Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 10:25:20 +0900 From: Ron Foster Reply-To: mtg-ml@balthasar.iso.comel.or.jp Errors-To: mtg-ml-request@balthasar.iso.comel.or.jp To: mtg-ml@balthasar.iso.comel.or.jp (MAGIC The Gathering Mailinglist Japan) This batch covers about mid-November through mid-January 1999. GENERAL 1) "Anything that is directly fiddling with the amount of damage dealt (as opposed to preventing damage or dealing additional damage) needs to be a continuous replacement effect in order to interact correctly with all the other effects out there. This includes double, deals one additional, and reduced by one. The "reduce to zero" effect of Protection (and anything that has it printed directly on the card) is still handled as a regular trigger, so it happens after all the continuous replacement and completely wipes out the damage." [Repeating this here because, while not quite Rulings-worthy, it _is_ important, and keeps coming up... For 6th Edition rules, reduce-to-zero will be a "shield" like all the other stuff that fiddles with damage.] 2) Trample's "damage-dealing can include defender" is a continuous effect that affects dealing the combat damage, not a continuous replacement ability. [You split up the Trample damage, deciding where to assign what, before dealing with any "double this"/"subtract one from this"/etc. issues. Rather than doing it in APNAP order and possibly doubling the damage before any goes to defender, etc.] 3) The "you may play an additional land" ability that some cards have [Fastbond, Summer Bloom, Storm Cauldron, Exploration, Gaea's Touch] is treated _not_ as raising the number of lands you may play this turn [so that, normally one, it might go to two or three or as many as you like], but rather as giving you an actual ability to play an extra land. [Following the usual rules for playing a land, so only on your turn during your main phase, not during your attack, not as a response to anything, only from the neutral state.] The consequences of this include: When you play a land with Gaea's Touch in play, you need to say whether you're using its "play an additional basic forest" ability or not. [You need to say whether you're using the additional ability or the normal one in any case, but here there's an extra restriction on the new ability.] If you don't say, you're assumed to be using your regular ability. If a Gaea's Touch or Storm Cauldron or Exploration leaves play and returns, other than by phasing out and in, in the same turn, you get a _new_ copy of the ability. Rather than "your limit was two, then went down to one, but is now two again ... and you've already played two", or the like. If Storm Cauldron merely taps and untaps again, that doesn't give you a new copy of the ability - it just means you can't use the ability while the card is tapped. [So that Exploration & Capsize, in some Loop or other, can act much like a painless Fastbond.] 4) Cards that require "each other player" to make a choice for an ability or to play an ability create one copy of the ability for each of the players involved. Thus, in a duel, the ability, singular, is played and controlled by the opponent; in multiplayer, each other player gets one ability, and they play them in whatever order the House Rules specify [rather than the controller of the card playing in multiplayer but not in a duel]. [Cards that require or allow "each player", or "each opponent", to do this also create one ability-copy for each. So that active player makes their choice first, in a duel, and in multiplayer you go 'round the table in whatever order your House Rules specify.] [This is essentially a "we're gonna rule it this way because it will be like this for 6th Edition" answer. For ease of transition.] 5) Last we heard, a release date (to the public) of late March or so for the 6E rules set was being discussed. This may of course change before then. 6) The player using a Vanguard card, for Arena games, is the controller of any ability it has. [The Vanguard card isn't a permanent of any sort ... but abilities it has work just as if they were written on a permanent that that player controlled. Defaulting to "instant", only that player can pay the costs, etc. It's not an ability of an artifact, land, creature, or enchantment; it has no color; it's lacking some other stuff too. But it _does_ follow ordinary timing rules, etc.] 7) An ability is a mana-producing ability if it is able to produce mana under some conditions. Whether or not the ability could be played -right now-, whether or not the ability's conditions to make mana are fulfilled right now, and whether the ability would make 0 mana or a positive amount doesn't affect whether it's a mana ability. [A tapped Island is still a mana-producing land; so is an empty City of Shadows or storage land, a Reflecting Pool when you have no other lands, or a Tolarian Academy when you control no artifacts. Etc.] 8) The Untap-phase and Cleanup-phase phase ability are each played in series - a "series of one". Instants aren't legal in either phase; the phase ability is played in series, like phase abilities done at the end or beginning of a phase are. It doesn't start a batch that nothing else can be added to. SPECIFIC CARDS 1) "Forbidden Crypt should, indeed, be treated as a continuous replacement ability now, and thus be able to interact with Psychic Vortex." 2) "Events in a Shahrazad subgame do not trigger abilities in the main game, and continuous effects in the main game do not carry over to the subgame." So Sleeper enchantments in the main game won't trigger when opponent casts a [creature] spell in the subgame, for instance. 3) >Question: If my only land is a Reflecting Pool with a Wild Growth, can I >tap it to get one green mana? "Currently no. You can't play an ability unless you can make all required choices. Reflecting Pool's ability requires you to choose a mana type that one of your other lands could produce. Since you can't do so, you can't play the ability." 4) Carpet of Flowers, despite its wording, cannot have the ability used during an attack. It can only be used during main phase before or after your attack. [When 6E rolls in, it will be usable only in first main and second main phase, not in combat phase.] 5) Outmaneuver is an ordinary instant ... which creates a replacement ability, lasting until end of turn, when it resolves. [The effect uses the word "instead", and the recent Ruling about it was in fact accurate in saying that blockers could disappear after it resolved and before the combat damage was dealt.] "It will affect the whole rest of the turn, though, if you end up having more than one attack" ... and affects both first strike combat damage and regular combat damage in any attack whose damage it affects. 6) The Hidden Spider isn't triggered by a Winged Sliver being cast. Winged Sliver doesn't innately have the ability flying; it has an ability that gives Slivers flying. _Because_ of this, it has flying -while it's in play-, because its own ability grants it to itself. But it doesn't have it printed in the text box, so can't trigger the Spider. [It _is_ triggered when you cast a Primal Clay, however.] 7) Mark Rosewater Sez both halves of a B.F.M. have the same casting cost. [For Phyrexian Devourer's purposes.] 8) For Worship versus Reverse Damage/Reverse Polarity, any life that wasn't actually subtracted from your total can't be Reversed. So if Worship stops you from losing some life, Reverse Damage/Polarity later that turn will just Reverse the life you _did_ lose ... and won't care how much damage was actually successfully dealt to you to cause that life loss. {"There, that should hold us until 6E. :)"} [Simulacrum, in contrast, simply redirects the damage ... so will get all the damage off of you and onto the creature. (The damage is never actually removed from a _player_ - it's just that it only gets one chance to make you lose life, and then just sits there on you.) You get back the life you actually _lost_ ... and the poor creature takes all the damage.] 9) More Reverse Damage: If something affects your life between the time you lost life to the source you choose, and the time the RD resolves ... you don't recalculate how much your life -would have been- affected if you'd never lost it in the first place. Instead, RD simply restores the amount of life you lost, to you, and then makes you gain that much life again. [So if you get Fireballed for 6, then play Infernal Contract and pay half your 18 life, going to 9, _then_ Reverse Damage the Fireball, you get back 6 life and gain 6 life, ending at 21. You _don't_ recalculate how much "half your life" would have been at the time you cast the Contract, and don't "retroactively re-do the whole turn's life adjustments"; you don't say "Well, I took 6, but I really didn't, so I _was_ at 24 retroactively, so I lost _12_ life, and am at 12, then get 6 back and gain 6, leaving me at 24 life".]