It *can*, but I would bet most people who haven't encountered the card before wouldn't get it exactly right (without the reminder text). Exiling everything on the stack - including Time Stop itself - is far from intuitive, as is skipping the end step entirely.
I think, it's fine that it's not intuitive. "get over it", I'm a little concerned the desire to further reduce magic's Complexity and Reading Skill aspects. These have been elements of the game for a long time, and it is not a fault of the game that it encourages careful reading.
The French version has a similar reminder text. Détruisez deux créatures non-noires ciblées, à moins que l'une ait une couleur que l'autre n'a pas. Elles ne peuvent pas être régénérées. >Normal text of Dead Ringers (Les deux créatures doivent donc avoir exactement les mêmes couleurs, ou ne pas avoir de couleur, sinon elles ne sont pas détruites). >Reminder text: (The two creatures must therefore have exactly the same colors, or not have any color, otherwise they are not destroyed)
About the translation part... lots of spanish magic players are still pissed that 'remove' was translated as 'remover'. I'm supposed to take away counters from the card, not whisk them!
6 หลายเดือนก่อน
Sería más claro si dijera "quitar"? Soy de Chile y remover no lo usamos como batir o mezclar
Funnily about dead ringers, the french text has a reminder text explaining the intent : "(the two creatures must then either have exactly the same colors or be both colorless, else they aren't destroyed)" I guess they already got word from english players about how confusing this was!
0:23 Konami be like... I've always wanted Dave to do an episode with judges from other games. Getting an in-depth comparison from each side would be fascinating.
As a person who watches Yu-Gi-Oh content on youtube, the person who most frequently comes to mind for Yu-Gi-Oh rulings in that sphere is Distantcoder, who makes semi regular videos breaking down new rulings and had a series where he invited on other Yu-Gi-Oh TH-camrs to try and answer ruling questions about their favorite decks.
In my own custom cards, I always like to put keywords in the order they matter, so for example, cycling, convoke, cascade, ravenous, echo, defender, flying, trample, hexproof, haunt, & flashback would always go in that order because they effect being in hand, casting, the stack, ETB, upkeep, declare attackers, declare blockers, combat damage, casting spells, LTB, & post-LTB in that order, but say, haste & vigilance could go in ether order because they both effect declare attackers
Thank you so much for this. The most important thing I do for work that is not in my job description is cleaning up after people who think "oh, username, account name, login name, same thing, isn't it" who look at me blankly when I tell them to just make the near-zero effort to use the phrases consistently. 😭 This is one of the important invisible things that grease entire workflows.
On the topic of translations - the german templating of magic cards are so much harder to parse than the english ones. For one, "target" is translated to "deiner Wahl", which means "of your choice", and there are a number of notorious cases where they've either forgot to add the "deiner Wahl" or added one where there shouldn't be one (for example on the original printing of Connive//Concoct), changing the way the card works sometimes drastically. Another thing that pops up is that "permanent" and "permanent card" both used to have the same translation on german cards - "bleibende Karte". For the most part, context made clear what was meant, but an egregious example would be the sorcery Aether Helix, which combines both those wordings on the same card. Thankfully, that wording was finally changed with LCI, where they changed the translations to "Permanent" and "Permanent-Karte".
In regards to Colossal Majesty, the korean templating used to use a special wording for those cases. Triump of ferocity would say only "if", while Colossal Majesty says "if, and only if,"
There actually is a physical Magic card that has reminder text for banding -- it's Banding Sliver, from the Mystery Booster Playtest Cards! Great video btw.
Spells and abilities that tap permanents as a cost still unnecessarily specify that you need to tap "an untapped" permanent. Even today, I run into people who think that you can tap a permanent that is already tapped, due to this bad templating.
Thank you so much for doing all of this extremely detailed and thoughtfully assembled rules content!!! You've helped me a great deal to understand a lot of rules interactions much more in depth!
Hi Dave. Great video as always. Thanks for taking the time to make these videos daily. Also, thank you for being really cool when I ran into you at Magicon Chicago even if I was a bit nervous/awkward.
This is very much like YGO's Problem-Solving Card Text! YGO is verbose but PSCT does a damn good job of being unambiguous (so long as you know how to read it) and consistent.
In fact this is exactly like PSCT. I wish I had been familiar with this concept when I was writing the script, because it would have been a great thing to include.
Great topic! I really think that Magic's templating is one of the reasons it's so successful. You couldn't have a game with 27,000 cards and a 250 page rulebook without it. I actually didn't even notice that they no longer say what to shuffle, but it's great. It's not like you shuffle anything else.
I was hoping you where going full card analyst. It is a good point and why I like to dig into the comp rules these days. On the bigger side I was the one that came up with the look of "Flip Planewalker" for MSE2 for the custom magic community.
Strictly speaking, templating, its implications, and associations with past (and future!) cards is perhaps the largest portion of being an editor for Magic. Its often an invisible job, until it isn't, for one reason or another. This felt like a thoughtful analysis of the topic. #WOTCStaff
I've been playing Magic for over 20 years, and I've thought for a long time it's a shame the editors don't get as much recognition for their work as some of the more high profile jobs like artists or card designers. Which is a shame, because, as I mentioned in the video, Magic really does seem to have better editors than some other card games out there. Thank you for your hard work in making Magic what it is!
Its definitely nice to see how people adapt to changes, even if they may not like it. Looking back on it, can allow people to understand why it was compared to now.
I was initially put off by the "enters" templating change, but then realized that "enters" is not a word used anywhere in the game other than "enters the battlefield", and additionally "is put into a graveyard from play" has already been changed to "dies", so simplifying "enters" just makes sense, in all honesty. I'll still probably call them ETBs for a long while, though. I still sometimes call it EDH.
Since this is a discussion on templating, I’d like to take the opportunity to ask a question about similar formatting that could produce very different results. Amy controls a Delney, Streetwise Lookout and an Ace, Fearless Rebel. Amy attacks Nick with Ace and has two triggers to sacrifice an artifact. Amy sacrifices two artifacts to these triggers. How many counters does she put on Ace? Amy controls a Delney, Streetwise Lookout and a Mastermind Plum. Amy attacks Nick with mastermind Plum and exiles 2 artifacts from graveyards. How many treasure does she make? (Assuming my understanding is correct, Ace gets 3 counters and Amy makes 2 treasure)
The 2 Treasure part makes sense, but I would think Ace gets either 2 or 4 counters, depending on whether or not Delney also doubles Ace's reflexive trigger.
@@JasonOshinko the reason it would be 3 IMO is that Ace attacks, and Delney creates a second trigger. The first trigger resolves, allowing Amy to sac an artifact. Ace then triggers again, and since he is still 2 power, it triggers a second time, putting 2 counters. When the second sac trigger goes to resolve, Ace is now a 4 power creature, so Delney won’t make another trigger, meaning that Ace gets 3 counters in total
Ace has a reflexive triggered ability so: 603.12. A resolving spell or ability may allow or instruct a player to take an action and create a triggered ability that triggers “when [a player] [does or doesn’t]” take that action or “when [something happens] this way.” These reflexive triggered abilities follow the rules for delayed triggered abilities (see rule 603.7), except that they’re checked immediately after being created and trigger based on whether the trigger event or events occurred earlier during the resolution of the spell or ability that created them. Which takes us to: 603.7e If an activated or triggered ability creates a delayed triggered ability, the source of that delayed triggered ability is the same as the source of that other ability. The controller of that delayed triggered ability is the player who controlled that other ability as it resolved. Therefore you are correct.
@@JudgingFtWoh my project isn't a card game, its gonna be a fighting game (with card-game style templating, as a first for a genre that normally has sloppy templating)
I have a question that I could not find a satisfactory answer for online. The general question would be: How does copying an opponent's triggered abilities interact with intervening if clauses that one player meets but the other does not? For a specific example, let's say Amy has seven lands in play and Bob has nine. Bob plays a Knight of the White Orchid, and Alice responds by playing an Aboleth Spawn. Will Amy get to search for a Plains and put it on the battlefield? Then, Bob casts Tiamat, with Amy's Aboleth Spawn still on the battlefield. Does Amy get to search her library for up to five Dragon cards not named Tiamat?
Well, although WOTC localization team usually does a good job, in russian translations they messed up several times. Probably the biggest I remember is KHC Nullmage Shepherd. In russian he is translated as "Изгоняющий пастырь", which is literally translated as "Exiling Shepherd". And so, his localized version of this ability exiles artifacts and enchantments, instead of destroying them. But its' old russian printing from RAV actually destroys permanents. I guess powercreep is real UPD: typos
I have a friend getting into MtG playing Standard on Arena, and explaining to him the distinction between Elas Il-Kor, Dreadhound, Vein Ripper and Vraan, Executioner Thane's templatings has been hilarious for me, frustrating for him.
Good video. The templating change I want the most (after changing EtB to enters, hurray) is changing "" to "this". Can you think of any reasons why writing out the cardname would be clearer? I've only ever seen it occasionally lead to confusion with people thinking they get two copies of an enters effect if they already control a copy of the same creature.
My guess is (a) using the card's name, especially for legendary permanents improves the flavor experience and (b) it might lead to awkward-to-read English sentences. E.g., "...when you sacrifice this this way,"
The bad part about all the keywords and shortcuts is that people simply dont know what it actually means and they consistently play it wrong when it matters, as nothing even hints to them they do it wrong. Stuff like "dies" and why non-creatures dont use the word "dies" is fairly annoying, as we also have leaves play triggers and the like and people just mix them up all the time. Then we get increasingly more keywords that cramp a lot of rules and hide them from the player. Planeswalker themselves had a bunch of rules with them that are not intuitive at all. Sagas, when they trigger and the tricks you can do with them (like last trigger on the stack, sacrifice it in response, or remove the last counter to keep it in play). Dungeons, Initiative ... horrendously overblown in complexity, you cant play the cards out of the box as you dont have the extra cards at hand and the card doesnt tell you at all what it means. Timing restrictions like sorcery speed for Equip are rules baggage as well, the card could be more explicit about it. Some things work much more intuitive, things like indestructible do exactly what they claim to do, prevent "destruction" (destroy) effects, and not anything else. Flying is the best keyword ever as its the most intuitive of them all. With Thunder junction we get "crime" and that is also not intuitive at all and silly on top of that (some might even feel uncomfortable to commit a crime, its just not a good word to have in a card game as a key mechanic). Defining zones with names is fine, exile was a good change to "outside the game" , as naming zones makes it cleaner to understand what it means in the game. Shortening text just for the sake of shortening it and then push more text on the cards is not a good trend, Magic cards today have way too much text, and especially non-intuitive abilities like the sneaky "reach" they put on cards you wouldnt except to have reach at all (its totally intuitive on spiders and archers, as they consistently did it, till they started to print spiders without reach, which was a total failure to do). Cards should explain enough that people can play with them out of the box and if necessary a booster should have rules hint cards (or the backside of the tokens) that explain the sets mechanics ... and if you cant fit the rules on such a space, you know its too long and too much.
Someone having trouble with "committing a crime" in a fictional game? The same game with a card called "murder"? This is why the right hates us on the left
To me, this, along with card types working the way they do, is why Magic is as good as it is. Not to disparage other games, but I came from Yugioh, which doesn't have a templating team, and so everything must be written on every card, and it becomes a nightmare. In Magic, "deals damage", "deals combat damage", "loses life", and "pays life" are all distinct mechanics, and so you can make 4 nearly identical versions of the same card and they all play very differently.
yes, but I don't think there's any instances where an effect of a card could be written in a way that works with all four of those, the wording would have to change pretty significantly just between "Deals Combat Damage" and "Pays Life".
@@thejackscraft3472 if I wanted to craft cards that actually did this identically but for the specific life lessening effect, I'd probably do it was "when a player is", so when a player is dealt combat damage, when a player loses life, when a player pays life, when a player is dealt damage, do blah blah blah.
@@CHoustonify as far as I can find, there are no cards that trigger a off of a player paying life, so that isn't a thing. And in the case of making exactly the same card but with those specific wordings, the one that states "Loses life" would completely encompass all the others, as the other three all cause loss of life, so you'd be making one card with three explicitly worse variants.
What about cards that have added more text over time? For example, threshold cards, where it's gone from reminder text to actually explained in the ability on the card
I'm taking a stab but I'm pretty sure it's that one effect puts "draw a card" on the stack if the condition is met and resolves regardless of whether that changes after activation while the other puts "if condition is met then draw" on the stack, which checks for the conditions at resolution My guess is that ferocity is the former and colossal is the latter
Awesome video! I'm new around here, and confused about how the location of the if-clause between Triumph of Ferocity and Colossal Majesty affects gameplay (10:48). Is there a video that explains this? I did a quick search through the channel's video archive and didn't see those titles mentioned, but let me know if anyone can point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it. Thank you!
Hi Dave, It was a pleasure seeing you at Magic Con Chicago. I am in a commander game with 3 other players and cast Rise of the Dark Realms. On the next turn, Zach casts Insurrection. He defeats myself and one other player. Thanks to Insurrection he controls player 4's creature after I controlled it. Where does that creature go at the end of turn? To its owner, or does it remain under Zach's control?
Lagrella was such a headache when she came out. I'm of the opinion they just should just keyword Oblivion Ring text as "jail". Jail a creature. Jail a permanent, Jail one thing for each player, etc. I use that shorthand colloquially in my draft games and it's much more elegant than trying to barf out a whole block of text for the current templating.
This is an interesting idea. Another benefit is that it would force them to sync up the disparate ways cards have accomplished the same effect historically, similar to what happened when they keyworded deathtouch
as a Brazilian, and I imagine Chinese players feel the same, it's painfully ironic to hear your conclusion mention the importance of precise translation, just as WotC decides we don't deserve to play in our native tongues anymore. regardless, great video as always, thank you!
This really saddened me also. I have a special connection to Magic in both those languages. The flavor text of Tectonic Edge was the first non-contrived Chinese sentence I was able to read. Likewise the flavor text of the original Spell Pierce was the first Portuguese sentence I could read. Losing both those languages in one day was a real punch in the gut for me.
For cards that have x players secretly choose a number or card and then reveal those choices, is there a rule against publicly stating what you are going to chose? Or to have any manner of discussion about the choices to potential sway player choices? This sounds like a stupid question but I curious if there are any actual rules behind that kind of card design.
That Alpha Hive text is absurd. If they had done more token makers in Alpha, maybe they could have included token creatures in the starter deck rulebook, but I can see why they didn't.
I was curious what the difference between triumph of ferocity and colossal majesty was in Japanese, since i can't even make a guess from the English and Japanese often explains things more clearly in card games imo. The Japanese text is even closer to identical between the two. The way the condition is written has a difference, but the part that would be equivalent to the same purpose of the word "if" is identical between the two. I'm very curious what the difference is because at least in Japanese i don't think it made it through translation
Oh, did a little more research and found the Japanese mtg wiki's page on templating. In the section on if clauses it explains the correct translation difference and specifically calls out Triumph of Ferocity as a card that failed to follow it.
I don't know of one. I wish I did when I was writing this script. The only reason I was able to come up with all those examples is because I was playing for a long time and I have a good memory.
I typically play with English cards, as do most of the people I know who play here (Luxembourg and previously Switzerland), but I have played prereleases where WotC dictated the language be German and have encountered a fair share of German and French cards (and accidentally bought bundles in German, oops) The templating leads to some weird sentences because German sentence construction is different from English, but they do a good job at translating the details and I have yet to encounter any real mistake there I'm far less fluent in French, but aside from vocabulary issues (éphémère=instant for example) the templating is familiar enough that I can follow what the cards mean Even manage to (mostly) understand cards in other romance languages to a degree, which came in useful when a guy passing through from Brazil showed up with his commander deck which was over half Portuguese
The translations are really consistent in French too. keywords (like when/whenever/at for triggered abilities) always have an equivalent in the french translations so you can apply the same rules to know which cards have a triggered ability for example. But sometimes, there are a few cards with an actual mistake in the translation (something that would change the way a card actually work). It's usually fixed in later printings, but it still means that some people will have a card with an effect that doesn't fit the text in French.
Of course, my first choice would have been to make it a supertype. They didn't want to let a supertype allow a card to have subtypes, but my counterargument is that all supertypes function differently so it wouldn't have been a big stretch.
Also, instant is not a noun. Tribal being an adjective at least makes sense because tribal was already the word the Magic community used to refer to creature types as a theme (e.g., elves tribal)
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There is something really powerful when a game can cleanly state "End the Turn."
It *can*, but I would bet most people who haven't encountered the card before wouldn't get it exactly right (without the reminder text). Exiling everything on the stack - including Time Stop itself - is far from intuitive, as is skipping the end step entirely.
I think, it's fine that it's not intuitive. "get over it", I'm a little concerned the desire to further reduce magic's Complexity and Reading Skill aspects. These have been elements of the game for a long time, and it is not a fault of the game that it encourages careful reading.
Would not have expected "ending the turn" to skip the end step
@@CodyEthanJordanthe end step is a part of the turn . .
Dead Ringers' text was so hilariously bad that the spanish version of it has an exclusive reminder text that tells you how the card works
The French version has a similar reminder text.
Détruisez deux créatures non-noires ciblées, à moins que l'une ait une couleur que l'autre n'a pas. Elles ne peuvent pas être régénérées.
>Normal text of Dead Ringers
(Les deux créatures doivent donc avoir exactement les mêmes couleurs, ou ne pas avoir de couleur, sinon elles ne sont pas détruites).
>Reminder text: (The two creatures must therefore have exactly the same colors, or not have any color, otherwise they are not destroyed)
EVERY language should have had reminder text on it. That was easily one of the worst templated cards ever made.
About the translation part... lots of spanish magic players are still pissed that 'remove' was translated as 'remover'. I'm supposed to take away counters from the card, not whisk them!
Sería más claro si dijera "quitar"? Soy de Chile y remover no lo usamos como batir o mezclar
@ quitar sería la palabra correcta
En colombia tampoco usamos remover asi, pero creo que estamos en la minoria porque muchos paises si lo usan como "batir"
interesting that you talk about this when we are getting a very big template change: "enters the battlefield" to just "enters"
Funnily about dead ringers, the french text has a reminder text explaining the intent : "(the two creatures must then either have exactly the same colors or be both colorless, else they aren't destroyed)"
I guess they already got word from english players about how confusing this was!
People who own the French/Spanish versions of this card, please scan them and send to Scryfall. People need to know about this!
0:23 Konami be like...
I've always wanted Dave to do an episode with judges from other games. Getting an in-depth comparison from each side would be fascinating.
I think this would be great. If anyone knows some judges from other card games who would be interested in this, definitely let me know!
As a person who watches Yu-Gi-Oh content on youtube, the person who most frequently comes to mind for Yu-Gi-Oh rulings in that sphere is Distantcoder, who makes semi regular videos breaking down new rulings and had a series where he invited on other Yu-Gi-Oh TH-camrs to try and answer ruling questions about their favorite decks.
@@Omnicrom Has DC actually worked at a large event? He's done ruling videos, but I don't know how if he's active in the Yugioh judge community.
@@randommaster06 He isn't a judge, no.
@@Omnicrom Whoever the judge was that issued Sam a game loss for the next match at the last YCS would be an interesting person to talk to.
In my own custom cards, I always like to put keywords in the order they matter, so for example, cycling, convoke, cascade, ravenous, echo, defender, flying, trample, hexproof, haunt, & flashback would always go in that order because they effect being in hand, casting, the stack, ETB, upkeep, declare attackers, declare blockers, combat damage, casting spells, LTB, & post-LTB in that order, but say, haste & vigilance could go in ether order because they both effect declare attackers
I believe the standard WotC way to do it is in the order they matter, with alphabetic order used as a tiebreaker.
Having been here before the stack and the Oracle itself, it's been a wild ride to see the changes over the years
Great googly moogly.... I remember banding as well 🤣
Thank you so much for this. The most important thing I do for work that is not in my job description is cleaning up after people who think "oh, username, account name, login name, same thing, isn't it" who look at me blankly when I tell them to just make the near-zero effort to use the phrases consistently. 😭
This is one of the important invisible things that grease entire workflows.
On the topic of translations - the german templating of magic cards are so much harder to parse than the english ones. For one, "target" is translated to "deiner Wahl", which means "of your choice", and there are a number of notorious cases where they've either forgot to add the "deiner Wahl" or added one where there shouldn't be one (for example on the original printing of Connive//Concoct), changing the way the card works sometimes drastically.
Another thing that pops up is that "permanent" and "permanent card" both used to have the same translation on german cards - "bleibende Karte". For the most part, context made clear what was meant, but an egregious example would be the sorcery Aether Helix, which combines both those wordings on the same card. Thankfully, that wording was finally changed with LCI, where they changed the translations to "Permanent" and "Permanent-Karte".
I love that they're turning "enters the battlefield" to "enters". It's so much cleaner!
I love that you mention the chess chunking experiment! Keep up the good work!
In regards to Colossal Majesty, the korean templating used to use a special wording for those cases. Triump of ferocity would say only "if", while Colossal Majesty says "if, and only if,"
There actually is a physical Magic card that has reminder text for banding -- it's Banding Sliver, from the Mystery Booster Playtest Cards! Great video btw.
Spells and abilities that tap permanents as a cost still unnecessarily specify that you need to tap "an untapped" permanent. Even today, I run into people who think that you can tap a permanent that is already tapped, due to this bad templating.
can you go further in this? this was so good! :D
My FAVORITE 250 page technical document. Haha man I love how deep into magic you are. Keep it up my friend!
Thank you so much for doing all of this extremely detailed and thoughtfully assembled rules content!!! You've helped me a great deal to understand a lot of rules interactions much more in depth!
Hi Dave.
Great video as always.
Thanks for taking the time to make these videos daily. Also, thank you for being really cool when I ran into you at Magicon Chicago even if I was a bit nervous/awkward.
This is very much like YGO's Problem-Solving Card Text! YGO is verbose but PSCT does a damn good job of being unambiguous (so long as you know how to read it) and consistent.
In fact this is exactly like PSCT. I wish I had been familiar with this concept when I was writing the script, because it would have been a great thing to include.
Great topic! I really think that Magic's templating is one of the reasons it's so successful. You couldn't have a game with 27,000 cards and a 250 page rulebook without it.
I actually didn't even notice that they no longer say what to shuffle, but it's great. It's not like you shuffle anything else.
I was hoping you where going full card analyst. It is a good point and why I like to dig into the comp rules these days. On the bigger side I was the one that came up with the look of "Flip Planewalker" for MSE2 for the custom magic community.
Strictly speaking, templating, its implications, and associations with past (and future!) cards is perhaps the largest portion of being an editor for Magic.
Its often an invisible job, until it isn't, for one reason or another. This felt like a thoughtful analysis of the topic.
#WOTCStaff
I've been playing Magic for over 20 years, and I've thought for a long time it's a shame the editors don't get as much recognition for their work as some of the more high profile jobs like artists or card designers. Which is a shame, because, as I mentioned in the video, Magic really does seem to have better editors than some other card games out there. Thank you for your hard work in making Magic what it is!
Its definitely nice to see how people adapt to changes, even if they may not like it. Looking back on it, can allow people to understand why it was compared to now.
The mechanical differences between the positionings of the if clause is something I regularly have to explain to newer players.
I was initially put off by the "enters" templating change, but then realized that "enters" is not a word used anywhere in the game other than "enters the battlefield", and additionally "is put into a graveyard from play" has already been changed to "dies", so simplifying "enters" just makes sense, in all honesty. I'll still probably call them ETBs for a long while, though. I still sometimes call it EDH.
The reminder text for banding does actually appear on the mystery booster playtest card Banding Sliver, but yeah it isn't anywhere else.
I confess I was not thinking on that level when I was writing this script
@@JudgingFtW fair enough
I loved this talk Judge Dave.
I love the 5 second shade thrown at Space Beleren... gods that set is an abomination
Since this is a discussion on templating, I’d like to take the opportunity to ask a question about similar formatting that could produce very different results.
Amy controls a Delney, Streetwise Lookout and an Ace, Fearless Rebel.
Amy attacks Nick with Ace and has two triggers to sacrifice an artifact. Amy sacrifices two artifacts to these triggers. How many counters does she put on Ace?
Amy controls a Delney, Streetwise Lookout and a Mastermind Plum.
Amy attacks Nick with mastermind Plum and exiles 2 artifacts from graveyards. How many treasure does she make?
(Assuming my understanding is correct, Ace gets 3 counters and Amy makes 2 treasure)
The 2 Treasure part makes sense, but I would think Ace gets either 2 or 4 counters, depending on whether or not Delney also doubles Ace's reflexive trigger.
@@JasonOshinko the reason it would be 3 IMO is that Ace attacks, and Delney creates a second trigger. The first trigger resolves, allowing Amy to sac an artifact. Ace then triggers again, and since he is still 2 power, it triggers a second time, putting 2 counters. When the second sac trigger goes to resolve, Ace is now a 4 power creature, so Delney won’t make another trigger, meaning that Ace gets 3 counters in total
Ace has a reflexive triggered ability so:
603.12. A resolving spell or ability may allow or instruct a player to take an action and create a triggered ability that triggers “when [a player] [does or doesn’t]” take that action or “when [something happens] this way.” These reflexive triggered abilities follow the rules for delayed triggered abilities (see rule 603.7), except that they’re checked immediately after being created and trigger based on whether the trigger event or events occurred earlier during the resolution of the spell or ability that created them.
Which takes us to:
603.7e If an activated or triggered ability creates a delayed triggered ability, the source of that delayed triggered ability is the same as the source of that other ability. The controller of that delayed triggered ability is the player who controlled that other ability as it resolved.
Therefore you are correct.
Amazing for a single take! Very impressive!
Great video Dave!
As someone who's working on templating for another game, thank you very much for this video. 😊
Be sure to send me an email if you need a consultant! I worked a similar job for another startup TCG, and it was really fun!
@@JudgingFtWoh my project isn't a card game, its gonna be a fighting game (with card-game style templating, as a first for a genre that normally has sloppy templating)
I have a question that I could not find a satisfactory answer for online.
The general question would be: How does copying an opponent's triggered abilities interact with intervening if clauses that one player meets but the other does not?
For a specific example, let's say Amy has seven lands in play and Bob has nine. Bob plays a Knight of the White Orchid, and Alice responds by playing an Aboleth Spawn. Will Amy get to search for a Plains and put it on the battlefield?
Then, Bob casts Tiamat, with Amy's Aboleth Spawn still on the battlefield. Does Amy get to search her library for up to five Dragon cards not named Tiamat?
Well, although WOTC localization team usually does a good job, in russian translations they messed up several times. Probably the biggest I remember is KHC Nullmage Shepherd. In russian he is translated as "Изгоняющий пастырь", which is literally translated as "Exiling Shepherd". And so, his localized version of this ability exiles artifacts and enchantments, instead of destroying them.
But its' old russian printing from RAV actually destroys permanents.
I guess powercreep is real
UPD: typos
My favorite rules are anything that starts with "one card".
I have a friend getting into MtG playing Standard on Arena, and explaining to him the distinction between Elas Il-Kor, Dreadhound, Vein Ripper and Vraan, Executioner Thane's templatings has been hilarious for me, frustrating for him.
Good video. The templating change I want the most (after changing EtB to enters, hurray) is changing "" to "this". Can you think of any reasons why writing out the cardname would be clearer? I've only ever seen it occasionally lead to confusion with people thinking they get two copies of an enters effect if they already control a copy of the same creature.
My guess is (a) using the card's name, especially for legendary permanents improves the flavor experience and (b) it might lead to awkward-to-read English sentences. E.g., "...when you sacrifice this this way,"
The bad part about all the keywords and shortcuts is that people simply dont know what it actually means and they consistently play it wrong when it matters, as nothing even hints to them they do it wrong.
Stuff like "dies" and why non-creatures dont use the word "dies" is fairly annoying, as we also have leaves play triggers and the like and people just mix them up all the time.
Then we get increasingly more keywords that cramp a lot of rules and hide them from the player.
Planeswalker themselves had a bunch of rules with them that are not intuitive at all.
Sagas, when they trigger and the tricks you can do with them (like last trigger on the stack, sacrifice it in response, or remove the last counter to keep it in play).
Dungeons, Initiative ... horrendously overblown in complexity, you cant play the cards out of the box as you dont have the extra cards at hand and the card doesnt tell you at all what it means.
Timing restrictions like sorcery speed for Equip are rules baggage as well, the card could be more explicit about it.
Some things work much more intuitive, things like indestructible do exactly what they claim to do, prevent "destruction" (destroy) effects, and not anything else.
Flying is the best keyword ever as its the most intuitive of them all.
With Thunder junction we get "crime" and that is also not intuitive at all and silly on top of that (some might even feel uncomfortable to commit a crime, its just not a good word to have in a card game as a key mechanic).
Defining zones with names is fine, exile was a good change to "outside the game" , as naming zones makes it cleaner to understand what it means in the game.
Shortening text just for the sake of shortening it and then push more text on the cards is not a good trend, Magic cards today have way too much text, and especially non-intuitive abilities like the sneaky "reach" they put on cards you wouldnt except to have reach at all (its totally intuitive on spiders and archers, as they consistently did it, till they started to print spiders without reach, which was a total failure to do).
Cards should explain enough that people can play with them out of the box and if necessary a booster should have rules hint cards (or the backside of the tokens) that explain the sets mechanics ... and if you cant fit the rules on such a space, you know its too long and too much.
Someone having trouble with "committing a crime" in a fictional game? The same game with a card called "murder"?
This is why the right hates us on the left
And tragically wotc stopped printing cards in Chinese while Chinese players are still showing up at tournaments 😢
To me, this, along with card types working the way they do, is why Magic is as good as it is. Not to disparage other games, but I came from Yugioh, which doesn't have a templating team, and so everything must be written on every card, and it becomes a nightmare.
In Magic, "deals damage", "deals combat damage", "loses life", and "pays life" are all distinct mechanics, and so you can make 4 nearly identical versions of the same card and they all play very differently.
yes, but I don't think there's any instances where an effect of a card could be written in a way that works with all four of those, the wording would have to change pretty significantly just between "Deals Combat Damage" and "Pays Life".
@@thejackscraft3472 if I wanted to craft cards that actually did this identically but for the specific life lessening effect, I'd probably do it was "when a player is", so when a player is dealt combat damage, when a player loses life, when a player pays life, when a player is dealt damage, do blah blah blah.
@@CHoustonify as far as I can find, there are no cards that trigger a off of a player paying life, so that isn't a thing. And in the case of making exactly the same card but with those specific wordings, the one that states "Loses life" would completely encompass all the others, as the other three all cause loss of life, so you'd be making one card with three explicitly worse variants.
YGO's PSCT is templating. It's far more verbose than magic for sure but it has a tremendous amount of effort put into its consistency
Font of Agonies triggers when you pay life.
What about cards that have added more text over time? For example, threshold cards, where it's gone from reminder text to actually explained in the ability on the card
Do you have a video on the difference of the "if" in Triumph of Ferocity and Colossal Majesty?
I'm taking a stab but I'm pretty sure it's that one effect puts "draw a card" on the stack if the condition is met and resolves regardless of whether that changes after activation while the other puts "if condition is met then draw" on the stack, which checks for the conditions at resolution
My guess is that ferocity is the former and colossal is the latter
I would love if you could go into the nuances of magic in other languages, it seems fascinating. Thanks for the great videos!!
In a couple years that won't be relevant anymore, the way wotc is dropping translations.
Really good video, thanks for the special clip!
Awesome video! I'm new around here, and confused about how the location of the if-clause between Triumph of Ferocity and Colossal Majesty affects gameplay (10:48). Is there a video that explains this?
I did a quick search through the channel's video archive and didn't see those titles mentioned, but let me know if anyone can point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it. Thank you!
Hi Dave,
It was a pleasure seeing you at Magic Con Chicago.
I am in a commander game with 3 other players and cast Rise of the Dark Realms. On the next turn, Zach casts Insurrection. He defeats myself and one other player. Thanks to Insurrection he controls player 4's creature after I controlled it. Where does that creature go at the end of turn? To its owner, or does it remain under Zach's control?
I have a topic for a video. Yesterday I was thinking of Umori and Roaming Throne. And I was curious if Umori's etb would be doubled
I’m not fond of the “add”/“enters” changes simply because it doesn’t make much intuitive sense to read - add it WHERE? Enters WHERE?
Lagrella was such a headache when she came out. I'm of the opinion they just should just keyword Oblivion Ring text as "jail". Jail a creature. Jail a permanent, Jail one thing for each player, etc. I use that shorthand colloquially in my draft games and it's much more elegant than trying to barf out a whole block of text for the current templating.
This is an interesting idea. Another benefit is that it would force them to sync up the disparate ways cards have accomplished the same effect historically, similar to what happened when they keyworded deathtouch
I agree. Legends of Runeterra has "capture" as a keyword that works basically the same as o-ring effects. It's clean.
as a Brazilian, and I imagine Chinese players feel the same, it's painfully ironic to hear your conclusion mention the importance of precise translation, just as WotC decides we don't deserve to play in our native tongues anymore.
regardless, great video as always, thank you!
This really saddened me also. I have a special connection to Magic in both those languages. The flavor text of Tectonic Edge was the first non-contrived Chinese sentence I was able to read. Likewise the flavor text of the original Spell Pierce was the first Portuguese sentence I could read. Losing both those languages in one day was a real punch in the gut for me.
@@JudgingFtW that's a really nice story, tho. what printing of spell pierce?
Does it really save money on ink? Ink is still being laid out on the card regardless of text.
For cards that have x players secretly choose a number or card and then reveal those choices, is there a rule against publicly stating what you are going to chose? Or to have any manner of discussion about the choices to potential sway player choices? This sounds like a stupid question but I curious if there are any actual rules behind that kind of card design.
More more more of this!
That Alpha Hive text is absurd. If they had done more token makers in Alpha, maybe they could have included token creatures in the starter deck rulebook, but I can see why they didn't.
I was curious what the difference between triumph of ferocity and colossal majesty was in Japanese, since i can't even make a guess from the English and Japanese often explains things more clearly in card games imo.
The Japanese text is even closer to identical between the two. The way the condition is written has a difference, but the part that would be equivalent to the same purpose of the word "if" is identical between the two.
I'm very curious what the difference is because at least in Japanese i don't think it made it through translation
Oh, did a little more research and found the Japanese mtg wiki's page on templating. In the section on if clauses it explains the correct translation difference and specifically calls out Triumph of Ferocity as a card that failed to follow it.
7:48 And then they made Mutate. Which is infinitely more confusing.
Is there a good way to see a list of all these wordy old template cards? I feel like it would make for a funny low power edh deck.
I don't know of one. I wish I did when I was writing this script. The only reason I was able to come up with all those examples is because I was playing for a long time and I have a good memory.
This works with “end turn” but fails at “enters”
"When ~ enters, do x" really doesnt sound right to me. Its like my version of english doesnt hear that as a proper sentence.
"how many cards can we fit on a card".
I typically play with English cards, as do most of the people I know who play here (Luxembourg and previously Switzerland), but I have played prereleases where WotC dictated the language be German and have encountered a fair share of German and French cards (and accidentally bought bundles in German, oops)
The templating leads to some weird sentences because German sentence construction is different from English, but they do a good job at translating the details and I have yet to encounter any real mistake there
I'm far less fluent in French, but aside from vocabulary issues (éphémère=instant for example) the templating is familiar enough that I can follow what the cards mean
Even manage to (mostly) understand cards in other romance languages to a degree, which came in useful when a guy passing through from Brazil showed up with his commander deck which was over half Portuguese
The translations are really consistent in French too. keywords (like when/whenever/at for triggered abilities) always have an equivalent in the french translations so you can apply the same rules to know which cards have a triggered ability for example.
But sometimes, there are a few cards with an actual mistake in the translation (something that would change the way a card actually work). It's usually fixed in later printings, but it still means that some people will have a card with an effect that doesn't fit the text in French.
Yay
Strixhaven came out 3 years ago. Is that really pretty recent? You be the judge.
It is recent compared to most of the major template changes we've seen.
bro. we are like the exact same flavor of mtg nerd 😂 i think we just wanna read books while we play games yanno
Card types are almost all nouns, so Tribal should have been named something else. At least they fixed it with Kindred.
Of course, my first choice would have been to make it a supertype. They didn't want to let a supertype allow a card to have subtypes, but my counterargument is that all supertypes function differently so it wouldn't have been a big stretch.
I’m only familiar with kindred as an adjective. What does it mean as a noun?
Also, instant is not a noun. Tribal being an adjective at least makes sense because tribal was already the word the Magic community used to refer to creature types as a theme (e.g., elves tribal)