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

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can i strionic either ability of pic?

what's the best way to use scroll rack in yidris?

You can copy either of them, because both are triggered abilities you control. Copying the second one is probably not terribly useful, but copying the first one would net you an extra card!

You'll want to Scroll Rack to put specific cards on top, to ensure you cascade as you want to, as well as to get rid of junk that's clogging your hand.

Say you want to cast a 6 mana spell in your hand, and you want a specific 5 mana spell to come with it, but you have some 7 drops in your hand that aren't useful right now. You'd Scroll away those 7 drops AND the 5 mana spell, below those. Then you cast your 6 mana spell, wheel past the 7s, cast the 5 as you wanted, and then put the 7s on the bottom.

Noob question:

Let's say I want to use master decoy's ability on a creature. In response, my opponent uses his own master decoy on my master decoy. So I can't use the tap effect. Do I still pay the one white for my master decoys effect?

I know that when a spell is countered you still pay the original spells cost. This is a slightly different scenario so I'm not sure

The way it works is
>Declare you are casting a spell/activating an ability
>Declare targets and modes
>Pay costs
>Place on stack
NOW your opponent gets to respond.
Your Master Decoy is already tapped, the cost is already paid. His ability isn't countered. His ability wouldn't be countered even if your opponent destroyed your creature.
gA likes to use the grenade metaphor, your creature's ability is like a grenade. If he throws the grenade and gets shot, the grenade still goes off.

That's not a legal play from your opponent. Magic is not a game of reflexes. When you activate your Master Decoy, you put the ability on the stack, pick your target, and pay all the costs. NOW the ability is on the stack, and your opponent has priority to respond- your Decoy is already tapped. He can't jump in and tap yours 'in response' to you trying to pay a cost, because he doesn't have priority to do so.

With the counterspell example, it's for the same reason- by the time your opponent is able to USE their counterspell, you've fully paid for your spell. You pay for the spell as part of casting it, not afterwards.

whoops, Declare modes/'choose X' comes before declaring targets.

Anyway, tapping Decoy is part of the cost. By the time your opponent can respond, your creature is already tapped and the ability is on the stack.

I am super-satan

I target darksteel forge with viashino heretic, indestructible prevents the forge from being destroyed but would the 2nd ability still function as normal

Your master decoy becomes tapped (which it already was because tapping is a cost)

Then your opponents creature you targeted is tapped because abilities use the stack.

Tappers don't prevent things in the short term they are not reactionary cards. You need to use them proactively. For example you need to tap your opponents creature before the "declare attackers" step. Once the creature is declared as an attacker it is going to happen (barring specific other cards)

This also effects abilities on the card. Once the cost is paid it goes on the stack independent of the creature. Even if the trapper was killed the ability would go through.

It would. The damage is not dependent on the destruction of the target.

If a card says " You may Exhert this creature as it attacks". Does the exhert effect activates only if the creature survives combat? More specifically i'm talking about Champion of Rhonas.

Okay interesting, thanks. My friends and I started playing quite recently, so I think there's a lot of unintentional rule breaking happening. We definitely use "in response" in places we shouldn't.

So if my friend wants to stop me from using my master decoy in that situation, what should he do? Should he immediately tap my MD after my upkeep?

You get the option to Exert the creature as it attacks, which is way before combat damage would ever kill it. If you choose to Exert it, the trigger (not activation) will fire right then, in the Declare Attackers step.

If Exert didn't happen until after combat, Ahn-Crop Crasher would be a really shitty card.

He can't STOP you from doing it in that scenario, period. All he can do is use his own to sort of 'force your hand'- as you said, using it in your upkeep, forcing you to use it there or not at all. The only way to flat out STOP you from doing it would be to use something like Sudden Shock (which you can't respond to), Stifle the activation, or play a card that makes it impossible to activate (like Damping Matrix, though you could just activate it in response to Damping Matrix being cast)

There's really no good end for him. Yes, he can do that, but you can still use your Decoy in response to the ability.
This will however force you to use it right then, and perhaps make a less-informed decision than if you were able to use it at your leisure. He could also be forcing you to spend that W you could be using for something else.

I better tell him the game we played last night made no sense haha.

So we actually had two tappers each. His goal was to nullify my tappers using his, which he cannot do as you've stated. But here's where it gets more complicated:

In my upkeep I have priority, so I tap one of his creatures using MD. Then priority passes to him, so he taps my other MD with one of his own tappers. I can't use both my MDs at once, right? They are added to the stack sequentially from my understanding. So he can stop one of them

Nope. He -cannot stop them-.

For one, you can activate Decoy A, retain priority, and then activate Decoy B, THEN pass priority to him, at which point both your Decoys have been activated.

For two, you could activate the first one and pass priority to him. If he then activates HIS decoy to tap Decoy B, you can respond by tapping Decoy B for its ability.

He *cannot in any way* use his Decoy to 'stop' yours, because you can just activate them in response.

You can't use both at once, but that just means you need to choose which one gets activated first.

You have two tappers. Your choices are:
>activate one, pass priority
>activate one, HOLD PRIORITY, activate the other
>activate neither
Activate sequentially/can't activate at the same time just means they can't occupy the same spot on the stack at once, one must resolve before the other. You can have both of their abilities on the stack at once.

This has been an enlightening exchange haha. Pretty sure I get it now, thanks

This video may help.

youtube.com/watch?v=P7VFyHMMXtc

Hey gA, is it acceptable to have extra copies of Delver of Secrets preflipped to act as tokens at a tournament? Or do I have to use the check box cards?

Well, they wouldn't be 'tokens'.

But yeah, as long as they're kept with your sideboard and aren't sleeved like your deck, that is an explicitly allowed "this is legal" exception to the normal Game Loss for keeping extra cards with your deck. It's super common for people to keep an 'extra' set of DFCs in perfect fits. Honestly, I recommend that if you're not using checklists, because I've seen sleeves AND cards get damaged from constantly being taken out and put back in.

Thanks, Yawgmoth!

Docent of perfection flips if you fill condition when you cast insant or sorcery.
If I cast cackling Counter part that makes a token copy of target creature I, targetting docent and causing it to flip will I:
1. Get a copy of docent
2. Get a copy of Final Iteration (docents flip side)
3. Fizzle because docent that was targeted does no longer exist.

It doesn't flip at all, it transforms. Flip is a whole other thing from Kamigawa.

In your scenario, you'll cast your Counterpart, which will trigger Docent. Trigger resolves, creates a 1/1 blue Human Wizard creature token, and that's all, because you only control 2 Wizards. Then, Counterpart will resolve and create a copy of the Docent. Since the trigger has to resolve before the spell that fired it, your Docent won't transform in this scenario.

If you already controlled one token, then the trigger here would create your third Wizard, and then transform Docent. Then, Counterpart would copy Final Iteration rather than Docent of Perfection.

>It doesn't flip at all, it transforms. Flip is a whole other thing from Kamigawa.

Huh, Didn't know they had mechanical name difference.

Also you still need 2 token present because docent is not a wizard or are you referring to something else?.

Ah, my mistake! Always RTFC, kids.

Yeah, you'd need 3 Wizards total, and Docent isn't one. So assuming you have 0 or 1 Wizards when you cast Counterpart, you'd make a single Wizard token, and then a single Docent token, no transforming. If you controlled 2 or more Wizards when you cast Counterpart, the Docent trigger would make another Wizard, transform Docent to Final Iteration, and then Cackling Counterpart would make a Final Iteration token. "Fizzle" is not an option, because you're still targeting the same perfectly legal object, it just changed what it looked like.

How folks, pretty simple question I think here. It's just that it caused a bit of contention, and we ended up reading through priority/stack rules and over-complicating it confusing ourselves.

Player A plays Conclave Phalanx, Player B lets it resolve. Player A gains some life, and then when Ajani's triggers, Player B shocks it. Did Player B have priority to cast shock, and would shock kill Ajani's before his ability resolves?

My understanding of how this works is like this:
-It is Player A's main phase
- Player A casts Conclave, Conclave enters stack, both players pass, it enters the battlefield
-Conclave's ability enters the stack, both players pass, Player A gains life
-Ajani is triggered. Player A passes. Player B puts shock on the stack. Shock resolves from the top of the stack dealing 2 damage to Ajani's; the damage puts it into the graveyard as a state-based action. Ajani's ability is still on the stack, but it has an invalid target and fizzles, doing nothing.
-Player A's main phase continues

I think the main thing that lead to an argument was if each player gets priority before a triggered ability resolves.

Thanks!

When Conclave Phalanx resolves and enters the battlefield, it will trigger itself. When that trigger resolves and gains Player A 2 life, Pridemate will trigger.

Player B can cast Shock in response to EITHER of those triggers to kill the Pridemate.


You've mostly got it right- a few nitpicks.

1) Things don't really 'enter' the stack. They are put ONTO it.

2) The damage doesn't kill the creature, the state-based action does.

3) Pridemate's trigger does not fizzle, because it doesn't target. With the exception of Aura spells, and keyword abilities (like Equip) which have the word 'target' baked into their rules, but not always present on the card, things *only* target if they explicitly use the word 'target'. Pridemate's ability doesn't fizzle, because it doesn't target, so it literally cannot. What happens is it resolves, and does fuck-all because the Pridemate is no longer in the zone the trigger expects.

Every time- every single time any objects are added to the stack, ALL players will get priority again. The reason for this is that nothing on the stack is ABLE to resolve unless all players successively pass priority without adding to the stack. It's not possible for something to hit the stack without you getting priority to respond before it resolves. The things that you can't respond to (special actions, SBAs, mana abilities) don't even USE the stack, which is why you can't respond. If it uses the stack, you're gonna get priority before it resolves.

Thanks for the detailed reply, I think this clears things up.