MTG Magic The Gathering Ask A Judge - Friday Morning Edition

Good morning boys and girls, and welcome back to Ask A Judge!

Daily reminder that any spoiler answers should be taken with a grain of salt, as the rules for them might change between the time of my answer and the time of their release!

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Does Morph have a separate ETB? Once when the card is played face-down, and another when flipped face up?

I have Exotic Orchard and a Swamp, my opponent has an Exotic Orchard. These are the only lands in play. Does my Exotic Orchard tap for B?

Opponent attacks with a 5/5, I declare blocker with a 1/1 and cast Test of Faith, is my 1/1 a 4/4 with 2 damage?

It's not entering the battlefield when you turn it face up; it's already ON the battlefield. Turning a face-down creature face-up won't trigger ETB stuff.

Yes. Your opponent's Orchard can tap for B, which means yours can as well.

Assuming no trample, yes. It prevents 3 of the 5 damage, and puts 3 +1/+1 counters on it, so by the time SBAs are checked you have a 4/4 with 2 damage marked on it.

So why does ToF say "give your creature as many +1/+1 counters as damage was prevented this way"? Wouldn't the creature always get three? What if their 5/5 had first strike?

Because it won't always prevent 3 damage. If you use Test in response to a Shock, it'll prevent all 2 damage and put 2 counters, because only 2 was prevented.

If their 5/5 had first strike, nothing changes. It tries to deal 5 to your creature, but 3 is prevented and your creature gets 3 counters, taking only 2 damage. So now you have a 4/4 with 2 damage marked on it, which slaps their creature back for 4. End result: Nothing died, your creature got bigger.

Is card ownership public information?

A has a Jeskai Infiltrator, B has 3 mountains. B casts Act of Treason, gaining control of Jeskai. B attacks A, deals combat damage, and triggers Infiltrator's ability. B now controls two manifested permanents, A's Jeskai and a random card from top of B's deck.

What about cards that have text along the lines of "destroy target creature an opponent owns" or "exile target permanent an opponent owns", would you need to keep tabs of who owns what in this case?

A card's owner is public information at all times. If you steal your opponent's Infiltrator and use it, you must clearly distinguish which manifested creature is the Infiltrator owned by someone else, and which is the card you own.

P1 plays Hive Mind, it resolves, P2 then Chaos Warps it, P3 then targets Chaos Warp with Wild Ricochet. What clusterfuck have these three people summoned?

If a player and his opponent both have 9 life and one plays an Urza's Rage and pays the Kicker cost, can the other player respond with three Undermines? If one part of the spell is illegal, does the other part of the spell still work?

I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, and say a lot of it goes into how everything resolves. Did player 3 cast ricochet before player 1's hive mind trigger resolved?

So, that depends on whether the Ricochet was in response to the Hive Mind trigger, or after it resolved.

>In response
Wild Ricochet triggers Hive Mind. Player 1 and 2 get copies of Ricochet, and can make new copies. Player 2's copy resolves first, changing the target of whatever they aimed it at, and creating a copy of that target. Copy of target resolves. Player 1's Ricochet resolves, changing the target of whatever, and copying it. That copy resolves. Hive Mind's original trigger resolves, copying Chaos Warp for Player 1 and Player 2. Player 2's copy resolves first, Warping something. Player 1's copy resolves next, Warping something. Then, the original Warp resolves, Warping the hive Mind.

>After resolve
The stack currently has three Chaos Warps, one for each player; P2's, then P1's, then P3's. P3's Ricochet is cast, triggering Hive Mind, so P2 and P1 (in that order) have copies on the stack. P2's Ricochet changes its target and copies it, copy resolves. P1's does the same. P3's does the same. Then, the Chaos Warps resolve in the order given.

Nothing you described is 'illegal'. It's not illegal to cast an Undermine against an uncounterable spell, just like it's not illegal to Doom Blade a Blightsteel Colossus. It's usually POINTLESS, but it's legal. If a spell instructs you to perform an action you cannot (like countering an uncounterable spell, or destroying an indestructible creature), you simply... don't. You just kinda gloss over that instruction and move on. So yes, it's fine for the other player to triple Undermine the uncounterable spell to make their opponent lose 9 life.

Okay, so a random question - waxing moon allows werewolves to flip - if you give other flip cards the werewolf subtype, can you flip them too? Like waxing moon avacyn or baby jace?

Transform, not flip. And yes. All Waxing Moon cares is that the targeted permanent (if you chose to target one) is a Werewolf that you control. If you were to give the Werewolf subtype to a different double-faced permanent, you could use Waxing Moon on them. Note that this was already sorta possible for Babyjace with Moonmist; you'll transform him and he'll die as soon as SBAs are checked because he's a Planeswalker with 0 loyalty.

So he only gets the loyalty counters if he is exiled and returned like normal?

Right, because that little number on the bottom right basically just means "This permanent enters the battlefield with N loyalty counters". That (and the thematic fun of 'exile and come back' being a gameplay analogue for their first planeswalk) is WHY they blink. If you just transform him, like with Moonmist, he instantly gets binned because nothing's told you to put counters on him, so you don't.

Is there some code of conduct for Judges, because the local guy keeps causing trouble for the other card games. Is there a place to report this, the owner doesn't want to go straight to banning without another warning(he's too nice sometimes) and threatening his judge position is the best way we can think of.

Ah gotcha, thanks!

There absolutely is- all Judges are bound by the Judge Code of Conduct and there is a feedback form.

THAT SAID, the JCC pretty much wholly exists to deal with misconduct related to Magic. There's three basic 'levels' of connection: Directly connected (conduct while working as a judge, wearing judge attire, while representing themselves as a Judge, etc). That's ALWAYS within the scope of the code. The next is partially connected; playing Magic in a non-judge Role, discussing Magic on social media, etc. That's POTENTIALLY connected and problematic. And something like 'a different card game' might not be connected at all.

That said, if everyone knows this guy is a judge, and he's making trouble in a shop where he Judges, that might be connected enough for the JCC to step in, or at least contact his RC and tell them to "get your boy right".

THAT said, I'd advise that he just talk directly to the Judge in question. Threatening to bar him from the store (or just barring him) is a more proportionate response than trying to 'threaten' his status as a Judge.

Asking for a bit more clarification, let's say I cast Insurrection stealing my opponent's Jeskai Infiltrator and Clone which is currently a copy of the Infiltrator. I swing and hit my opponent with both creatures, triggers go off and resolve and I now have 4 manifested permanents, two of which my opponent owns. Is it public information which permanent is the Infiltrator and Clone or do I simply need to indicate which permanents I own and wich two my opponent owns?

Which one is Infiltrator and which is Clone is not public information. The only relevant public information here is which two of those 4 face-down permanents you own, and which two you do not. All players will know which two permanents are the ones you stole, but not which of them is the face-down Infiltrator and which is the face-down Clone.

Thanks gA, you da best

Ah, I'm okay. YOU guys are the best, honestly. I don't know if I'd have kept my passion for Judging all these years if I'd had to go those long stretches between events without any chance to actually help people. These threads have helped keep me sharp and helped keep the fire burning. Thank you all for that.

I can't say what exactly he does wrong since I was asked otherwise but I will say that he absolutely hates the fact that Magic has to share a day with Force of Will. That's why the owner thought to go for the report; he acts up WHILE judging, toward another card game.
As for not barring him... Geek social fallacies are stupid. He should have been banned long ago.
On a more fun note: I always hear about humility and opalescence being funny. But I don't understand the wording on the ruling for the two interacting. Can you dumb them down for me please? The most complicated interaction I know of is 2 Possibility storms active.

Okay, if he's being a dick while acting as a judge, that is 100% in the JCC's wheelhouse. While acting as a judge he is a representative for the program as a whole, and is expected to conduct himself befittingly. I still think an adequate step is just to say "You are no longer welcome in this store" or "If you don't shape up you will not be welcome in this store", but this is something the JCC would have some say in.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSccIfjzcQ8Q_CuxKYjpuznesTQ46g5n5lhGSmp5FWe_hPy3CA/viewform

That right there is the Magic Judge Feedback Form. It's useful to pass feedback on a judge off to the higher-ups, whether that's bad or good.

>Question
Humility turns off abilities. Including its own. That's what gives people headaches- Opalescence animates Humility, so Humility's ability takes away Humility's ability. People get caught in a logic loop of "Well if the ability is turned off, then it doesn't turn itself off, so it turns back on, which turns itself off, which turns it back on, which turns itself off..."

In reality the end result is that because Humility began applying in layer 4, it continues applying in later layers, even if the ability stops existing before those layers. So all your non-Enchantment dudes are 1/1s with no abilities, and all your Enchantments (barring Opalescence, unless you have a second one) are either 1/1s with no abilities, or have no abilities but have PT equal to their mana cost, depending on timestamps.

What if cards were played in this order:

>Opalescence 1
>Opalescence 2
>Humility
>Opalescence 3
>Opalescence 4

Two Opals and a Humility are 4/4, the other two are 1/1.

any of these good, gA?

No clue! I don't play a ton of board games to start with, and I'm not terribly familiar with those.

What's your favourite part about MtG?

You don't really need both Forbidden games, just choose one.

What's the most common infraction seen in drafting?

Well, anything that goes wrong during the draft portion would be Tournament Error - Limited Procedure Violation, so... that?

Exact wording is hard:
When people fuck it up, in what manners do they tend to fuck it all up? Getting their boosters and pulls mixed up? Handing packs the wrong way? Etc.
How do you fix this sort of thing?

What's the worst part about being a judge

Most common problem at a draft is probably mixing stuff up (like setting a pack down on top of another one when the person to your right hasn't looked at it yet, or accidentally putting an entire pack with their picks).

When it comes to THAT level of fuckup, you just kinda... wing it. There's not a written policy because there's so many ways someone could conceivably muck up the drafting part. I advise people to do called drafts if they don't trust a pod to draft right.

Depends on who you ask. I know some of my L2 friends whose biggest complaint is that they don't have the time or energy to PLAY competitively because of all the events they're judging, but that doesn't bug me. I'd say the most frustrating part about being a Judge, for me, is dealing with stubborn store owners. Whether they've got abysmal policies that you KNOW will get their community killed in a matter of months, or they're just very difficult to work with, it's very frustrating.

The people!

Can I use Lost Legacy, target myself, name Hedron Alignemnt, and only choose to exile one and fail to find on the rest.

Sure! Any time you're searching a hidden zone for a card of a stated quality, you can fail to find it, even if it's there. Plus, Lost Legacy says "any number" of cards, and 1 is a number.

what if I have one in my graveyard, would i be required to exile that one?

With some cards, yes. The graveyard is not a hidden zone, so you can't "fail to find" there.

That said, Lost Legacy says "Any number of", not "all". You could use Lost Legacy and choose not to exile any cards, even if there's 4 copies in the graveyard, or the library you hit is literally nothing but the named card.

Awesome, thank you

Does an opponent's deck count as an hidden zone if i'm searching it?

Technically it's still a hidden zone even if both of you are able to see the whole thing. Libraries and hands are ALWAYS considered hidden zones, even if every card in those zones is currently revealed to all players.