seen before scanning and printing the first card?

>fell off
What?

The pen marks over TER were an accident, yes.

If I have Leonin arbiter and I cast surgical extraction and I don't pay 2, what happens?

Also, how does this work flavourwise? Oroborus-type ring of giants living on top of each other?

It happens. A friend of mine has the green commander deck with pretty much no holofoils.

This is a game where strapping three swords and a throwing knife to a parrot makes it able to beat up a god. Don't sweat the flavor too hard in large interactions.

SLEEVES
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V
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They came off pretty much as soon as they came out of the box

That'd be something the HJ would have to decide at the event, because something like that might lead someone to think the cards were bad fakes.

It was an accident on the master version that wasn't caught until it was too late to fix it.

You'll search the owner of the target's hand and graveyard for copies to exile, but you can't search the library so you don't.

>It was an accident on the master version that wasn't caught until it was too late to fix it.
Didn't Maro/someone else at WotC just recently say it was intentional and that the accident thing was a myth?

No clue. The way I've always heard it is that it was a mistake.

So essence flux

Can you dodge removal with this? Lets just say grizzlybear vs lightning bolt

Yes you can for targeted removal.

>It was an accident on the master version that wasn't caught until it was too late to fix it.
According to the artist that designed it, it was not in fact an accident. That's a urban legend.

Targeted, yes. As soon as your Grizzly Bears leaves the battlefield via Flux, it becomes a new object. You're using the same card to represent it, but it's 3 different objects to the game (GB on board A, GB in exile, GB on board B). The Lightning Bolt is looking for the object it targeted, and that object no longer exists, so it fizzles.

No luck against boardwipes though.

So if my opponent fetches a shock land can I respond to them paying 2 to untap it by vialing in NuThalia and keep it tapped?

You have to respond to the *fetch*, not to the pay 2. By the time they're paying 2, the land has already entered the battlefield and it's too late for Thalia to modify how it enters the battlefield. Of course then your opponent will probably just choose to not pay 2 since Thalia is making the land tapped anyway.

Not gA so don't take my word as truth, but the shocklands don't have a trigger to untap. It simply enters either tapped (paying zero life), or untapped (paying two life) when it enters the battlefield. You can respond to the fetch by putting in Thalia, which means the shockland will always come in tapped, even if they choose to pay 2 life.

But once the fetchland trigger resolves and they start searching their library, you can't respond to the shockland entering.

So I got a question about this thing.

If I had Pic Related and Mirrorwing Dragon out, and I cast a spell that targets a creature and the creature happened to be Mirrorwing Dragon, what will happen with the copies? Would casting a lightning bolt or a boomerang have different targets than casting a cantrip such as Expedite?

does a creature die when it enters the graveyard, or does the game check for toughness first?

a creature "dies" when it goes directly from the field to the graveyard. No in between.

don't understand the question.

one more question: if i have It That Betrays and Anafenza on the battlefield, would a sacrificed creature go into exile?

exiled

You can't respond to a replacement effect, no. Your last chance to Vial in Thalia is immediately before the activation of the fetch resolves, and they can just decide not to pay the 2 because it'll come in tapped anyway.

Mirrorwing and Grip will both trigger. when the spell is cast. If you control both, you can either have Grip randomly pick a new target and then clone the spell, or clone the spell first.

Once the Mirrorwing trigger resolves, it aims a copy of your spell at every other creature you control, that it could legally target. Grip will trigger for each of those copies. All of the Grip triggers will resolve, randomly selecting a new target for each copy (which means you could end up with one creature being targeted by multiple copies). After all those Grip triggers resolve, the copies of the spells can begin resolving. Then, if the original Grip trigger is still there (if you resolved Mirrorwing's first), it'll reselect the target for the original spell. Then the original spell will resolve.

I'm not sure I understand your question.

"Dies" is just a templating shorthand for "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield". A creature can 'die' from the Legend Rule, from a Doom Blade, from lethal damage, from having 0 toughness, from being sacrificed.

If the game needs to know the toughness of a creature that has died, it'll look at the creature as it last existed on the battlefield.

It would, for a brief moment. They'd sacrifice the nontoken permanent, and Anafenza's replacement effect shunts that creature to exile instead of to the graveyard. Then, It That Betrays' trigger looks for the card in the first public zone it went to after leaving the battlefield. NORMALLY that's the graveyard, but here that's Exile, so ITB will yank it out of exile to your board.

This is also why ITB can steal a sacced Commander if they put it into the Command Zone instead of the graveyard.

>the It thing
wow, i never knew that.

A question that I had for a few day, if I cast a Spell that as additional cost require the sacrifice of a creature, can I tap that creature before resolution but after that I have chose it?

Sorry for the bad English.

Yeah, it's not SUPER intuitive, but once you grok the "why" it makes sense.

As in, can you cast your spell, say "I'm gonna sac this one", then tap it? Not quite. Let's use a simple sac spell like Altar's Reap, and go through the steps of casting a spell.

1) Announce Altar's Reap, move it from your hand to the stack.
2) There's no alternate costs here, but there is an additional one, so you announce that you'll be paying the additional cost.
3) No targets to choose for this step
4) Nothing to divide for this step
5) Game does a quick check to see if the proposed spell is legal, and it is
6) Total cost is locked in at "1B, sac a guy"
7) You get a chance to activate mana abilities (most people just float mana before the spell, but this step is here for a reason)
8) Pay all costs in any order
9) Your spell is cast.

You don't actually pick what to sacrifice until Step 8 of the spellcasting process, but you don't have priority to do anything other than "Continue casting this spell via these steps in this order" during the actual cast. You could tap a creature for an effect, then cast Altar's Reap and feed the creature to it ,though.

I attempt to cast for example Natural Order, paying the sacrifice cost first, then tapping Selvala for mana as my only mana source. What if she doesn't turn up enough mana? Do I just do a quick rewind and put the dead thing back?

Thanks for the answer, is similar to wwhat I thought, I wanted to be sure.

By the way the cards for this clarification were Humble defector and Eldritch evolution

You generate mana before you pay costs. If you absolutely need Selvala to generate enough mana (for example, she HAS to generate 2 mana because you only have two untapped Forests as other sources), then you can't finish casting the spell and the game rewinds to before you put it on the stack, with the exception that we don't undo Selvala's mana ability.

If you're going to use Selvala to cast a spell, and you need her to generate enough mana, tap her first. It saves everyone a headache.

That one doesn't work so well. If you tap the Defector, then the ability has to resolve before you can cast your Evolution because Sorcery, and by then you don't have a Defector to sacrifice.

If you cast Evolution first, the Defector is dead by the time you have priority to activate it.

If you could cast Evolution as though it had flash, though (Vedalken Orrery, for example), you could tap your Defector, then sac it to Evolution and still get your draws.

But what if I want to use her for shenanigans?

I Know, that is why I needed the clarification, if I must give flash to Eldritch evolution, all became to complicated to be useful :(

Thanks again For the answers ;)

Then I fill frown disapprovingly in your direction.

What's your top ten cards?
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I'd have to think about it, to be honest.

Cool.

Does ghost apply similarly to blocking? Imy not actually aware how blocking works but I understand you can sacrifice, tap, etc. The monster after declaring blockers and still block the attack (for the most part)

I'm not sure what you mean by "ghost".

By ghost I mean this. I'm a phone poster lol

Ah. Then yes. If you block with something and then it leaves the board for whatever reason (blinked, sacced, hit by a Doom Blade, whatever), whatever it blocked is still blocked. You won't take damage, unless you were blocking a thing with Trample, in which case you take very much damage.