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

Is relentless rats 2nd rule legal in commander, I've never got a straight answer

Yep! Rats' ability trumps the format limits. If it worked the other way, then the rules would make it so you could only have 4 of them in other formats, which kinda defeats the point of the ability.

I'm a L1 Judge but not working at my shop because there's a judge on staff.

What are some things I could do to be considerate? Do I need to be a hardass if I see something wrong going on at the table next to me?

It depends on the situation and the culture of the shop, really. For something casual and unsanctioned, just stepping in to help correct a problem and explaining you're a Judge is fine. If the event is sanctioned (like an FNM), don't interfere beyond asking them to stop playing while you get a Judge because something is wrong, and then alerting the store judge to the situation. Don't try to "fix it" yourself, because while you may have the KNOWLEDGE, you don't presently have the AUTHORITY within that event.

Okay. The reason I ask is last FNM one player cast a pact of negation, drew for his turn and when his opponent said "uh, pact trigger" he goes "well crap, I was hoping you would forget it."

I got the judge because that's Fraud, plain and simple, but the judge just asked me what I expected him to do, because "The game's over, that's it."

Since he's a store employee, I just didn't know how to respond to that. Should I have?

Don't argue the ruling, even if you know it's wrong. At best you can appeal if YOU get a ruling you know to be wrong, but as a spectator, don't fight it. Accept that as their ruling, but ask if you can speak to them about it after the game/round/event/when they get a minute, whatever, and then explain your side of things. They're not gonna go back and upgrade the "Well I guess you lost" to a DQ after the fact, but they'll at least be aware of what to do if it happens again.

Okay. Thanks for the advice.

Can I kick my opponent in the nuts and call a judge on them for delaying the game while they writhe in pain?

Yes, and the judge will likely issue a DQ, but for you for Unsportsmanlike Conduct - Aggressive Behavior.

You can, but you won't like the results.

Treacherous Pit Dweller dies. My opponent has Hexproof. What happens? Does it come back at all? Do I get to keep it?

What are some stupid things you've been called over for?
Has anyone tried to cheat under you?
Any stories?

What if it was well-intended, like they had a scorpion on their pants?

>TPD
It will come back under your control because of undying, and target opponent gains control of it. You don't have a target opponent to give it to, so you keep it.

>Has anyone tried to cheat under you?
Before I got my judge certs one person tried mana weaving in an incredibly obvious fashion, and when I called him on it said that it wasn't illegal and the judge said "it's a free FNM, I'm not throwing him out" so I just unweaved his deck.

It dies, and Undying triggers. Trigger resolves, brings it back with a counter. That triggers the "I came back from the dead" trigger, which TRIES to go on the stack, but can't, because there's no legal targets. The game shrugs, the ability is removed from the stack without doing anything, and now you have a 5/4 facebeater.

Sorry, totally missed t he other questions!

I don't consider any call stupid. Even if it's something really simple -to me- that doesn't mean the players who called me knew or understood it, and I'd much rather they call me to come do my job than make an assumption and possibly make things worse. I'm literally being paid to help and answer questions, so it'd be really shitty of me to get mad about being expected to perform the service for which I am being paid!

Yes, I've had to DQ two cheaters, and there's someone in my group I refuse to play with because he's a cheater and he still loses.

Stories will come after I return from an errand!

My rule is "The only stupid question is the one you already know the answer to."

Even then, I'd much rather you call me to confirm something than make an assumption.

I'd say the only questions I actually dislike are the ones that are INTENDED to waste my time.

As a non judge,can you tell me in case i wanted to play modern but switch from combo (storm) to control, what deck would you think would deal the best results?

I honestly don't know much about the Modern metagame, I'm afraid.

Ah, no worries, thanks anyway

Evening bump!

should I play Magic Online?

If you enjoy drafting or don't have a lot of people to play with locally, yes.

If The Scorpion God is my Commander, and he dies, and I choose to put him in my Command Zone, does he go from the Command Zone to my hand at the end of the turn?

Nope, because the trigger never fired. If you Command Zone it, it went there -instead- of the graveyard, so it never Died, so that trigger never happened. Same thing with Child of Alara. If you do have it die, it'll linger in your graveyard until the delayed trigger puts it into your hand.

is the interface as atrocious as people seem to think? I've only watched MTGO streams, and it doesn't seem like it's all that bad.

I just want to be able to play Magic whenever, and wherever I want. The only other thing I'm hesitant about is losing the social interaction and that wonderful feeling of holding sleeved cards in your hand.

The interface isn't too terrible- the awkward thing tends to be setting stops, and that it bugs out at times.

And I have a friend who keeps a sleeved stack of basics nearby to shuffle and fidget with while he plays MODO.

It's very easy to accidentally do things or do them wrong. It also, supposedly, does things even when you don't hit the button for it.

Any of you guy's can solve this puzzle:

>> It's your turn
>> Main Phase 1
>> Opponent has 7 life left
>> Win this turn

Cast destined and lead on your main phase giving destined to your survivor and lead to your afflictor, 6 afflict damage and a 3/3 indestructible going face, given your opponent has no removal you have the win.

it's so simple....i was wrapping my head around the bat haste and the mirage mirror copying the bat for so long, the destined/lead card seem to be the first obvious trap idea as it doesnt take all your mana and discarding it with merciless eternal effect to get the lead effect was always landing me short of 1 damage :/

i feel like an idiot.....time to abandon magic

waitaminute, doesnt aflict only triger once anyway?

blocked by 1 creature or 3 creature, it's in a state of "becoming blocked" only once per combat, it doesnt trigger 3 times

Taken from magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/hour-devastation-release-notes-2017-06-30

702.129. Afflict

702.129a Afflict is a triggered ability. "Afflict N" means "Whenever this creature becomes blocked, defending player loses N life."

702.129b If a creature has multiple instances of afflict, each triggers separately.

If multiple creatures block a creature with afflict, afflict triggers only once.
Afflict causes the defending player to lose life; it's not damage or combat damage.
If a creature is attacking a planeswalker, that planeswalker's controller is the defending player.
Afflict resolves before combat damage is dealt. If this loss of life brings a player to 0 life or less, that player loses the game immediately. A blocking creature with lifelink won't deal combat damage in time to save that player.

I feel like this one is pretty obvious but if I have Hapatra on board and festering mummy and then I lethal sting putting a -1/-1 counter on my mummy killing it I get the snake token from that right?
Basically if something dies to a -1/-1 counter from hapatra you get the token because it was still placed correct?

This sounds like affilct only triggers once so that method doesn't work

yes

do i get a 1/1 spirit with flying and a */4 zombie without flying?

How many cocks have you sucked to earn an exemplar wave judge reward?

Correct, you'll get a Mummy. You put a counter on the Mummy, which triggers Hapatra. Then you destroy the targeted creature, then put Lethal Sting in the graveyard, all with Hapatra's trigger waiting. SBAs are checked, kill the Mummy for having 0 toughness, and then Hapatra's trigger goes onto the stack.

If you're hitting an */4 creature in the graveyard, yes. You'll get a token copy of the card (except the copy is a 1/1 Spirit flier), and then you'll get an ability-less zombie with the same P/T as the creature.

Zero!

Use Mirage Mirror ability to copy the Proven Combatant
while that ability is on the stack, copy Cunning Survivor with Mirage Mirror ability

stack look like this

>1:will become a Proven combatant
>2:will become a cunning survivor

start resolving the stack

>2: become a cunning survivor

interupt yourself by using Merciless eternal ability that triger your mirror(now a [Cunning Survivor])

your creature is now a 1/3 +1 attack from discarding untill the end of turn + is unblockable untill the end of turn from discarding

resolve stack

>1:become a Proven Combatant

the mirror is now an unblockable 5/4 and all you have left to do is attack with everything

Proven Combatant WILL deal 5 damages
Grisly Survivor is irrelevant if it's blocked or not
Merciless Eternal will deal 4 damage unblocked OR 2 damage if blocked

Total 7 damage

>THE WINRAR IS YOU

Let's say I use my Spellskite's ability to enchant 2 of my opponent's Ethereal Armors unto it.
Who's enchantments does it count and why?

Theirs. The Auras are on your creature, but are still CONTROLLED by your opponent, so the "you" on Ethereal Armor refers to their controller.

How do you shuffle unsleeved cards?

Your opponent's, since even if they enchant your creatures the armors are still controlled by your opponent

As best you can, I guess.

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/hour-devastation-release-notes-2017-06-30

Mirage Mirror
3
Artifact
2: Mirage Mirror becomes a copy of target artifact, creature, enchantment, or land until end of turn.

Once Mirage Mirror's ability resolves, it no longer has that ability.
Mirage Mirror copies the printed values of the target permanent, plus any copy effects that have been applied to it. It won't copy counters on that permanent or effects that have changed its power, toughness, types, color, or so on. Notably, it won't copy effects that made the target permanent become a creature

If I play a forest does it come into play tapped or untapped? Can I make a green circle with it on my first turn and play another card?

Right. You activate it once targeting Combatant, hold priority, and activate it again targeting Survivor.

The ability doesn't just instantly resolve the moment you activate it. It's the same thing as Scion of the Ur-Dragon; activate it once, hold priority, do it again. Second activation resolves, make it a Moltensteel Dragon, pay a bunch of life for buffs. First activation resolves, get Skittles, swing with your big-enough Infect dragon.

All permanents enter the battlefield untapped, face-up, unflipped, and phased-in unless something explicitly says otherwise. Nothing is saying otherwise, so your forest will enter untapped. Compare to lands like Stirring Wildwood, which say they enter tapped.

Creatures the only permanents really affected by what we call "summoning sickness". Any noncreature permanents can tap to activate their abilities (like a Forest's mana ability to generate G) as soon as they hit the board.

Vial smasher's triggered effect chooses players at random. If a player has hexproof can they be chosen? Vial smasher doesn't have the word 'target' in its text so is hexproof irrelevant?

Vial Smasher's ability doesn't target, so Hexproof won't matter.

Some things target randomly, like Goblin Test Pilot. For those, you choose randomly from among all legal choices, so you'd exclude any creatures or players with Shroud, Hexproof, or a relevant Protection, and only choose from among the legal potential targets.

If player 1 controls Kalitas and the opponent has 5 nontoken creatures and player 1 casts a board wipe, does his effect trigger, wiping the board and creating 5 zombies after the board wipe or are they destroyed too?

Kalitas does not have a triggered ability. Katias has a replacement effect. The board wipe will simultaneously destroy every creature on the battlefield. They will then die. Kalitas' replacement effect will replace "I die" with "I am exiled, and that guy gets a Zombie" for the 5 nontoken creatures controlled by the opponent.

Those Zombies will not be destroyed, because the one-time "Destroy all creatures" event from the wipe has already happened.

Thanks judge

Yesterday you promised stories. Where are stories?

What kind of stories would you like?

But if it's Yaheeni's Expertise they still will?

Nope! Generating a continuous effect that modifies the characteristics of a set of objects (in this case, "dudes get -3/-3", which is an effect in Layer 7c) only 'works' on the set of objects that exist as that effect is put into place. If you play Yahenni's Expertise, and then after it resolves play a Glory Seeker, your Glory Seeker is not a -1/-1, but a 2/2, because it didn't exist as Yahenni's Expertise resolved.

So Expertise will give everything -3/-3, then let you free-cast something if you want, then go to the graveyard. SBAs will be checked, and will send anything of YOURS with 0 or less toughness thanks to Expertise to the graveyard, but will exile anything of THEIRS with 0 or less toughness thanks to Expertise (because of Kalitas), and give you a Zombie per.

Basically, unless it's something like Player C dropping an Elesh Norn (because that's a constant continuous effect, rather than one generated by a one-shot effect), whatever killed your opponents creatures won't touch the Zombies you get out of the deal.

See

are abilities like cycling and transmute instant speed?

Yes

There's no such thing as "speed" in Magic.

Most activated abilities can be activated at the same time you could cast an instant: whenever you have priority. Cycling is among those. That's the default; some abilities will have baggage that put timing restrictions on them. Transmute is among THOSE- you can only activate the Transmute ability of a card in your hand at the same time you could normally cast a Sorcery: during your own Main Phase while you have priority and the stack is empty. Other abilities like this are Loyalty abilities and Equip.

So, both of these I can freely talk about because the associated investigations are long since over.

The first PPTQ I ever worked, was my first time Head Judging a PPTQ, and my second Comp REL Event after getting L2 (the first being Son of Vegas). Theros-era Standard. All was going well enough, and I was walking the room, pausing to watch some Magic every now and then. I stop at a table, where Player A is on America Heroic, and has a Battlewise Hoplite. Taps out. "Ordeal of Thassa- Heroic trigger." Opponent nods. Player A places a d6 on the Hoplite, showing 1 counter. "Ordeal of Thassa- Heroic trigger." Opponent nods, Player A ticks the die up to 2. I lean in a little closer to double check the Hoplite- yep, there's an extra component to the ability: the Scry. This was before 'you didn't Scry' was just shortcutted as 'you chose to leave it on top'- it was an action you couldn't just 'skip'. So, as Player A is announcing combat, I stop him, and explain what happened. I issue a Warning for Game Play Error - Game Rule Violation, and rewind to the resolution of the first Heroic trigger. Easy- all he does is look at the top card, likes it, and leaves it, then says "I wanna leave it on top for the second scry, too."

I'm finishing writing the penalty on the slip, and the opponent speaks up: "Man, I really wish you hadn't told him that."

So, Player N and I step aside for a quick talk. I ask what he meant- "Well you reminded him he forgot to Scry, now he gets to. That sucks." I ask if this means he was AWARE his opponent misresolved the ability- he was. I ask why he chose not to point out a broken rule he'd noticed. "Uh, to gain an advantage?"

For those following at home. the three criteria for Cheating are "Break a rule/allow a rule to be broken", "Be aware of the illegality of that", and "Do it to gain an advantage". Dude basically quoted the definition of Cheating to me. So, he was DQed. My first DQ at my first PPTQ.

Welcome back, we missed you. I'm going for my second practicum during the prerelease, unless something goes terribly wrong I should be a judge within a week. These threads are partially to blame, to keep up the good work.

I'm very happy to hear that! Best of luck.

>Dude breaks the rules
>You get DQ'd for your opponent's fuckups.

And people wonder why magic is dying.

He got DQed for noticing his opponent fucked up and not calling attention to it to gain advantage. That's against the rules. If he hadn't noticed, or he'd thought that all the card did was "get a counter", then everything's fine, but he noticed his opponent break a rule (in this case, incorrectly resolving an ability) and kept quiet about it to gain advantage. That's no different than realizing your opponent has missed the past 4 life you lost on his lifepad and not correcting him when he thinks he doesn't have lethal on board, because he thinks you're at 6 when you KNOW you're at 10.

>I am required to tell my opponent how his cards work or risk DQ

bitch it's your deck if you don't know how your cards work you shouldn't be allowed to play those cards.

If you notice a rule is broken, and you don't call attention to it in order to gain advantage, you're cheating. Period. You may not like it, but those are the rules.

can i activate gwafa on my opponents turns? im to embarrased to ask my friends

You can! It's a regular activated ability, so you can activate it any time you have priority- same rules as casting an instant, so you can do it on someone else's turn.

If you want to use it to "stop" an attack, you'd need to do it BEFORE they declare the creature as an attacker, though.

I repeat. And people wonder why magic is dying. It's easy to see that people are sick and tired of this beta numale friendship sharing crap where everyone wins because no one can ever do anything wrong and letting them means you're literally worse than hitler

...

Please go back to /pol/ where you belong.

targeting enigma drake with the soul separator.
isn't the power-defining trait an ability that would get copied by the spirit?

Two questions that came up in /ccg/ a while ago.
1) If I have a creature with an ability that defines its power and toughness as your maximum hand size, would a "you have no maximum hand size" effect make it a 0/0 or infty/infty? The way I think it works is that the game can't find a value and so defaults to 0, but I want to be sure.
2) If I have a creature that turns my lands into, say, 2/2 Plants (in addition to being lands) and also makes Plants indestructible, would a (sufficiently large) earthquake effect wipe out my lands? I don't think it would, but I'm not sure.

What are triggered abilities from creatures called?
If I have Runic Halo on the board and named Thought-Knot Seer will my opponent be able to target me with exile from hand effect?

*Runed Halo

What would be the call if I misname a card like that with an effect that requires me to name one. Sort of like the Borborygmos Pithing Needle thing, but instead of naming a wrong card I name one that doesn't exist (like Runic Halo).

Player 1 has Homura, Human Ascendant on the battlefield. Player 2 has Lim-Dul the necromancer on the field. Homura gets killed. What happens?

In the game we ruled it as Player 2 paying 2 mana and getting an unflipped Homura on his field, as the flipping is part of Homura's graveyard effect which was replaced by Lim-Dul's. Then, when Homura died on player 2's battlefield, player 1 got a flipped Homura.
How much of this is correct?

You can't name a card that doesn't exist, or i think, isn't legal in the format your playing. As such, you'd back up to when you played it, if feasible.

Also note thatwould apply here too, if either player knows the card isn't a legal choice, lets it happen, and does so to gain advantage, such as you naming a non-existing card, thats cheating.

Not a judge, but I'm fairly certain that this is how it would work:
When Homura dies, what happens depends on whose turn it is. When Homura dies, both the Lim-Dul and Homura trigger. The active player puts his trigger on the stack first, then the inactive player puts his trigger on the stack. Since both triggers need to find the card from the graveyard, the one that resolves first (which is the one that was put on the stack last, i.e. by the NAP) "wins".
In short, if Homura dies on P1's turn, Lim-Dul resolves first and P2 can get an unflipped Homura if he pays 1B. The Homura trigger then can't find the card and does nothing. If Homura dies on P2's turn, Lim-Dul trigger goes on the stack first, thus Homura trigger resolves first. P1 gets a flipped Homura, and P2 then has the option to pay 1B, but even if he does it wouldn't do anything.

I'm less sure on the second part, but since the flip-ability doesn't specify "under its owner's control", it should return under the control of whoever controlled the creature.

That makes sense, sadly I cannot remember when the creature died as it was also a multiplayer game (I assume triggers go onto the stack in clockwise order starting from the active player in that case).

Who picks what order creatures die from a board wipe?

No one, since they all die at the same time

So I'm still kind of new and understand priority for the most part but things like this confuse me:
Opponent cast a creature and I have no response to the stack. Once that creature resolves am I allowed to respond to it then?
Some rules make it seem like I can't because I have no priority here and need to wait for them to activate something or change phases (aka pass priority).

Am I just crazy for thinking this or can you fatal push a dude the second he successfully hits the board or do you have to wait? Can you respond to summons in this game or not.

torment of hellfire

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/hour-devastation-release-notes-2017-06-30

1) main phase starts, opponent has priority
2) opponent casts creature, he still has priority and can activate abilities/cast spells
3) opponent passes priority, now you can cast spells like counters etc
4) you have nothing to do so you pass the priority back, the creature resolves and hits the battlefield
5) your opponent now has priority and you have to wait until it passes it back to you, either after he casts spells/activates ability or to move on to the combat phase

gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=136032

gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=430842

let's suppose i am looking to makespellweaver volute interact the amonkhet/hour of devastation aftermath cards, in particular istant/sorceries and sorceries/istants.For Example Leave // Chance

if i have 4 copies of Leave // Chance in the graveyard, one of them is enchanted with spellweaver volute, and i cast a sorcery spells triggering Spellweaver Volute, can i combo off it and cast all 4 Chance cards?
my idea is that when spellweaver volute lets me play the first Leave//Chance i get to play the side i choose; choosing the sorcery side(NB: wotc site says the copy exists in the graveyard) would let me trigger the Volute again, enabling it to copy and cast the next split cards it enchants, going on a loop for as many split aftermath cards i have in my GY.

My guess is that the word" play" doesn't let me cast sorceries when there is stuff on the stack...so would that work differently if i had Teferi or vedalken orrery ( lets me cast sorceries whenever i could play an istant)?

finally can someone clarify when the "if you do exile the enchanted card and make Spellweaver Volute enchant another istant card in the graveyard" happens? Because to someone ignorant of the exact rules it could look like it goes on the stack separately after you played the sorcery and you could make it so you could cast an infinite amount of aftermath-sorcery-copies off a single enchanted split card.

That actually should work. You cast a sorcery which creates a copy of leave//chance that you can cast for free. Since it's a split card you can cast either half. And the game is giving you special permission to cast it now, so if you somehow cast a sorcery off it (and split cards are the only way to do that) volute will trigger again.

The "if you do" clause means that the card you pseudo-flashback with volute gets exiled and volute picks another target to enchant, if one exists.

think of it as an enchantment torrential gearhulk almost.

It is. The thing is, that ability will exist in Layer 7a, whereas Soul Separator's ability saying "This is a 1/1" applies in 7b, one layer later, overriding it. Same thing as hitting an Enigma Drake with a Diminish.

For the first one, I don't really have an answer, because nothing with an ability like that exists in the game. There's no such thing as "infinity" in Magic, you have to have actual integers, so it couldn't be an infinity/infinity, but it being a 0/0 doesn't make much sense, either. But like I said, that's not really a wording that exists (or probably WOULD) in Magic, so the rules don't really cover it.

For the second, nah, they're good. Indestructible means that they can't be destroyed, either by "destroy" effects like Doom Blade OR lethal damage.

They're just called triggered abilities. They will not, because you have protection from Thought-Knot Seer, so a targeted ability from that source cannot target you.

Depends! "Name a card" really just means "uniquely identify a card". If you used the 'wrong' name but it was clear what you intended to name, we just clarify and move on. If it's unclear what you named, you get a Warning, and are instructed to name a card at the time it's discovered.

Depends on whose turn it is. Both Homura and Lim-Dul will trigger from that death, and the triggers go on the stack in AP/NAP order. So if it was P2's turn, Homura's trigger will resolve first and bring Homura back flipped. If it was P1's turn, Lim-Dul's trigger will resolve first and let P2 pay 1B to get Homura on HIS field.

Also, there is no "player 2's battlefield". There's just one battlefield, it's a shared zone.

This is correct.

Well, turn order, but yeah.

Nobody. They all die simultaneously.

Actually I want gA to look at this, it might be a loop you can choose to stop, depending on when the "if you do" clause works. If you can find asplit card where one half is a sorcery, the other is an instant, and the sorcery side can win you the game with an arbitrarily large number of castings, you may have something.

Not IMMEDIATELY. Once an object on the stack resolves, the Active Player (person whose turn it is) will receive priority first. So they cast Glory Seeker, it resolves, and THEY have priority immediately afterwards so you can't just windmill slam your Fatal Push. You have to wait until they pass priority again, either by adding a new object to the stack, or by passing it to move into the next step or phase.

If you cast Chance from your graveyard, Spellweaver Volute will go to the graveyard as a State-Based Action as soon as SBAs are checked, because it'd be an Aura not attached to any legal objects.

What you COULD do is cast a Sorcery from your hand, trigger Volute, and let you cast either half of Leave/Chance from your graveyard, then stick Volute to the next one and repeat. So you can chain the four, but you need to cast a spell from your hand to start it; you can't start it by Aftermath-ing the thing it's attached to.

The "if you do, exile and blah blah" means if you do choose to cast the copy for free, then after you've done that, exile the original from your graveyard and move Volute over. It doesn't "go on the stack separately" because it's all part of the same triggered ability resolving. You absolutely cannot go "infinite" here.