Published on 07/18/2016
I'm So Excited
By Carsten Haese, James Bennett, Callum Milne, and Nathan Long
This Article from: Callum Milne
Cranial Translation
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Note: This article is over two years old. Information in this article may be out of date due to subsequent Oracle and/or rules changes. Proceed with caution.
And I just can't hide it!
Gah! Ow! Hey! Moko, stop that! What's with all the abuse, and why are you waving that paper around? What do you mean, "contractual obligations"? Let me read that thing!
...WHAT?!
All right, so apparently I'm legally required to answer your rules questions, and Moko's got that steely glint in what's left of his eyes so I don't think I'm going to be able to worm out of it. I'm also required to remind you that if you'd like your own questions answered you can send them to us here at the CI offices via moko@cranialinsertion.com , or via Twitter @CranialTweet for the short ones. You'll get an answer and potentially see your question in a future article. Now let's get all this over with so I can get back to building that time machine!
Q: What happens if I use Moonmist to transform Midnight Scavengers? Its back face is only half of Chittering Host...
A: Not much happens at all, because you can't transform Midnight Scavengers at all—it's not a double-faced card. Meld cards may have something other than a regular Magic card back on their other side, but that doesn't make them proper double-faced cards—they don't have two faces. They have a front face, yes, but they only have half a face on their back, not a proper second face at all, so as far as the rules are concerned, meld cards and double-faced cards are two completely different things, even if they work in many of the same ways.
Q: Is a melded permanent considered to be a card, a token, or neither?
A: Since a melded permanent is represented by actual Magic cards, it's definitely not a token, but it's not just "a" card, either—it's two!
A melded permanent is one game object physically represented by two cards. It may sound a little weird, but if you've ever seen someone represent an unusually-sized token creature like a Treefolk Shaman with two dice (one showing 2 and a second showing 5), then it's the same basic idea, just done officially with actual cards. Which card is the creature? They both are!
Q: I have a melded creature enchanted with an aura, then Oubliette exiles them. If I destroy Oubliette later, where does the aura go?
A: Well, both of the component creatures are returned to the battlefield tapped, and if the melded creature had any counters on it, each of those creatures will have that many of the same type of counters on them. Then Oubliette's ability attempts to return the Aura to the battlefield attached to...both creatures at the same time. That's not possible, so instead the game has you choose one of the creatures, and the Aura returns to the battlefield attached to only that creature instead.
Q: I control Wheel of Sun and Moon, and my opponent controls Rest in Peace. What happens if my Hanweir, the Writhing Township is destroyed?
A: There are multiple replacement effects trying to apply here, so you need to choose whichever one you want to apply. If you choose to apply the Wheel, both your Hanweir Battlements and Hanweir Garrison cards will be revealed and put onto the bottom of your library, and if you choose the Rest in Peace, they'll be exiled.
Note that even though there are two distinct physical cards trying to go to your graveyard here, you cannot make different choices for each of them. This is because they were on the battlefield as two parts of a melded permanent, so applying one of the replacements to either card affects both cards.
Are you sure this thing's just the Voice
of nightmares? Because I think it might
just be the Face, too.
of nightmares? Because I think it might
just be the Face, too.
A: A lot. A lot a lot. As in
—twelve mana total. A melded permanent has two front faces, and its converted mana cost is therefore equal to the sum of the converted mana costs of those two front faces. Since Gisela, the Broken Blade has a mana cost of 
(CMC 4) and Bruna, the Fading Light has a mana cost of 
(CMC 7), the converted mana cost of Brisela, Voice of Nightmares is 4 + 7 = 11. Ouch.Q: If I cast Long Road Home on Brisela, Voice of Nightmares, I get the two angels back with +1/+1 counters on them. What happens to those counters when they meld again at the beginning of my end step?
A: They go away. There may have been counters on Bruna and Gisela, but Brisela is a completely different object from either of them, even though the same physical cards are used to represent...it? And nothing's telling you to place counters on Brisela, so you don't.
Q: If I control two Midnight Scavengers and Cytoshape one of them into a copy of Graf Rats, can I then meld the two? They're both meld cards that belong to the same pair...
A: Both creatures get exiled, but they won't be coming back any time soon, or at all. When the ability resolves, you do as much as possible, and you can exile them just fine, so you do, but melding two cards that don't form a complete meld pair together—one being the upper half and the other being the bottom—is impossible, so you just can't do it. Instead, they stay where they are in exile forever.
Q: If I have a devil token enchanted with Faith Unbroken and my opponent kills it, can I target the creature coming back from under Faith Unbroken with my token's death trigger?
A: Yes, you can do that. When your token dies, its ability triggers and wants to get put onto the stack. But hold on a moment, we can't do that right away—first we have to check for applicable state-based actions.
We perform that check, and hey! There's a Faith Unbroken sitting there on the battlefield all by its lonesome without any enchanted permanent to keep it company—we can't have that! So Faith Unbroken is put into your graveyard, which ends the duration of its exile ability and puts your opponent's creature back onto the battlefield.
Any more state-based actions? No? Great! So now, at long last, you can finally put your devil's trigger onto the stack. And hey, your opponent has this shiny new creature on the battlefield ready to be targeted...
Q: Does Lunar Force combine with Sigarda, Host of Herons to get me infinite counterspells?
A: Afraid not—the two cards don't have any interaction at all. Sigarda only stops you from having to sacrifice permanents to spells and abilities your opponents control, and even though Lunar Force's ability triggered off of such a spell, you're still the one who controls the ability, which is what's actually forcing you to sacrifice Lunar Force. Sigarda sees that you control the ability, so she doesn't stop the sacrifice.
Q: I don't get Dark Salvation. If my opponent doesn't already have any zombies and I want to kill my their creature, I have to give them a bunch of zombies to replace it? That seems like a terrible deal!
A: Not quite. Dark Salvation doesn't count the number of zombies controlled by the player whose creature you're trying to kill; it counts the number of zombies controlled by the player you just gave a bunch of zombies to.
So if you target yourself and one of your opponent's creatures, you'll end up giving yourself a whole slew of fresh zombies and also probably killing off your opponent's creature to boot. A much better deal, yes?
Q: Can I use Clear Shot to give my creature +1/+1 for the turn even if my opponent doesn't have any creatures? Or she does, but all of them are hexproof?
A: Afraid not. In order to cast a spell you need to be able to choose legal targets for every instance of the word "target" in its text, even if not all of the spell's effects care about all of the targets. If you can't choose all the necessary targets, you can't legally cast the spell.
Q: How do escalate spells work with Brain in a Jar? The rulings for the Brain say you can't pay alternative costs for the spell it's casting, but you can pay additional costs—which is escalate? Or is it something else entirely?
A: Escalate is an additional cost, so if you want to choose multiple modes, you do indeed need to pay it when casting an escalate spell using Brain in a Jar's ability.
Q: I have Collective Effort in hand, and my opponent has a 3-power creature. Can I escalate Collective Effort to both give my opponent's creatures +1/+1 and kill their now-4-power creature?
A: Nice try, but sadly, that's not possible. You need to choose all the targets for a spell as you're casting it, which means you need to choose a 4+-power creature to target long before Collective Effort resolves, and therefore long before your opponent's creatures would get the +1/+1 bonus.
Q: Can I choose the same mode twice for Collective Brutality?
A: No. When casting a modal spell, you can't choose the same mode multiple times. As is usual in Magic, there are exceptions to this, but if the spell itself doesn't specifically say otherwise, the normal rules are going to apply, and you will only be able to choose a given mode once.
I think I've permanently
lost my taste for playing hangman...
lost my taste for playing hangman...
A: When an effect sets a player's life total to a specific number, the way the game accomplishes that is by causing that player to gain or lose whatever amount of life is necessary to reach the new total. This means that if your opponent's life total is greater than the Tree's toughness, they'll end up losing whatever amount of life is necessary for them to reach the new, lower, total; things that care about your opponent losing life will see that and function accordingly.
Similarly, if your opponent's life total was lower than the Tree's toughness, they'll gain enough life to reach the new total, again for anything that cares.
Q: If I respond to Tree of Perdition's ability by changing its toughness, say with Turn to Frog, would my opponent's life total become 1, or still 13? Does the ability re-check the toughness when it resolves, or use the toughness at the time the ability was put on the stack?
A: Your opponent's life total becomes whatever the Tree's toughness is at the moment the ability is resolving, whatever that may be. If you've managed to render the Tree a 1/1 since activating the ability, that means your opponent will now be at 1.
Also relevant is that your Tree-Frog's toughness will now be whatever your opponent's former life total was, even after the whole being-a-Frog business ends.
Q: Okay, so what if I Tragic Slip the Tree to give it -13/-13 instead? Does my opponent die for having 0 life once the ability resolves?
A: Sadly, it's not going to be that easy to kill your opponent. When the game instructs you to "exchange" two things in Magic, you can only do so if the exchange can be performed in both directions. You can't get something for nothing, or nothing for something.
If Tree of Perdition is dead when its ability resolves, no matter why it's dead or what its toughness was when it died, the game will see that it's not possible to set the now-dead Tree's toughness to your opponent's life total, and the exchange will fail. Your opponent's life total won't change at all.
Q: I target two creatures with Tamiyo, Field Researcher's first ability. Do I draw two cards if both those creatures deal damage in combat, or only one?
A: Two cards. The delayed trigger set up by Tamiyo's ability will track each creature individually, and will trigger any time either of them deals combat damage; if both of them are dealing combat damage at the same time, the ability will trigger once for each of them, and you will end up drawing two cards.
Q: If you have an emblem from Tamiyo, Field Researcher, can you cast Ancestral Vision from your hand?
A: Absolutely. The reason you can't normally cast Ancestral Vision from your hand is that it doesn't have a mana cost that you can pay; if you try casting it from your hand the normal way, once you get to the part of casting the spell where you have to pay the mana cost, you find yourself unable to do so, because there isn't one you can pay.
Tamiyo's emblem allows you to sidestep all of that, because it allows you to skip that whole ugly "paying the mana cost" requirement. Since you don't need to pay the mana cost, you never run into the problem of there not being a mana cost to pay.
Q: If Stirring Wildwood is blocked by Permeating Mass, what happens at end of turn?
A: When Permeating Mass deals combat damage to Stirring Wildwood, its ability will trigger, and the Wildwood will become a copy of the Mass. However, at that time Stirring Wildwood's own animation effect is still around and kicking, so it applies over top of the copy effect from Permeating Mass. The Wildwood becomes become a copy of the Mass, but it still has all the characteristics granted to it by the animation effect, so it's still a green and white 3/4 Elemental with Reach on top of that.
At the end of the turn, the animation effect will wear off, and that leaves the Wildwood as a "plain" copy of the Mass. In other words, it's a 1/3 green spirit creature named "Permeating Mass" with a mana cost of
and no need to ever use something as boring as a mirror.Q: Can I look at my opponent's sideboard if I've gained control of them with Emrakul, the Promised End?
A: No, you can't! This is actually a change introduced for the release of Eldritch Moon. Previously, if you gained control of another player, you were allowed to look at their sideboard, but that's no longer the case.
The upshot of this is that if you make your opponent cast a spell like Coax from the Blind Eternities that requires them to choose a card from outside the game (which in a tournament setting means "from their sideboard"), since you're unable to look at their sideboard, you're unable to make a choice for them, and the spell won't do anything.
And that's it! Be sure to come back again next week but not until then because I have a lot of work to do and very little time to do it in I've already wasted half an hour on this little chat so here's the door thank you all so much for coming goodbye!
*SLAM*
- Callum Milne
About the Author:
Callum Milne is a Level 2 judge from British Columbia, Canada. His home range is Vancouver Island, but he can be found in the wild throughout BC and also at GPs all along the west coast of North America.
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