Published on 10/10/2016
Too Tense
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 Information in this article may be out of date due to subsequent Oracle and/or rules changes.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.
Shadows over Innistrad really should
have released in the fall.
have released in the fall.
Sorry about the outburst there; I'm a bit of a nervous wreck at the moment. According to my doctor my blood pressure's been ridiculously high lately, and I need to reduce the amount of stress in my life or I'll have a heart attack within the year. Which goes to show just how little he knows about doctor-ing—telling me that just gives me even more to stress about!
Luckily, I've always found answering rules questions relaxing rather than stressful, so I won't have to cut back on my Cranial Insertion duties at all. So if you have a rules question you'd like to see answered, send it to us via email at moko@cranialinsertion.com , or if it's shorter you can find us on Twitter @CranialTweet. You'll get an answer and possibly see your question in an upcoming article!
For now, though, just sit back, relax, and let the questions flow.
Q: I look at my opponent's hand with Distended Mindbender and see her cards are an Obstinate Baloth and an Alive // Well. Can I choose Alive // Well for the CMC 4+ card so I don't have to give her a free Baloth?
A: Alive // Well has two distinct converted mana costs: 1 and 4. That CMC of 1 means it's the only card in your opponent's hand with converted mana cost 3 or less, you're forced to choose it for the first part of the Mindbender's ability.
Luckily for you, Distended Mindbender doesn't care if you double-dip. Since Alive // Well also has a CMC of 4, it's also a legal choice for the second part of the Mindbender's ability, even though you've already chosen it once for the first part. No free Baloth for your opponent!
Q: Does Padeem, Consul of Innovation draw me a card if I only have a Servo token or some other 0-cost artifact?
A: As long as nobody else controls an artifact with a higher converted mana cost, sure! While a converted mana cost of 0 is about as low as you can possibly go, it will still be enough to impress Padeem if there's no other artifacts around that have a higher cost than that.
Q: How does Essence Harvest work if I hit my opponent with it while my strongest creature is Malignus? It starts off by hitting them for half their life total, but that means that Malignus gets smaller...so do I gain less life?
A: No, you still gain the full amount of life. Essence Harvest determines the value of X it's going to use as it starts to resolve, and that value won't change after that in mid-resolution, even if the greatest power among creatures you controls changes somewhere along the line.
Q: I went to crew my Fleetwheel Cruiser, but in response my opponent managed to enchant it with Song of the Dryads. What happens? Does it still become a creature, and if so, what are its stats?
A: When it enchants a creature, Song of the Dryads doesn't erase the power and toughness that are printed on it. Sure, turning something into a forest removes all abilities printed on it, but power and toughness aren't an ability. The Song just makes that permanent not be a creature any more, and thus renders the printed power and toughness irrelevant since noncreatures don't have power or toughness.
But in this case, thanks to the crew ability that's waiting to resolve, your Cruiser is going to become a creature after Song of the Dryads has turned it into a land. And since it's now a creature, and it still has that printed power and toughness on it, those values will apply, and your Cruiser will be a 5/3.
This looks a lot like me during
a Halloween candy binge...
a Halloween candy binge...
A: It will indeed. When something is exiled "until" some other event occurs, it gets returned immediately after that other event happens, before anything else can happen. Your Emperion will be returned to the battlefield as soon as the Priest leaves, before you move on to the next part of resolving the ability that removed it, and will thus block you from gaining any life.
Q: If I use Sakashima the Impostor to copy Arcane Savant in a cube draft, am I right in thinking that no spell will be copied, because Sakashima keeps his name, and you definitely didn't exile anything for a card named Sakashima?
A: You're actually incorrect here; you'll be able to copy and cast the card you exiled for the original Arcane Savant just fine.
Arcane Savant's ability actually uses its name in two different ways, and how the name is used matters. The first time, where it says "When Arcane Savant enters the battlefield...", it's simply referring to itself—using its name here is just a nicer way of saying "this card".
But the second time, where it says "...exiled with cards named Arcane Savant..."? That's different. Here, the Savant isn't referring specifically to itself—it's referring to any card with a specific name—the fact that that name happens to be the same one that the Savant itself normally has isn't relevant at all, because you'd still be looking for that name no matter what the name of the card asking you to look was. Sakashima has the same ability, so it too will be looking for cards "exiled with cards named Arcane Savant".
Q: Can you use Pithing Needle to stop the sacrifice ability of a clue token? Similarly, do cards like Suppression Field affect clues?
A: Well, the ability of a Clue token is indeed not a mana ability, but sadly for you, Pithing Needle only stops abilities from sources with the name you chose as it enters the battlefield, and there is no card named "Clue" for you to name, so you're not able to use the Needle to stop Clue tokens.
Suppression Field, however, will indeed affect Clues, since it doesn't care where the activated abilities it affects come from.
Q: The rulings for Metallurgic Summonings say that you get the Construct before the spell that triggered the ability resolves. Does that mean that I can cast Saheeli's Artistry and target the 6/6 Construct the Summonings creates for it?
A: No, you cannot. As with any spell, you need to choose all targets for Saheeli's Artistry as you cast it, and at that time, the Summonings hasn't yet triggered at all, and definitely hasn't created any token for you to target. The Summonings will only trigger after you've finished casting the Artistry, and while you will indeed get the token before the Artistry starts to resolve, by that time your target will have long since been chosen already.
Q: If a player controls The Gitrog Monster and discards a land to Smallpox in addition to sacrificing a subsequent land, will the monster trigger twice, or will the player only draw one card since they both went to the grave as part of the same spell?
A: They'll draw two cards. Discarding a card and sacrificing a land when Smallpox resolves are two separate actions that are performed sequentially. Since they happen at different times, the Monster will trigger once for each of them, even though both happen during the resolution of the same spell.
Q: If I have a enough cards in hand to kill my opponent with Fateful Showdown, but I don't have enough cards to draw, would I win if it resolved?
A: Well, your opponent won't win, so maybe you can count it as a moral victory, but you won't be winning in the actual game sense. After Fateful Showdown finishes resolving, the game will see both that your opponent has a life total of 0 or less and that you've attempted to draw cards from an empty library. As such, both you and your opponent will be losing the game simultaneously, and since all players have lost at once, the game will be a draw.
Q: When Combustible Gearhulk enters the battlefield, does the opponent make their decision right when Gearhulk triggers, or when the trigger resolves? Can I use Vampiric Tutor to put a specific card on top of my library based on her decision?
A: No, you cannot. Your opponent only chooses whether or not to let you draw cards as the Gearhulk's ability is resolving, and by that time it's far too late for you to tutor up a specific card—by the time you know what they've chosen and have a chance to do anything, the ability will have completely finished resolving, and either you'll have a bunch of extra cards or your opponent will have a significantly lower life total.
Q: If I cast Eldritch Evolution and sacrifice Altered Ego to it, would it be considered a 4-cost creature, or would its CMC be that of the creature it copied?
A: While on the battlefield, your Altered Ego is a copy of the creature you copied, including its mana cost (and therefore its converted mana cost). As soon as it leaves the battlefield and enters the graveyard it will be a plain Altered Ego again, but Eldritch Evolution won't see that, because it cares about the converted mana cost of the creature you sacrificed, not the cost of whatever card you put into the graveyard as a result of the sacrifice.
As such, Eldritch Evolution will go looking for a creature card with CMC equal to or less than the CMC of the creature you copied, plus two.
Q: If I play Iona, Shield of Emeria with Panharmonicon around, may I choose another color?
A: No, you cannot; you'll still choose one and only one color. Panharmonicon causes triggered abilities that trigger off of an artifact or creature entering the battlefield to trigger twice, but Iona, Shield of Emeria doesn't have any triggered abilities at all.
Abilities that do things 'as' something enters the battlefield are actually static replacement abilities, not triggers. Triggers watch for an event happening and then do something after they see it happen, but replacement abilities are applied on the fly, modifying whatever event they apply to to cause it to work differently.
In Iona's case, that means modifying the way Iona enters the battlefield to include choosing a color for its ability, so that Iona's never on the battlefield without having a color already chosen.
Q: Would Panharmonicon cause Erdwal Illuminator to trigger twice?
A: No, it would not. In order for Panharmonicon to cause an ability to trigger twice, that ability needs to check two important boxes: first and foremost, that ability has to care about the fact that something just entered the battlefield, and second, that thing that just entered the battlefield has to be an artifact or creature.
Erdwal Illuminator fails to check that first box, because its trigger condition is its controller investigating—it doesn't actually care whether or not that investigation actually caused something to enter the battlefield is completely secondary.
To see this distinction in action, imagine investigating for the first time in a turn while you controlled Parallel Lives. If Erdwal Illuminator cared about things entering the battlefield, Parallel Lives should cause it to trigger multiple times, since it means investigating puts multiple things onto the battlefield. But it doesn't, because the part the Illuminator cares about is that you performed the keyword action in the first place, no matter what the outcome was.
Q: With Panharmonicon in play, I resolve a Brutalizer Exarch. Do I get to choose different modes for the individual triggers?
A: You do indeed! Unlike Strionic Resonator and similar cards, Panharmonicon doesn't work by taking an existing ability (one that you've already chosen modes for) and copying it. Instead, it simply causes the original ability to trigger multiple times, and since each of those triggers is independent of the other, you get to make separate choices for each of them.
Q: I'm a little confused by cards that say "Choose target creature", like Spark of Creativity. Do I do this when I put it on the stack, like with regular targeting, or do I choose that target when it resolves?
A: There's no difference between cards like Spark of Creativity and cards that target "normally", at least not as far as how the targets work—it's purely a cosmetic difference. Listing the targets up front for cards like Spark of Creativity, Harnessed Lightning, and similar makes it clearer both that there is a target required and that it must be chosen before you resolve any of the spell's effects.
To see the difference, check out Fiery Gambit; the targeting requirement is buried in the middle of the card's text, so it might be easy for players to miss that casting it requires choosing a creature to target at all, and the way the effect that targets appears after the instruction to flip coins might be taken to imply that you flip coins first, and only choose to target something after you know whether or not damage will be dealt.
Q: I control Mana Reflection and tap an Ancient Ziggurat for mana. May I use that mana to cast multiple creature spells, or must I spend all the mana on the same spell? It says spend the mana only to cast a creature spell...
A: As with similar cards that restrict the mana they produce to creature spells, like Food Chain, you can split the mana among multiple creature spells if you like—you're not required to spend it all on the same one if you don't want to.
While Ancient Ziggurat does say "a" creature spell as opposed to "creature spells", that's a cosmetic difference. Under normal conditions the Ziggurat can only ever produce a single mana at a time, and of course it's not possible to split one mana among multiple spells, so using the singular might help avoid some confusion.
Q: In a multiplayer game, Council's Judgment resolves, and the votes are tied between something else and Lightning Greaves, but there's more than one Greaves on the board. The player who cast the Judgement says that since it doesn't target, it exiles them all—is that right?
A: No, it's not right at all. When you vote for Council's Judgment, each vote is for one specific permanent to be exiled, not for all permanents with a given name. If there's more than one Greaves on the board, the players voting should have pointed out which one they wanted to exile as they voted—a vote for just "Lightning Greaves" isn't specific enough when there's more than one of them around.
Q: When must you choose to go first in game two - before or after sideboarding?
A: The player who lost the first game of the match only needs to choose whether or play or draw after sideboarding is concluded. They're free to announce their intentions beforehand if they really want to, of course, but they don't need to do so until they're done sideboarding.
Q: If a player was the monarch and Karn Liberated restarted the game, will that player still be the monarch after restarting?
A: No, they won't be—nobody will be the monarch, because one hasn't been crowned yet.
Restarting the game causes the current game to end immediately, and begins a new game that's independent of the old one. Just as when starting any other new game, no player will be the monarch in this new game since no effect has yet instructed a player to become the monarch.
Q: I heard something in my local store about the rules for pile shuffling changing—what's all that about?
A: The most recent edition of the Magic Tournament Rules was released recently, and it includes a small addition regarding "pile shuffling", which shouldn't really be considered "shuffling" at all. Basically, since "pile shuffling" (more accurately, "pile counting") is only useful for counting the number of cards in the deck, you're not allowed to do it multiple times when randomizing your deck, as repeating the process provides no additional benefit and takes a not-insignificant amount of time.
Some people have taken the change to mean that they're allowed to pile count every single time they shuffle their deck, even if they have no interest in counting their cards remaining. ("Hey, it says I can't do it more than once per shuffle—that must mean I can do it exactly once per shuffle! Right? Right?") Don't be one of those people. Those people are jerks who are wasting everyone's time, and they're likely to garner a few Slow Play warnings from judges for their trouble.
And that's all we have this week! Join us next week when Nathan will be back to bring us another new pile of new rules questions straight from the inbox!
-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.
Blees
Bonus Fateful Showdown question: Hit yourself with it for lethal (for reasons), can't draw enough cards, but you have a Laboratory Maniac in play. The drawing of cards is replaced by winning, but what about being at 0 or less life?
#1
• Date: 2016-10-10 • Time: 10:11:58 •
104.3f If a player would both win and lose the game simultaneously, he or she loses the game.
#2
• Date: 2016-10-10 • Time: 11:38:31 •
Carsten
Quote (jskura):
|
104.3f If a player would both win and lose the game simultaneously, he or she loses the game. |
That rule doesn't apply to Blees's question. Laboratory Maniac replaces the draw with a win, so you win during resolution of Fateful Showdown. The game loss won't happen until the SBA check after Fateful Showdown's resolution, but the game is already over before that happens.
#3
• Date: 2016-10-10 • Time: 12:36:54 •
