Distributing damage to 0 targets is well in line with how mathematicians deal with these situations. E.g., the binomial coefficient tells you how many different ways there are to distribute n damage between k targets, and it's well-defined for k=0; there's 1 way to distribute them. Also when doing sums and products, the notation we use lets you take the sum or product over 0 numbers; these are called empty sums/products and they're just 0. Everything still works, and it lets you write some things more neatly.
I opened a Fury at prelease. Thought it dealt damage to any target. A few people let me hit their face with it. I later reread the card and stopped doing it.
"I'll have Fury deal... zero damage to my Grizzly Bears." "I will cast Into The Flood Maw targeting the bears so the ability will fizzle." "Oh- kay... then."
I had this one wrong as well. Over the years the templating has become so clear and consistent that if there isn't a "may" or "up to" in the text, I immediately assume that it means "you have to do the thing, even if it's bad for you"
"Any number" kind of means "up to but not including infinity." But since you can't divide more damage than you have, they really could have just said "up to 4" here.
Mathematician: Well, 0 is a number, and it sure does say any number. Dave, second later: Dealing 4 damage among 0 targets isn't something a mathematician would say you could do. One funny thing about math is that the 0 or "empty" case is almost always considered valid. For example, the empty set counts as a subset for every set, even itself!
@@colgatelampinen2501 Now I'm thinking about how to formalize this. We'd be stuck if we have to partition, but I think there's another way. I'd call dealing damage a function, D(t), for some target t. So, here we'd define a set of targets, T, then adjust the game's state to by the changes in D(T). If T is empty, then D(T) is also empty. In other words, that choice of T means we make no changes. I'd have to be a little more careful about defining D because it has at least an "amount of damage" parameter, but I'm happy with this.
It's kinda strange that scryfall has not considered this situation in "Notes and rules information for Fury". This configuration can appear quite often...
Adding on to the previous replies, the Gatherer notes on Scryfall come from the set FAQ's, which are written by normal people. I know from experience how hard it is to go through every card in a set and try to come up with all the interesting rules interactions that could come out of each card, so I can definitely understand how some (infuriatingly obvious in hindsight) rulings can get left out.
Could you maybe explain what happens if in a 4 player game, I crack a „Memory Jar“ in an opponents turn but the opponents dies the same turn. Do all the exiled cards stay in exile or do the get returned at the beginning of the next opponents end step? Thanks in advance, love your videos, they are really helpful!
If a player leaves the game during their turn, that turn continues to its completion without an active player. If the active player would receive priority, instead the next player in turn order receives priority, or the top object on the stack resolves, or the phase or step ends, whichever is appropriate.
Question for you: Does Angel of Vitality's "If you would gain life, you gain that much life plus 1 instead" count as its own life gaining event, or only as a modifier of a separate life gaining event? For example I have Righteous Valkyrie and Angel of Vitality on the battlefield. I then cast Youthful Valkyrie would their be two instances of life being gained or only one, seeing as to how the Angel of Vitality is only a modification of Righteous Valkyries life gaining trigger?
As I understand it, it simply modifies the amount of life gained to be that much plus one, so it's still one instance of lifegain. If it worked the other way it might say "whenever you gain life, gain 1 life" or something, so you'd have the lifegain that triggers it, and *then* gain one life. I think the key phrase in the actual text is "if you would gain life", which indicates that it's modifying/replacing that event.
Based solely on the title, I thought this was going to be: “Until end of turn, all your opponent’s 10 million creatures get ‘When this is targeted, sacrifice it’. I cast Fury, and target each of them, assigning one to the first four, zero to the rest. Now, sacrifice all of them.”
I'm quite confident that if your opponent had, for example, seven or more cards in their graveyard and 10,000,000 Boneshard Slashers in play you could totally do that and it'd work.
@@theemathas Yes, when splitting damage via an "among any number of targets", each part has to be non-zero. So at least one point per target, limiting the maximum number of possible targets.
Having the answer change is one of the biggest causes of missed rulings, especially among experienced judges. Learning something, then having to forget it and learn the opposite is not trivial. Years afterward, you have only a vague sense of both answers feeling familiar, so they both seem correct. It happens to me, and I've heard it happening to many other people too. This is one reason why if the answer has changed for a question in one of my episodes, I try to point that out and also avoid talking about what the old (now incorrect) answer was if possible.
@@FatybIob It's mentioned at 2:03 that the answer used to be the opposite of what's stated here. In another comment I linked the old version of the CR where you can see the rule used to say that you couldn't choose 0 targets if you were dividing something between them.
@@miserepoignee9594 I researched the video. The example shown you could choose 0. There is no old example where you couldn't unless the card said "cannot be 0"
@@FatybIob It used to be that for dividing or distributing you'd need to partition that and since you can't partition anything except 0 among 0 targets, if you had to partition more like 4 in this case, you'd have to choose at least one target.
This actually doesn't work for a couple of reasons: (1) Venerated Rotpriest only triggers on spells, not abilities. (2) If you're dividing damage among some number of targets, each target must receive at least one damage for the distribution to be legal [CR 601.2d]
It seems more intuitive that "any number" means zero can be chosen. That's immediately what I thought when reading it
When you have a PhD. in math, like Richard Garfield does, you CAN divide by 0.
didn't even realize the cr pdf i had was outdated until i checked this rule, very much appreciated!
Distributing damage to 0 targets is well in line with how mathematicians deal with these situations. E.g., the binomial coefficient tells you how many different ways there are to distribute n damage between k targets, and it's well-defined for k=0; there's 1 way to distribute them. Also when doing sums and products, the notation we use lets you take the sum or product over 0 numbers; these are called empty sums/products and they're just 0.
Everything still works, and it lets you write some things more neatly.
The empty product actually is 1, usually. Or rather, the empty sum/product is the additive/multiplicative identity.
I opened a Fury at prelease. Thought it dealt damage to any target. A few people let me hit their face with it. I later reread the card and stopped doing it.
It would have been even funnier if they let you deal 8 damage because they thought Double Strike applied too, lol
"I'll have Fury deal... zero damage to my Grizzly Bears."
"I will cast Into The Flood Maw targeting the bears so the ability will fizzle."
"Oh- kay... then."
I had this one wrong as well.
Over the years the templating has become so clear and consistent that if there isn't a "may" or "up to" in the text, I immediately assume that it means "you have to do the thing, even if it's bad for you"
"Any number" kind of means "up to but not including infinity." But since you can't divide more damage than you have, they really could have just said "up to 4" here.
I've had a similar situation happen a while ago, and the judge had to refer to the comprehensive rules to make their ruling.
Since it says any number of targets, can you choose more than 4 targets? For the purposes of killing "illusionary" creatures.
You can't, as you have to assign at least one damage to each target.
lets just let n= {number of targets} and take the limit as n approaches 0 and call it day
I love learning new things :)
Can you explain what would happen if I played word of command with little teferi on the battlefield under my opponent’s control
Mathematician: Well, 0 is a number, and it sure does say any number.
Dave, second later: Dealing 4 damage among 0 targets isn't something a mathematician would say you could do.
One funny thing about math is that the 0 or "empty" case is almost always considered valid. For example, the empty set counts as a subset for every set, even itself!
Mathematician: Well you have to partition set of 4 elements, and empty set sure is not partition of any nonempty set.
@@colgatelampinen2501 Now I'm thinking about how to formalize this. We'd be stuck if we have to partition, but I think there's another way.
I'd call dealing damage a function, D(t), for some target t. So, here we'd define a set of targets, T, then adjust the game's state to by the changes in D(T).
If T is empty, then D(T) is also empty. In other words, that choice of T means we make no changes.
I'd have to be a little more careful about defining D because it has at least an "amount of damage" parameter, but I'm happy with this.
It's kinda strange that scryfall has not considered this situation in "Notes and rules information for Fury".
This configuration can appear quite often...
99.9% of all notes there are copied from the Gatherer website. So Wizards chose to not put up a note.
Adding on to the previous replies, the Gatherer notes on Scryfall come from the set FAQ's, which are written by normal people. I know from experience how hard it is to go through every card in a set and try to come up with all the interesting rules interactions that could come out of each card, so I can definitely understand how some (infuriatingly obvious in hindsight) rulings can get left out.
Could you maybe explain what happens if in a 4 player game, I crack a „Memory Jar“ in an opponents turn but the opponents dies the same turn. Do all the exiled cards stay in exile or do the get returned at the beginning of the next opponents end step?
Thanks in advance, love your videos, they are really helpful!
If a player leaves the game during their turn, that turn continues to its completion without an active player. If the active player would receive priority, instead the next player in turn order receives priority, or the top object on the stack resolves, or the phase or step ends, whichever is appropriate.
Question for you: Does Angel of Vitality's "If you would gain life, you gain that much life plus 1 instead" count as its own life gaining event, or only as a modifier of a separate life gaining event?
For example I have Righteous Valkyrie and Angel of Vitality on the battlefield. I then cast Youthful Valkyrie would their be two instances of life being gained or only one, seeing as to how the Angel of Vitality is only a modification of Righteous Valkyries life gaining trigger?
As I understand it, it simply modifies the amount of life gained to be that much plus one, so it's still one instance of lifegain. If it worked the other way it might say "whenever you gain life, gain 1 life" or something, so you'd have the lifegain that triggers it, and *then* gain one life. I think the key phrase in the actual text is "if you would gain life", which indicates that it's modifying/replacing that event.
@@ARC-7271 yes this is how I understand it to be as well, thanks!
Based solely on the title, I thought this was going to be: “Until end of turn, all your opponent’s 10 million creatures get ‘When this is targeted, sacrifice it’. I cast Fury, and target each of them, assigning one to the first four, zero to the rest. Now, sacrifice all of them.”
I'm quite confident that if your opponent had, for example, seven or more cards in their graveyard and 10,000,000 Boneshard Slashers in play you could totally do that and it'd work.
You're not allowed to target something then assign 0 damage to it.
@@theemathas Yes, when splitting damage via an "among any number of targets", each part has to be non-zero. So at least one point per target, limiting the maximum number of possible targets.
I thought this video would be longer.
MTG has always told you on the card if you can't pick 0. I'm surprised this was a stumper question either logically or historically.
Having the answer change is one of the biggest causes of missed rulings, especially among experienced judges. Learning something, then having to forget it and learn the opposite is not trivial. Years afterward, you have only a vague sense of both answers feeling familiar, so they both seem correct. It happens to me, and I've heard it happening to many other people too. This is one reason why if the answer has changed for a question in one of my episodes, I try to point that out and also avoid talking about what the old (now incorrect) answer was if possible.
@@JudgingFtW Did the answer really change tho? What card said "any number" that didn't let you pick zero without saying so?
@@FatybIob It's mentioned at 2:03 that the answer used to be the opposite of what's stated here. In another comment I linked the old version of the CR where you can see the rule used to say that you couldn't choose 0 targets if you were dividing something between them.
@@miserepoignee9594 I researched the video. The example shown you could choose 0.
There is no old example where you couldn't unless the card said "cannot be 0"
@@FatybIob It used to be that for dividing or distributing you'd need to partition that and since you can't partition anything except 0 among 0 targets, if you had to partition more like 4 in this case, you'd have to choose at least one target.
Does that mean you could deal 4 damage to an enemy target and 0 damage to your own Venerated Rotpriest just to trigger it?
This actually doesn't work for a couple of reasons:
(1) Venerated Rotpriest only triggers on spells, not abilities.
(2) If you're dividing damage among some number of targets, each target must receive at least one damage for the distribution to be legal [CR 601.2d]
it says any number it can be 0
WTF? I remembered the old rule. The new one is kinda dumb.
Ohhhhh love it
I got this wrong I had no idea they changed the rule to "Any Number" can be zero.