David DeLaney / rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules #lots-and-lots: 10/3/04-3/13/05 Okay, this is Officially Too Long Between Weekly Summary Reports, sheesh. I have had an odd question or two saved up for a while, but got hit with two in the last week where I apparently am interpreting the rules differently from other people, and I wanted to check and make sure of my interp, or, alternately, find out what I'm missing or considering impossible that we're actually doing these days. Traffic Load - medium-low; Usenet, alas, has been sloooowly dying for the last five or six years, as all these blogs and webforums and IM channels, etc., draw off people to slightly faster or shinier methods of communicating... I'm still there, and the newsgroup's still there, but it's a five-to-ten-post-per- day thing, not a hundreds-per-day. We have the usual two-to-four other people industriously answering questions also, though the members of the group change slightly over time. And zoe stephenson (sp?) took over the maintenance of the group's three-part FAQ, and updated it a bit, a month or two ago. Newsgroup stuff: The vast majority of questions are, as usual, simple to answer and/or simple to point out the relevant rules for, given that you know the rulebook exists and where to look in it. But there's always a few that take more, or more detailed, explaining. Rules questions: I'll take them from oldest first, so make sure to save up some concentration for the last couple... An old question: A Vesuvan Doppelganger, or Unstable Shapeshifter, that copies another of these. Does it end up with two of the relevant triggered abilities, at least until the next time it copies something that doesn't have a triggered ability added at the copy level? Specifically - will a Dopp that copies itself (say it's being a blue Serra Angel with the added upkeep-triggered ability) have -two- copies of the ability, and trigger twice on your next upkeep? If it keeps targetting and copying itself, does it add on another copy of the copy-level triggered ability each time? It seems from the rules that it should, and I know we talked about this a few years ago. (And, again, copying anything that _doesn't_ have such a copy-level-added triggered ability would get it back down to the one ability it adds as part of copying...) The rulebook, it turns out, never ever says ANYTHING, not word one, about how to win the game. It notes that if a player wins and loses simultaneously, that player will lose... and it has several ways to lose... but it never says anything about what one must do to win. Players "intuitively" understand that if you're the last one left in the game, you win by default, and of course a card telling you you win will cause this - but can you find either of these in the rules? No... Can we add, I think, a 102.9 that says something close to "If a player is the only player left in the game, that player wins the game. This happens after all opponents have lost and/or conceded. Effects can also tell a player to win the game."? Because at present, if all your opponents lose, that leaves you in a sort of limbo, from what the rulebook says on the subject... (If WotC gets the multiplayer rules together, this would get tweaked for them into "If only players on one team are left in the game, that team wins the game." for team games, probably.) Part one of this week's confusing issues: Orb of Dreams. As far as I can tell, from looking at the card and reading the rulebook AND knowing how the three similar cards work? This should affect itself just fine, and cause itself to come into play tapped. I've been told that several outside-WotC sources are currently saying it does not. Let me go through my reasoning here... First: I have no problem with "~ comes into play tapped" being treated as a replacement ability. They want that to work so that Humility or Titania's Song _can't_ stop it from working... so it has to be done before any continuous effects at all get applied to the incoming permanent, ~. And the rulebook has this nicely delineated in 410.10e, with a list of stuff that applies to the permanent itself, and in 419.1b, covering the "with" and "as" replacement-effect stuff. The problem appears to be coming from 419.1c . This covers the " comes into play tapped" just fine. But goes on to say that " come into play tapped" is also a replacement effect... and this can't be true. Why? Well, Orb of Dreams isn't the first thing to do this. (If it were I'd have no problem hearing that its effect was a replacement effect, and got applied before the Orb could come into play.) We have Kismet, Uphill Battle, and Root Maze as predecessors to it ... and all three of those have to wait for continuous effects to be applied to the things coming into play, BEFORE they can tell whether they apply at all. Kismet has to know if something will be an artifact, creature, or land (as opposed to an artifact card, creature card, or land card), and who will control it; Root Maze has to know if something will be an artifact or a land; and Uphill Battle has to know if something will be a creature. (Who played it has already been determined some time ago, so that's not part of the problem.) All three of these follow the template in the second half of 419.1c ... but none of them can function as replacement effects, because all three have to wait until at least layer 4 of applying continuous effects - AFTER all "with / as / ~ comes into play tapped" replacement effects have been applied but before triggered abilities trigger - to determine whether they -can- apply, and to what. In short: Kismet is ruled to apply to artifacts, creatures, and lands ... not to 'artifact cards, creature cards, and land cards'. And applies to _permanents_ your opponents _control_, not "cards your opponents own and are putting into play" or "nonInstant nonSorcery spells your opponents control and spells or abilities your opponents control whose effects put cards or tokens into play". It can't be a replacement effect; 419.1c's second half is wrong, for that card and for Uphill Battle and Root Maze. Now, as I said, Orb of Dreams doesn't -need- to wait for continuous effects to be applied, to see what it applies to ... but it's outnumbered three to one in cards that use its template by ones that must do so. And since 419.1c is demonstrably inaccurate for those three, I don't feel comfortable using it to differentiate Orb of Dreams -from- the other three and saying that Orb of Dreams' ability -is- a replacement effect, even though the other three can't be - I don't see any benefit to us from having these four cards split three one way and one the other. So: I've been saying on the newsgroup, as answers, that Orb of Dreams causes -itself-, and anything coming into play along with it, to come into play tapped. Note that Kismet and Uphill Battle -can't- apply to themselves... and as far as I know, if Mycosynth Lattice is in play, Root Maze's effect applies to itself just as well as to anything else, so would cause itself to come into play tapped. The opposing arguments seem to fall into categories: 1) "419.1c says it's a replacement effect, so it must be one". See above for why 419.1c can't be right for the other three cards. 2) "The Orb has to be in play before its continuous effect can affect stuff, so it can't affect itself". This isn't correct; when you're applying continuous effects, you apply ones from things coming into play right along with ones from things already in play. I see no way to distinguish between the static ability of an Orb already in play and one coming into play; both should apply to the things coming into play. (Assuming, of course, that it's not a replacement effect.) Things do not come into play, sit there a moment "naked", -then- find that they themselves have static abilities and "turn them on"... but that seems to be the core of this version of the argument. And of course 3) "A level 3 or 4 judge on Star City said this, so it must be true", with nothing from the rulebook to back them up... In summary: As far as I can tell, Orb of Dreams' static ability should NOT be a replacement effect; 419.1c needs to lose its second half entirely; and an Orb coming into play should cause itself to come into play tapped. What, if anything, am I missing here? (And, if this is correct: would it be worthwhile to have reminder text in Oracle "#(This includes Orb of Dreams.)#", or at least a Gatherer ruling on it?) Part two of Dave's recent travails: A question on Reweave versus Stalking Stones came up; I looked at the card texts (yay!) and answered that even if the Stones were animated by their own effect, what you wait to match with Reweave is a land card, since Reweave says you wait for a revealed card that shares a -card type- with the sacrificed permanent. And an animated Stalking Stones is a land creature artifact in _permanent type_, but is still just a land -card-. (As far as I know, only copy cards, and this is even a maybe, can change card type; in general, we try very hard to AVOID asking what the card type of something in play is, and just ask about permanent type. And note that Reweave -does- sacrifice the permanent before starting to reveal the cards, so the -card- itself is in the graveyard...) An Alert Reader came back and let me know that John Carter had ruled the opposite way last fall, in his columns #7 ("Q: When does Reweave check the card's type, during the sacrifice or in the graveyard? / A: When Reweave resolves it uses the type(s) that the permanent had right before it was sacrificed.") and #8 ("Q: If I play Reweave on an animated Blinkmoth Nexus, do I get to choose the card type or does Reweave stop when it finds a card that is or an artifact, creature, or a land? --Tiago F. / A: You do not get to pick which type. An animated Nexus is a 1/1 artifact creature land. Thus, that player will stop turning over cards once an artifact, a creature, or a land is revealed."). And this confuses me ... because, as noted, Reweave specifies it is asking about -card type-, not -permanent type-, but these answers are assuming it's looking for a card type the card shares with the permanent types of the permanent. And since all the permanent types are also card types (though not vice versa), this is an easy mistake to make... The Champions FAQ doesn't mention this card at all, so I have no help either way from that avenue. I'd like to know if a) Reweave is supposed to be using the -permanent- type of the permanent, in which case can we reword it to say something like "that shares a type with ..." - note that any =subtype= it shares means it also has to be sharing an actual type - or b) Reweave is supposed, as its text says, to be using the -card- type of the permanent, in which case animation effects won't change what card type it has, and a sacrificed Stalking Stones makes you wait for a land card to be revealed. (And if it's b), how the answer changes, if at all, for a _copy_ of an animated Stalking Stones; I'm fairly certain the Clone becomes an actual land -card- at the copy level, since "type" is copiable and it doesn't specify only "permanent type" - but I want to make sure, independently of the main question here.) Other: Most-recent Saturday School note: Er, no, the Genju doesn't write -text- on the Plains at all. It just gives it an ability. It doesn't change the text in any way. The result is the same - but anything trying to edit the text on the Plains won't find "creature", "whenever", "life", etc., as words that can be edited in the Plains' rules text. Abilities get given at layer 4 or above, _after_ text has been finalized and has been called on to produce abilities; text gets changed at layer 3 or below, before granted abilities from the text actually exist (and of course copy cards are so Special we could scream). [Also, you've got "it's" in _several_ places where you mean "its". Remember, "it's" is short for "it is", while "its" is possessive, and I also refer you to http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif ... Remember that this is the REVERSE of the rule for nouns becoming possessive ("John's car", "Carter's column", but "its answers"). "it's power and toughness" is wrong, for example, as would be "changes it's color". Plz fix those, as it makes us appear an uneducated company, or one that's had its proofreaders (not "it's proofreaders", for example) go on strike...] And finally, a note on the column-before-last's Vote: I personally think "You may play cards from your graveyard" may want to be considered alongside "You may play cards in your graveyard". (I vote, of course, against the 'as though they were in your hand', since it's been a pet peeve of mine since Urza-block days...) Gatherer, on the whole, is doing great. I still think you oughta update the actual Oracle page every few months with 'canned' lists from Gatherer, and I see there's a link to Gatherer right on the Oracle page; I do want to note, however, that Gatherer's output -still- appears to be using several-many special characters that don't translate right into anything but Microsoft Notepad/Wordpad/Word editors - the 'smart quotes', the dash in the typeline, _all_ the special characters like AE in AErathi, accent-a in Juz\'am Djinn, caret-u in Ring of Ma'R\^uf, etc. Yes, that may be the exact way the words appear in the card titles, but come on, let's make this accessible to and readable by people who are -not- using Microsoft products, okay? Mwonvuli Ooze's Oracle wording _still_ isn't right. Look it up in Gatherer and look at the actual card text in the picture: it counts the upkeep you paid, NOT the number of age counters on it, since its cumulative upkeep is 2. It should read "1 plus twice the number of age counters on it.", not "1 plus the number of age counters on it.". Heart of Bogardan has the same mistake stemming from the same problem - its cumulative upkeep is 2, so the last-paid cumulative upkeep will be twice the number of age counters. (Revered Unicorn used the same mechanism, but has CU: 1, so the mistake wasn't made.) I see the incorrect (older) ruling in Gatherer for Spectral Shift got taken out - but a correct one wasn't added to replace it? Since it -had- the older ruling there, you probably want to put one there telling people how it does actually work, that you can target the same permanent with both modes if you Entwine the spell. Dave, awaiting the Saviors of Kamigawa set From dbd Wed Mar 23 20:30:29 2005 Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 20:30:29 -0500 From: David DeLaney Subject: [wotc] Re: Rules inconsistency Status: RO Daniel W. Johnson wrote: >Do lands have a mana cost? Lands have no printed mana cost. The rules define them as having mana cost 0, but it's not printed on the card. This means their mana cost and converted mana cost is 0; it doesn't mean "they don't have a mana cost at all". >See rule 203.1 and the glossary entries for "Colorless" and "Mana cost". Looking... The "Colorless" entry is the one that's out of step. Should say either "have no printed mana cost" or that sentence should Go Away and the next should start off "Lands and artifacts are". Or the second sentence should end in "have mana cost 0.". I'll note it up to them. Dave From dbd Mon Jun 6 01:55:03 2005 Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 01:55:03 -0400 From: David DeLaney To: dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com Subject: [WotC] Re: Jitte Status: RO In rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules, you wrote: >Zoe Stephenson wrote: >>David DeLaney sent: >>> David de Kloet wrote: >>>>Feb 1, 2005 - If the Jitte leaves play after the "+2/+2" mode is announced but >>>>before it resolves, the bonus is given to the creature that was most recently >>>> equipped once the ability resolves. >>>> >>>>Is this also true if Jitte wasn't equiped to any creature when it left play? >> >>> No. "Last known information" is what is being used here, since the Jitte is >>> leaving play ... and if the last known information about the Jitte when it was >>> in play is "it wasn't attached to anything", then no creature gets the +2/+2, >>> just like the case where it IS in play, not attached to anything, on >>> resolution. Only if the Jitte was attached to a creature as it left play >>> can the last-known information say "it was attached to creature Q". >> >>...and as dskloet rightly points out, that's not quite what the note on >>the Jitte actually says. It only refers to the most recently equipped >>creature, it doesn't mention that it had to have been equipped at the >>point the Jitte left play. It also doesn't explicitly mention that it's >>the creature most recently equipped by the Jitte... > >Well, okay, yeah. We can pass this along to John for tweaking (or, really, >anyone can, using the address in Saturday School, I think). > >Dave