Published on 09/27/2010
No Myr Feet
or, Another Year of Metal Puns
By Eli Shiffrin, Brian Paskoff, and Carsten Haese
This Article from: Eli Shiffrin
Cranial Translation
[No translations yet]
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 Information in this article may be out of date due to subsequent Oracle and/or rules changes.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.
I'm so sorry. There will be
pop-culture references, too.
pop-culture references, too.
And, of course, with a new set comes a mother lodestone of questions, freshly mined and refined from... well, from our prereleases, mostly, but a few emails. Got more questions after this article? I'm sure you will, enough to fill a couple more weeks just about the new set! How do I know when you haven't even read the article yet? Because the FAQ is loooong and still not exhaustive. Send in your questions to cranial.insertion@gmail.com to get an answer from the experts!
Speaking of which, this article isn't meant to replace the FAQ, merely to supplement it; I've deliberately avoided most of the things that show up in the FAQ, so make sure that you go over to the Wizards website and read the FAQ of happy FAQiness.
After you've done so, pick up your magnets and wave them in the sky (away from your computer) and let's cleave on into metalworld!
Q: Proliferate is so broken, it doubles counters on everything!
A: But that's not what it says it does – read it a bit more closely. For each permanent/player you choose, you only get to add one counter, period; not one counter for each counter on it, and not one counter of each kind on it, just one counter of one kind on it.
Q: What does a creature with infect do to planeswalkers?
A: It walks up and says "hey, I'm a big nasty infectious Phyrexian nasty." The planeswalker says "ew" and then takes damage. Since infect only specifies an unusual result of damage for players and creatures, damage dealt to planeswalkers is treated entirely normally: the walker loses counters.
Q: Will preventing damage from a source with infect stop the -1/-1 or poison counters?
A: Yes, that works. The counters are the result of the damage being applied, and if the damage doesn't happen, its results naturally don't happen, either.
Remember that even with infect, the damage is still being dealt – just with different results than normal. Lifelink will also cause life to be gained, and any "whenever something deals damage" triggers will go off.
Q: If I give Vector Asp infect three times, will it give triple poison counters?
A: You'd think that being three times as infectious would mean it'd kill three times faster, but infect doesn't work like that. The rules say that the result of damage from a source with infect is poison counters, not a poison counter for each instance of infect. You'll need to find another way to squeeze more venom out of your Asp.
Bang bang, Koth the Silver Hammer
Came down upon her head.
Came down upon her head.
A: The Ravine, despite its many peaks and rocky formations, is not a true Mountain. You can tell because the type line says "Land" and does not say "Mountain" anywhere on it. Merely tapping for red mana doesn't make it a Mountain.
Q: Can I imprint Bitterblossom on Semblance Anvil to get cheaper Faeries?
A: Sure, as long as the Faeries in question are tribals, not creatures. Semblance Anvil cares about card types, not subtypes; types include artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, sorcery, and so on. It does not care about subtypes like Faerie.
Q: Will an artifact creature on Semblance Anvil reduce other artifact creatures by
?A: No, you can only hammer out the discount once per spell, and the discount is only
. If you had a $1 off coupon for either chocolate or ice cream, you wouldn't save $2 on chocolate ice cream. Unless your supermarket is really cool like mine, but Magic still doesn't work like that.Q: How does Quicksilver Gargantuan interact with levelers?
A: Remember how Sephiroth and Magus are so awesome when you control them, until they actually join your party and start leveling up? Kind of like that. As long as you keep your Leveling Gargantuan at level 0, it'll be 7/7 from its layer-1 copy effect, but as soon as you level up, the layer-7b power/toughness setting effect will trump the lower layer copy effect and set a new, lesser power and toughness.
Q: Can Necrotic Ooze copy abilities from levelers in my graveyard?
A: Sure, it can copy the level up ability. That's it. The other abilities aren't actually there – they're part of continuous effects that say "if you've got enough level counters, you have this ability," and static abilities and continuous effects aren't taken by the Ooze.
Q: If I have two Putrid Leeches in my graveyard, can I pump Necrotic Ooze twice, or only once still?
A: The Ooze will leech each ability from each Leech, and each leeched Leech ability is a discrete ability – your Ooze will have two abilities, each which can be activated once a turn. The text of the ability may be the same, but they're still separate abilities.
Q: What does Necrotic Ooze copy with a Myr Propagator in the graveyard?
A: When an object uses its name in its ability, it's really saying "this object" – so the Ooze will have "
, 
: Put a token that's a copy of this object onto the battlefield." You'll get to squeeze out a token copy of your Ooze that has all of those activated abilities as well.Q: If I drop Splinter Twin on a Quicksilver Gargantuan or copy a Myr Propagator-Gargantuan, will I get copies of what it's copying, or can I copy new things each time? Are the copies also 7/7?
A: Copiable values are very hard to change, but other copy effects are one of the rare ways to etch new copiable values. Your Gargantuan will have every detail of the Myr it copied engraved on it for Splinter Twin or Myr Propagator to copy, with the exception of its own 7/7 power/toughness, which is also copied. The original ability to mold your Gargantuan into a new creature is long gone; all that's left is what it says on the creature you copied.
However, if you choose not to forge a critter as the Gargantuan originally enters the battlefield, it'll survive happily as a 7/7 (unlike Clone) – and then Splinter Twin will fracture off a copy of the original Gargantuan with the copy replacement effect, and then you can craft something new and exciting every time you activate the token-making ability.
Q: I block two 5/5 creatures with Rusted Relic and a mana Myr. I only have one other artifact. Does Rusted Relic die, or can the Myr die first making the Relic a noncreature artifact?
A: Barring first-strike damage, the Relic and the Myr will be dealt 5 damage each at the same time, and then will both be destroyed by state-based actions at the same time. While you can choose their order in the graveyard, they're both put there at once; there's no way to merely have the Myr die first and save the Relic. In fact, if the Relic deals combat damage at all, it will also be dealt combat damage and destroyed if that damage is lethal.
When I see a strange foreign substance,
I dip my fingers into it right away, too.
I bet you he licks his fingers after.
I dip my fingers into it right away, too.
I bet you he licks his fingers after.
A: Nope, if you want to go and make copies, the spell has to have the single Golem target chosen as part of casting it. Redirecting the spell or copying the spell won't trigger the Precursor's ability.
Q: Will I lose life from Reanimate-ing Platinum Emperion?
A: Nope! You follow the steps in the order written: First you return the Emperion, and then you lose life. Except you can't lose life. This also applies to any other cards that have you do something and then lose or gain life, including Condemn (which does net you life since the order gets rid of your Emperion first).
Q: If I reveal five lands for Genesis Wave, can I play them all?
A: No, because you don't play anything with Genesis Wave – you put them onto the battlefield. And there are no restrictions on how many lands you can put on the battlefield, only how many you can normally play, so you're free to put all five down!
Q: Is there any way I can drop more than one Mox Opal and get mana out of them before the explode?
A: Nope. As soon as your second Opal resolves, Mister State-Based Actions kicks in and turns the two into lovely earrings for its girlfriend Miss State Trigger. (Note that State Trigger has nothing at all to do with this question, so it's a surprise to her. Shhh.) You can only activate mana abilities when you have priority or when you're asked to pay mana, and neither happens before SBAs takes the Opals away.
Q: If I control a Rusted Relic and two other artifacts, and then the Relic is destroyed, will that trigger Vigil for the Lost?
A: For leaves-the-battlefield triggers, you have to look at the game state immediately before the leaving rather than after. Immediately before leaving, the Relic was a creature, so the Vigil will trigger.
Q: Can I pay
over and over for Nim Deathmantle to get multiple creatures back from Day of Judgment?A: When a bunch of creatures die at once, Nim Deathmantle triggers that many times. Each time a trigger resolves, you can pay or not pay; if you do, you get the creature back and it puts on the death hat. If you pay again, another guy comes back and yoinks the Deathmantle away, but nothing says that this destroys the first creature – it gets to sit around and sulk at losing its toy.
Q: How does infect work in Two-Headed Giant?
A: Much the same way Hypnotic Specter works: After a creature with infect goes unblocked, you choose a head to assign damage to. That head gets that many poison counters. Once one head has ten, the team loses the game. So the moral of the story is that poison does not actually enter the bloodstream, it just goes straight to the brain.
Q: With the new Mindslaver wording, how does it work in 2HG?
A: Exactly the same as before: You control both players on their next turn. To control one player on a team with shared team turns is to control all players on that team.
As a good rule of thumb, absolutely nothing changed about Mindslaver's interactions, only the wording on the card.
Q: Will Platinum Emperion do anything meaningful in 2HG?
A: Sure! If you can't gain or lose life, the entire team can't gain or lose life, and nothing at all can change the team's life total.
Well, we're tapped out of space for this week, but there's still a dense mix of questions to answer! Paskoff will be back next week with some more answers, including some big non-Scars questions that are popping up.
A brief announcement for our European readers: Some of you may have noticed that the article is usually published with a link for the Spanish translation. What many of you may not know is that we've had several Italian translations made, but weeks after the article was published. Well, our Italian translator is going to try to pick up the pace and get the translations done before publication so that our English, Spanish, and Italian translations will all go up at the same time! (Midnight Eastern US time as Sunday becomes Monday)
We still need a Japanese translator...
Until next time, enjoy summoning the powers of more than four elements!
- Eli Shiffrin
Tucson, Arizona
About the Author:
Eli Shiffrin is currently in Lowell, Massachusetts and discovering how dense the east coast MTG community is. Legend has it that the Comprehensive Rules are inscribed on the folds of his brain.
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