Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 01:47:10 -0700 From: Beth Moursund Subject: [O] The August rulings August 1997 Magic Rulings & Errata A Summary of Recent, Significant Rulings compiled by Tom Wylie General Rules The following are meant to clarify the rulebook, and how the game in general works. 1) Questions sometimes arise about cards that will be affected by continuous abilities as they come into play, and those cards' interaction with triggered abilities. The most recent example is the interaction of Living Lands, Kormus Bell, and so on with AEther Flash. Do the continuous abilities of Living Lands and so forth cause lands to be creatures in time for AEther Flash's ability to trigger and deal 2 damage to them? The answer is essentially the same as before: A card comes into play without the effects of continuous abilities that will apply to it once it's in play. Therefore, triggered abilities that check against a card coming into play ignore continuous abilities that will modify it once it's in play. For example, if Living Lands is in play, it doesn't cause forests coming into play to trigger abilities that look for creatures coming into play, such as AEther Flash's. However, abilities that trigger when something enters play will take into account any abilities or effects that modify specifically how something comes into play. For example, Kismet causes permanents to come into play tapped, so those permanents would trigger a hypothetical "Whenever a tapped permanent comes into play" ability. As another example, if a card similar to Living Lands existed that read, "All forests come into play as 1/1 creatures," it would cause forests to trigger AEther Flash's ability. Copy cards also fall into this category, because they come into play as whatever they copy (rather than copying once they are actually in play), so abilities trigger on the characteristics of what's being copied, not the original characteristics of the copy card. All of the above applies equally to tokens coming into play. 2) Last month's rules team release (July 1997) eliminated as much of the delay of triggered abilities as possible. For example, if an ability triggers during an event of an effect's resolution, it is played immediately after that event, rather than waiting until after the effect has finished resolving. This change now applies to damage prevention as well. For example, if an effect's resolution has two events, and any damage is assigned during the first event, the resulting damage prevention step occurs before the second event resolves. As before, if an event leads to both triggered abilities and damage prevention, the triggered abilities are played first. Effects triggered by general game rules rather than by game events (for example, burying an enchantment whose target is illegal, or destroying a creature whose toughness drops too low) are also played immediately following each event. Such rules only check the state of the game at the time the event is over, ignoring what happened during the event. For example, whether a creature is destroyed due to lethal damage is determined by its toughness after the event, regardless of whether its toughness had been lower during the event. These effects, which players sometimes call "rules-triggered effects," are handled before triggered abilities. So if a creature's toughness drops to 0 during an event, but goes back above 0 later on during the same event, it won't be destroyed by lethal damage (unless, of course, it had sufficient damage already). 3) The concept of damage "packets" is being changed. If a source deals more than 1 damage, no single packet of damage listing the total amount of damage is generated. Instead, each 1 damage records all the characteristics and controller of its source separately, and is prevented or redirected separately. The practical impact of this change is minimal. The characteristics and controller of the source still "lock in" when the damage is assigned. Spells and abilities that prevent more than 1 damage, such as Healing Salve, now must prevent each 1 damage separately rather than in larger chunks. Effects that redirect damage now prevent and create individual "points" of damage, not packets of damage, but otherwise these effects work the same. Abilities that trigger whenever a source assigns damage still trigger based on the total amount of damage assigned, not once for each 1 damage. Thus, the primary impact of the change is make clearer what happens when a source assigns damage to a creature or player, the source's characteristics and/or controller change, and then the source assigns damage to that creature or player again, all within a single event. But because this virtually never comes up during play, the change is primarily theoretical. 4) Last month's rules team release (July 1997) changed the rule about dividing an effect's resolution into separate events. Specifically, an effect is divided up only around the word "then"-not around periods and the word "and." This is the only basis for deciding how effects are divided into events. For example, it isn't necessarily true that each repetition of repetitive process, such in the cases of Mana Clash and Forbidden Ritual, will be its own event; to determine this, look for the presence or absence of "then" in the card text. 5) Virtually eliminating the delay for triggered abilities generated a question about abilities that trigger when a creature attacks, blocks, or is blocked by another: "Shouldn't such abilities be played after the (attacking or blocking) step is over?" Rather than trying to develop a set of rules for exactly when triggered abilities of various types are played during combat, we've decided to streamline the "declare attackers" and "declare blockers" steps. Each of these two steps consists of a series of spells and abilities that can be played at that time, followed by declaring all attackers or blockers at once, followed by another series of spells and abilities that can be played at that time. Thus, declaring all attackers and declaring all blockers are each single events that will trigger abilities that trigger when a creature attacks (or doesn't attack), blocks (or doesn't block), or is blocked (or isn't blocked). Streamlining these steps simplifies other rules pertaining to declaring attackers and blockers. For example, it should now be obvious that any declaration of attackers or blockers must consist of an entirely legal attack or defense, as opposed to the player being trusted to flesh out the attack or defense later on. Also, all banding decisions are simply made when attackers are declared-they don't need to wait until a later time. 6) A declared attack is illegal if any creatures required to attack are excluded that could've been legally added to the declared attack. However, the attacking player isn't strictly required to declare as many creatures required to attack as possible before declaring other attackers. For example, if a player controls one creature enchanted with Errantry and six creatures required to attack, that player can attack with solely the creature enchanted with Errantry, leaving the other creatures at home. As another example, if a player's Orcish Conscripts is required to attack, that player isn't flatly required to attack with it and at least two other creatures, but if the player does attack with at least two other creatures, the Conscripts also attack if able. 7) Previously it was ruled that if part of an effect triggered on a certain condition, and that condition had been met between the time the ability was played and the time its effect resolved, then that part of the ability triggered immediately. This rule has been eliminated. Triggered portions of an effect won't start checking on their trigger condition until that event of the effect has resolved. For example, the effect Phantasmal Mount's ability includes "If either Phantasmal Mount or the targeted creature leaves play this turn, bury the other." If the targeted creature leaves play before the total effect tries to resolve (the creature gaining flying and +1/+1 until end of turn), it obviously fizzles. If Phantasmal Mount leaves play before the effect resolves, the targeted creature won't be buried as a result, because the trigger condition was met prior to resolution of the effect. 8) Previously it was ruled that if part of an effect lasts only as long as one or more conditions are true, then that part of effect begins and ends immediately if one or more of those conditions isn't true. This ruling has been changed so that the relevant portion of the effect never even begins if the "as long as" condition is no longer true. For example, Seasinger's second ability reads, "Gain control of target creature [. . .] as long as you control Seasinger and Seasinger remains tapped." Now, if at the time the effect resolves you don't control Seasinger and/or if she is untapped, you never gain control of the creature at all, whereas before you would've gained control of it briefly and then handed it right back. The same principle applies to effects that last only as long as one or more conditions are false. 9) Effects that prevent instants from being played prevent spells and abilities of the type "instant" from being played, regardless of how they are being played. For example, an effect that prevents instants from being played will stop Healing Salve (type instant) even though it is played as damage prevention; that same effect won't stop Hydroblast (an interrupt), even when it's played as an instant. This principle extends to the various other types of spells and abilities. As another example, an effect that prevents enchantments from being played would prevent Armor of Thorns from being played as an instant, because Armor of Thorns's card type reads, "enchant creature." Note that phase abilities and phase costs are distinct types of abilities-they don't count as type "instant," though they are played as instants.