MTG Ask a Judge thread

Your opponent will cast the spell, then Erayo's Essence will trigger and go on the stack above it. Both players will have a chance to respond to the trigger, which means you can cast a counterspell and have it resolve before the trigger does.

i figured i was asking a silly question, but just wanted to be sure. this changes things for me and one of my pet decks just got a bit better for knowing this, tyvm

No worries!
Hazezon's errata text mentions "number of lands you control at that time", so, alas, zero.
I'm sure there's something profound someone can say about trading sand for life here.

The only silly question is the one you don't ask. Also, "lets arm wrestle for the play", but that doesn't come up often.
Erayo's original text is kinda vague but the errata is pretty clear that it's a triggered ability, and thus you can respond to it.

The Oracle text specifies "where X is the number of lands you control at that time", meaning if you control 0 lands when the delayed triggered ability resolves, you'll get 0 tokens.

Bonus fun fact: If Hazezon leaves before the delayed trigger resolves, you'll still get the tokens. You can abuse this via Cloudshift and similar effects to stack the first trigger multiple times before your next upkeep.

Do you get priority between the cards you get?

If your whole deck was filled with cards with cmc 4 or greater would you be forced to draw your whole deck before getting priority again?

Attached: Demonlord+Belzenlok+%5BDOM%5D.jpg (223x311, 72K)

No. You'd add the cards to your hand, take damage from all of them, and then receive priority if you didn't lose from taking all that damage. Keep in mind that if you have the life to cover it, you'll still lose the game the next time you would draw a card, so you'd better win fast.

He would still have lands in his library after resolution, correctm

It says exile cards until not reveal cards until. All the lands will go away as well.

Ouch that is a costly demon

Well they're supposed to be, nobody ever trusted a demon who only wanted your soul on weekends and holidays.

Can you reveal cards in your hand by casting a spell, but refusing to pay the costs?
So it goes on the stack but then as you refused to pay the costs, it goes back into your hand and the game state is reverted to before you tried to cast it.
I suppose then your opponent has to forget what they saw. Which realistically they won't.

>creature have "when this creature dies..."
>I play a sword to plowshares in it.
>goes exiled.
Is the creature ability triggered? Or "dies" is only if the creature goes to the graveyard?

Does Yasova's triggered ability target creatures regardless if you pay the cost? Does this mean she forces free sacrifices each combat when combined with Dismiss Into Dream?

Attached: Untitled.png (645x446, 633K)

Dies only applies to going to the graveyard from play. Not a judge but this is fairly common knowledge.

Ty. :) I was in doubt all my life about it.

Attached: image.jpg (899x674, 90K)

If I have a creature equipped with Illusionist's Bracers, can I put anything on the stack in between the activations of whatever ability is copied?

For example, say I have the Bracers on Kiora's Follower. Can I tap my Sol Ring, tap Follower to untap it, then tap the Sol Ring again in response before the 2nd copy of Follower's ability resolves, so I can untap it again with the copy, and finally tap it a 3rd time?

You receive priority between the resolutions of the two abilities, which gives you a chance to activate mana abilities.

Oh sweet, this has some serious potential

In fact you can do anything that you could do at instant speed between the spells. Just make sure to keep track of where you are on the stack if you're up to complex shenanigans.

Where's GA? I want GA! even if he was a bit of a cuck

So, at the beginning of combat on your turn, Yasova's ability will trigger and go on the stack where you then choose the target for it (note that it must have power less than Yasova's power).

Then the ability given to the targeted creature by Dimiss into Dream will trigger and go on the stack. It will presumably resolve and be sacrificed.

Yasova's ability, without a legal target anymore, will fizzle on the stack.

So yeah, that works as long as the creature has power less than Yasova's power.

It's sort of a grey area, but yes, you're allowed to change your mind. My personal ruling would be as long as it's pretty clear that nothing has happened that could have influenced the decision its ok. So if you put a Bolt down on the table, and they put a Dispel down, you can't say "wait never mind", but if you point a bolt at a 4/4 and immediately realize that you can't kill it, it's ok to bring it back. Your opponent doesn't have to try to forget what they saw, this isn't bridge we're playing. If you drop your deck while shuffling and your opponent sees a card, thats on you. If you're holding your hand too low, thats on you. Same deal here, you change your mind, your opponent gets more information.

I'll scour the MTR to see if I can find anything more concrete.

>and thus, after a lifetime of searching, he found true peace.

Dude is correct.
The thing about triggered abilities which is weird when compared to activated ones, is that you pay any costs during resolution instead of activation, and you declare targets and players get priority waaay before resolution.

youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
He'll be back one day.
He might be here right now.
That's the beauty of anonymity.

If I discard call to the netherworld and a black creatures at the same time due to card effect, can I cast for madness to get that same black creature back

I'm used to saying "make Marit Lage" as a shortcut for copying Depths with Stage and resolving the sac trigger and it works out locally since everyone knows what they're doing including saying "waste with sac trigger on the stack". However if my hypothetical opponent started running their mouth about this at a GP having missed the window to use Wasteland who would you rule in favor of and why?

Yep!
Something I try to hammer into people, because it was a revelation when I first discovered it, is that abilities triggering does not equal abilities going onto the stack.
Your Netherworld triggers, then, once a player would gain priority, it goes onto the stack and chooses a target. By that time everything is in the yard, so you've got no problem.

Y'see, the thing with shortcuts is they only work if everyone's on the same page. It would really depend on exactly what your opponent is saying. If you said "make Marit Lage", they said, "wait I want to wasteland you at some point" then they're implying they want to deviate from the shortcut, so you gotta go through it one step at a time.

If they say "ok", you put your lands in the bin and pull out your token, then they say "wait I'm gonna wasteland that before you sac it" then I start investigating. If it turns out that you were trying to get them to miss it by being vague, then that's a big no no for you. If they were just slow on the upkeep and didn't think about the fact they could stop you, too bad for them, knowledge of game rules is something we reward. If they didn't understand the shortcut fully, because lets be honest it's not super clear if you don't play much legacy, then I would rewind back to the last time they passed priority, which should have been your Stage resolving. You would probably be asked to be more clear in the future. Of course, if they lie about that and were just slow on the upkeep, that's a no no for them. I would definitely consider how common the interaction of Stage/Depths is in legacy while making this ruling.

tl;dr
If anyone's trying to cheat the system by being vague or lying, that's not gonna get them closer to the top 8, if a player is a slow thinker, too bad for them, if a player misunderstood the shortcut, we rewind.

If you can give me more details about the exact hypothetical situation I can give you a better answer.

will any of the saga steps trigger with solemnity in play
or is it a nonbo

Depths/Stage has been common knowledge among regular players ever since Lands stopped playing 43 lands and could combo people out, with the rise in popularity of Turbo Depths no one except someone who literally just picked the format up should not know what's up.

I imagine it would probably go something like this.
"Make Marit Lage?"
"k."
*throws lands in the bin and takes out Johnny, Combo Player out of the deckbox and places it on the field*
*yo dawg shit I meant to wasteland after you've sacced the original Depths"
"I did ask you if Marit Lage is ok?"
"Judge!"

You're right, but I'm talking if they're not a regular player. Like I said, I would consider how common the interaction is (very) and use that to determine my ruling. If they're a pretty seasoned player it probably will go in your favour.
In that example your opponent was just slow on the upkeep, and that's too bad for them. "Make Marit Lage" is clear enough that if they understand the combo they can't really argue that they just thought you were activating Stage. But if Bruce the Standard Player who lives next to the convention center where the GP is being held decides to jump in after his friend lends him Oops All Spells is your opponent (a spicy brew with wastelands), it's possible he didn't get the shortcut, or didn't realize you were shortcutting at all.
Just something to think about.

Regular players aren't going to get away with that.

As with all spoiler cards, I can't give you a 100% answer till we get the release notes (though this time it's kinda weird since we have half the release notes), but I can tell you that the outcome looks bleak. Enchantments can't enter with counters and they can't have them put on them, so it's a nonbo.

Or a strong hate piece if you're on the other side of the table.

suppose I have Knight of Grace and my opponent who is black targets it with Bolt. She ignores the damage right?

Not gonna lie, colored players would be neaterino.

Definitely gonna have to wait for the full release notes for that one

Lets say I assemble this board-state of artifacts and cast Mana Clash. How many coins am I flipping, and do me and my opponent flip our coins at the same time? Do we see the results of eachother's flip before I get to decide which coin I keep?

Attached: Super Clash Bros.png (1115x309, 452K)

Are you a pedophile?

Ho boy

From the Thumb's oracle rulings:
>If you and your opponent both flip at the same time, you can see your opponent’s result before choosing which result to keep.
Which clears that part up.

Krark's Thumb has a replacement effect and those work multiplicably. The first one turns your one flip into two, the second turns those two into four, and the third turns those four into eight. Basically, you flip eight coins and ignore seven. It's not quite that simple as the way the thumb works you should be flipping two coins and ignoring one, four times, then splitting those into two groups of two and ignoring one from each group, then you've got two flips, so you ignore one of those. The maths works out that you can just choose one of the original eight though, instead of pulling out a flowchart.

That said, I made a quick flowchart in MSpaint that took 1,500 hours to check if you want to take a peek.

Surprised it took this long.

>believing made up stories.
The guy that people are using as a stick to beat judges over the head with was sacked before the story came out.

Maybe he was asleep

This is the most common question I get in these threads unfortunately.

If anyone legitimately wants to know more about what happened, here's a statement by the Judge Conduct Committee.
blogs.magicjudges.org/conduct/2018/01/11/statement-ross-prajzner/

Pretty much nothing happened then.
It's amazing what made up nonsense retards on younoob and twittard will swallow.

I wanna be judge, what can i do for start?

Is there any official recourse I can claim for extremely poorly hygenic people at tournaments? There's this one guy at my LGS, who while he doesn't actually have swarms of flies buzzing around him, has a wall of stench like a personal forcefield. It's quite literally headache inducing to sit across from him, and while I'm not sure it materially affects my play, it certainly affects my enjoyment. Is there some rule in the books that allows me to get him ejected? Or at least hosed down?

Start by becoming a regular at local Magic events at your store etc

Then talk to a local judge about it

Snapcaster + wizard lightning/counterspell, flashback cost reduced yay/nay?

I have a Kheru Spellsnatcher face down. I flip him and counter a spell. When I cast the countered spell from exile, it goes into the graveyard, correct?

So say I also have a Rest in Peace out. The exiled card, when cast, does not go to the graveyard, but remains exiled. Can I keep casting it for free, then?

Attached: Image.png (223x311, 127K)

If I cast Thirst For Knowledge and choose to pitch an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and some other card, what order do I resolve the discard effects? My assumption is that I can choose the order they go to grave to have the second card get shuffled in with Ulamog (by putting it in first) or end up in the graveyard by itself (by putting it in second).

With Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, Hypersonic Dragon, Vedalken Orrery etc, what happens if I control two legendary sorceries on the stack at the same time? Do I still have to choose one and put the rest in my graveyard?

>When I cast the countered spell from exile, it goes into the graveyard, correct?
Yes.

>So say I also have a Rest in Peace out. The exiled card, when cast, does not go to the graveyard, but remains exiled. Can I keep casting it for free, then?
No. When it's exiled again, it's exiled by something else and it may be the same card in exile but Kheru Spellsnatcher no longer cares because it wasn't exiled by its morph ability.

With rebound (from Taigam, Ojutai Master) can Not forgotten target itself? (The rebounded cast)

You have to resolve the whole effect of Thirst for Knowledge before dealing with Ulamog's trigger from being put in the graveyard. They both go into the graveyard in whatever order you want, and you can listen to Ulamog asking for a shuffle.

No? Not Forgotten is not in the graveyard.
You cast it, and chose a card in a graveyard (right now Not Forgotten is on the stack and not in a graveyard)
It resolves and then rebound makes Not Forgotten go to exile instead of the graveyard, assuming you originally played NF from your hand.
On your next upkeep rebound lets you cast Not Forgotten again (it moves from exile back to the stack) and you can target something in a graveyard (Not Forgotten's still not in a graveyard). When it's done it finally goes to the graveyard.

Apologies, my internet dies last night so i couldn't get to a few questions.

Unfortunatly it's not nothing, a sex offender fell through the cracks and that's an issue. It's not as bad as "WOTC is full of pedos" like it has been made out to be, but it's not something we should ignore.

But yeah, it's been blow way out of proportion.

So first off, you need a level 2 judge to be your mentor. They will oversee the three steps you have to do; an interview, a written exam and you need to run two events. If you don't know any near you, contact your regional co-ordinator LINK, or ask if there are any L2's who are willing to mentor you around on any nearby MTG facebook pages.

It may sound a bit daunting but it's not that hard. The interview is, as gA described it "to make sure you're not a human garbage fire". In fact, I skipped mine as my mentor considered our facebook communication to be enough.
I think you need to get 70% on the exam to pass, maybe 80% but if you study for it it's quite easy. It's semi-random questions; there's always a few on 2HG, sanctioning, layer 7, the steps for casting a spell, and a few other things.
Then you need to run two events. The goal is you should be comfortable running a draft on your own after these. Again, running a regular old FNM isn't too hard. If you want to impress your mentor, see if they'll let you run a prerelease.

Personally, I found the hardest part learning the steps for casting spells.

Not really. The closest is unsporting conduct, but thats a stretch. Even if there was, it's not like wizards would send a swat team in to sort it out, they rarely interfere with local stores.
Your best bet is to talk to your TO about the problem and have some others who have been affected talk to them as well. I understand that some TO's are protective of their customers because they don't want to lose them, but if enough people tell him that this guy's is a problem, hopefully he will sort it out.

Yep, you can't apply two alternate costs (like flashback and overload), but you can still apply cost reductions.

Homie has it. The reason you can't cast it from exile forever is because it changed zones, when it goes to the stack and back to exile it has no memory of being connected to the Spellsnatcher.

Yeah, Ulamog can't interrupt a resolving spell.
Blightsteel Colossus can, however, as it's a replacement effect.

Legendary sorceries don't have anything to do with the legend rule. The only rules baggage "Legendary" has on sorceries is that you have to control a legendary creature. So you're all good.

Also, a spell can never target itself.
Thanks for answering questions my dude

GA only answered questions like a judge. He had no appreciation for the minutiae of the rules.

Is there an actual rule regarding Hygiene?

oo, shots fired. You hear that gA, we don't need you! but we miss you

>IPG 4.1 Unsporting Conduct — Minor
>A player takes action that is disruptive to the tournament or its participants.

That's as close as your gonna get.

Was playing a guy and it was legitimately nauseating, that's all idk.

Sorry, I assumed you were As I said to him:
Not really. The closest is unsporting conduct, but thats a stretch. Even if there was, it's not like wizards would send a swat team in to sort it out, they rarely interfere with local stores.
Your best bet is to talk to your TO about the problem and have some others who have been affected talk to them as well. I understand that some TO's are protective of their customers because they don't want to lose them, but if enough people tell him that this guy's is a problem, hopefully he will sort it out.

In a lgs setting, how does a judge deal with judge calls in the match they are currently playing? Call for another judge if there’s one available? What if they are the only judge there?

I ask because an LGS just opened up nearby, and we currently have only one judge in our playgroup, and I was considering become a judge myself.

Ah, I didn't check and thought Ulamog had the same replacement effect as Colossus. In the case of Blightsteel Colossus though, order sent to graveyard affects whether the second card is shuffled or not, right?

We have to judge without thought of personal advantage, of course. If I'm in a match at an FNM I'm judging I'll usually ask if anyone else wants to give an answer, whoever my opponent is ok with. Otherwise, I'd find the section in the CR that applies in whatever situation we're in, or a gatherer ruling. This has happened twice to me, once in a practice game just before fnm, involving Blood Moon vs Darksteel Citadel. I found the exact part of the CR and showed it. And once in an FNM my opponent excused himself to ask one of the other knowledgeable players a question about a card, I think it was Deflecting Palm vs Etched Champion.

If you're interested in becoming a judge, I gave some info at , but feel free to ask any more questions about it.

It won't get shuffles in either way because another difference Blightsteel has with the Eldrazi is it only shuffles itself, not the rest of the yard.

Shameless self bump

Here's a question I got asked last Saturday for all you budding young whippersnappers who want to give it a go.

A player controls Heliod, has five devotion and is enchanted with Overwhelming Splendor. They lost one of their devotion. What does Heliod look like? What if they started with four and went up a devotion?

If I cast a spell affects all creatures until end of turn does it also apply to creatures that enters the battlefield after the spell resolves or only the ones already there?

Just the ones already there. Static effects, like Soraya the Falconer and Gaea's Anthem affect things that came in after, but stuff with a duration like Overwhelming Stampede and Dragon Throne of Tarkir only affect stuff that was already on the board.

Is being a judge worth it for the foils?

Heliod becomes an enchantment and regains his other abilities due to type changing applying in a layer before splendor's ability removal is applied.
The same goes for the other question, if heliod becomes a creature it will be affected by Splendor and lose all abilities. The status quo will be continually updated.

If your reason for becoming a judge is to get foils then you're gonna have a bad time. The way the program works at the moment is that L2's and L3's can nominate a certain number of other judges for exemplary behavior and service, and they will get some foils. You can also get them by attending judge conferences.

I don't know any more details because I haven't gotten any, nor have I spoken to anyone about them IRL.

Ding ding! We have a winner. Heliod's type changing effect applies in layer four, and Splendour's ability removing effect applies in layer five, so Heliod's will always apply first regardless of whether he's going up or down in loyalty, even though he never has any abilities while he's a creature.

Dominaria leaks related rules question:
If you have hope of ghirapur on the field, can the new Mox Amber tap for colorless?

I remember hearing a while back that colorless is not actually a color so I wanted to clarify.

Attached: A90D7CDB-312D-4A51-B0A4-472124A7164A.jpg (375x523, 51K)

Is that an australian card? How do you deal with them when they come to american championships?

Colourless is, in fact, not a colour. This can't make mana if you control only colourless legends. Compare it to Reflecting Pool, which specifies types of mana, not colour, so Reflecting Pool could make colourless if you control a Wastes.

It's no different to other foreign language cards, players can request oracle text. Same as pic related, a Chinese counterspell

Attached: Counterspell of maximum disrepect.png (187x223, 72K)