MTG Ask a Judge thread

If you somehow had the capacity to equip at instant speed (I think there's a card that allows this), then here's the breakdown:

1. Opponent declares attackers
2. Everyone gets priority for instants
3. You declare blockers (block is successful)
4. Everyone gets priority for instants (you equip here at instant speed)

Here's a question. If I trigger Warkite Marauder's ability on a creature with a +1/+1 counter, does the creature instead turn into a 1/2? Or does it immediately default to 0/2 as per Warkite's ability? If it is the latter, when it turns back is the counter gone?

if my opponents play a pump spell and it resolves, and afterwards I do sudden spoiling what happens? do they becomes 0/2's with the buff or flat 0/2's

Alright, after much debating on exactly what rule allows this, two other judges and I have decided that it's rule 400.7h.
>If an effect causes an object to move to a public zone, other parts of that effect can find that object.
Since moving to the command zone is a replacement effect, it replaces "exile" with "command zone" in Ghost Council's ability. The delayed trigger then tries to find the Council where the original ability put it, which is the command zone, and brings it back.
It works!

So stifling this will just leave it in the command zone forever. Until they cast it again.

Whether or not it should be banned is definitely a player thing, not a judge thing. It involves a bit of both derived and free information. The name of all visible objects is free information, but the number of particular types of objects is not. If your opponent asks "what lands do you have?" you're obliged to identify each one. But if they ask "how many lands do you have?" you can just say "count them yourself". Nothing illegal happened in this game. Perhaps something that wasn't sporting happened, but that's not my place to say.

Like said, if you can equip at instant speed, you get two draw two cards and their dude deals no damage to you (unless it has trample).

These are basically the same question, and for this we head to our old friend layers. We apply effects that set a creature's power and toughness to specific values in layer 7b., then effects that increase or decrease it (pump spells) in 7c., then + and - counters in 7d. Apply everything in that order regardless of what order the effects started affecting things. So Sudden Spoiling/Warkite are applied first, making the creature small, then we apply pump spells, then counters.
With Warkite, the creature is a 1/2, with Sudden Spoiling, (and lets assume Giant Growth), it's a 3/5.

Layers are so much fun!

Thanks for the answer!

The reason it says "base power" is so you know that stuff like enchantments/equipment/counters still matter. It's like saying "pretend this creature's P/T box says 0/1."

Oh yeah, I forgot that they changed the wording of those cards to "base power". That makes it much easier to reason it out.

Shameless self bump

What's the biggest event you have judged?

Are you one of the pedophile judges or no?

The 30 person HOU pre-release that I got certified at. I've only been judging for a couple months, so I haven't seen many big ones. I'm booked in for an event later in the year that's got the 2015 SDCC planeswalkers up for first place which will probably have a big turnout, and
I'm on staff for GP Sydney in a few months. Gonna be rad.

What's the deal with pile shuffling?
It's allegedly the only way to truly randommize the shuffle while simultaneously being """mana weaving""".

I've had draft events where my shitty shuffling was a contributing factor to having a bad time, since i was told not to pile shuffle, and it seems to be the only practical way to shuffle a 99 card edh deck.

If Greenbelt Rampager is killed/exiled in response to his ETB trigger (and you have

Mana weaving, for those who don't know, is the act of sorting your deck into lands and nonlands, putting them in two piles, then putting cards from each pile into one big pile, one or two at a time, until you have a complete deck.

Lets get some key things out of the way:
When playing magic, every time you shuffle, you must present a randomized deck.
When mana weaving, your goal is to evenly spread your lands across your deck.

Evenly spread != random. Even though your don't know the location of a specific card, you know the general order of them (land, spell, land, or whatever it is). So if you shuffle after manaweaving, here are our possible outcomes:

1. You shuffle enough that you don't know the general order of your deck.
In which case, it shouldn't matter whether your deck was mana weaved, sorted alphabetically or already randomized, the result is the same, the deck is now randomized and you've undone your mana weaving.

2. There are still traces of mana weaving after shuffling
In which case, your deck isn't fully randomized, which is considered cheating.

You're either wasting everyone's time or cheating, so don't mana weave. Plus it looks shady as hell if you're reordering your deck between every round.

Pile shuffling isn't random either, its very easy to track where cards go and in comp is primarily a way of counting your deck.

Unfortunately, the order you draw your cards is the random part of magic. You say that you've had bad drafts because you've shuffled poorly, but have you ever attributed having a good time to shuffling well?

In the end, practice makes perfect. Mathematically, seven riffles will get your 60 card deck fully randomized. Mash shuffling is very similar to riffling, the reason not much maths has been done on it is because it's impossible without sleeves and casinos don't use sleeves. Try mashing your commander deck in halves, six-seven times each, then mashing both halves together once or twice.

I believe its referring to Greenbelt Rampager as it is on the field. By changing zones to the grave/exile it is considered a new object even though it still is a card named Greenbelt Rampager, but is not the one being referenced by the trigger. Think about how Cloudshift fizzles bolt. The creature will leave the battlefield and immediately come back, but as a new "object"

I love this card

Also, you'll get used to it. I remember the first time I tried to shuffle a commander deck. After a while it just became second nature. Then I picked up a double sleeved commander deck, and eventually that was easy too.
I hope I've explained this well enough, but let me know if you want more detail on anything.

This is similar to another question I had earlier today about the Ghost Council, but this is the other end of the stick.

When the Rampager's trigger starts to resolve, it looks for the Rampager where it was when it triggered, the battlefield. It's not longer there, so it just shrugs, eats two energy and does nothing else.

The reason for this is that when cards change zones, the game doesn't keep track of where they have come from. If it did, things could get ugly if someone needs to know if that greenbelt ranger got Doom Bladed or Thoughtseized, ten turns later and nobody remembered.

when will we get proper M25 leaks?

I have a vanilla 2/1.

My opponent has a vanilla 1/1, and a 2/2 Grim Flayer.

He attacks with the Grim Flayer.

I block with my 2/1.

Before damage, I cast Harm's Way, redirecting the Grim Flayer's damage to my opponent's 1/1.

Do I take 1 damage, or 0 damage?

gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Harm's Way

You take 1 damage from the 1/1, and both the 1/1 and the Flayer dies.
>why:
damage is applyed all at the same time, so the vanilla hits you at the same time the damage from the Flayer is being done to it.

my opponent's 1/1 did not attack.

If the grim flayer is a 2/2, and I select him as the source who's damage will be prevented to me and/or permanents I control, why would he deal 1 damage to me?

Oh, thought the 1/1 attacked. In that case you take no damage.
The card doesn't prevent damage, it changes how the damage is done. So it makes the Flayer deal his damage to the 1/1 and not to you or your creature.

Hopefully soon. There's a lot of potential.

>thumbs_up.jpg

I'm off to bed, if the threads still up in the morning I'll answer more questions.

So as long as you shuffle, it's perfectly fine, assuming it didn't take too long.

>not gA
I can't trust you.

What?

I have a total of 10 power among creatures I control, can I play a Chord of Calling, CMC 5, X being 2 to summon Ghalta?

No. Ghalta's converted mana cost is still 12. His discount does not change its cmc.

Say my opponent is at 20 life and I hit them with a creature that does 1 damage. That creature is equipped with both Scytheclaw and Quietus Spike.

How much life does my opponent lose?

hey judge, are they gonna make everybody sad by not reprinding the bird in dominaria?

They take 1, go to 19. Both equipments trigger. You can stack them in either order, that won't matter. First trigger resolves, player takes CEILING(19/2) = 10, and is at 9. Second trigger resolves, player takes CEILING(9/2) = 5 and is at 4.

Converted mana cost of an object is the sum of the symbols in its top right corner (or the sum of the symbols in the top right corner of the object it's copying, if applicable); variables evaluate to 0 in all zones except for the stack where they evaluate to the value chosen for that variable as the object was put onto the stack.

Jesus christ two threads of people telling you that you're wrong, and now a judge telling you specifically in a nice long explanation that it is dumb and frowned upon and YOU STILL ARGUE?

You must be the autist from the edh thread. I'm not the user you were arguing with.

Also, maybe you should reread that thread if you think many people were on your side.

You're one of those kids that ate paste while wearing a bicycle helmet, huh?

If someone casts Spreading Seas on a Forest that's enchanted with Utopia Sprawl does the sprawl get destroyed?

Yep.

Well, the Sprawl becomes unattached and then heads to the graveyard as a state-based action. Giving it indestructible won't help.

My opponent has a Geist of St Traft with 3 enchantments on him: Daybreak Coronet, Auramancer's Guise, and One With the Wind.

1) I activate my Arcane Lighthouse.
2) I target the Geist with Bathe in Light, naming Blue.

Do all of the enchantments fall off of the Geist?

>Stopped playing regularly after the first innistrad Block
>Favorite Blocks of all time was Mirrodin I and II
>Just checked the Kaladesh block card lists
What the fuck, why i fucking missed that.

would the average head judge have a problem with this kind of alter? do you?

Yes. With protection, remember DEBT. Damage is prevented by the source, Enchantments/Equipments of the source can’t be attached to it, Blocking with the source is out, and Targeting with the source can’t happen. Since Traft gets protection from blue, the blue auras fall off and then coronet since he stops being enchanted.

As long as you shuffle afterwards you're undoing your weave. If you're not undoing your weave, you're cheating. Don't mana weave.

youtube.com/watch?v=i_KBKDqraO4
I don't trust myself sometimes man.

gA (galvanicAutogenitor) is the judge who started these threads. He's been posting less and less as his life gets busier and busier, to the point where it's been almost a year since his last thread. I decided to take over.
Basically, I'm batman and he's one punch man.

These are correct, but I just want to point out that the only variable that ever changes CMC is the value of X. So your Chord has a CMC of 3, if you cast it with X=5, it has a CMC of 8.

They won't make me sad. If anywhere, I'm betting that sorta stuff will be in the core set. I hope they bring it back.

Don't worry, standard wasn't all that artifact heavy.

That said, this is what I was running:
tappedout.net/mtg-decks/standard-reservoir-combo-bonesaw-go-home/

That should be fine. The official rules with alters is that the name and mana cost have to remain unobscured, and the card has to be recognizable. This fits well into that definition, so you should really have no trouble.
That said, always ask the head judge.
I swear if you do that to your LED's though I'm gonna throw up.

>forgetting fortification
Get it together user

but no theres only one of these and I've never seen anyone play it just pretend it's not real

>As long as you shuffle afterwards you're undoing your weave.
Correct. So as long as you shuffle, then there really isn't any problem.

fuck off pedshit

That card is pretty much an auto include in a Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper EDH deck.

Which means why the fuck are you mana weaving in the first place?

Why does it matter as long as they shuffle? Maybe they're killing time until the next commander match starts.

The problem is if a judge sees you mana weaving they'll assume you're cheating, because if you're not cheating theres no reason to mana weave. Plus it adds a lot of time to shuffling.

>Basically, I'm batman and he's one punch man.
Metaphor of the decade right there

Hey how do you feel about us asking you non-MTG questions? I need to know if traps are gay or not.

That's why I've never seen it I suppose. Seems pretty rad with Horobi, Death's Wail too.

Thanks, I thought it was fitting.
I'd prefer if we kept it to MTG, but I'd also prefer my threads to not die after 30 posts, so I'm gonna give it a solid "occasionally"

As much as I like Dr Manhattan I'm gonna go with Rorschach here.

Whoops, name fell off.

there's no such thing as "occasionally" gay, there is only bisexual

So you heard it here first, folks. The debate is over: Batman says traps are bisexual.

I'm literally going to shuffle as quickly as possible just to prevent people like you from trying their shit

speaking of glad you took my suggestion
crappy-tus huehue

What does this even mean in reference to what you quoted? If you're shuffling quickly then you're probably not getting a very good shuffle, and isn't that what you want to prevent in the first place? And what would shuffling quickly while waiting for a commander match to finish even accomplish?

>people like you
I don't even mana weave, but I don't screech like an autist when someone does before they shuffle either :^)

>too dense to understand why people don't like it when people mana weave, despite a judge saying that it's a bad idea and explaining why it's a bad idea
user, please.

I exile a Bane of the Living from my opponent's graveyard with my Dimir Doppelganger, copying it. I then cast Ixidron, flipping my Doppelganger face down.

Does it still have Morph? Can I turn the copied Bane face up, respond to its trigger with Dimir Doppelganger's ability to exile a high-toughness creature and have Doppelganger survive its own copied Bane of the Living trigger?

EDH is weird...

That one little flavour text edit.

So my opponent is at 0 life with phyrexian unlife on the field, I swing for 10+ damage and he casts Angel's grace.
He won't not lose the game that turn. However he will still get the 10+ poison counters because sources with infect make him gain poison counters instead of reducing his life total.
Is that correct ?

Yes.

yes, but make sure if you have multiple doppelgangers that you keep them marked and identified what thing they cloned when they came into play/are flipped down.

If I cast eternal Dominion with taigam ojutai master's rebound, do I eventually get two triggers of it after the rebound cast? So two permanents.

>too dense to understand how shuffling works
>judge literally stated "As long as you shuffle afterwards you're undoing your weave."
Step up your game, user.

I really never considered having a real name before you mentioned it. You've opened my eyes.

Clones and morph has some funky interactions iirc, I'll answer this when I get home in about an hour.

There's a whole load of them. Champion of the Parish is my favourite.
>He stands for every penis in this town. And they stand for him.

Correct. He gets ten poison and dies in his upkeep.

Unfortunately no. Rebound allows you to cast that spell during your next upkeep, but epic means you can't cast any spells for the rest of the game, and it doesn't care where from or how you're casting them.
No beuno.

You're right, shuffling it afterwards will undo it. But tell me, why are you mana weaving? Whats the purpose of it?

>You're right, shuffling it afterwards will undo it. But tell me, why are you mana weaving? Whats the purpose of it?
I think gave a common situation where it may legitimately happen. It seems to me that as long as they present a randomized deck in a timely fashion, whatever they do before shuffling is irrelevant. If someone else gets upset about it, it's on them.

If i have 2 doubling seasons in play, does Uglin get 28 counters?

This user
Is correct, it will be a face down copy of Bane of the Living and you can turn it face up as you would normally. You can also respond to it's own trigger to make it swole and let it live.
The funky interactions I was talking about come into play when you have stuff like Infinite Reflections and morphs lying around.

Fair point. If you're doing it purely to kill time, sure, there's no harm. In the end all I can say, Weave-user, is if there's no trace of the weave after you shuffle, and you're not taking a lot of time, I can't stop you. It will look very shady if you do it at a large tournament though.

And for that user that deleted his post, ding-ding-ding! Correct.

Bloody phoneposting, I keep losing my name