Subject: Constructed Deck Rulings. Date: 7 Jan 1998 03:05:55 GMT From: "Daniel Gray" Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy The following is the second in a series of rules and rulings FAQ's designed to aid both the player and judge of constructed tournaments. The questions focus principly on Standard (Type II) and Extended tournaments, and are derived from multiple sources (player questions, actual tournament events, and questions from IRC and the judge list comprise the majority of them). This FAQ will be posted by me to both the dcijudge-l and the .strategy newsgroup. Everyone may feel free to copy this post and put on other web pages or listservs, provided no changes are made to it. If anyone has any questions, feel free to address them to me at dmgray@worldnet.att.net. Dan Gray Level IV Certified Judge Magic: The Gathering Playtester Member, DCI Policy Advisory Committee World's Worst Scrabble Player 1. What's up with the Waterspout Djinn ruling in the D'Angelo summaries? You know, the one that says I can return a single island to upkeep two Djinns? The ruling in D'Angelo is in error. You cannot now, nor have you ever been able to, upkeep multiple Waterspout Djinns with a single untapped island. Remember, Waterspout Djinn has an upkeep cost. Upkeep costs are always written as, "During your upkeep, do action A or [else] do action B." These work as follows-- when you announce the upkeep, you decide whether you're doing A or B. If you choose A, everything that happens in A happens immediately (as a cost), and when the ability resolves, nothing happens. Conversely, if you choose B, nothing happens on announcement, and when you resolve the ability, B occurs. Because returning an untapped island is the "A" on Waterspout Djinn, it happens when you announce you are paying the upkeep, and the island is back in its owner's hand before you have any opportunity to announce paying for the upkeep of another Djinn. The ruling in D'Angelo mistakenly assumes that Waterspout Djinn is an upkeep _ability_ rather than cost. Upkeep abilities are always written as, "During your upkeep, do action A." They are also played as instants, and when they resolve, the action A occurs. If Waterspout Djinn had an upkeep ability (Which would be written as, "During your upkeep, return an untapped island you control to owner's hand."), it would be possible to use a single island for multiple Djinns (just as it is currently possible to use a single green creature for multiple Stampeding Wildebeests). However, the Djinn has a cost and not an ability, and it is therefore impossible to use the same island twice. Waterspout Djinn 2UU Summon Djinn 4/4 Flying During your upkeep, return an untapped island you control to owner's hand or sacrifice Waterspout Djinn. 2. What's all this I hear about Interdict being able to counter protection and trample and whatnot? Under the right circumstances, Interdict can stop a great number of abilities that are normally unstoppable from working. The key is the second sentence of the card, which says the abilities of the permanent cannot be played again that turn. Similar to the pre-errata City of Solitude, because Interdict uses the word "abilities," rather than "activated abilities," it shuts down things like triggered abilities, phase costs, phase abilities, and even several creature abilities (including flanking, rampage, trample, and the "reduce damage to 0" part of protection). Interdict obviously needs errata to fix this, but for the moment, here's basically how it works: First off, you cannot use Interdict to counter an ability that normally cannot be interrupted, nor one that is not activated. That is, you cannot play Interdict to simply "shut down" a permanent with the second sentence. There has to be a legally targetable ability to counter before you can even play Interdict. So basically, Interdict can only target activated permanent abilities that are played as instants, interrupts, or sorceries. However, once you successfully counter an ability with Interdict, during this turn, everything except mana sources (which cannot be prevented due to the Abeyance ruling), continuous effects, and characteristics of the permanent (such as "Counts as a Wall.") are "shut off," and cannot be used. This includes things like phase abilities, upkeep costs, triggered abilities, and any creature abilities which are "played" in some way. This includes the "reduce damage to 0" portion of protection from something, but, as the remainder of protection (cannot be targeted and cannot be blocked) is continuous, those portions continue to function. What this means is that, even if you use Interdict to counter your opponent giving his Order of the White Shield first strike, you still cannot target the Order with a Drain Life, though something nontargeted which does damage (like Pestilence or Evincar's Justice) will kill it. Therefore, the practical applications of this strange rule seem to be somewhat minimal, and although the card should eventually receive errata (mostly because it does something it clearly wasn't designed to), it's an interesting anomaly at best for the moment. Interdict 1U Interrupt Counter target activated ability of a permanent. Abilities of that permanent cannot be played again this turn. Draw a card. 3. What's this "Scroll Rack Trick" I keep hearing about, and is it legal? The "Trick" is basically a method of using Scroll Rack when you have more cards in your hand than in your library to help prevent your library from becoming depleted and is perfectly legal. This trick is basically as follows: You have more cards in your hand than in your library. Use the Scroll Rack and set aside a number of cards from your hand which is greater than the number in your library. The result will be you put more cards back on top of your library than you took off of it. What is basically happening here is that the user of Scroll Rack is "abusing" a rule of the game that states, essentially, that whenever an effect occurs, you try to complete that effect as fully as possible. It's the rule that governs what happens when you activated Browse with fewer than five cards in your library (look at however many there are, take one, and throw the rest away). It also covers Scroll Rack. Let's say you set aside six cards but have only two in your library. When the ability resolves, you first set aside the six cards, and then you try to take six from your library. Since there are only two cards there, you take just those and then put the set aside six back into your library. Voila, replenished library. Scroll Rack 2 Artifact 1,T: Set aside any number of cards from your hand. Put an equal number of cards from the top of your library into your hand. Then, put the set aside cards on top of your library in any order. 4. What's all this I'm hearing about not being able to target my opponent with a Cursed Scroll? The question being raised involves what's commonly called the "repeat targeting rule." It basically says that if something asks you to choose multiple targets, you cannot choose the same thing as a target twice. Generally, this rule is applied to things like Firstorm (which ask you to pick a specific number of different targets) or Rock Slide (which asks you to choose any number of targets). However, a number of judges, rules gurus and others have applied it to Cursed Scroll, noting the fact that the Scroll asks you to choose both a target opponent (who picks the card from your hand) and a target creature or player (who gets damaged if the card is the right one). There are rulings that say both, "Yes, of course you can target your opponent with the damage," and those that say, "No, you cannot." I favor the, "Yes, of course you can" version, mostly because this is clearly the design intent of the card, and, also, as far as I'm concered, the repeat targeting rule applies for each individual occurance of the word "target" on a card. If a card calls for multiple targets, but uses the word target more than once, each occurance of the word target can target the same thing. Therefore, Cursed Scroll works just you think it would-- you can damage your opponent with it, not just yourself or a creature. Keep in mind that as there is no 100% official ruling on this (and won't be until the Rules Team deals with it), individual judges are free to rule either way they wish at their own events. If you're unsure, ask the judge beforehand how he or she plans on ruling. Cursed Scroll 1 Artifact 3,T: Name a card. Target opponent chooses a card at random from your hand and reveals it to all players. If that card is the named card, Cursed Scroll deals 2 damage to target creature or player. 5. So what exactly is the deal with Mishra's Factory and counters? Though it may surprise many, currently, it is impossible for counters of any kind to alter the power and toughness of an animated Mishra's Factory. When you evaluate continuous effects that are altering the power and toughness of a creature, you consider all the "inherent" characteristics and effects of a permanent (that is, those effects generated by the card itself, as well as the what's actually printed on the card-- color, casting cost, name, permanent type, power, toughness, etc.) before evaluating all other effects altering that permanent (such effects are usually referred to as "external."). By rule, counters on a permanent are considered to be part of the "internal" characteristics of the card. When you play the ability that "animates" a Mishra's Factory and turns it into a 2/2 Assembly Worker, the ability "separates" itself from the Mishra's Factory (this is the reason why the rule, "Destroying the source of an effect will not remove the effect" works-- because abilities becomes separate from whatever created them). Since the ability animating the Factory is separate from it, it is therefore external. Because of this, the "I'm a 2/2 creature" effect on the Factory is evaluated after the modifications made by any counters on the Factory. For this reason, it is impossible not only to kill but to even change the power and toughness of a Mishra's Factory using things like Serrated Arrows and Contagion which create counters. Keep in mind that this rule only applies to a specific category of creatures-- namely those that are being animated by an outside source (notably, Chimeric Sphere, Jade/Xanthic Statue, and animated lands and artifacts). Cards that are normally creatures (that is, summons or artifact creatures) are still affected normally by counters. This is, as may be apparent, an obvious "bug" in the rules. Various people (myself included) are working on an alternate solution to solve the problem (the best I've heard so far involves "timestamping" counters on a permanent so that they are evaluated in the chain of continuous effects analysis at the same point as the effect which created them), but for the moment, counters cannot affect Factories and other similar creatures. Mishra's Factory Land T: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool. 1: Mishra's Factory becomes a 2/2 creature named Assembly Worker until end of turn. (This creature still counts as a land.) T: Target Assembly Worker gets +1/+1 until end of turn. 6. Does the ruling about Abeyance not being able to stop mana sources apply to any other cards? Yes, it does in fact. The Abeyance ruling says, "Spells and abilities can never prevent mana sources from being played." So, any spell or ability which says you cannot play a certain class of spells or abilities which includes mana sources will not, in fact, stop a player from using mana sources. A short list of such cards includes Cursed Totem, Null Rod, Hand to Hand, and City of Solitude. There may be a couple of others I'm not remembering. Remember, the rule only says that spells and abilities cannot prevent mana sources from being played. What this means is that the rules can still prevent a player from using mana sources (specifically, summoning sickness and the inability to use activated abilities of a permanent before its upkeep cost has been dealt with), as can restrictions on when and how often an ability may be played (such as with Wall of Roots), and abilities or effects that completely remove the mana source ability from a permanent (such as Humility).