The Magic School #1: Copying and...Copying.

I finally have a moment to get a few questions put in for the first edition of The Magic School. Today I'm looking at copy effects and how they'll resolve properly.

CREDITS: These questions come from www.mtgsalvation.com and its Cranial Insertion section, either in whole or in part. The way I answer, though, is my own doing.


The first question concerns situations like enchanting a Mountain with Crusher Zendikon and copying it/getting token copies somehow like with a kicked Rite of Replication. What do you get: just copies of the land, or do you get multiple Zendikons for your copying efforts?

ANSWER: Sorry, you "just" get 4 additional lands.

When a card says to copy or "put a token that's a copy...onto the battlefield", it only gets the copiable (pronounced like "Copy-able") values of the card it's trying to copy.

So what are copiable values? From the Comprehensive Rules:

"706.2. When copying an object, the copy acquires the copiable values of the original object’s characteristics and, for an object on the stack, choices made when casting or activating it (mode, targets, the value of X, whether it was kicked, how it will affect multiple targets, and so on). The “copiable values” are the values derived from the text printed on the object (that text being name, mana cost, card type, subtype, supertype, expansion symbol, rules text, power, toughness, and/or loyalty), as modified by other copy effects, by “as . . . enters the battlefield” and “as . . . is turned face up” abilities that set characteristics, and by abilities that caused the object to be face down. Other effects (including type-changing and text-changing effects), status, and counters are not copied."

So what is that saying in layman's terms?

If you have a permanent being copied, you only get what the original card was printed with.
If you have a spell being copied, you get the spell's original effects along with any additional effects tacked on while on the stack and all choices made for that spell (like how much was paid for X, what the targets for that spell are, which effect(s) you chose when you're able to choose between a number of effects, etc.)

So in this case, we're copying a permanent: Mountain.

What can we copy when it comes to a Mountain? Not a lot. The copied card will have all printed characteristics, so we'll get a token that looks like this:

Mountain
Basic Land - Mountain
(Token)

Notice there's no "Basic Land Creature - Beast" or "4/2" or anything from the Crusher Zendikon? We're only concerned with copiable values; that is, the printed values on the card we're targeting.

As a quick aside, this is true for any "manland" (a land that you can turn into a creature). When you copy a "manland", you only get what's printed. For example, copying an "animated" (land turned into a creature) Celestial Colonnade, here's what you'll get:

Celestial Colonnade
Land
Celestial Colonnade enters the battlefield tapped.
TAP: Add W or U to your mana pool.
3WU: Until end of turn, Celestial Colonnade becomes a 4/4 white and blue Elemental creature with flying and vigilance. It's still a land.
(Token)

Notice I didn't give the token 4/4 or flying or vigilance or a creature type? That's because Celestial Colonnade wasn't printed with those on it. It was printed as a land with an ability that lets it become a creature.


So as a slight segue into the next question: If my opponent just cast a Comet Storm and paid a total of 7 colorless: 4 went for X (so 4 damage to anything he targets), and 3 toward Multikicker and choosing myself and 2 of my creatures. He only has one creature. I Twincast his Comet Storm. What all happens now, assuming I make the strategically best choices?

ANSWER: First, technically a judge should never answer strategy questions, so if you're at a tournament be sure to ask EXACTLY what you mean when you have a question.

But I'm not an official judge, so I get to help you out.  :)


So look back at the copiable values rule. I'll copy-and-paste the appropriate section:
"When copying an object, the copy acquires the copiable values of the original object’s characteristics and, for an object on the stack, choices made when casting or activating it (mode, targets, the value of X, whether it was kicked, how it will affect multiple targets, and so on)."

So what's copiable on Comet Storm?
1) The original text that lets you deal X damage to a target and, if mulitkicker was paid, deal X damage to an additional target.
2) The value for X, which here is 4.
3) The multikicker target choices, which are you and your 2 creatures.

Normally, you'd have just screwed yourself over since the targets are set in stone. But luckily, Twincast and most other "copy target spell" effects let you change targets!

So you'll be able to deal 4 damage to up to 3 targets of your choosing (remember, this is thanks to Twincast's effect letting you change the targets). But strategically-speaking, you've only got 2 good targets: Your opponent and his lone creature.

So your best course of action is to deal 4 damage to your opponent, 4 damage to his creature (assuming it's not Stuffy Doll of course!), and 4 damage to one of your creatures already being targeted by your opponent's Comet Storm. Yeah, it sucks, but it still gets to hurt your opponent which is what you were wanting to do with Twincast anyway.


I'm going to keep this one short because copying effects are pretty tricky and I don't want to mess you up too much with other issues (that and I'm already late on delivering something in the form of new content so I figure something good would be better than a lot of small and relatively weak stuff). We'll delve into more rules issues next week when I'll have some time for sure to deliver something a lot better.

Until then, take care! And we hope to see you for the Master of Commander tournament Saturday.

Breaking News: School Sucks. More At 11.

School's biting into my time hard lately, so no updates today. Maybe Friday? We'll see! If I get a chance to do updates, it'll be alot at one time.

Catch you then!

New Feature: The Magic School

We all know how complicated a game of Magic can get. We've got the basic rules, the Comprehensive Rules, Card Set FAQs that can modify the Comprehensive Rules, errata that changes how a card works, M10-style rules changes that affect the game on a massive scale...it's a ton to keep up with.

Which is why I'm going to start a new feature here that hopefully everyone can learn from.

On Wednesdays or sooner, I'm going to start The Magic School. The Magic School will bring together a few interesting rules questions from either situations that came up at SMM or questions I've read online and answer them using the Comprehensive Rules, various set FAQs, or maybe even just a refresher of the basic rules in some cases.

I hope to get the premiere edition set up and ready for Wednesday. Please comment on it and help me make it interesting, getting questions you want answered, or anything else you think will help the section.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll stop by Wednesday for the first edition of The Magic School!

No Updates...At Least, Not Yet

I said I'd update on the Pro Tour before the weekend's out.

...Not too much luck there.

I do have some quick recaps I'll expand on throughout the week.

1) Luis Scott-Vargas (affectionately also known simply as LSV) was 17-0 with his new Naya deck combined with a strong ZEN-ZEN-WWK draft showing before being beat by Jund in the Semifinals. LSV set a new record for most consecutive match wins; the previous record was 14-0 before that player lost in the Quarterfinals of Pro Tour - Tokyo (not too sure of names and dates/events, but I do remember the record being 14-0).

2) Jund won....again. I mean, how much skill does it take to win with Putrid Leach, Bloodbraid Elf, Bituminous Blast, and Lightning Bolt, plus the new manlands Raging Ravine and Lavaclaw Reaches?

3) Stoneforge Mystic, which I talked about just a couple posts down? Remember I said it was $1.50 - $2 each before Pro Tour - San Diego? And that it went up to $4-$5? Try $8-$10!! If you stocked up before Friday, you made huge money!

4) Jace, the Persuasion Master seems to be stuck in a rut. 3 copies in the Top 8 at last weekend's Grand Prix (Extended format), 3 copies in the Top 8 at last weekend's PTQ (Legacy), and as I was hoping Gabriel Nassif and his buddies would Top 8 at Pro Tour - San Diego we still ended up with only 3 Neo-Jace in the Top 8. And one Legacy side event at the Pro Tour? 3 Neo-Jaces in the Top 8. *sigh* At some point, good ol' fashioned Control will be back at the top, and this Jace will shine in the Pro Tour limelight. I tell ya what, though...at least it's a good rut to be in.


That's the quick update for everyone! As I get to watch the Top 8 video I'll post more impressions. Until then, hope you have a good day and catch you later! I hope you've enjoyed this so far.

"Master of Commander" Tournament 2/27 NEXT WEEK

EDIT: When you come in Saturday, use the main church entrance to come in. There's a small hallway beside the chapel area that leads to a library. That's where we'll be.

If you read the first post of this blog, you know part of its purpose is to keep you informed of our attempts to set up tournaments for more casual players in the Hixson, TN area.

So here's a tournament for that crowd!


A couple of us here have wanted to try a 2-player version of EDH/Commander since we found the format. So we've basically taken the EDH/Commander rules and put them into a tournament for next week.


"Master of Commander" Tournament Rules

A. Deckbuliding

1. Singleton: Your deck can only have 1 copy of any card that's not a basic land or Relentless Rats.

2. 100 cards: Your deck must have 100 cards in it, counting your eventual Commander.

3. Legendary Creature as your Commander: As part of your 100 card Singleton deck, you must have at least 1 Legendary Creature in the 100 cards you use. You'll pick 1 Legendary Creature in your deck to be your Commander.
      *Braids, Cabal Minion and Kokusho, the Evening Star are banned from being Commanders. (You'll see why later in the rules)
      *As a matter of simiplicity, you may only designate 1 Legendary Creature as your Commander for the whole tournament; if you have multiple Legendary creatures, you cannot switch out which one is your Commander between games/matches.

4. No Cards Off-Color from Your Commander's: You may only use colorless cards and cards that share a color(s) of the Commander you end up using in order to pick the cards for your deck.
      * Hybrid and Split cards count as all their colors. So for example, if you use Agrus Kos, Wojeck Veteran (3RW mana cost) and want to use Marisi's Twinclaws in your deck, you're out of luck because Twinclaws is a Red, White, and Green creature, whereas Agrus Kos is only a Red and White creature.
      * EXAMPLES: If you use Sliver Queen, you may use any card you like as they'll all share a color with your Queen. If you use Wrexial, the Risen Deep you are confined to Blue and/or Black cards and/or colorless cards in your deck (i.e.: your cards cannot have White, Red, and/or Green in their mana costs).

B. Gameplay Rules

5. Commander in the Command Zone: Before each game, you'll take 1 Legendary Creature in your deck and put it in the "Command Zone." This is like a "really really removed from play" zone in that nothing can target that area and it's not considered to be an in-play area.

6. Summoning your Commander: You can cast your Commander at any time you could normally cast a creature (Flash abilities notwithstanding) by paying your Commander's mana cost.

7. Commanders don't "die" per-se: If your Commander would end up in your Graveyard or Exiled, you may instead move it back to the Command Zone. (so in a sense, your Commander never "dies").

8. Additional Payment after Death and "Resurrection": Each time your Commander is "resurrected" (sent back to the Command Zone), you have to pay 2 additional colorless mana to cast it for each time it's been sent back. So a General that normally costs 3RW would instead cost 5RW the first time it's "resurrected", then 7RW the second time, 9RW the third, etc.).
    * Just because a Commander is destroyed, exiled, etc., doesn't mean it stops being a Commander.

9. Mana Production Rules: You can only produce colorless mana or mana of the colors of your Commander only. Any mana produced that's not in your Commander's colors instead makes Colorless mana for that color.
    * EXAMPLE: Bartel Runeaxe (3BRG) is your Commander. You use an Orzhov Signet to try to make 1 Black and 1 White mana. You'll get the Black mana just fine since Bartel is Black, but because Bartel Runeaxe isn't White you'll get a single Colorless mana for the White portion, netting you 1B (1 Colorless + 1 Black) instead of WB (1 White + 1 Black).

10. Instant Loss Rule: If you're dealt more than 20 points of combat damage by a single Commander, you lose the game, no matter your life total.
    *Think of this like Poison, except it requires 21 counters instead of 10 and that 1 point of combat damage = 1 counter.

11. Specific Ban List: Commander does have its own separate ban list, found here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/100cardsingleton-commander
    * Any Legendary creature on that list is only banned from being a Commander; for example, you may use Kokusho, the Evening Star in your 100-card deck, but you can't use it as your Commander.

12. Clarifications:     * The Legend Rule does apply to Commanders.
     * No abilities of your Commander are active while in the Command Zone; the only time you get the benefits will be when your Commander is on the battlefield (or in the graveyard if it has a "while this is in the graveyard"-type ability, of course.

Aside from the ban list for Commander itself, we'll use the Legacy banned/restricted list.

We charge $2 for every Constructed tournament, and this will be no different. Prizes will be pack splits of Worldwake. ("Pack Split" is us taking a pack(s) of cards, opening the contents, and spreading them out on a table. The winner gets first choice of cards, second place gets second pick, and so on.)

Let us know what you think about these rules, what needs to be changed, if certain cards needs to be banned, and all of that. I usually ban auto-win/auto-loss cards, but I slipped a bit on remembering to do that so they're legal for this tournament.

We hope to see you next Saturday for this exciting format!

Initial Pro Tour - San Diego Card Updates

So we're into the first day of the Standard format Pro Tour - San Diego and we're already seeing breakout cards from Worldwake making a big splash.

First off...

Stoneforge Mystic was a sleeper. Sitting around $1.50 to $2, she's doubled to tripled in the span of one night to $4-$5. Why? In Extended, she's used to search up the Umezawa's Jitte you need to win; Brian David-Marshall was also talking about a G/W deck that used Chord of Calling to search up a Stoneforge Mystic at the end of a turn to get SoFI (Sword of Fire and Ice) so that next turn all the player needs to do is equip SoFI to a creature and attack. She's a two-mana Equipment searcher, and used with the right Equipment she's dangerous. In essence, ignore her 1/2 stats since you don't care about her as a creature but rather as another efficient White tutor. :)

Basilisk Collar is getting a bit of attention too, but so far it seems to have been priced about right since release at $4-$5. Basilisk Collar is the popular Standard format target for the Mystic, effectively making any creature into a Vampire Nighthawk.


Next is talk of the "Donate on legs", Bazaar Trader.

 

 "Seriously? WTF!? I mean, he's a 1/1 for 2 mana. He needs to do something better."

He does. He permanently takes control of opponent's creatures.

"Say WHAT!?"

It's true. Take Mark of Eviciont or Act of Treason.

So let's say your opponent's Baneslayer Angel is getting you down. You played Bazaar Trader last turn. You can deal with it. How? Cast Act of Treason/Mark of Mutiny, targetting Baneslayer Angel. The Angel is now under your control. Now TAP Bazaar Trader, letting "target player", that's you, take control of the Baneslayer Angel you now control. Congraulations! You just gained permanent control of Baneslayer Angel! Bazaar Trader's effect doesn't last until end of turn, so it's now under your control for the rest of the game. :)

This isn't the only interaction going on with Bazaar Trader. The obvious is Abyssal Persecutor. Get your opponent down to 0 or fewer life, then just switch control of Persecutor to your opponent and BAM! You win.

How about going as far back as Shards of Alara? Remember that "crap Rare" Immortal Coil? Yeah, Bazaar Trader's seeing a bit of play with that, too. "Go ahead, take my Immortal Coil. Lightning Bolt for 3...oh no! You don't have enough cards in your graveyard. GG!"

Finally, how about a sleeper? One that's been sleeping since Time Spiral...

And they said Counterspell was the best counterspell around...

Seriously, it is seeing play. Gabriel Nassif's playing a new U/W deck and some of his main decked cards are indeed Cancel, Counterspell's replacement. Some players were going "For 3? No way! I'll use [insert popular counterspell of the time here] instead! That's bull****!"

....

So who actually stepped into that pile of bull****?

That's a quick rundown of some of the bigger cards I've heard are being played pretty heavily at Pro Tour - San Diego. I'll post another update or two before the weekend ends, along with impressions after the Finals Sunday night. Until then, take care and we hope to see you around soon either here or IRL!

EDIT: I'm using card pictures from magiccards.info, which I believe to be 1000 times faster and better than Gatherer. Give them a try and see if you don't agree. They also include a price guide of sorts so if you see a card you like you can get a rough idea of what it's worth thanks to the online stores who stock those cards and are effectively advertising their stores on this search engine.

Worldwake Draft Results

Last Saturday was our Worldwake "Release" Draft day. I tell you, the set is popular! Counting the draft pile, we went through a whole box in just a few hours. We didn't get any Jaces but we saw 4 Mythics (Comet Storm; Novablast Wurm; Wrexial, the Risen Deep; and Abyssal Persecutor) and all but 1 of the manlands (we doubled up on Ravaging Ravine) so I'd call it a decent box.

After we got off our new card craziness we got going with the draft. Of course, I let the players keep one Rare they opened but the rest have to go to the prize pool. Right off the bat, Damon started laughing and wrote his rare down. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it was Abyssal Persecutor. This naturally put him into a mostly black deck. The rest of of were unsure how well our decks would work (we're not pros here, ya know!) so we were just taking the best we could get.

As I got my first few picks I was hopeful I had recruited enough fliers and Calcite Snappers to be okay on the offense, so I went W/U with two manlands: Lavaclaw Reaches and Celestial Colonnade. Man, was the Lavaclaw Reaches the WRONG thing to do! I figured I would have had enough land search/deck thinning to get to my splashed Mountain and Swamp, but each time I'd have rather had a Plains or Island than them. Needless to say, each Game 2 I swapped out the Mountain, Swamp, and Lavaclaw Reaches for a couple Islands and a Plains.

Match 1 was against Damon's U/B Persecutor build. What hurt me was every time he stuck Persecutor he won; all he had to do was bounce Persecutor to his hand after I was in negatives for the win. The combination of a 6/6 with Flying and Trample was just too much for me. Even with the fliers I had, I couldn't absorb enough damage and deal it to kill the Persecutor. Wrexial, the Risen Deep sealed the game in his favor Game 1. Game 2 I got a fast start with some early fliers and an Enclave Elite guaranteed I could outrun him to the finish. Game 3 was Persecutor winning, but barely with a score of 10-9 when time was called. (Our tiebreaker is to finish the current turn and check life totals. Higher life total wins the match if it's Game 1 or 3. For Game 2 matches, the Game 1 winner wins. Most of this is a time issue, as we don't have a lot of time to finish up our tournaments.). One of the games I did get Goliath Sphinx out, but it just wasn't enough and either met a bounce spell or was killed blocking a Persecutor.

We do a "double elimination" of sorts with our tournaments. We play one round, separate the losers and winners, and basically run two tournaments the rest of the way: one for the first-round losers and one for the first-round winners. This way we're all guaranteed at least two matches during each tournament. So I got...

Match 2: My U/W Fliers vs. Mick's G/R Burn/Aggro Allies
We only did one game here, so the match came down to the winner of this getting 4th place (out of 5 players. Yeah, not a lot, but it's still a lot of fun!). I started off pretty early with Basilisk Collar and some 2- and 3-mana fliers. I kept attacking for 2 while Mick was building up.  I eventually got Lightkeeper of Emeria, so I effectively turned an Uncommon 3/3 into a bigger Vampire Nighthawk. The game kind of stalled life-wise for me: I'd attack and gain 3, he'd attack and take 3-4 out of me at a time. He ended up getting a Graypelt Hunter up to 10/4 through its own effect and Claws of Valakut. A few attacks there would have dealt the death blow but he kept holding back on it. I really think Mick had the match well in hand but maybe tiredness got the best of him? I won a game I shouldn't have, but it was interesting fighting around all he had.

I ended up 1-1 out of 2 matches in 4th, but I got to take home a Wrexial, the Risen Deep; Celestial Colonnade; a foil Bajuka Bog; and a few other cards I can't remember right now. That's not too bad for $9. ;)

Our winners, their places, and the type of decks they played:
1st: Damon, U/B
2nd: Wayne Eanes, ?? (memory's shot. Sorry!)
3rd: Tiff Higgins, G/W Beatdown
4th: Preston Hamill (aka The Loveable CardGameNut!), W/U Fliers
5th: Mick Pheres, R/G Ally Beatdown/Burn

Thanks to our 5 guys (and gal. ;) ) for making this Worldwake Draft so enjoyable!


PS: We hold these "Release" drafts around a week after a set is officially released, so be sure to try and make the Rise of the Eldrazi Draft May 1st. Will Eye of Ugin be worth anything play-wise? Come by and find out!