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

Good morning and welcome back!

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Am I a bad person for wanting to use Life and Limb and Blood Moon in the same EDH deck?

A little.

Welcome back gA, brewing any jank?

>alms collector on the field
>I play windfall
What happens?

Sorta- I put together v1.0 of my Dinosaur deck last week and got in a fair few games over the weekend, and currently building Doran is on top of my build-list, followed by Marchesa Knights and Voltron.

So, first everyone ditches their hands, obviously. If nobody discarded more than one card, then everyone just draws 1. But if anyone discarded more than 2, then Alms Collector kicks in. We'll say someone discarded 5.

Everyone discard. Then everyone TRIES to draw 5. Collector's controller will draw 5, because nothing's stopping that. Everyone else will only draw one card, and Collector's controller will draw a card for each opponent that tried to draw 5. So if it was a 4 person game, Collector's controller draws 8 cards total, and the other three players each draw 1 card.

What a fisting.

Jesus that's a strong interaction. I thought you'd only draw 3 cards, one for each opponent, but since you still draw the five, that's just a complete blow out. I think I'm going to have to make an esper wheels deck now.

Also, I run Doran, it's honestly amazing. You best be running the OG art with the sprinting tree, it's just so good.

Unfortunately, I'm not using the original art! I was considering scrapping my Ghave deck for a while, but when I got this wave's Exemplar foils, I decided "Well, guess I'm building Doran." I'd always kinda wanted to, anyway.

Does thalia change converted mana cost for things like chalice?

Is there anything current serving judges aren't allowed to do? E.G play at certain events or judge outside their jurisdiction? (Sorry for any English mistakes)

I can't even hate. Those foils are pretty sexy.

The thing about Doran, like you probably can expect, it's very weak to wraths, and if someone nevermores your commander, your entire deck doesn't work unless you get assault formation out. My favorite spicy wincon? Dropping Triumph of the Hordes out of nowhere. I just wish the deck had red so I could run Mirrorwood Treefolk, but it's still pretty fun to tree of perdition someone then swing with a giant death tree. I usually run wound reflection, but that's just me.

Nope. The only time CMC *ever* changes is with X spells (where X is 0 off the stack, and 'whatever you declared it to be' on the stack).

Whether you're paying R, 1R, 2R, WUBRG, or 5 dollars and an Enraged Battle Ox to cast it, Lightning Bolt has a CMC of 1. Period.

Nah, your English is fine, friend!

We're not allowed to play in large events that we're also judging. I can play while judging an FNM or a prerelease, for example, but not a PPTQ or a GP. If I'm not working the event, there's no restrictions on me for what I can and can't play in, beyond what's normal for a player; that is, I can enter a GP, but I can't play on the Pro Tour unless I actually earn a spot like anyone else.

We don't really have a "jurisdiction" for judging. I could, theoretically, run events in Germany if I felt like flying over there to do it. I'm not 'bound' to my home city, state, region, or even country.

Yeah, I'm not expecting it to be top-tier or anything, it just seems fun. The Ghave deck it's replacing was cute for a few weeks, but it's really boring now (it's just Saproling/Fungus tribal)

Nothing changes converted mana cost.

If a player forgot the trigger of Longtusk Cub to generate 2 energy would the player lose the energy if catching the mistake right after his/her opponent draws the card on the following draw phase. It would be a warning for missing the trigger but would the penalty be no energy?

The card does not read "may" and is a compulsory trigger.

If we're assessing Missed Trigger, you've... well, missed your trigger. There's a small handful of exceptions where we just resolve the trigger now, or assume you resolved it, and this is not one of them.

You won't get a Warning here because that's not a generally detrimental trigger, but it'll be up to your opponent whether or not to put the trigger on the stack. They probably won't let you have it.

Who owns the tokens made by cards like hunted troll?

Tokens are owned by whatever player created them. The Hunted cycle has your opponent creating the tokens, so they own them.

It used to be that the owner of a token was whoever controlled the effect that made them, which made the Hunted cycle + Brand hilarious.

I never expected the trigger to hit the stack but I did get a warning from a judge at the Dallas Open. I didn't expect much to come from the game. My opponent was one of the biggest jerks I have ever played against. Raising his hand and calling judge was muscle memory for this guy.

At one point he handed his deck to me sideways and then called a judge claiming I was looking at the bottom of his deck so I should get a warning.

Well that guy sounds like a dick.

And yeah, there shouldn't have been a Warning there; we only give those for triggers that are considered "generally detrimental". If it's a 'good' trigger, we basically consider you not getting your trigger to be punishment enough. Unless we suspect cheating, anyway.

If an enrage creature is blocked by two creatures, you get 2 enrage triggers right?

Not so! It's being hit by two creatures, but technically it's taking all of that damage at once, as part of the Combat Damage Step. Only one trigger.

Would enrage Trigger twice off of double strike, assuming the creature taking damage survives passed the first strike damage?

There, yes. That's two different 'instances' of damage. You'd get one trigger right after the damage in the First Strike damage step, then another in the normal damage step.

Let's say 2 creatures. a 5/5 and a 5/5 trample is attacking.
If i blocked both using Spike Tailed Ceratops (4/4, can block an additional creature each combat.), and also double blocked the trample one with another 3/3 creature, how would damage be calculated?
I assume i still got 3 damage through no matter how the opponent assigned damage right?

So, you're using Ceratops to block the 5/5, and Ceratops and a 3/3 to block the 5/5 trampler.

You'd choose the order you're assigning damage to the things you double block for Ceratops, and your opponent would choose the order they're assigning damage from their Trampler to your two blockers. This is so, for example, if you know they're putting your 3/3 first, you could Giant Growth it to save it.

Your opponent's double-blocked guy has to assign lethal to the first blocker in the order they chose before they can move onto the second, BUT they can factor in damage from other blocked creatures. Likewise, your Ceratops has to assign lethal to the first thing YOU chose for the damage order, but you can factor in damage from the 3/3. So most likely, you'll have your 3/3 assign 3 to the trampler, and Ceratops will assign 2 to that and 2 to the other. Your opponent will have the not-trampler assign 5 to the Ceratops, and the trampler assign 3 to the 3/3, trampling over for 2.

End result, Ceratops, the 3/3, and the trampler are all dead, the not-trampler has 2 damage marked on it, and you took 2 damage.

Thanks. I somehow counted the 1 spilled damage from the non trampler.
Is damage assigned at the same time? I mean if my opponent somehow doesn't want my 3/3 to die, can he choose to assign the trample damage to the Ceratops first?

Does Kopala, Warden of Waves affect Merfolk spells you control that are on the stack? Been wondering this since the card got spoiled and have yet to find a straight answer.

It doesn't specify creature, card, permanent, etc. It just simply says "Merfolk", which makes me think it would effectively make your Merfolk spells cost "2" more to target with a counterspell for example.

Ga, I once had to play against a player who smelled so bad it was difficult to play the game. It felt unfair and offensive and I would like to know if a player has ever been dq' d for nasaly assaulting people.

The answer is no.

Technically your opponent announces the damage assignment order for your blockers (that is, the order your opponent will be doing damage to them) first, then you announce the damage assignment order for the things that Ceratops blocked in the Declare Blockers step. If, for whatever reason, they'd rather just heap all the damage onto your Ceratops and not trample OR deal damage to the 3/3, they could just put Ceratops first and hit it for 10 total, yes.

Nope. When something refers to permanents like that ("Merfolk", "Creature", "artifact", etc) without any further descriptors, there's basically an invisible word 'permanent' after it. If it was meant to also work for spells, it would clearly say so, the way Arcane Adaptation does.

That's not something we'd really DQ for. If a player's hygiene was bad enough to disrupt the event, we'd inform the TO, and they'd handle it. The TO might ask the player to leave the venue, but that's not quite the same thing as a DQ.

I suppose that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

ixalan appeals to me i haven't played mtg in years but i have no one to play with

If you can wait a bit, Magic Arena is coming out soon, and sounds like a great solution for you.

do you know when its coming out ?

I don't think a release date has been supplied, but they're taking applications for the Closed Beta. I'd wager to expect the game by summer of next year.

Does rules advisor mean anything other than being a hall monitor equivalent to a judge's police officer?
Do you have to go through a lot of shit to be an L1 judge and if you are an L1 judge are you obligated to participate in MtG events as a judge

RA was basically a mixture of "a good benchmark for knowing where you are on your way to L1" and a way to have some kind of clout as 'the rules guy' without going so far as to be a Judge.

With the lowered requirements for L1, RA became increasingly pointless, which is why they got rid of it. By the time they axed it, it was basically meaningless (no offense to anyone).

To be an L1, you must judge at least 2 sanctioned events, pass a written exam, and pass an 'interview' (which is basically just making sure you're not a complete trash fire of a person) within a span of six months. That's it- it intentionally has a fairly low barrier to entry, where the "hardest" part is the basic rules knowledge.

Each level has some maintenance requirements to keep from lapsing, but you're not REQUIRED to judge specific events (until you're way deep into L3, at least). To maintain L1, you need to take a yearly exam to show you're up-to-date on the rules (and not just coasting on what you KNEW 2 or 3 years back), and judge a sanctioned event every six months. That's it. You could literally just run one FNM every five or six months and be fine to maintain your L1; you're not "obligated" to judge any more than that, and you're never required to judge SPECIFIC events. If you'd rather play than judge, you 100% can. Even if it's a case of "This event will not fire without you" (which is more of an L2 thing, like when a shop calls me to say the other L2s in the state are busy that weekend), you have no obligation to go run it. Maybe you're busy. Maybe you'd just rather watch One Piece and eat Oreo O's all day. Either way, you can just say "Sorry, I'm not available" with no repercussions.

that's pretty neat.
Thanks for the detailed response.

I didn't even know rules advisor got axed, I did the little test for it way back when but I haven't played since like 2012.

>Maybe you'd just rather watch One Piece and eat Oreo O's all day

Where the hell are you getting Oreo O's? I thought you could only get them in Korea!

They brought them back like a month ago, apparently. Walmart exclusive. I have five boxes in my kitchen.

What's the most convoluted interaction between cards you've ever had to piece together?

I don't think you even need to re-test for L1; at least, I haven't had to and the local L2s I asked said it wasn't necessary.

I do judge multiple events weekly though.

Does storm sculptor return itself to it's hand if you cast it without any other creatures on the battlefield

Yes. Pay 4 get a 1/1 merfolk with Deeproot Waters!!

Let's say I have Nest of Scarabs out and an Ifnir Deadlands.
I sacrifice Ifnir to put two -1/-1 counters on a creature, let's say some poor 1/1. Does Nest of Scarabs give me two insects or one?
My assumption is that although the card doesn't specify the counters are placed one at a time, a state-based action occurs after the first counter hits, the creature dies, then the second counter fizzles. Since the second counter is never applied, I would only get one insect. Is this correct?

Second, a commander scenario:

Sower of Tempation steals someone's commander.
I played Overwhelming Splendor on the player controlling the Sower of Temptation. Does the stolen commander remain with the player who controlled Sower of Temptation, or would their commander be returned?
What about a scenario where, say, a permanent is exiled by Angel of Sanctions and then Overwhelming Splendor is played on them. Is the exiled permanent gone for good?

Technically, the annual refresher test was only implemented late last year.

Yes. If it wasn't meant to be able to bounce itself, it'd say "another".

Probably the Blood Moon thing from last thread.

SBAs are never checked in the middle of something resolving. Even if they were, you're not putting one counter on, stopping, then putting another; you're putting 2 on simultaneously as one instruction. You'll put both on, Nest triggers, then SBAs are checked because the ability is done resolving, the 1/1 dies, and then the Nest trigger goes on the stack. When it resolves, you'll get 2 bugs.

It remains for two reasons. First, Splendor doesn't take abilities away until Layer 6, while the control-change effect is created in layer 2. Second, the duration is "set" once the trigger resolves, and the duration is "As long as Sower of Temptation remains on the battlefield", not that plus "and has this ability". It's not a static ability on Sower giving you control, it's a stated-duration continuous effect created by the resolution of a triggered ability.

Same for Angel. The duration is created as a result of the trigger resolving. If Angel leaves the battlefield later, that already-created effect ends.

I'm I allowed to get away with false cuts and false shuffles and stacking my deck etc. if my opponent doesn't cut my deck for some reason

do you honestly think the answer to this question is going to be yes?

what's the hardest to detect method of false shuffling

...

can I regenerate from the graveyard? how does this card work? what is it good for?

So, to regenerate something is to basically put a 'shield' around it. The next time (this turn) that object would be destroyed, the regen "shield" replaces that destruction event with "Tap this, remove this from combat, remove all damage from this". It's not 'bring back a dead thing', it's not 'that thing dies and then comes back', it's just "the next time that would be destroyed this turn, instead it is not".

Welding Jar is basically "for" pulling a "GET DOWN MISTER PRESIDENT". Someone throws a Doom Blade at your big-ass artifact guy? Pop jar to save it.

can two jars save each other infinitely. do they bounce?

Sacrifice is a cost, you cannot respond to paying a cost

No, for two reasons. First, sacrificing is a cost, and you can't respond to costs being paid.

Second, Regeneration only replaces *destruction*. As in, the word 'destroy' (like on Doom Blade), or lethal damage. It won't stop sacrifice effects (cost or otherwise), it won't stop the Legend Rule, it won't stop a 0 toughness creature from dying, etc. The only thing it stops is destruction events, and those only come from lethal damage and effects that explicitly use the word 'destroy'.

In your opinion are the slow play rules making four horsemen unplayable justified?

The male cuttle fish will change its color and suck in its tentacles to undermine the male competition ritual and go to essentially rape the females to perpetuate its genes.
Do you feel that is an adequate assumption of your shilling of your attempt to ascend the Wizards hierarchy

I understand how frustrating it can be when you KNOW, mathematically, that you'll eventually get to the state you want to jump to, and that it technically doesn't matter what happens inbetween, but we have to have consistent rules, and the rules they picked were "You can't shortcut unless you know how many loops we're skipping and the exact end state we're stopping at". I think it's an unfortunate casualty of making things consistent and intuitive.

Hah, oh man, you must live under a rock if you think I shill for WotC. I'm currently part of the lawsuit against them. I'm doing this for grins, and to help the community, I couldn't give less of a fuck about how it impacts my standing to WotC.

I can get behind not letting them shortcut, but not even letting them play it out is just absurd.

Can you proliferate energy counters?

To me, that's even more clear-cut. Generally speaking, the combo doesn't really affect the game until you get to the end setup (to my knowledge), so up until then you're just repeating pointless actions, which means you're wasting time. It might only take you 3 or 4 minutes to get the combo manually. It might also take you 40. And that's not fair to your opponent. With MODO, it's just "Try your luck, sunshine, and hope you combo out before the clock stops". But in paper magic, every minute you spend spinning your wheels with that and praying to RNGesus that you mill the right cards is a minute you're basically stealing from your opponent, and that is 100% the definition of Slow Play.

Sure! They're counters on a player, which is one thing you can proliferate.

And now, bed.

Oooooh, how is the lawsuit going?

I heard that bolting a tidehollow sculler in response of the etb will let them pick and exile a card forever
I also heard that you can bolt a snap before the etb lets them pick a card to flashback
this isn't consistent unless there is something I am missing. Does the creature need to be in play for an etb to resolve, or does the tidehollow leave the battle field trigger before he leaves or something?

Yep. The ETB resolves, and exiles the card until something that's not on the battlefield leaves the battlefield. IE, forever.

Nope. You can bolt the snap, but it won't stop them from flashbacking their whatever. Snapcaster's trigger doesn't care about snapcaster.

Thank you.

I was pretty sure I was right, but thought hey, may as well ask. Turns out I was very wrong in both cases.

Also, just a curious question:
I was at a tournament with competitive REL and was watching a guy play. I noticed there was a stray card sitting in the seat next to him, in his sleeves. If I had to hazard a guess I'd have to say he bumped it off the table when it was in his graveyard.
I called out "Hey man, that your card?" without really thinking. Judge was right there. Poor guy looked at the card, then at the judge with a "I'm fucked, aren't I?" expression.
Unfortunately I didn't find out what happened as I had to take care of something else.
What would be the typical ruling in a case like that?

What were the reqs before the current system?

I'm going to do my exam this month after almost six months after I started the whole process (I live six hours away from my nearest L2), and you weren't kidding about the interview. I asked my mentor about it and he basically said "We've talked on facebook enough that I know you're a reasonable candidate"

This guy's right, if you bolt a sculler the leave the battlefield trigger goes off first, then the enters the battlefield trigger goes off after.

With snappy, you can respond to the trigger, say your opponent targets a mana leak, you can bolt the snappy in response and since the trigger hasn't resolved, he can't use his leak out of the graveyard to stop it.

Caeteris paribus, if a state-based effect causes a creature with a self-sacrificing ability to enter the battlefield with

Yes it can't

Dunno! I'm not one of the "named" plaintiffs, I'm just part of the class action, so I only get periodic updates. All I'm aware of is that it's still alive.

We're pretty pissed about the contract issue for GPs, though.

The first is correct, the second is not. By the time you have priority to cast Bolt in either of those cases, the trigger is already on the stack with a target chosen.

We'd investigate and try to find out what the most likely explanation was, try to "fix" it if possible, and if we suspect foul play, DQ.

I don't think the L1 stuff has changed a ton since the redefinition. The big thing for that was that the L1 exam got much narrower in scope, and you're no longer expected to have working knowledge of the IPG.

State-based ACTION. And probably, it'd depend on the card. If it's an ETB trigger, then correct; SBAs are checked before that trigger even goes on the stack.

how do you pronounce oreo o's?

ask your local judge

The word "oreo", a pause, and then "ohs".

>the lawsuit against them
i'm not aware of this, what's the tl;dr for the case?

The tl;dr is that Judges are in a weird, nebulous grey area where we somehow have all the responsibilities and "cons" of being employees, volunteers, and contractors, but none of the protections of any, basically. The lawsuit says that because of the amount of control WotC has over us, we should be considered employees, not volunteers or contractors, and is going after WotC for violating employment law by taking advantage of that.

Hm okay, the two specific cases both involved Heartless Summoning, with Viscera Seer on one hand and Eldrazi Scion token(s) on another.

Yeah, no dice. By the time you have priority to activate those abilities, SBAs have already killed em.

If somebody has two starfield of nyx (and 3 other enchantments) out, and another person casts Suden Spoiling on them, do all their enchantments cease to be creatures or will they be 0/2s until end of turn?

Maybe person 2 has an Anger of the Gods or something, and wants to clear the field of Enchantments the only way they know how to.

They'll be 0/2s. Spoiling takes away all abilities... 2 layers after Starfield animated everything. That effect's already done its job, so removing it does fuck-all here. It's basically just the Humility/Opalescence thing.

Sweet. Good to know.

Good, I figured. Thank you sensei

>We're pretty pissed about the contract issue for GPs, though

Found an article about the lawsuit: blog.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/top-legal-news/magic-card-game-judges-sue-for-lost-wages-claim-to-be-employees/

But it doesn't specific "GP Contract" thing.

Prolly because the article is from last year, and the contract thing didn't come up until this week.

Oh...

I mean, if you want to call them Oreoooos, nobody's gonna stop you

If I attack with flamerush rider and storm fleet arsonist, making a token copy of the arsonist, does its raid ability trigger?

It does, because by the time that token is entering, you have absolutely attacked with creatures this turn.

Doesn't matter what he calls them so long as he uniquely identifies them.

im just getting into mtg so forgive me if these are just too simple, i used google but i couldnt find solutions to these exact situations.
2 questions:

1.) lets say im tapped out of mana but i have 3 treasure tokens (untapped, they don't have summon sickness), and i have a Cancel in my hand.

its my opponents turn and they play a spell.

can i tap/sacrifice the 3 treasure tokens to cast Cancel?

2.) its my opponents turn. i have 1 untapped mana and 2 treasure tokens that i created on my last turn. i have a Metallic Rebuke in my hand.

my opponent casts a spell

can i improvise the fresh treasure tokens to help cast Metallic Rebuke?

1) Absolutely. Cancel doesn't care where the mana you're using came from; very few cards do, and they'll spell it out explicitly, like Imperiosaur. You can fully pay for a spell with the mana from Treasure tokens unless something is saying otherwise.

2) Sure! They aren't automatically "popped" just by being tapped, you have to be explicitly activating that ability. You can tap them for other things, like Improvise, or to activate something like Clock of Omens. You can't double-dip on this, though; you can use Treasures for Improvise OR to make mana, but you can't use them both for the same spell; savvy?

Also, you're using the word 'mana' when you mean to say 'land'. Lands *make* mana (usually), but are not themselves 'mana'. It'd be like ordering a glass of cow, or gesturing at a field of milks.

Silly question, but does Asmira, Holy Avenger count tokens for its +1/+1 ability?

It does. Creature tokens do 'die' just like normal creatures. They go to the graveyard, and trigger anything that cares about that (as well as 'count' for things like Asmira). They just stop existing right after that.

if you are making an asmira edh deck. Know that you are my brother of another mother.

Yeah as long as you don't just call them oreos its ok, otherwise we get that Boryborgmos problem again.

So my playgroup was trying for like 10 minutes to figure this out tonight. Pic related is out, you attack with X creatures. The argument was that all X creatures deal combat damage at the same time, so the trigger for Alchemist can only prevent one of those attackers. The counter argument is that all those attackers damages trigger separately. None of us could find a satisfactory answer online so we need clarification.

sorry forgot pic

>if a source

each attacking creature is a source of damage, so alchemist would trigger on each of them seperately

That's what I was afraid of...

Any opinions on the GP contract updates?

youtube.com/watch?v=di7_xsufnmE