Dominic Appleguard wrote:vxicepickxv wrote:This could get interesting as they are more meta level questions.
What are the top 5 most confusing cards you've dealt with?
What are the top 5 most confusing abilities you've dealt with?
Have you had players tell you you're wrong in a match? Did it get heated?
I'm not actually a judge, but under a judge's supervision I have made rulings based on what was going on for a current game. There has been some raised voices, but once it was explained by the judge things calmed down.
As for the most confusing cards, I can see why Illusionary Mask is on there. Even the oracle text, and gatherer rulings, it still hurts my brain. It's an activated ability of an artifact that's also a spell, that would allow you pay for a creature card as a spell that is a 2/2 colorless creature with no subtypes until you tap it, damage it, or it damages something, even if the creature card isn't a spell.
Volrath's Shapeshifter is interesting, but it's not really that confusing. It's just a copy of whatever's on top of your graveyard but you can also pay 2 to discard another card.
Humility is tricky, when you add in opalescence, or Mycosyth lattice and March of the Machines.
I don't know why people think morph is as hard as it is. You cast the creature as a colorless 2/2 creature with no subtypes and a casting cost(and converted mana cost) of 3. You can look at it at any time, and you can pay the morph cost as an instant.
Suspend causes headaches because people don't want to learn how it works. You pay the suspend cost, and the card is exiled with the counters on it. You remove counters(normally 1 during the upkeep) until the last counter is removed, and it's cast as soon as the last counter is removed, no matter what.
Phasing is only confusing because unlike every other time a perminant leaves play, phasing remembers.
Banding is kind of weird, because I don't remember how all the incarnations work, but I know that it changes how creatures attack as a band(basically a giant blob creature in terms of color and abilities) and how damage is assigned to blocking creatures and how damage is dealt to the attacking creature(or band).
Splice just means add to a spell to the base spell, and then put the splices back in your hand. Reveal them when you want to splice, and then pay the splice cost. They cards you're splicing are still in your hand, and basically add to the basic spell. It might change a card from untargetted to targeted, but you get to keep what you splice in your hand. If the cost to splice is discard a card, what you splice onto the base spell is still in your hand, so you can discard it to pay that cost.
Dredge is a draw replacement effect. Instead of drawing you can mill yourself X cards and get the card out of your graveyard. You have to be able to draw in order to replace a draw effect. If you can't draw cards then you can't dredge.
Friend:Umm, I saw a cat and started clicking...
Me:You have made an accurate summary of the internet.