MTG Magic The Gathering Ask A Judge - 「 W E D N E S D A Y W E E K 」

It's a pseudo ability, not the exact same. It's a fine example to get the point across.

And Spire Tracer's ability is different than Flying.

It is? how?

Can Spire Tracer block a creature with flying?

Hello, I attack with furyblade vampire and I discard incorrigible youths and cast it for it's madness cost. Can I attack with incorrigible youths? Or it's already past the declare attackers?

Right. Misread, sorry.

You can! Furyblade triggers during your Beginning of Combat Step. You put that trigger on the stack, discard Youths, and pay the Madness cost. Youths resolves, and you're still in BOC step, which is immediately BEFORE Declare Attackers step. By the time you're declaring your attacks, your Incorrigible Youths are on board and ready to swing.

Don't be! I wasn't trying to be antagonistic, I just lapse into Socratic Method sometimes.

furyblade triggers at the beginning of combat before the declare attackers step

Does Baral affect alternative casting costs such as miracle of flashback?

>Y'ALL KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS
I do not. What time it it?

Yep! To figure out costs, you start with the normal cost (or alternate cost, if you're paying one of those), then apply any cost increases (whether voluntary, like Kicker, or involuntary like Thalia), then apply reductions (Like Baral), then apply 3ball.

About 10 AM

No worries, m8.

I have one more question, though. If both me and my opponent control a Notion Thief, and I cast Divination, what happens? Do their abilities make an infinite loop, and if they do, how are involuntary infinite loops handled in Magic?

Replacement effects never 'loop' because a replacement effect can't apply to the same event more than once.

With two Thieves in a two-player game, they just "cancel" each other, effectively. If you go to draw, your opponent's Thief steals the draw, and yours steals it back. If your opponent goes to draw, your Thief steals it, and theirs steals it back.

Actual involuntary infinite loops (like Triple O Ring) end the game in a draw.

I cast Thromok with warstorm surge on the field, devouring 3 creatures.

Will I be able to deal 9 damages with warstorm surge? The devour seems to happens when Thromok is entering the battlefield so I don't know if the surge will see Thromok before or after the meal.

Thanks for the answer man!

Devour is a replacement effect that modifies how the creature enters the battlefield. There's never a time Thromok is on the field but has not yet devoured the things you fed to him, nor is he ever on the field without those counters. He enters as a 9/9, rather than entering as a 0/0 and then getting nine counters.

Even if that is what happened, somehow, Warstorm Surge checks the creature's power as the trigger RESOLVES, not as the trigger fired.

I have Nemesis Mask on a creature, and i have a Nacatl War Pride out as well.

I swing with both of them at an opponent who has 5 creatures in play. How can my opponent block, since multpile cards are now telling them what to do?

They have to fulfill as many requirements as they possibly can, while violating zero restrictions. There's no restrictions here, just requirements- you have 5 creatures that must be blocked by a specific creature (each) if able, and one creature that must be blocked by ALL creatures if able. You look at the blocking requirements on a per-blocker basis, so what we really have is 10 requirements: 5 instances of "I gotta block that masked fucker" and 5 instances of "I gotta block that one specific cat", one instance per blocker.

Your opponent can gang-block the Masked creature and let the cats through, OR block the cats and let the Mask through, OR block -some- of the cats and assign the rest of the blockers to the Masked creature. Basically as long as no more than 1 creature blocks any given cat, and all 5 creatures block something, any configuration is legal.

Player 1 and 2 both have Grave Pact in play. Players 1,2,3,4 all have 10 creatures. One of Player 1's creatures die. Is it a board wipe?

Thanks. A judge explained it to me last week and the ruling was the same as yours, but I just wanted to understand why it was working the way it was. I was hazy on the reasoning behind it

Kinda. Player 1's Pact triggers, and 2-4 sac a creature. That triggers Player 2's Pact, and 1/3/4 sac a creature. Repeat back and forth until 1 or 2 run out of creatures, which will break the chain.

If I've done my math right, Players 3 and 4 will run out of creatures slightly before Players 1 and 2 do, but you will end up with a totally cleared board (eventually)

>I was hazy
Dude, requirements/restrictions are fucking rough. They're a weak point for me, so you are very much not alone.

good day, gA

Consider Knowledge Pool and Possibility Storm. I understand that while I control both and when someone casts a spell from hand I can arrange the triggers such that I choose which effect takes place. But say an opponent gains control of the Pool while I retain the Storm - then the triggers resolve in AP-NAP order, correct? I would, by necessity, have to put my spell in the Pool, while my opponent would have to put his/her spell into the Storm?

>Consider Knowledge Pool and Possibility Storm
Counterpoint: consider the bumblebee.

Anyway, onto the question, yes; AP/NAP would be how we handle it if someone stole your Pool. A spell cast on your turn would have the Pool trigger resolve before the Storm trigger, so Pool eats the spell, gives the caster a new one of your choice, and then after that spell resolves Storm wheels for a free spell. A spell cast during the opponent's turn would be fed to Storm in exchange for the next spell down, and Pool would get nothing.

looking at Pool, it looks like the casting player gets to choose what spell comes out of the Pool. was that changed?

though I didn't know that Storm doesn't care about if the original spell got exiled by some other effect or not. that's good to know! Chaos deck just got a little more fun :D

>Finally, you -will- punt calls. You -will- punt a call so badly it will literally cost someone a game, maybe even a Top 8 slot.

Don't most judges who fuck up that badly get fired though?

Quick situation, just to see if I have the stack down correctly. I think it should work, but I'd like to be sure.

I have a mirrorworks on the board. I cast Mindslaver.
In response to the mirrorworks trigger, I sac mindslaver to take over someone's turn. Then the mirrorworks trigger goes off and I get a copy token of mindslaver.
Since the original mindslaver is gone, I get to keep the copy.

Did I miss something or does that look right?

I've been considering going for L1, since I regularly seem to know at least as much about the rules as or sometimes even get to correct a L1 judge in our FLGS.

I'm mostly curious where you have to apply and/or do the exam, and if there's lots of things to learn about registering deck lists.

I'd mostly do it for funzies, not to actually judge events (though maybe in the future, I dunno yet). And to start with 1 card when playing Judge Tower, which I freaking love to play.

Oooh, there's another question for you, Galvanic, how much do you love/hate judge tower?

>Counterpoint: consider the bumblebee.
Judge, can I get the oracle text on the bumblebee?

Bumblebee has flying despite not having wings with enough toughness to support its weight.

No, it wasn't changed, I had just been typing 'you' instead of 'the caster' and decided to change it to clarify that this happens no matter who casts, and I missed that 'you'. Mea culpa!

Jein. We're (sorta kinda) volunteers, so we only get 'fired' in one of two ways: We can be decertified for gross misconduct, or a TO can boot us. It's very rare for a TO to throw you out during an event, and I've basically never heard of it happening over a bad call. They might decline to work with you in the future, but that's a whole other thing.

Nah, that's fine.

As for the exam, you wanna talk to a Level 2 judge and they can get everything set up. You won't be expected to know shit about decklists, because those don't exist at Regular REL, and that's the only REL L1s are tested on.

Judge Tower is super neat, but I never bothered building one because most of my locals would lose, badly.

Bumblebee 1GW
Creature - Insect
T: Bumblebee gains Flying until end of turn
1/1

>Judge Tower is super neat, but I never bothered building one because most of my locals would lose, badly.

We mostly just play it by removing all of the lands from one of our own EDH decks.

My atraxa was hilarious when someone pretty much got all the card draw in the deck in one turn. He miraculously survived.
Somone else got about about all the enchantments to do with +1/+1 counters, but never got a single creature for the triggers to do something.

I mean, even if I just grabbed a random pile rather than making a spicy tower, it'd probably last MAYBE 4 games before everyone decreed it "fucking stupid" and never wanted to play it again.

Judge's Tower is just "Dump cards on the table one at a time, AP narrates what happens, loses if they miscall?"

I know what Judge's Tower is.

My point is, my playgroup doesn't rules so good, and would lose fairly quickly, then ragequit the format because it's "stupid" to them.

That was a question, man. I don't fukken know what Judge's Tower is.

That's a shame. Last time we did it we decided to just "do it for 20-30 more minutes before we quit and go home" at ~30 past midnight. One of the players even didn't really want to join but there was no one going for another EDH game anymore at that point.
We ended up going until 2:30 am, going through 2 full decks, and the hesitant guy being one of the most enthusiastic players.

Funny thing is, one of my best friends loves it, and he's fairly new and still really crap at all the rules and interactions. It's a great way to learn them.

Hah, my bad!

Kindasorta. All players have an infinite life total and infinite mana of all types, and share one library and one graveyard. Your starting hand size is equal to your judge level, no mulligans.

Each player has to play every card they can, as soon as the game rules allow. Each player has to activate every ability they can as soon as the game rules allow (starting from the bottom up, for cards with multiple activated abilities), etc, etc.

The tl;dr is that each player takes all actions they CAN take, as soon as they legally can. If you violate a regular Magic rule, or one of the rules of Judge's Tower, you lose.

So a "really spicy" tower as you put it is lots of conditionals and instants and layers and dependencies?

Layers and dependencies are easy, because those just happen without your input.

But yeah, it's a mixture of "fun way to distract yourself from the 12 dollar 'burger' you're eating from the convention concession during your GP lunch break" and "training".

The way we do judge tower is like this: Take any EDH deck, though the more interaction there is between cards in the deck itself, the better (so my rakdos creature spam wouldn't be much fun since it's reliant on the commander, who's not included due to being in a different sleeve).
Then, remove all lands from it. Everyone is dealt cards equal to his judge level. It's advised to have at least one judge playing since rule interactions tend to get crazy.

The goal is simple, do not make a rules mistake while adhering to these playrules:
1) You have infinite mana, infinite life. The library is both yours and that of your enemy, The graveyard is both yours and of your enemy.
2) You MUST play a card as soon as you are able to. the same is true for activated abilities of any kind.
3) You MUST attack whenever you can. The same is true for blocking.
4) On every card, a "may" clause is treated as a "Must".
5) X is always 5. If you were to go infinite with something, do it 5 times instead.
6) If you have an ability that you can activate basically infinitely and indefinitely (Quick example, Grenzo dungeon warden's activated ability), do it once every turn cycle (as in, from the moment it's your turn until it's your next turn), and again as soon as possible.
7) Whenever you make a mistake, you clear your board (it goes to the graveyard), and the card you made an error on is put to the side as a penalty point.
8) The game is finished when the deck is empty, and the one with the fewest penalty points wins.

It's possible I'm forgetting some things, but that's the gist of it.

It gives funny situations like someone losing because he forgot to cast an instant he just drew during the draw step itself. Or someone basically winning before they even got a turn.

We once played it with an EDH chaos deck.

It was hell.

I cried from laughing.

I have an Omnath, Locus of Mana in play with 10 green mana in my pool. If I cast Momentous Fall, do I draw 11 cards of 7?

HOW DO I LIGHTNING BOLT?

Rotate an untapped Mountain by 90 (+-45) degrees, windmill slam the Bolt, and scream your target's name loudly enough that somebody outside can hear.

>601.2h The player pays the total cost in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can’t be paid.
Seems like 11 but I'm not a judge.

If you want to draw 11 : sac it then pay the mana
If you want to draw 7 : float the mana then sac it.

Depends on what you do first. This is one of the corner case where there's a difference of floating mana before casting v pay when the spell told you to.

the power and toughness of Omnath is only changed whenever a player gets priority so you will always draw 11 cards and you cannot chose to draw only 7

Example: A player controls a creature with the ability “This creature’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your hand” and casts a spell whose effect is “Discard your hand, then draw seven cards.” The creature will temporarily have toughness 0 in the middle of the spell’s resolution but will be back up to toughness 7 when the spell finishes resolving. Thus the creature will survive when state-based actions are checked. In contrast, an ability that triggers when the player has no cards in hand goes on the stack after the spell resolves, because its trigger event happened during resolution.

But that's caused by SBAs only being checked at certain times.
CDAs and static abilities are, unless I'm badly mistaken, updated in realtime. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

>the power and toughness of Omnath is only changed whenever a player gets priority
>The creature will temporarily have toughness 0 in the middle of the spell’s resolution but will be back up to toughness 7 when the spell finishes resolving.

You contradict yourself here.

That is for checking for state based actions, not for determining the creature's last known power.

Yes.

It depends on the order in which you pay the costs. If you sac before you make the mana payment, you draw 11. If you sac AFTER the mana payment, you draw 7.

Always dome.

>is only changed whenever a player gets priority
This is not at all correct.

Yep! Dying is the process of going from field to GY, so when the triggers ask for targets they'll each be valid targets for each other.

Do Lush Growth count towards Coalition Victory? I want to say yes, but I'm unsure.

>Lush Growth
It does. Coalition Victory is just checking for basic land types, and Lush Growth provides those.

It will! The game doesn't specify that each basic land type has to be a separate card.

Neat. How about Sunken Hollow which is an Island Swamp (or similar dual lands) but not a basic land?
Ruling on Coalition Victory says "If a single land has multiple types" counts, but again I'm unsure since the ruling on Sunken Hollow says it's not a basic land.

It doesn't care about basic or not. It only cares about basic land types. It just so happens that basic lands are most likely to have those types.

really simple question, but the issue comes up a lot in my group, and I'd like a clarification on it:

>Player 1 and 2 both have some sort of Shooter (lets say Goblin Sharpshooter)
>1 tries to shoot 2's shooter
>2, in response, attempts to shoot 1's

What happens here? Do both creatures die, or does 2 shooting 1 stop 1 from being able to shoot, as it is now dead thanks to being 0 toughness?

And, another instance:

>1 has a Dark Imposter, and attempts to use its Exile ability
>2, in response, uses Sorin's Thirst to deal 2 damage to it

Does the Imposter die before his ability ever goes off? Does he take the 2, sitting at 0 toughness, then Exiles and gains the +1 counter to live? Does he die but still exiles anyways?

1. both dies.

2. Impostor dies but still exiles anyway

Yep! CV is only checking that, among your lands, those subtypes exist. They don't need to be 'naturally there', nor do they need to be on different lands. Slapping Lush Growth on a Watery Grave satisfies that whole chunk of it.

Player B's ability resolves, killing Player A's pinger. Then Player A's ability resolves, killing Player B's pinger.

Abilities on the stack exist independent of their sources. Destroying a creature does not auto-counter the ability already on the stack, any more than shooting a soldier AFTER he threw a grenade makes the grenade disappear in midair.

>Second bit
Imposter dies, ability resolves and exiles the creature, but nothing else.

Also, damage does not reduce toughness. It would not be a 2/0, it would be a 2/2 with 2 damage marked on it.

yeah, i worded it poorly with the toughness stuff, just using the terms the others in my group tend to use.

So why is it that the abilities on a stack exist independantly from their sources? It just seems counter intuitive to me that attempting to kill/remove the source of whatever is causing something doesn't actually do anything for you.

Because that's just how the rules are. It's like asking why the upkeep is before the draw step- that's just how the game was designed. Again, the grenade analogy- killing the soldier doesn't un-throw the grenade. He's not 'getting ready' to throw it, just like you're not 'getting ready' to activate it. It's already on the stack. Getting rid of the source now doesn't do anything, and that's because they didn't want people to be able to say "In response, Terror to counter your ability". Removal isn't Stifle.

To me, it's more counterintuitive that killing the source stops the ability that already triggered/activated.

fair enough, I never heard the grenade comparison before. Makes everything make a bit more sense now.

one last question before I head out for commander night, its about legendaries.

Does the rule that I must sacrifice a second of a Legendary happen before anything else involving it? ie, I can't put a Mechanized Production onto a Gonti's Aether Heart and be able to (when I have the Energy to pay it) sac the clone for the new Token's extra turn effect, can I?

It's not 'sacrifice' (IE, it won't trigger a Savra). It's "pick one, place the others in the graveyard".

Legend Rule is what we call a State-Based Action. It's checked immediately before a player gets priority, every single time a player gets priority... but only then. It's not checked in the middle of a spell or ability that's resolving, for example. So Mechanized Production would make an Aether Heart, and that would trigger the copy AND the original. Production finishes resolving, SBAs are checked, you have to pick one Heart to keep and put the other into the graveyard. THEN your "get EE" triggers go on the stack, and you have priority to activate abilities.

tl;dr no, you have to bin one of the hearts before you can activate any of them

aight, was just making sure before I told my buddy that his grand scheme of "infinite turns without Time Walk" wouldn't work

Thanks for all your help Judge!

Well, all he really needs is a Mirror Gallery.

But he doesn't need to know that.

oh boy. That card would not only turn him into an infinite turn taking bastard, it'd shut down our resident Kokusho, the Evening Star player.

Imma be sure to keep that card a secret

>keep that card a secret
I mean this in an absolutely not-remotely-condescending way

But it is legitimately adorable when I see stuff like that. Like, seriously- I remember being a lot newer to the game than I am now, and finding older cards and losing my fucking mind at how neat they were.

Thank you for letting me live vicariously through you for a moment there.

lol, all good.

I meant it as more of a "fuck everyone else in my play group". We've got people that the moment they find the way to break a game, they do so, and it kills the fun so fast that we just tell them no to playing. I'm talking Liquimetal-Splinter against a mono-Color deck to remove all lands, or the old favorite Painter's Mill.

One of them just recently learned about the joys of "This creature is Unblockable for a turn" with blightsteel Collossus.

Tower of Magistrate vs Godo / Kemba etc etc
:^)

do my opponent get man from this or is it destroyed before they get the mana they tapped for?
Can I choose not to put it on my lands once my opponent run out of lands?

yes they do

the player whose land gets destroyed gets to choose, not you.

ah, misread the card! thanks

As I noted above, destroying the source of an ability does not stop the ability.

Even if it did, mana abilities happen instantly, do not use the stack, and cannot be responded to. By the time this trigger is going on the STACK (let alone resolving to destroy anything), your opponent already has the mana.

thanks for claryfing. I should know by now that mana abilities don't use the stack but magic is hard to learn when there's so many rules. Hard to keep track on everything all the time, I've only played for a year :(

I found this was a fun exercise to do, especially when carpooling, etc. It's called mental magic.

First off, it's a completely mental exercise. You have to keep track of the number of cards in your hand, whats on the board, and life totals mentally.

You have a 15 card deck, max of 3 of each basic land, and it's singleton. To make it simpler, no non-basic lands. Every card in your hand is any card in the game which you can play normally, but there are two rules that set it apart from normal magic:

One, to play a card you must be able to recall it from memory word for word, or at least close enough that both players accept it, including creature types, etc, and if you get it wrong in any meaningful way, the card gets exiled and your mana has been wasted.

Two, if anyone plays a card, even if they get it wrong, no other player can play that card for the rest of the roadtrip.

So the first few games are likely to be black lotus into force of will into turn 1 wins, but as the card pool gets smaller and smaller, it gets harder and harder to both get your gameplan going, and to counter your opponent's gameplan.

By the end of it I was casting One With Nothing with a Library of Leng on the field to stop myself from getting milled from my opponent's Dictate of Kruphix and Dack Fayden.

>tfw reading the card doesn't always explain the card
how do you deal with old cards that say one thing on them but oracle/gatherer says another?
Some cards aren't obvious at first, like specific creature types etc. (summon creature on card, creature - type on oracle)

It gets easier as you go.

I've seen stuff like that before, but it's usually "Grab a handful of the donation box, shuffle it up, and hand out piles to each player. You can play any card in your hand face-down as a basic land named Utopia that taps for any color. You can play cards in your hand as if they are any card with that exact same cost, and once a card has been played, it can't be played again"

So similar, but you'd have to have an Ornithopter or a Memnite to do a turn 1 Lotus, for example.

If it's old enough to have the old cardframe, I always double-check the Oracle just to be safe.

If it's a situation where a subtype would matter, I double check anything printed before the Grand Creature Type Update.

Also, bed is now.

I'll wait till morning for you to answer this.

How does myriad and melee work together?

They don't. Myriad tokens were never declared as attackers.

Ok I'm not sure how this one works. I'd love to get a judge's insight as to the ruling for this and why. I played this at a tournament and the judge ruled against me but didn't explain to me why exactly.

1. (My turn) I play thoughtseize and make opponent discard Through the Breech. I have an extirpate in hand but wait until I see a Simian Guide before using it.
2. Turn 4 (Opponent's turn) he removes Simian Guide from the game. He has tapped no mana, I tell him to hold up and play extirpate on Through the Breech.

He calls judge and tells judge that was the card he was going to play. I said I had no idea what card was in hand but as soon as he removed simian guide I played extirpate.

Judge leaves for like 10 minutes and puts us in a hold while he looks up ruling.

Says it would rule in opponent's favor but doesn't really explain to me why.

Forgot to say 1. (My turn) was turn 1.

What do you mean by "ruled against me"? What even was the ruling?

Actually, hold up. I can tell you what the judge ruled AND why.

Judge ruled you were "too late" to cast your spell and that the opponent got to cast their whatever first.

This is because Mana Ape is a mana ability, so doesn't use the stack and doesn't cost you priority. If he could activate Mana Tyrone, he could then immediately cast his shit with that R and you don't get a chance to do shit. Same as tapping a mountain.

Sorry realized I was vague, the judge said I can't play extirpate until he plays Through the Breech. I asked how that is if it's instant speed and has split second. He didn't really give me an answer other than it has to do with how Simian Guide works.

I kept contesting that he had not technically played the spell (he had not tapped any mana, he had only removed simian guide.) But it fell on deaf ears and he didn't really have an explanation why it was the way that it was.

Ohhhh I get it. I guess I figured it was an ability. I don't know why he couldn't have just said that.

Thanks

>I don't know why he couldn't have just said that.
Given that he had to look it up, he likely wound up asking "hey what happens" and omitting the "hey why happens" from his question, so he got a what answer with no why answer.

In the comments section of lsv's latest draft on channel fireball some guy talking about auras and hexproog says "If it's moved or attached it can bypass shroud or hexproof, not blinking. When you blink an aura it goes back on the stack as a spell."

This sounds fucktarded (and is fucktarded) but is it true?

no it's not