Turning things into an artifact creature refers to the rule about type changing. If I turn something into an enchantment, it’s an enchantment. If I turn something into an “enchantment in addition to its other types” then it is an enchantment/land or whatever. If I turn something into a land, it’s a land. If I turn it into a creature, it’s a creature. If I turn it into an artifact creature, the rules implicitly add “in addition to its other types” (205.1b) This means there are a ton of lands that animate to an artifact creature and contain the words “this is still a land” when it’s technically unnecessary. So like, if you animate a seat of synod with Tezzeret, agent of Bolas’s second ability, you get a 5/5 artifact creature land as opposed to just an artifact creature.
One thing I've always been a little unsure of is why this rule even exists... Like, is there some card that turns something into an "artifact creature", that it needed to keep the other types because of some interaction, that they added this rule to fix? Was that easier than just, like errata-ing Xenic Poltergeist or whatever to say "in addition to its other types"? It just feels like a really weird edge case to have in the rules. Most of the weird or narrow rules in the CR, I can at least come up with some situation it would come up, or some rationale for the rule to exist, but this one baffles me.
@@mrphlip I think it’s because the game designers didn’t want players to figure out a way to turn your land into creatures and shut off their ability to produce mana/still be lands. They were weirdly protective and not protective of lands at the same time
@@bryanprillaman1857 I think it could become a problem with 'Book Of Exalted Deeds' nowadays as players tried to get a land enchanted via adding types and then loosing them, reducing the number of ways to remove the card with the counter. Maybe there could be a weird combo.
@@DatShepTho I don’t think so, because you are turning X into an artifact creature, where X can be anything. Only creatures care about summoning sickness, and in this interaction, “creature” is part of the destination.
If you cast a spell which resolution involves playing a subgame, you can wish in the subgame to pull out THE RESOLVING SPELL. This makes it possible to have a infinite layered game.
im going to assume im not alone in feeling a mounting sense of dread in the later levels of the iceberg. like, hearing about the most obscure rulings that involve layers and shit just felt like, surreal
I think it's that in addition to the lack of audio/visual stimuli. Sure there's the cards, but that's it. No music, no highlighting, no animations, nothing. There are also these pauses between his sentences sometimes that just leave this uncomfortable feeling of anticipation with no resolution. The person accidentally made a horror masterpiece.
@@julienandrus4169 I’m pretty sure it only gets super unintuitive when you have 2 oziliths. All you need to know/explain is that counters being moved count as counters being added and you should be good
4:49 while this used to be true, rule 201.3 was updated with the release of Guilds of Ravnica to allow players to choose any name of a card in the Oracle card reference. One interesting outcome of this new ruling is that you can now name the Augment card “Ninja” from Unhinged to affect Ninja tokens created by Volrath’s Laboratory from Stronghold, meaning that silver-bordered sets do technically have an effect on black-bordered Magic.
Huh, wasn't it originally changed to the "Legal sets only" to prevent horseshit like claiming your opponent clearly meant the card not even legal in the current format when they named "Borborygmos" with Pithing Needle?
@@dapperghastmeowregard The Borborygmos + Needle incident I've heard about was the one with the modern Grishoalbrand deck where both Borborygmos cards are legal. Were people doing Pithing Needle funk in RTR block/standard or something?
@@donjohnson1335 Nah, I was prolly misremembering, I swore they announced the change from any card to legal only around that same time though (although again, could just be my brain being dumb).
5:00 this is no longer true. you can name any card, regardless of legality. this was changed rather recently, and is used to no end by naming "abandon hope" in modern in games that are clearly won already
@@Calintares not at all. this was changed long before garth and if the rule weren't changed garth would still function just fine. this was an update to the definition of what a cards characteristics were while inside of a game. they ultimately decided that legality was not a characteristic once the game began.
The Grandeur creature's activated ability being paid by discarding itself is the most interesting jank I have seen in a long time. I can also confirm that it works! 34:32
That Ozolith rule made me physically go "OOOOHHHH" i was literally making a Skullbriar deck and edhrec showed people playing that card and i didnt know why but since the tokens are just copied that makes so much sense and its insanely good.
The ozolith ruling is actually super important now that affinity has more modular cards to play with. When a permanent with modular dies, who gets the counters? This ruling clears that up.
Regarding turning things into artifact creatures: The reason is this rule: "205.1b Some effects change an object’s card type, supertype, or subtype but specify that the object retains a prior card type, supertype, or subtype. In such cases, all the object’s prior card types, supertypes, and subtypes are retained. This rule applies to effects that use the phrase “in addition to its types” or that state that something is “still a [type, supertype, or subtype].” Some effects state that an object becomes an “artifact creature”; these effects also allow the object to retain all of its prior card types and subtypes. Some effects state that an object becomes a “[creature type or types] artifact creature”; these effects also allow the object to retain all of its prior card types and subtypes other than creature types, but replace any existing creature types." The last part states that turning creatures into artifact creature always keeps their other types, an exeption to how it's handled in all other cases. (e.g. Blood Moon.) The causes some issues, most notably was the reason that "Darksteel Mutation" was errated to have the awkward oracle text of, in part: "Insect artifact creature with base power and toughness 0/1 and has indestructible, and it loses all other abilities, card types, and creature types."
@@benstone732 You flip one card from the stack of mutated things as a representative of the whole thing, moving the rest out of the way because it shouldn't be physically present at that time. Although it probably doesn't matter because it either gets destroyed anyways (because Chaos Orb), or doesn't because indestructible/regenerate shenanigans. After that, if the destruction actually happens, you move the entire stack to the appropriate zone(s), most likely the graveyard. If it doesn't, you reassemble the stack in the correct order and place it back on the battlefield.
Actually, in November, they changed the token rule so tokens can no longer be named with Pithing Needle or cards with similar effects. "With the creation of Blood tokens in Innistrad: Crimson Vow, this relatively obscure interaction had the potential to become significantly more common (see Flesh // Blood). The fact that a player could stop Blood tokens with Pithing Needle's effect but not Treasure, Food, or Clue tokens is inconsistent, and players shouldn't be expected to know which tokens share a name with a printed card, so we decided to change the rule. From now on, if a spell or ability is creating a token without specifying its name, the name will be the same as its subtypes plus the word "Token." For example, a "Goblin Scout creature token" is named "Goblin Scout Token." Similarly, the name of a Blood token created in the game is "Blood Token" and choosing the name "Blood" for an effect will not cause that effect to apply to Blood tokens."
12:48 For reference, the simplest way to exile an exiled card is to use Pull From Eternity (or a processor card) while Rest In Peace is on the battlefield.
9:45 - Ertai's Meddling is actually one of six spells, I believe, that put something on the stack without casting, the other five being the Epic spells from Saviours of Kamigawa. EDIT: I misunderstood exactly what Meddling did, so this comment is wrong. Thanks to Jem Bennett for the correction.
@Jem Bennett Epic does do that; though I suppose that if you spliced stuff onto the Epic spell it would copy. Regardless, the difference here is that something is put on the stack that isn't a representation of a spell already on there.
I have to know where "Damage causes loss of life" falls. It's simultaneously such an obvious fact and confusing that it is such a recurring piece of reminder text. The fact that it's reminder text at all, while also not being strictly true (infect, most prominently) makes it all the more bizarre.
Just to be clear because Sylvan Library and Brainstorm are very popular cards in Legacy, if you are in a competitive REL tournament and you cast a Brainstorm before your Sylvan Library trigger resolves you are required to call a judge on yourself so they can monitor the composition of your hand. Having done this as a meme a number of times, I can confirm that you're about 50/50 whether that judge is amused or annoyed that you didn't just wait to your main phase for the Brainstorm. (the objectively better play 99.99% of the time)
11:34 i can think of 1 thing that has to do with layers. The entire thing goes like this: You have chimeric staff and march of the machines out. Chimeric staff is now a 4/4 creature artifact. You activate chimeric staff’s ability, X being 10. This makes chimeric staff a 10/10 artifact creature - Construct. Your opponent then casts imprisoned in the moon on your chimeric staff. Your chimeric staff is now a land that taps for colorless. You then activate liquimetal coating to make the chimeric staff an artifact land that taps for colorless. Because of the rule of “Dependency” (rule 613.8), the chimeric staff is now a non-creature artifact, which march of the machines is dependent on. this makes it so that as long as liquimetal coating’s continuous effect is apllied, chimeric staff is a 4/4 artifact creature, and no effects other than march of the machines apply to it.
I can also think of one thing that has to do with layers: You have noodles, Bolognese Sauce and bechamel Sauce out, layer it correctly and get a tasty lasagna. The result is, that everyone you share it with might mit win the game but win a fantastic day 😁
9:43 Ertai’s meddling is not the only spell/effect that puts a spell on the stack without casting it. Reverberate is a spell that puts a copy of a instant or sorcery on the stack without casting it. Just like Ertai’s Meddling does. The same is true for Fork, Narset’s reversal, Ral storm conduit’s -2 ability, the activated ability dual casting gives to the enchanted creature, the expansion half of expansion//explosion, dualcaster mage’s enters the battlefield effect, and many more cards that have effects that copy instant and sorceries. Ertai’s meddling does the exact same thing as all these cards, the templating of the rules text is just different enough to confuse people. It could easily read “At the beginning of each of that player's upkeeps, if that card is exiled, remove a delay counter from it. If the card has no delay counters on it, that player copies that spell.” The only difference between Ertai’s meddling and all the other copy cards is Ertai’s meddling doesn’t let the controller of the copy choose new targets for said copy. It must target the same thing(s) the original did.
The layer 11 god mechanic has gotten me about 10 or so times this week with Klothys interacting with Grumgully and bard class, I forget it needs the devotion requirement without including itself to get the counters on EtB.
Something missed by this iceberg is the rule that not just creatures, but all permanents enter the battlefield summoning sick, but only creatures cannot use tap abilities while summoning sick. For this reason, Inkmoth Nexus cannot attack on the turn it entered if you animate it, and similarly, artifacts that have been animated the turn they came in cannot use their tap abilities. This has been an extremely annoying fact for my artifact combo edh list that uses infinite mana with Voltaic Construct to untap an animated artifact with a tap ability to infinitely activate that tap ability, which i cannot do if it's summoning sick. However, because the artifact is a creature when animated, i can enchant/equip it with things that give haste to get around this. Also, the commander is Kozilek, the Great Distortion and giving a 12/12 menace commander haste is extremely good when you're dropping it in as early as turn 4 or 5 sometimes.
basically, thousand year elixir in that deck ONLY solves the exact situation of an animated artifact being summoning sick, whereas the equipment options in a similar vein (Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves) serve more than one purpose, giving my commander hexproof/shroud and haste, or making an animated artifact hasty in a pinch. the Voltaic Construct lines usually involve generating infinite mana using an animated mana rock, which was most likely in play several turns before i go off, and lets me dig for voltaic key + brighthearth lines well before i would ever need to give the next part haste. that deck is a pain in everyone's ass though, so i'm not sure i'd even want it to be much more dumb lol
I wish I could find the article, but there is an amazing layer interaction where some combination of humility, magus if the moon, and opalescence can make all your creatures and enchantments to be mountains permanently regardless of any of those cards leaving the battlefield.
Nice series. A number of things I think would have made sense to include: 1. Copiable values. What does and doesn't get copied when you clone a permanent? What happens when you clone a clone or a mutated creature (aka a merged permanent) 2. Type changing effects and what happens to the permanent's supertypes and subtypes. 3. Rule 305.7 which touches on the two previous points. If a permanent's type is changed to one of the five basic land types, it loses all abilities granted by its copiable values, but it doesn't lose any abilities granted by other effects. It also doesn't lose any other cards types or subtypes, which can have some counterintuitive consequences. E.g. Blood Moon causes Ashaya to become a 0/0 creature that immediately dies, because it lost the characteristic-defining ability that set its power & toughness. Blood Moon also kills Urza's Saga because it becomes a saga with no chapters. Sagas get sacrificed if the number of counters on them are >= the number of chapters. 4. Loyalty abilities on non-planeswalker permanents. Any permanent type can have loyalty abilities and loyalty counters, but only planeswalkers have Loyalty. On the battlefield their loyalty equals the number of loyalty counters on them. Damage will cause counters to be removed and having zero counters kills them. That is not true for non-planeswalker permanents with loyalty abilities. E.g. If you turn all your planeswalkers into creatures using Sarkhan the Masterless, combat damage won't cause counters to be removed. After combat you can activate loyalty abilities of the erstwhile planeswalkers, but they won't die from activating a minus ability that removes all remaining counters - at least until end of turn when they become planeswalkers again. Things get even more whacky if you do things to planeswalkers that temporarily became creatures like mutating onto them or enchanting them with enchantments that cause them to lose the planeswalker type. 5. How Solemnity interacts with various effects. It stops Vanishing (if it was already on the battlefield), but not Fading. It can bypass Cumulative Upkeep (since the 6th edition rules changes). It doesn't effect planeswalkers, but it does effect planeswalkers that became creatures. Etc. 6. Damage that can't be prevented vs protection, e.g. A Progenitus that's blocking an attacking Questing Beast will die. 7. Effects that ends the turn and effects that causes certain phases or steps to be skipped. How does that interact with delayed triggers like "at the beginning of next end step".
Something fun about the Turing Machine: it's possible to set up Turing Machine tapes that will terminate if some mathematical theorem is true, but will not terminate otherwise (for example, a Machine that halts iff Goldbach's Conjecture is false.) Since it's possible to describe the step-by-step functioning of a Turing Machine, it's possible to set up this sort of tape and use common agreement of the players to progress the machine arbitrarily far. Since nobody knows for sure if Goldbach's Conjecture is true, the game could not progress. Contrast with the Four Horsemen combo: with FH, there's no way to know for sure how long the combo will take, so players aren't allowed to skip through the execution (opposing player might have a way to interrupt the combo that would also depend on specific placements of cards, or might not believe that the FH player will win on the game clock.) Furthermore, since the combo doesn't advance the game state, trying to execute it manually results in slow play penalties. However, with this Turing Machine, there is a predetermined outcome, we just don't know what it is yet. Furthermore, since the execution of the Turing Machine depends on modifying the board state, it should be legal in a tournament to execute the machine as long as one wants. Since nobody knows if the Goldbach Conjecture is true, nobody knows what states the Turing Machine will reach, so the player executing the combo can't be forced to skip to the end. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that they'll reach a gamestate they want, so they can't convince the other player to scoop. TL;DR: a player could use the Turing Machine deck to stall a game out for as long as they want without taking a slow play penalty, but only until somebody proves whether the Goldbach Conjecture is true or false.
Interesting thing about the wall of roots infinite mana loophole is that players did have a way to win using that mana with magma mine (see Wall of Boom deks) at least until an emergency rules change. So there must have been a window at some point where players could use that mana to activate abilities.
All this talk about banding last episode makes me realize that they should rework that kind of ability. I would create a keyword for a set and would name it "bravery" or "brave", or "courageous", or something, the description of which would be "during combat, lethal damage must be assigned to 'brave' creatures before being assigned to other creatures". The most common scenario would be that you block the 2/2 bear with your 1/3 brave and your 2/1 piker, and the bear would need to assign 2 damage on the 'brave' creature, making them extremely effective at blocking and/or trading up. It would also apply for creatures that have the ability to block multiple creatures (they'd have to kill the 'brave' creature before dealing damage to the other one). I feel like that would keep some of the flavor of banding, while being instinctive to understand, and would allow for limited games to be a little bit more slow by making blocking instead of attacking even more advantageous than it currently is. Also would help white be more different from the other colors.
Dunno about the distribution of Banding between colors, but the Brave ability could have been primary in white and secondary in green and red (although you could make it tertiary in green to nerf it a little bit because arguably it's the best color in most Magic formats right now).
You forgot probably the most confusing part of equinox's ruling; if the spell *could* target or attempt to destroy an indestructible land, it can't counter the spell because you cannot guarantee a land will be destroyed. This remains true even if the land has lost indestructible from Hour of devastation, ***BUT NOT*** if it lost indestructible from Soul sear, even though in both cases, it is no longer indestructible, but only if it is no longer a creature. This is because of the fact Equinox checks the future states of cards instead of the current states of the cards, and to do that, it has to look at every card played previously and applies those effects to the future state of the card. Because of this, it looks back at Hour of Devastation, sees it was cast this turn, checks to see if the spell you intend to counter will be destroying a creature land or just a land, sees the land is just a land, and discards Hour of Devastation's effect. Then, it will check if the land has indestructible or not, which, while it does not in the current board state, in the alternative Equinox reality, because Hour of Devastation's effect doesn't effect lands, and it only looks at the *current* state of the card instead of the state at the time, Equinox considers the land to have not lost indestructible, and thus, will not counter a stone rain that would destroy it, because in the equinox timeline, that land never lost indestructible, since it applied the "creatures lose indestructible" line to the fact the card is *currently* just a land, without considering the fact the land may have been a creature beforehand, since it cannot verify that the land was a creature when the spell resolved. And then stone rain destroys your land it targeted directly. But as for why this doesn't happen with Soul Sear? While Equinox doesn't care about remembering specific board states or the timing of spells, it *does* care about what a spell targeted, and if a spell actually resolved or not. So now Equinox looks back, sees that Soul sear targeted the indestructible land this turn without fizzling, and, since the ability specifies permanents losing indestructible, applies that to the land, despite the fact in Equinox's timeline, the land would remain a land at all times, and the spell *should* have fizzled, but didn't, so it gets to be resolved against an illegal target. Because now Equinox has determined your opponent has broken the rules and applied what they did anyways, ***NOW*** equinox will counter the stone rain, and so now your cascading cataracts will not be destroyed anymore. Don't Soothsay, kids.
You have to be impressed by any card brave enough to time travel to impossible alternate futures as part of its resolution. Makes you wonder how the wizards diegetically crafted such a monstrosity.
Turning things into artifact creatures. The first thing that sprang to my mind is “titania’s song” Effect of card: Each noncreature artifact loses all abilities and becomes an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its mana value. If Titania's Song leaves the battlefield, this effect continues until end of turn. It stands out as unique due to its “until end of turn” even after being destroyed. Perhaps?
You mentioned the Turing Machine but not why it is interesting. The reason it's interesting is that it makes determining the winner, even of a game state in which no further input from players occurs, undecidable. Any computational problem can be encoded in Magic in such a way, and not all computational problems are decidable; ergo, the game itself is undecidable.
39:00 if you win a coin toss caused by solving a gap in the rules, does it contribute to effects that count coin tosses like Chance Encounter since a coin toss has become part of a resolution of a stage?
The turning things into artifact creatures is probably a reference to karn silver golems ability, which is often used as a means to open your opponents artifacts up to creature removal. Because he works by making them a creature with power and toughness equal to their cmc, if you hit zero cost artifacts, they go to the graveyard as soon as they become creatures as state based actions, which means it cant even be responded to by trying to out counters on it or something. This is typically done against 0 cost artifacts or artifact lands. However, with liquimetal coating, or mycosynth lattice, you can make anything an artifact. Even without this, though, making things artifact creatures before a wrath of god can be really helpful in getting more value from wrath.
A good cleanup step loop is Gitrog monster and Underrealm Lich. You can essentially filter your entire deck depending on how many lands are left once you get the engine going. Pretty nuts
that's probably supposed to say "turning lands into artifiact creatures" if you can turn lands into artifiacts there are numerous effects that turn artifacts into creatures with x/x = CMC and as a result they are sent to the graveyard.
The last line of dialogue reminded me of one of the rules in the original Alpha rulebook, which read “During the course of a game, a dispute that you cannot solve by referencing the rules may occur. If both players agree, you can resolve the difference for the current game with a coin toss.”
First Strike is realy uncommon in black/blue (typical ninja colors), but it would be amazing in a ninja deck, because you hit with two creatures instead of one. I'm planing a ninja deck, this ruling will definitely influence my deck.
11:45 I know EXACTLY what this is talking about; Karn, the Great Creator. There's a long list of interesting interactions that can happen with Karn, the Great Creator that are so extreme in their convolutedness, and intricacies, it's near impossible to accomplish in an ACTUAL game of Magic; basically, you'd need to develop the prerequisites and conditions to do it by literally goldfishing, due to how difficult and ridiculous the lines are. If I'm wrong btw, then what I found out should probably be at this tier because I've had to talk to like, 6 judges about it lmao
you can give your opponents things like Lich's Mirror, proliferate and give the opponent 10 infect so it just breaks the game. There's other examples, certain artifacts with specific properties that hurt your opponents.
27:50 Aren't there ways to gain priority in your cleanup step? Discarding a card with madness for handsize, for instance? If this happens and SBAs are checked, I think the auras still do not save the creature.
@24:48 "+1/+1 counters are not interchangeable" This unfounded claim is contradicted by CR 122.1: A counter is a marker placed on an object or player that modifies its characteristics and/or interacts with a rule, ability, or effect. Counters are not objects and have no characteristics. Notably, a counter is not a token, and a token is not a counter. Counters with the same name or description are interchangeable.
@@hughmortyproductions8562 - The CR 122.1 ruling quoted above is from the latest version (4-14-2023) of the MTG Comprehensive Rules: media.wizards.com/2023/downloads/MagicCompRules%2020230414.pdf
@@QuicksilverSG That's what I mean. Under the current rules - the rules you quoted - counters of the same type are interchangeable. Many years ago, different counters of the same type were not necessarily interchangeable. This is one of several old rulings that are included in this video. These old rulings are marked in the video as "obsolete rulings" because they no longer apply but I think they are still interesting to talk about to see how the game has evolved over the years.
9:21 Melira Vs Inkmoth Creatures that deal damage without having an effect do still count as having delt damage. If you're playing commander, an opponent has Platinum Emperion or Teferi's Protection, and you deal combat damage to them with your commander, then the damage will be processed with no effect, however the commander damage rule does not care if the damage had an effect, only that it was delt, so a commander given infect would still kill an opponent with a Melira in play, and combat damage triggers would still go off. This is even referenced in Melira's Gatherer page.
Re: Red Elemental Blast Having Conditional Speed This rule was only a thing between 5th Edition and 6th Edition rules. Before this, REB was always an interrrupt. This made it where instants couldn't interact with REB, making it an AMAZING removal spell. The Elemental Blasts and Hyro/Pyroblast were the ONLY reason this rule existed at all.
Talking about the Turing Machine at 32:10 reminds that someone made a TH-cam video demonstrating the deck and how it works, you can check it out here: th-cam.com/video/pdmODVYPDLA/w-d-xo.html
About panglacial wurm, the interaction in the video is handled acceptably by the rules, but the rules do not explain *where in your deck* you place the panglacial wurm when you fail to cast it. This matters in the following situation: Alice is using Arid Mesa's ability to search her library. The top 3 cards are Panglacial Wurm, Panglacial Wurm, and Circle of Dreams Druid. Alice would like to attempt to cast Panglacial Wurm A, then fail to cast it, and move it somewhere else other than the top of the deck, leaving Circle of Dreams Druid 2nd from the top. If this is possible, she can then cast Panglacial Wurm B. She will get the mana to pay for it by using her Millikin to put her Circle of Dreams Druid onto the top of her discard pile so that she can tap her Volrath's Shapeshifter for GGGGGG.
I’d say the Turing machine’s only limit is the number of cards you can have in your library being how many you can shuffle without assistance, but something tells me a robotic AI overlord might not have much trouble shuffling a few 1000 cards
The whole Panglacial Wurm and Selvala thing could've been easily solved by giving Selvala the restriction that it can only be activated at instant speed. Which would match the other card that has a mana ability that can create an unknown quantity of mana: Charmed Pendant
Season of the Wtich + Silent Arbiter is easily resolved: The last known state is looked at. That is, the other creature could not have attacked. So destroying none is correct. However, if no creature attacks (and all are untapped), then all are destroyed, as for all the creatures the last known state is that they could have attacked.
Relevant ruling (on Season of the Witch itself): _A creature won’t be destroyed if it was unable to attack that turn, even if you had a way to enable it to attack. For example, a creature that had summoning sickness wouldn’t be destroyed even if you had a way to give it haste._ The creature could not attack, because another creature already attacked.
You *can* name cards that are not legal in the format you're playing. You can even name silver bordered cards this way; which could matter with the card "ninja" + ninja tokens.
Ozolith's wording is also relevant on Strixhaven cards like Star Pupil. You can have Star Pupil die, put its +1/+1 on another creature, then put Ozolith's new +1/+1 on the same creature for 2 counters.
I'm mildly disappointed that copiable values weren't mentioned, probably one of the most arbitrary rules in the game exists there. Transferable copy affects (affects that turn a permanent into a different one, the have it regain the ability) are a copiable value. Thus is you do something like copy a myr propagator with a cryptoplasm, then activate the crypto-propagator's ability, the token it creates will also have that ability.
Also, tokens have no backside: if you copy a creature with an affect that transforms it, the trigger to transform it will always fail as the token doesn't have a different side to transform to.
In the situation with 3 Conversions, it actually matters which lands are in play. If you have the timestamp order M->P, S->M, P->S, - M->P only depends on S->M if there are some swamps in play that are not also mountains - S->M only depends on P->S if there are some plains in play that are not also swamps - P->S only depends on M->P if there are some mountains in play that are not also plains So if all lands in play are plains with no other subtypes, then M->P does not depend on anything, and it happens first. Then you look at S->M and P->S. Since there's a non-swamp plains, S->M depends on P->S, so you run P->S first. Then you run S->M, making all the lands into mountains.
That last rule reminds me of something I heard when I played tennis is college. Apparently if one of the players disagrees with the score the whole game or in an extreme case whole set needs to be replayed. Don't know how true it is.
29:35 can you please give an example of something that is "not an effect"? Do you mean like discarding to hand size at the end step? What else would cause me to discard a card besides an effect?
Costs are not effects. So basically, if you activate the ability of an Insolent Neonate ("Discard a card, sacrifice Insolent Neonate: Draw a card."), Library of Leng doesn't trigger. The whole "costs aren't effects" thing is annoyingly confusing, but it's the same reason why Doubling Season can't double Planeswalker loyalty abilities' costs but Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider can.
regarding layer 12: nope thats not true. There isnt always a definitive answer in the rulebook, like with the example of silent arbiter and season of the witch. It is now deemed that some interactions are too niche, that changes to the rulebook are not worth the effort and potential negative sideeffects they can bring down the line
Can I ask about a ruling? What happens if I make a token with kikijiki, then donate the token to an opponent? I’m 50% sure that at the end of the turn I would put a trigger on the stack to sacrifice the token, then , I not controlling the token, nothing would happen.
this is from part 1 or 2, but you mentioned that there's only technically one "exile" pile. Does that mean that in theory, a player could exile a card an opponent controls, then brought back under their own control from exile?
So with burning of xinye, a player can’t choose an indestructible land. But they have to choose 4 lands… what happens if all their lands are indestructible(like thru avacyn)? They have to choose four of their lands but none of their lands are available choices
If you can't do everything, you do as much as it's possible. If something is impossible, then it's ignored. So if only have indestructible lands, you just don't choose any lands, and so none of your lands are destroyed.
@@anthonycannet1305 A spell only fizzles for a lack of *targets.* Other choices being impossible doesn't stop the spell from resolving and doing as much as it can.
Pretty sure pitching needle doesn't have any restrictions on naming cards legal in whatever format your playing so you could name shape shifter or even black lotus with it in a modern tournament not sure where you got that one from
It's an old ruling. You used to only be able to name cards that are legal in the format you are playing. I just didn't realise that they had changed it.
With the Burning land destruction spell and having indestructible lands. Aren't those lands still valid targets but they won't be destroyed? Like you can target murder on Ulamog the cealess hunger but nothing will happen. Right? So technically you could have indestructible lands and Burning will still resolve but your lands just won't be destroyed. Just like Armageddon won't do anything to your indestructible lands. Unless the target is illegal to something you can effect vs an area wide effect.
You would have been right, except Burning of Xinye does *not* target the lands. You choose which lands to destroy. Two important differences between choosing and targeting: 1. You can't choose to do something that isn't possible, like destroying an indestructible permanent (rule 608.2d). When choosing targets, you only have to fulfill the targeting requirements. Whether the spell will have any effect when it resolves doesn't matter. In contrast, when the choice is about taking an action, that action must be possible. You can't choose to destroy an indestructible land in the same way that you can't, e.g. choose to remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature that doesn't have any. 2. Targets are chosen when the spell or ability goes onto the stack. Choices like the one on Burning are made during resolution. One side effect of this timing difference is that the choice can't be responded to. Once you've chosen which lands to destroy with Burning, you can't save the lands by casting Kamahl's Will, because you won't get priority until after Burning has finished resolving. Intuitively it makes sense that choices made during resolution can't be responded to, otherwise you could e.g. circumvent a Duress by casting the instant chosen by your opponent before it gets discarded.
Shouldnt the chromatic star draw trigger happen after the cost of grandeur is payed? Triggered abilities going higher on the stack than paying the full cost seems like its outside all rules of the game.
It would with Chromatic Star but Chromatic Sphere uses a different wording. In the Sphere's wording the card draw is part of the mana ability not a separate triggered ability, so you can draw a card while putting a spell or ability on the stack. This has led to other weird interactions in the past and is likely part of the reason Wizards printed Chromatic Star in the first place, so they could have the same basic functionality as Chromatice Sphere but without the weird edge case interactions.
Turning things into an artifact creature refers to the rule about type changing. If I turn something into an enchantment, it’s an enchantment. If I turn something into an “enchantment in addition to its other types” then it is an enchantment/land or whatever.
If I turn something into a land, it’s a land. If I turn it into a creature, it’s a creature.
If I turn it into an artifact creature, the rules implicitly add “in addition to its other types” (205.1b)
This means there are a ton of lands that animate to an artifact creature and contain the words “this is still a land” when it’s technically unnecessary.
So like, if you animate a seat of synod with Tezzeret, agent of Bolas’s second ability, you get a 5/5 artifact creature land as opposed to just an artifact creature.
One thing I've always been a little unsure of is why this rule even exists...
Like, is there some card that turns something into an "artifact creature", that it needed to keep the other types because of some interaction, that they added this rule to fix? Was that easier than just, like errata-ing Xenic Poltergeist or whatever to say "in addition to its other types"? It just feels like a really weird edge case to have in the rules.
Most of the weird or narrow rules in the CR, I can at least come up with some situation it would come up, or some rationale for the rule to exist, but this one baffles me.
@@mrphlip I think it’s because the game designers didn’t want players to figure out a way to turn your land into creatures and shut off their ability to produce mana/still be lands. They were weirdly protective and not protective of lands at the same time
@@bryanprillaman1857 I think it could become a problem with 'Book Of Exalted Deeds' nowadays as players tried to get a land enchanted via adding types and then loosing them, reducing the number of ways to remove the card with the counter. Maybe there could be a weird combo.
What about for summoning sickness reasons?
@@DatShepTho I don’t think so, because you are turning X into an artifact creature, where X can be anything. Only creatures care about summoning sickness, and in this interaction, “creature” is part of the destination.
If you cast a spell which resolution involves playing a subgame, you can wish in the subgame to pull out THE RESOLVING SPELL. This makes it possible to have a infinite layered game.
Generally infinites give the one casting the infinite the win. Based solely on the other players conceding.
@@tannertadlock7741 if no player can win, the game ends in a draw
What happens when you start a sub game with less than 7 cards in your library? Do you deck at the start?
@@mazimus2578 yes you lose on the spot if you cant draw 7
@@mazimus2578 There a rule that states : If a player has 7 or less card in his library, he loses the game.
im going to assume im not alone in feeling a mounting sense of dread in the later levels of the iceberg. like, hearing about the most obscure rulings that involve layers and shit just felt like, surreal
I think it's that in addition to the lack of audio/visual stimuli. Sure there's the cards, but that's it. No music, no highlighting, no animations, nothing. There are also these pauses between his sentences sometimes that just leave this uncomfortable feeling of anticipation with no resolution.
The person accidentally made a horror masterpiece.
The Ozolith is also highly relevant with all cards that have the Modular ability.
Hardened scales decks are gonna be explaining how that works until the end of time
@@julienandrus4169 optimistic with how long that explaination will take lmao
@@julienandrus4169 I’m pretty sure it only gets super unintuitive when you have 2 oziliths. All you need to know/explain is that counters being moved count as counters being added and you should be good
Also relevant with things like Vorinclex, that double or halve counters added to it.
4:49 while this used to be true, rule 201.3 was updated with the release of Guilds of Ravnica to allow players to choose any name of a card in the Oracle card reference. One interesting outcome of this new ruling is that you can now name the Augment card “Ninja” from Unhinged to affect Ninja tokens created by Volrath’s Laboratory from Stronghold, meaning that silver-bordered sets do technically have an effect on black-bordered Magic.
I really feel like that's just an oversight, and not technically feasible. Although I'd LOVE to see that debate with a judge happen.
I'm going to start naming Silver Bordered cards with Pithing Needle from Urza's Saga as BM
Huh, wasn't it originally changed to the "Legal sets only" to prevent horseshit like claiming your opponent clearly meant the card not even legal in the current format when they named "Borborygmos" with Pithing Needle?
@@dapperghastmeowregard The Borborygmos + Needle incident I've heard about was the one with the modern Grishoalbrand deck where both Borborygmos cards are legal. Were people doing Pithing Needle funk in RTR block/standard or something?
@@donjohnson1335 Nah, I was prolly misremembering, I swore they announced the change from any card to legal only around that same time though (although again, could just be my brain being dumb).
5:00 this is no longer true. you can name any card, regardless of legality. this was changed rather recently, and is used to no end by naming "abandon hope" in modern in games that are clearly won already
I'm guessing this is in order to make Garth the One-eyed function.
@@Calintares not at all. this was changed long before garth and if the rule weren't changed garth would still function just fine. this was an update to the definition of what a cards characteristics were while inside of a game. they ultimately decided that legality was not a characteristic once the game began.
The Grandeur creature's activated ability being paid by discarding itself is the most interesting jank I have seen in a long time. I can also confirm that it works! 34:32
That Ozolith rule made me physically go "OOOOHHHH" i was literally making a Skullbriar deck and edhrec showed people playing that card and i didnt know why but since the tokens are just copied that makes so much sense and its insanely good.
4:17 This was changed in Crimson Vow, now tokens without a name have “token” at the end of there name, stopping pithing needle.
The ozolith ruling is actually super important now that affinity has more modular cards to play with. When a permanent with modular dies, who gets the counters? This ruling clears that up.
Regarding turning things into artifact creatures:
The reason is this rule:
"205.1b Some effects change an object’s card type, supertype, or subtype but specify that the object retains a prior card type, supertype, or subtype. In such cases, all the object’s prior card types, supertypes, and subtypes are retained. This rule applies to effects that use the phrase “in addition to its types” or that state that something is “still a [type, supertype, or subtype].” Some effects state that an object becomes an “artifact creature”; these effects also allow the object to retain all of its prior card types and subtypes. Some effects state that an object becomes a “[creature type or types] artifact creature”; these effects also allow the object to retain all of its prior card types and subtypes other than creature types, but replace any existing creature types."
The last part states that turning creatures into artifact creature always keeps their other types, an exeption to how it's handled in all other cases. (e.g. Blood Moon.) The causes some issues, most notably was the reason that "Darksteel Mutation" was errated to have the awkward oracle text of, in part:
"Insect artifact creature with base power and toughness 0/1 and has indestructible, and it loses all other abilities, card types, and creature types."
so what happens when i crack my artifact creature chaos orb that has other creatures mutated onto it?
@@benstone732 chaos
@@benstone732 You flip one card from the stack of mutated things as a representative of the whole thing, moving the rest out of the way because it shouldn't be physically present at that time. Although it probably doesn't matter because it either gets destroyed anyways (because Chaos Orb), or doesn't because indestructible/regenerate shenanigans. After that, if the destruction actually happens, you move the entire stack to the appropriate zone(s), most likely the graveyard. If it doesn't, you reassemble the stack in the correct order and place it back on the battlefield.
Actually, in November, they changed the token rule so tokens can no longer be named with Pithing Needle or cards with similar effects.
"With the creation of Blood tokens in Innistrad: Crimson Vow, this relatively obscure interaction had the potential to become significantly more common (see Flesh // Blood). The fact that a player could stop Blood tokens with Pithing Needle's effect but not Treasure, Food, or Clue tokens is inconsistent, and players shouldn't be expected to know which tokens share a name with a printed card, so we decided to change the rule. From now on, if a spell or ability is creating a token without specifying its name, the name will be the same as its subtypes plus the word "Token." For example, a "Goblin Scout creature token" is named "Goblin Scout Token." Similarly, the name of a Blood token created in the game is "Blood Token" and choosing the name "Blood" for an effect will not cause that effect to apply to Blood tokens."
I think that's a great change. Makes it much more simpler :)
With that statement they totally forgot Food Tokens are not mana abilities. 😂
12:48 For reference, the simplest way to exile an exiled card is to use Pull From Eternity (or a processor card) while Rest In Peace is on the battlefield.
9:45 - Ertai's Meddling is actually one of six spells, I believe, that put something on the stack without casting, the other five being the Epic spells from Saviours of Kamigawa.
EDIT: I misunderstood exactly what Meddling did, so this comment is wrong. Thanks to Jem Bennett for the correction.
@Jem Bennett Epic does do that; though I suppose that if you spliced stuff onto the Epic spell it would copy. Regardless, the difference here is that something is put on the stack that isn't a representation of a spell already on there.
@Jem Bennett Ah, I see, then yes, there is a difference there.
I have to know where "Damage causes loss of life" falls. It's simultaneously such an obvious fact and confusing that it is such a recurring piece of reminder text. The fact that it's reminder text at all, while also not being strictly true (infect, most prominently) makes it all the more bizarre.
Man, youtube surprisely lacks icebergs about magic, this was awesome, in the future you can make one about the lore or something
Just to be clear because Sylvan Library and Brainstorm are very popular cards in Legacy, if you are in a competitive REL tournament and you cast a Brainstorm before your Sylvan Library trigger resolves you are required to call a judge on yourself so they can monitor the composition of your hand. Having done this as a meme a number of times, I can confirm that you're about 50/50 whether that judge is amused or annoyed that you didn't just wait to your main phase for the Brainstorm. (the objectively better play 99.99% of the time)
11:34 i can think of 1 thing that has to do with layers. The entire thing goes like this:
You have chimeric staff and march of the machines out. Chimeric staff is now a 4/4 creature artifact.
You activate chimeric staff’s ability, X being 10. This makes chimeric staff a 10/10 artifact creature - Construct.
Your opponent then casts imprisoned in the moon on your chimeric staff. Your chimeric staff is now a land that taps for colorless.
You then activate liquimetal coating to make the chimeric staff an artifact land that taps for colorless. Because of the rule of “Dependency” (rule 613.8), the chimeric staff is now a non-creature artifact, which march of the machines is dependent on. this makes it so that as long as liquimetal coating’s continuous effect is apllied, chimeric staff is a 4/4 artifact creature, and no effects other than march of the machines apply to it.
I can also think of one thing that has to do with layers:
You have noodles, Bolognese Sauce and bechamel Sauce out, layer it correctly and get a tasty lasagna.
The result is, that everyone you share it with might mit win the game but win a fantastic day 😁
9:43 Ertai’s meddling is not the only spell/effect that puts a spell on the stack without casting it. Reverberate is a spell that puts a copy of a instant or sorcery on the stack without casting it. Just like Ertai’s Meddling does. The same is true for Fork, Narset’s reversal, Ral storm conduit’s -2 ability, the activated ability dual casting gives to the enchanted creature, the expansion half of expansion//explosion, dualcaster mage’s enters the battlefield effect, and many more cards that have effects that copy instant and sorceries. Ertai’s meddling does the exact same thing as all these cards, the templating of the rules text is just different enough to confuse people. It could easily read “At the beginning of each of that player's upkeeps, if that card is exiled, remove a delay counter from it. If the card has no delay counters on it, that player copies that spell.” The only difference between Ertai’s meddling and all the other copy cards is Ertai’s meddling doesn’t let the controller of the copy choose new targets for said copy. It must target the same thing(s) the original did.
thank god i stumbled on this when it was finished
The layer 11 god mechanic has gotten me about 10 or so times this week with Klothys interacting with Grumgully and bard class, I forget it needs the devotion requirement without including itself to get the counters on EtB.
Something missed by this iceberg is the rule that not just creatures, but all permanents enter the battlefield summoning sick, but only creatures cannot use tap abilities while summoning sick. For this reason, Inkmoth Nexus cannot attack on the turn it entered if you animate it, and similarly, artifacts that have been animated the turn they came in cannot use their tap abilities. This has been an extremely annoying fact for my artifact combo edh list that uses infinite mana with Voltaic Construct to untap an animated artifact with a tap ability to infinitely activate that tap ability, which i cannot do if it's summoning sick. However, because the artifact is a creature when animated, i can enchant/equip it with things that give haste to get around this. Also, the commander is Kozilek, the Great Distortion and giving a 12/12 menace commander haste is extremely good when you're dropping it in as early as turn 4 or 5 sometimes.
For Artifact Combo is Thousand-Year Elixir not better than equipment to bypass summon sick?
basically, thousand year elixir in that deck ONLY solves the exact situation of an animated artifact being summoning sick, whereas the equipment options in a similar vein (Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves) serve more than one purpose, giving my commander hexproof/shroud and haste, or making an animated artifact hasty in a pinch.
the Voltaic Construct lines usually involve generating infinite mana using an animated mana rock, which was most likely in play several turns before i go off, and lets me dig for voltaic key + brighthearth lines well before i would ever need to give the next part haste.
that deck is a pain in everyone's ass though, so i'm not sure i'd even want it to be much more dumb lol
I wish I could find the article, but there is an amazing layer interaction where some combination of humility, magus if the moon, and opalescence can make all your creatures and enchantments to be mountains permanently regardless of any of those cards leaving the battlefield.
28:10
Notable to mention: this is only ETB replacement effects. Triggered abilities work based on devotion after it is in play.
Nice series. A number of things I think would have made sense to include:
1. Copiable values. What does and doesn't get copied when you clone a permanent? What happens when you clone a clone or a mutated creature (aka a merged permanent)
2. Type changing effects and what happens to the permanent's supertypes and subtypes.
3. Rule 305.7 which touches on the two previous points. If a permanent's type is changed to one of the five basic land types, it loses all abilities granted by its copiable values, but it doesn't lose any abilities granted by other effects. It also doesn't lose any other cards types or subtypes, which can have some counterintuitive consequences. E.g. Blood Moon causes Ashaya to become a 0/0 creature that immediately dies, because it lost the characteristic-defining ability that set its power & toughness. Blood Moon also kills Urza's Saga because it becomes a saga with no chapters. Sagas get sacrificed if the number of counters on them are >= the number of chapters.
4. Loyalty abilities on non-planeswalker permanents. Any permanent type can have loyalty abilities and loyalty counters, but only planeswalkers have Loyalty. On the battlefield their loyalty equals the number of loyalty counters on them. Damage will cause counters to be removed and having zero counters kills them. That is not true for non-planeswalker permanents with loyalty abilities. E.g. If you turn all your planeswalkers into creatures using Sarkhan the Masterless, combat damage won't cause counters to be removed. After combat you can activate loyalty abilities of the erstwhile planeswalkers, but they won't die from activating a minus ability that removes all remaining counters - at least until end of turn when they become planeswalkers again. Things get even more whacky if you do things to planeswalkers that temporarily became creatures like mutating onto them or enchanting them with enchantments that cause them to lose the planeswalker type.
5. How Solemnity interacts with various effects. It stops Vanishing (if it was already on the battlefield), but not Fading. It can bypass Cumulative Upkeep (since the 6th edition rules changes). It doesn't effect planeswalkers, but it does effect planeswalkers that became creatures. Etc.
6. Damage that can't be prevented vs protection, e.g. A Progenitus that's blocking an attacking Questing Beast will die.
7. Effects that ends the turn and effects that causes certain phases or steps to be skipped. How does that interact with delayed triggers like "at the beginning of next end step".
Check out Solemnity and Everlasting Torment
Something fun about the Turing Machine: it's possible to set up Turing Machine tapes that will terminate if some mathematical theorem is true, but will not terminate otherwise (for example, a Machine that halts iff Goldbach's Conjecture is false.) Since it's possible to describe the step-by-step functioning of a Turing Machine, it's possible to set up this sort of tape and use common agreement of the players to progress the machine arbitrarily far. Since nobody knows for sure if Goldbach's Conjecture is true, the game could not progress. Contrast with the Four Horsemen combo: with FH, there's no way to know for sure how long the combo will take, so players aren't allowed to skip through the execution (opposing player might have a way to interrupt the combo that would also depend on specific placements of cards, or might not believe that the FH player will win on the game clock.) Furthermore, since the combo doesn't advance the game state, trying to execute it manually results in slow play penalties. However, with this Turing Machine, there is a predetermined outcome, we just don't know what it is yet. Furthermore, since the execution of the Turing Machine depends on modifying the board state, it should be legal in a tournament to execute the machine as long as one wants. Since nobody knows if the Goldbach Conjecture is true, nobody knows what states the Turing Machine will reach, so the player executing the combo can't be forced to skip to the end. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that they'll reach a gamestate they want, so they can't convince the other player to scoop. TL;DR: a player could use the Turing Machine deck to stall a game out for as long as they want without taking a slow play penalty, but only until somebody proves whether the Goldbach Conjecture is true or false.
I feel like there's possibility to write a 'Standoff at Honolulu' style fanfic for mtg turing machines with sufficient cleverness
Interesting thing about the wall of roots infinite mana loophole is that players did have a way to win using that mana with magma mine (see Wall of Boom deks) at least until an emergency rules change. So there must have been a window at some point where players could use that mana to activate abilities.
Cool series of videos, I really enjoyed watching them
Layer 12 is actually shocking in its abject simplicity... Like a dark secret that's been lost to time
All this talk about banding last episode makes me realize that they should rework that kind of ability. I would create a keyword for a set and would name it "bravery" or "brave", or "courageous", or something, the description of which would be "during combat, lethal damage must be assigned to 'brave' creatures before being assigned to other creatures". The most common scenario would be that you block the 2/2 bear with your 1/3 brave and your 2/1 piker, and the bear would need to assign 2 damage on the 'brave' creature, making them extremely effective at blocking and/or trading up. It would also apply for creatures that have the ability to block multiple creatures (they'd have to kill the 'brave' creature before dealing damage to the other one).
I feel like that would keep some of the flavor of banding, while being instinctive to understand, and would allow for limited games to be a little bit more slow by making blocking instead of attacking even more advantageous than it currently is.
Also would help white be more different from the other colors.
Dunno about the distribution of Banding between colors, but the Brave ability could have been primary in white and secondary in green and red (although you could make it tertiary in green to nerf it a little bit because arguably it's the best color in most Magic formats right now).
You forgot probably the most confusing part of equinox's ruling; if the spell *could* target or attempt to destroy an indestructible land, it can't counter the spell because you cannot guarantee a land will be destroyed.
This remains true even if the land has lost indestructible from Hour of devastation, ***BUT NOT*** if it lost indestructible from Soul sear, even though in both cases, it is no longer indestructible, but only if it is no longer a creature.
This is because of the fact Equinox checks the future states of cards instead of the current states of the cards, and to do that, it has to look at every card played previously and applies those effects to the future state of the card.
Because of this, it looks back at Hour of Devastation, sees it was cast this turn, checks to see if the spell you intend to counter will be destroying a creature land or just a land, sees the land is just a land, and discards Hour of Devastation's effect. Then, it will check if the land has indestructible or not, which, while it does not in the current board state, in the alternative Equinox reality, because Hour of Devastation's effect doesn't effect lands, and it only looks at the *current* state of the card instead of the state at the time, Equinox considers the land to have not lost indestructible, and thus, will not counter a stone rain that would destroy it, because in the equinox timeline, that land never lost indestructible, since it applied the "creatures lose indestructible" line to the fact the card is *currently* just a land, without considering the fact the land may have been a creature beforehand, since it cannot verify that the land was a creature when the spell resolved.
And then stone rain destroys your land it targeted directly.
But as for why this doesn't happen with Soul Sear? While Equinox doesn't care about remembering specific board states or the timing of spells, it *does* care about what a spell targeted, and if a spell actually resolved or not. So now Equinox looks back, sees that Soul sear targeted the indestructible land this turn without fizzling, and, since the ability specifies permanents losing indestructible, applies that to the land, despite the fact in Equinox's timeline, the land would remain a land at all times, and the spell *should* have fizzled, but didn't, so it gets to be resolved against an illegal target.
Because now Equinox has determined your opponent has broken the rules and applied what they did anyways, ***NOW*** equinox will counter the stone rain, and so now your cascading cataracts will not be destroyed anymore.
Don't Soothsay, kids.
You have to be impressed by any card brave enough to time travel to impossible alternate futures as part of its resolution. Makes you wonder how the wizards diegetically crafted such a monstrosity.
Turning things into artifact creatures. The first thing that sprang to my mind is “titania’s song” Effect of card: Each noncreature artifact loses all abilities and becomes an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its mana value. If Titania's Song leaves the battlefield, this effect continues until end of turn.
It stands out as unique due to its “until end of turn” even after being destroyed. Perhaps?
You mentioned the Turing Machine but not why it is interesting. The reason it's interesting is that it makes determining the winner, even of a game state in which no further input from players occurs, undecidable. Any computational problem can be encoded in Magic in such a way, and not all computational problems are decidable; ergo, the game itself is undecidable.
Ah the certainty of uncertainty.
39:00 if you win a coin toss caused by solving a gap in the rules, does it contribute to effects that count coin tosses like Chance Encounter since a coin toss has become part of a resolution of a stage?
... can you Krark's Thumb a rules dispute?
@@Heriarka Don't think so, since the judge flips the coin.
@@manarager3413 what if the judge controlled a krark's thumb
The turning things into artifact creatures is probably a reference to karn silver golems ability, which is often used as a means to open your opponents artifacts up to creature removal. Because he works by making them a creature with power and toughness equal to their cmc, if you hit zero cost artifacts, they go to the graveyard as soon as they become creatures as state based actions, which means it cant even be responded to by trying to out counters on it or something. This is typically done against 0 cost artifacts or artifact lands. However, with liquimetal coating, or mycosynth lattice, you can make anything an artifact. Even without this, though, making things artifact creatures before a wrath of god can be really helpful in getting more value from wrath.
What a surprise, I just found your channel today and watched the first 2 iceberg part videos
Great videos man!
Good bunch of videos, I was surprised there wasn't anything in there about split second cards
A good cleanup step loop is Gitrog monster and Underrealm Lich. You can essentially filter your entire deck depending on how many lands are left once you get the engine going. Pretty nuts
that's probably supposed to say "turning lands into artifiact creatures" if you can turn lands into artifiacts there are numerous effects that turn artifacts into creatures with x/x = CMC and as a result they are sent to the graveyard.
Kudos for pronouncing Burning of Xinye correctly!
Ozolith also matters with modular, when a creature with modular that dies it moves its counters and ozolith gets an equal amount of counters.
thanks for finishing the series
This was a very fun series! Thanks a ton for uploading!
The last line of dialogue reminded me of one of the rules in the original Alpha rulebook, which read “During the course of a game, a dispute that you cannot solve by referencing the rules may occur. If both players agree, you can resolve the difference for the current game with a coin toss.”
First Strike is realy uncommon in black/blue (typical ninja colors), but it would be amazing in a ninja deck, because you hit with two creatures instead of one. I'm planing a ninja deck, this ruling will definitely influence my deck.
Black knight, knight of malice are both uncommon. 🤣
Turning things into artifact creatures: march of the machines + liquimetal coating
11:45 I know EXACTLY what this is talking about; Karn, the Great Creator. There's a long list of interesting interactions that can happen with Karn, the Great Creator that are so extreme in their convolutedness, and intricacies, it's near impossible to accomplish in an ACTUAL game of Magic; basically, you'd need to develop the prerequisites and conditions to do it by literally goldfishing, due to how difficult and ridiculous the lines are. If I'm wrong btw, then what I found out should probably be at this tier because I've had to talk to like, 6 judges about it lmao
I would *love* to know what fucked up shit can be done, a quick google search didn't lead to anything
you can give your opponents things like Lich's Mirror, proliferate and give the opponent 10 infect so it just breaks the game. There's other examples, certain artifacts with specific properties that hurt your opponents.
@@JazzyAnasazi I LOVE lich's mirror involuntary loops lmao
27:50 Aren't there ways to gain priority in your cleanup step? Discarding a card with madness for handsize, for instance? If this happens and SBAs are checked, I think the auras still do not save the creature.
@24:48 "+1/+1 counters are not interchangeable"
This unfounded claim is contradicted by CR 122.1:
A counter is a marker placed on an object or player that modifies its characteristics and/or interacts with a rule, ability, or effect. Counters are not objects and have no characteristics. Notably, a counter is not a token, and a token is not a counter. Counters with the same name or description are interchangeable.
Hence why it is labelled as an obsolete ruling.
@@hughmortyproductions8562 - The CR 122.1 ruling quoted above is from the latest version (4-14-2023) of the MTG Comprehensive Rules:
media.wizards.com/2023/downloads/MagicCompRules%2020230414.pdf
@@QuicksilverSG That's what I mean. Under the current rules - the rules you quoted - counters of the same type are interchangeable.
Many years ago, different counters of the same type were not necessarily interchangeable. This is one of several old rulings that are included in this video. These old rulings are marked in the video as "obsolete rulings" because they no longer apply but I think they are still interesting to talk about to see how the game has evolved over the years.
9:21 Melira Vs Inkmoth
Creatures that deal damage without having an effect do still count as having delt damage. If you're playing commander, an opponent has Platinum Emperion or Teferi's Protection, and you deal combat damage to them with your commander, then the damage will be processed with no effect, however the commander damage rule does not care if the damage had an effect, only that it was delt, so a commander given infect would still kill an opponent with a Melira in play, and combat damage triggers would still go off. This is even referenced in Melira's Gatherer page.
Would you like to see some funk?
Solemnity and Everlasting Torment
Creatures can't deal damage to each other
But there is deathtouch
Re: Red Elemental Blast Having Conditional Speed
This rule was only a thing between 5th Edition and 6th Edition rules. Before this, REB was always an interrrupt. This made it where instants couldn't interact with REB, making it an AMAZING removal spell. The Elemental Blasts and Hyro/Pyroblast were the ONLY reason this rule existed at all.
Talking about the Turing Machine at 32:10 reminds that someone made a TH-cam video demonstrating the deck and how it works, you can check it out here: th-cam.com/video/pdmODVYPDLA/w-d-xo.html
About panglacial wurm, the interaction in the video is handled acceptably by the rules, but the rules do not explain *where in your deck* you place the panglacial wurm when you fail to cast it. This matters in the following situation:
Alice is using Arid Mesa's ability to search her library. The top 3 cards are Panglacial Wurm, Panglacial Wurm, and Circle of Dreams Druid. Alice would like to attempt to cast Panglacial Wurm A, then fail to cast it, and move it somewhere else other than the top of the deck, leaving Circle of Dreams Druid 2nd from the top. If this is possible, she can then cast Panglacial Wurm B. She will get the mana to pay for it by using her Millikin to put her Circle of Dreams Druid onto the top of her discard pile so that she can tap her Volrath's Shapeshifter for GGGGGG.
I’d say the Turing machine’s only limit is the number of cards you can have in your library being how many you can shuffle without assistance, but something tells me a robotic AI overlord might not have much trouble shuffling a few 1000 cards
Once the turing machine is set up it uses tokens to encode the tape, so you can run arbitrarily large programs without having to make your deck larger
The whole Panglacial Wurm and Selvala thing could've been easily solved by giving Selvala the restriction that it can only be activated at instant speed. Which would match the other card that has a mana ability that can create an unknown quantity of mana: Charmed Pendant
This video changed my life.
Kyle Hill did a video awhile back on making a Turing machine out of an mtg deck. It was quite the watch
Season of the Wtich + Silent Arbiter is easily resolved: The last known state is looked at. That is, the other creature could not have attacked.
So destroying none is correct. However, if no creature attacks (and all are untapped), then all are destroyed, as for all the creatures the last known state is that they could have attacked.
Relevant ruling (on Season of the Witch itself): _A creature won’t be destroyed if it was unable to attack that turn, even if you had a way to enable it to attack. For example, a creature that had summoning sickness wouldn’t be destroyed even if you had a way to give it haste._
The creature could not attack, because another creature already attacked.
You *can* name cards that are not legal in the format you're playing. You can even name silver bordered cards this way; which could matter with the card "ninja" + ninja tokens.
Ozolith's wording is also relevant on Strixhaven cards like Star Pupil. You can have Star Pupil die, put its +1/+1 on another creature, then put Ozolith's new +1/+1 on the same creature for 2 counters.
CORRECTION at 6:10 fossil find was printed in shadowmore
Judge! My opponent is attempting to build computer.
Now I'm interested in building a Lazav EDH deck themed around flip cards. It's a shame there's only 8 in dimir colors.
I'm mildly disappointed that copiable values weren't mentioned, probably one of the most arbitrary rules in the game exists there.
Transferable copy affects (affects that turn a permanent into a different one, the have it regain the ability) are a copiable value. Thus is you do something like copy a myr propagator with a cryptoplasm, then activate the crypto-propagator's ability, the token it creates will also have that ability.
Also, tokens have no backside: if you copy a creature with an affect that transforms it, the trigger to transform it will always fail as the token doesn't have a different side to transform to.
Thank you... I'll have to rewatch a few times, but very informative.
I love the idea of using Stasis to have infinite mana
You forgot to mention Kyle Hill's vid on the MTG Turing Machine!
I enjoyed this series a lot!
The bottom tip should be "there are no rules"
there really should be a single card with all the rules
just for meta golden rule
In the situation with 3 Conversions, it actually matters which lands are in play. If you have the timestamp order M->P, S->M, P->S,
- M->P only depends on S->M if there are some swamps in play that are not also mountains
- S->M only depends on P->S if there are some plains in play that are not also swamps
- P->S only depends on M->P if there are some mountains in play that are not also plains
So if all lands in play are plains with no other subtypes, then M->P does not depend on anything, and it happens first. Then you look at S->M and P->S. Since there's a non-swamp plains, S->M depends on P->S, so you run P->S first. Then you run S->M, making all the lands into mountains.
You have a nice voice i can listen to. I find all this very interesting for future Magic games. Like Ozileth for example.
That last rule reminds me of something I heard when I played tennis is college. Apparently if one of the players disagrees with the score the whole game or in an extreme case whole set needs to be replayed. Don't know how true it is.
Some of those rules fuck my mind on so many levels xD
If you turn a land into an x/x artifact creature where x is it's mana value, it dies even if it has indestructible.
Part 2: 21:40
Does Karn tgc let you steal the exiled artifacts of your opponent?
Yes, even ones from like banishing light.
this was great thanks for making it!
I haven’t played Magic in a decade and I never will again, but I still find these videos incredibly interesting.
Why not? What happened my man
No idea which layer this would go in, but Regicide is a card that you can legally play in your eternal format decks, but can never cast.
The honalooloo story was to good. I highly recommend it.
29:35 can you please give an example of something that is "not an effect"? Do you mean like discarding to hand size at the end step? What else would cause me to discard a card besides an effect?
Costs are not effects. So basically, if you activate the ability of an Insolent Neonate ("Discard a card, sacrifice Insolent Neonate: Draw a card."), Library of Leng doesn't trigger.
The whole "costs aren't effects" thing is annoyingly confusing, but it's the same reason why Doubling Season can't double Planeswalker loyalty abilities' costs but Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider can.
I don't play Magic anymore (and I only ever played casually with friends), but this was very interesting.
regarding layer 12: nope thats not true. There isnt always a definitive answer in the rulebook, like with the example of silent arbiter and season of the witch. It is now deemed that some interactions are too niche, that changes to the rulebook are not worth the effort and potential negative sideeffects they can bring down the line
Can I ask about a ruling? What happens if I make a token with kikijiki, then donate the token to an opponent? I’m 50% sure that at the end of the turn I would put a trigger on the stack to sacrifice the token, then , I not controlling the token, nothing would happen.
Correct. You can't sacrifice something you don't control.
I believe (111.4) obsoletes the Pithing needle Shapeshifter interaction
Kyle Hill made an actual Turing Machine in Magic in recent times
The Pro Tour Honolulu one was super funny. Haha.
this is from part 1 or 2, but you mentioned that there's only technically one "exile" pile. Does that mean that in theory, a player could exile a card an opponent controls, then brought back under their own control from exile?
So with burning of xinye, a player can’t choose an indestructible land. But they have to choose 4 lands… what happens if all their lands are indestructible(like thru avacyn)?
They have to choose four of their lands but none of their lands are available choices
If you can't do everything, you do as much as it's possible. If something is impossible, then it's ignored. So if only have indestructible lands, you just don't choose any lands, and so none of your lands are destroyed.
@@oals29 but if you making choices is impossible wouldn’t that mean the spell fizzles? As in nobody’s lands get destroyed?
@@anthonycannet1305 A spell only fizzles for a lack of *targets.* Other choices being impossible doesn't stop the spell from resolving and doing as much as it can.
Loved the series, you did an awesome job explaining the iceberg!
Pretty sure pitching needle doesn't have any restrictions on naming cards legal in whatever format your playing so you could name shape shifter or even black lotus with it in a modern tournament not sure where you got that one from
It's an old ruling. You used to only be able to name cards that are legal in the format you are playing. I just didn't realise that they had changed it.
These videos were so awesome!!! Please make more! Would die for a yugioh one lol
I had a cleanup step loop with bone meiser. Was super weird
With the Burning land destruction spell and having indestructible lands. Aren't those lands still valid targets but they won't be destroyed? Like you can target murder on Ulamog the cealess hunger but nothing will happen. Right? So technically you could have indestructible lands and Burning will still resolve but your lands just won't be destroyed. Just like Armageddon won't do anything to your indestructible lands. Unless the target is illegal to something you can effect vs an area wide effect.
You would have been right, except Burning of Xinye does *not* target the lands. You choose which lands to destroy.
Two important differences between choosing and targeting:
1. You can't choose to do something that isn't possible, like destroying an indestructible permanent (rule 608.2d). When choosing targets, you only have to fulfill the targeting requirements. Whether the spell will have any effect when it resolves doesn't matter. In contrast, when the choice is about taking an action, that action must be possible. You can't choose to destroy an indestructible land in the same way that you can't, e.g. choose to remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature that doesn't have any.
2. Targets are chosen when the spell or ability goes onto the stack. Choices like the one on Burning are made during resolution. One side effect of this timing difference is that the choice can't be responded to. Once you've chosen which lands to destroy with Burning, you can't save the lands by casting Kamahl's Will, because you won't get priority until after Burning has finished resolving. Intuitively it makes sense that choices made during resolution can't be responded to, otherwise you could e.g. circumvent a Duress by casting the instant chosen by your opponent before it gets discarded.
Shouldnt the chromatic star draw trigger happen after the cost of grandeur is payed? Triggered abilities going higher on the stack than paying the full cost seems like its outside all rules of the game.
It would with Chromatic Star but Chromatic Sphere uses a different wording. In the Sphere's wording the card draw is part of the mana ability not a separate triggered ability, so you can draw a card while putting a spell or ability on the stack. This has led to other weird interactions in the past and is likely part of the reason Wizards printed Chromatic Star in the first place, so they could have the same basic functionality as Chromatice Sphere but without the weird edge case interactions.
Fun fact Silent arbiter does not work with silent arbiter doesn't work with season of the witch but crawl space does
What if Vesuvan Doppelganger turns back into Voice of All later?
What a masterpiece.
I am guessing you can use wish under mindslaver if you are in a subgame. cool
does pithing needle affect tokens that have been eternalized if u name the card that originally had the externalize ability
Well volrath’s shapeshifter is…a bit of a monstrosity…