Battlestar Galactica kicked off its final half season yesterday. Unfortunately, I missed it because I was in Los Angeles as the Magic Pro Tour kicked off its hopefully not-final season with an Extended Grand Prix. But before BSG started its historic final run, the Sci-Fi channel ran a half-hour special with the top ten things to get new viewers caught up on the show. Let’s see if we can do the same with Magic…
1- Swans of Bryn Argoll does not have a triggered ability
Players have been mixing this card up all season. The key words (not keywords) for a triggered ability are “when,” “whenever,” and “at” (as in “at the end of turn). Swans has none of these. But it also isn’t a replacement effect because it doesn’t have the key word for that, which is “instead.” Then what are we left with?
Well, it has the phrase “prevent that damage,” so it is quite simply a damage prevention effect. Besides the semantics of it, damage prevention effects and replacement effects occupy the same space in terms of the rules. It’s just that the lack of the word “instead” is a huge red herring that throws people off. I mean, that guy can’t possibly be Keyser Soze.
So we’ve identified it as a damage prevention effect. What does that mean in the context of its partner in crime, Chain of Plasma? What happens is that you draw your three cards right there during the resolution of Plasma as if it were written on the card. If I were some kind of Magic Card Editor expert, I would make a mockup of a Chain of Plasma with the new text for you. In the meanwhile, just use your imagination.
2- Blood Moon is easier than you think
The Blood Moon questions at a PTQ are an inevitability. Sometimes you can see them coming as if in slow motion, or Matrix bullet time (but not Wanted bullet time).
Is my Seat of the Synod still an artifact? (Yes)
Is my Minamo still legendary? (Yes)
And so on and so forth. Recently, I had a revelation of sorts regarding Blood Moon, and that was to put it into the proper context by comparing it to effects that change creature types. Players understand creatures much better than they do lands because it’s easier to relate to a Lhurgoyf than an Island.
Let’s say you have a Memnarch and an Imagecrafter. If you use the Imagecrafter’s ability on Memnarch to turn him into an Elf, is Memnarch still an artifact? Is Memnarch still legendary? Of course, he is both of these things. Changing his creature subtype line will not affect his card types (artifact creature) or supertype (legendary).
Now apply that logic to Blood Moon. When it says that nonbasic lands are Mountains, it is replacing any land types with Mountain. The only incidental of this is that these lands will lose any other land types and any other abilities they might have. This leads us to…
3- Blood Moon is harder than you think
One aspect of Blood Moon that trips up even the die-hard players is the blanking of other abilities. This makes sense because the creature type analogy breaks down here. Turning Memnarch into an Elf doesn’t make him lose his awesome abilities, nor does he gain “T: Add G to your mana pool.” So the parallel doesn’t hold up, and this extra level of complexity isn’t helping people understand what’s going on.
The fact is that, unless there is an “in addition to” when you turn a land into a Mountain, you are removing all of the card’s text and adding “T: Add R to your mana pool.” Your Mutavault can no longer animate itself. Riptide Laboratory cannot bounce your Wizards.
Any comes into play triggers on the land get blanked, gone in a flash of Mountain-ness before they get a chance to trigger. Land-wise, this primarily applies to Ravnica Karoos. Not exactly the most popular Extended cards, but it’s good to know that the bounce trigger does not take effect. Your new Mountain will come into play tapped, however, because that is an “as this comes into play” effect, which modifies the way the land comes into play before Blood Moon can blank the card.
The same holds true for Ravnica dual lands, which is probably more relevant to the format. Since the ability modifies the way they come into play, the lands will come into play tapped unless you pay two life. If you do pay the two life, you will have a happy untapped Mountain. Enjoy.
And then Nick Fang played Confusion in the Ranks. Whoops. Sorry. Random notes from the Saturday night EDH game at GP: LA.
4- X equals zero except on the stack
There are two cards that this is relevant for, and quite coincidentally it helps understand the interaction between the two. Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives, the two cards that have somehow surpassed Arcbound Ravager as “best artifact from Mirrodin block.”
Applying the “rule of X” the converted mana cost of a Chalice in play is zero regardless of how many counters are on it. Hence, to blow it up with Explosives requires nothing more than two mana for the activation cost. To stop your opponent from breaking your pretty toys, you need to have a Chalice for zero… unless they have a land that taps for colorless mana.
Oh, that tricky Explosives. Since it’s an X, you can pay any amount you want; the sunburst will subsequently look only at the different colors you did pay to play it, and if you didn’t use any colors, it won’t get any counters, even if you paid 7 with a full Urzatron. You are also free to overpay with the same color to get around any larger Chalices.
5- Stifle does more and less than you think
At a GPT, a player asked me if he could Stifle the Chain of Plasma copying ability. Again, we are not dealing with a triggered ability here. The effect that copies Chain of Plasma is merely an effect of the spell. During the resolution of the spell you deal three damage (which presumably gets replaced with drawing three cards), then you have the choice of discarding a card to make a copy, all as part of the normal resolution of the spell. If you choose to make a copy, that goes on the stack with no triggered ability.
You also cannot Stifle dredge or retrace. Neither of those are triggered or activated. Triggered abilities you already know how to identify. For activated abilities, just look for the colon which separates the cost from the effect.
6- Slow Play doesn’t just mean taking one minute to make a single play
This is one of those topics that probably deserves its own article some day. Some instances of Slow Play are very insidious and difficult to discern. Take a Swans player going through the typical motions of copying Chain of Plasma over and over again. They aren’t going to get “the full thirty seconds” per card they play.
These decks will basically kill you on time with paper cuts; an extra five seconds to make a simple play here, ten seconds there, and somehow even though no individual action has taken longer than 20-30 seconds, game 1 has taken 40 minutes to complete. I definitely had concerns that non-Pros would not be able to go through the motions of these combo decks in an efficient manner.
7- How to protect Life from the Loam from Vendilion Clique
Life from the Loam gives Rock decks a smackdown of long-term inevitability. As answers go, Extirpate is the best one available and played, but Vendilion Clique offers a rather unique solution to the problem – get rid of Loam while it is in hand, not the graveyard. Gerry Thompson suggested a way around the Clique problem, but it managed to confuse some people, so I’ll go over it in detail in this article about clearing up confusion.
The natural thing for Loam players to do is to dredge their card back on their normal draw for the turn. However, this puts the Loam into your hand at the beginning of your draw step, a step in which your opponent will receive priority before you can proceed to your main phase, and thus he can Clique the Loam away. (This priority pass in the draw step catches a fair number of players off guard itself.)
Gerry’s answer is to draw your card for the turn as normal and use a cycling land to dredge your Loam during you main phase. After you replace the draw with dredge and put the Loam in your hand, you are the first player to receive priority. Behold! You can play Life from the Loam without Vendillion interruptions. That tricksy GerryT.
8- Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere don’t affect copies
Unless they are copies from Isochron Scepter. The key to understanding Chalice of the Void’s interactions is that it only counters spells that are played. Playing a spell means going through the motions and paying all the costs, except in the case of Isochron Scepter and Panoptic Mirror which clearly state that you are playing the copies. Everything else out there makes copies which go directly onto the stack. Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200. Do not counter with Chalice of the Void.
Some of the implications of this include Chalice not countering storm copies (although the original will be countered). The same goes for replicate. This makes Shattering Spree a rather effective way to blow up a Chalice for one. Just make sure that the original Spree is not targeting anything important, or that you double up and put an additional replicate copy on that target.
All of the various copy effects will not care about Trinisphere, while anything that is played will. One of the more important interactions with Trinisphere is that you have to spend three mana when you play a card coming off suspend. Unfortunately, this is in addition to your original suspend payment.
Trinisphere also has some cute interactions with cost reduction effects. By cute, I mean that it basically doesn’t care. Apply all of your cost reduction effects, then your Trinisphere will “ask” if you are paying at least three for the spell. If yes, everything is fine. If no, then you need to pay three. Trinisphere is really bossy that way.
9- Storm takes count when the spell is played…
… not when the triggered ability resolves. I heard several stories about players misplaying storm in this way, counting extra spells that were played in response to the trigger, as in counterspells fighting over the original. The triggered ability will trigger and go on the stack on top of the original spell. There is no way to get in between the spell and the trigger; they are connected at the hip.
Incidentally, if you are playing a deck with storm make sure to keep your own count. At least two players at GP: LA had to call a Judge to inform them that they had lost count. It seems like a ridiculous situation. It’s your own deck. You should know what it is capable of doing and prepare for the eventuality that, even if you don’t have a storm card, if you are in the midst of going off, you may eventually draw into one and need to know how many spells you’ve played this turn.
10- Dark Confidant is still the leading cause of missed trigger penalties
If you have a Dark Confidant in play and you draw your card for the turn, you have missed the triggered ability. The remedy for this is that you put the triggered ability on the stack when you realize the error and resolve it (assuming it is within a turn cycle).
However, if you put two cards into your hand without revealing one of them, you are guilty of Failure to Reveal. The penalty for this infraction is a Game Loss. This is another one of those infractions that carries a harsh penalty because there is too much potential for abuse with fooling around with hidden information. The moral of the story is, if you are going to mess up with Dark Confidant make sure you don’t put that second card into your hand.
Countryside Crusher is very similar to Dark Confidant. It has a triggered ability and it asks you to reveal cards. At the GP, HJ Scott Marshall incorrectly overruled a Floor Judge and gave an essentially upgraded Game Loss for Failure to Reveal instead of the Missed Trigger. Once he discovered his mistake, he told the assembled Judge staff about it so that we would not repeat the error. Furthermore, he told us that he would seek out the player to apologize personally. You’ve often heard me talk about Judge accountability like this, but I think it is a very rare and awesome thing to see someone of Scott’s stature and experience leading by example and owning up to his mistake.
Until next time, this is Riki Hayashi telling you to call a Judge.
Rikipedia at Gmail dot gpla
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