Magic the Gathering: Ask a Judge

[Atifexe]

Makes sense. Thank you for the clarification, philip - I'm trying to get better with layers and dependencies so that I can create some really silly combos.

One more question: If I play a forest after setting up this board state, does it cause a recalculation of what's what for everything, or do the effects apply in timestamp order only to the forest?

[phlip]

I believe it would mean reshuffling everything, as it would create a dependency where there wasn't one before...

[Jamfalcon]

So there was a minor dispute during a Planechase Commander game yesterday. We think we got it sorted out and everyone agreed, but I wanted to double check that our conclusion was right.
Player A casts a creature.
Player B uses an ability to take it (in this case, a plane that allowed him to swap control of two permanents).
Player C casts Mind Control on the creature.
The Mind Control is then destroyed.

There were some who initially thought that the creature would revert back to Player A, but the understanding we came to is that Player B's ability would still grant control, and he would regain the creature were the Mind Control destroyed. Was that correct?

[phlip]

Yes, it would go back to player B.

When a second "gain control of this thing" effect happens, the previous one doesn't go away... they're both still there, but the one with the later timestamp overrides the earlier one so the earlier one has no effect. If the later one then goes away or expires or something, then the earlier one will take over.

You can see this happen in the shorter term with:
Player A casts a creature
Player B casts Mind Control on the creature
Player C casts Act of Treason on the creature
at the end of turn, the creature will return to player B (unless the Mind Control has also been destroyed, in which case it'll go back to player A).

[Jamfalcon]

Excellent, thank you.

[Prospero101]

Can a cloning effect copy a copy? Say my Clone copies my Grave Titan, then my Grave Titan dies. Can I play my Phyrexian Metamorph copying the cloned Grave Titan, making another Titan?

Also, on a related note, if the above is true, and we replace Clone with Evil Twin, whose activated ability reads "...except it gains 'UB, Tap: Destroy target creature with the same name as this creature," does the Metamorph gain the Evil Twin ability?

[ElFuzzy]

Not a judge, but I believe you can. Copy takes everything the card says except whether it's a token or not. Metamorph could clone a cloned grave titan. It's still the same answer for evil twin. If you are copying an evil twin who is in tern copying something else. You get everything from the something else and the ability of the evil twin. The only way you wouldn't get that ability is if you copied the something else at the source.

[korvys]

Yes and Yes. Copy effects all happen on the same layer, so time stamps apply. The earlier copy will be a copy of whatever it was before the later copy tries to copy it.

[Prospero101]

On a related note, if I take an opponent's creature using Dominate after it is declared as an attacker, is it still declared as attacking me after I've taken it?

I'm making a clone/mind control Commander deck and I want to know how these things come up.

[phlip]

No, if a creature changes controllers during combat, it's removed from combat. It'll still probably be tapped, but it won't be attacking you any more.

[Prospero101]

Cool, good to know. Dat instant speed mind control, yo.

[chetoos]

What happens when you enchant razorfield rhino, with metalcraft active, with ensoul artifact, or increase its base power and toughness in any way?

[phlip]

Razorfield Rhino is at base a 4/4... Ensoul Artifact would upgrade that to 5/5. If you have metalcraft, the plusses would apply on top of that, making it a 7/7.

This is why the templating on these abilities was recently chanted from "it becomes a 5/5" to "its base power and toughness becomes 5/5"... to make it clear that it's setting the power and toughness first, and any extra plusses or minuses go on top of that.

[chetoos]

Sorry about asking about weird rule interactions, but I was intrigued, reading the rulings for planeswalkers on gatherer. What happens in this instance: You control a Gideon, Jura just for sake of example and simplicity, a mycosynth lattice, and some effect that turns all artifacts into creatures with P/T equal to their CMC, like march of the machines, or a flat P/T, like Tezzy. Can you activate Gideon's +0 at all, and if so, what does he turn into?

[Atifexe]

You apply the power and toughness setting effects in timestamp order. Because Gideon's ability was activated last, he'll be a 6/6 creature until end of turn, after which his power and toughness revert to whatever the effect that made him a creature says they should be.

[JackSlack]

Hm.

Turn two. I have a plains and a mountain. I cast Vexing Devil. My opponent opts to take the four damage. In response, I Cloudshift it.

Illegal move? If not, what happens?

[Kapol]

Illegal move. If I'm not mistaken, the opponent chooses to take the four damage at the ability's resolution. Meaning that once he chooses to take the four life, you sacrifice Vexing Devil as part of the ability. At that point, the stack is empty and you can play spells. But you can't Cloudshift the Vexing Devil as it is no longer in play.

Or, to put it another way, you can't respond to an ability part-way through resolution.

[korvys]

Kapol is correct. Vexing devil enters, and it's triggered ability goes on the stack. Both players get priority to respond. When it resolves, you opponent gets a choice and the result happens, but no-one gets priority until it's over (with the Devil dead and damage taken, or not).

[JackSlack]

Gotcha. Thanks, guys. That's one bit of synergy I'll have to do without.

[Kapol]

I'm sure the answer is no, but I feel like asking anyways. If I attack with a Professor Sphinx and have a Courser of Kruphix on the field, do I have to reveal the two other cards scry'd to my opponent? As well, I don't have to keep the once-top card of the library revealed, do I? Meaning I can rearrange the scry as I want (like shuffling it), then bottoming a card, topping the "top card" and then putting another card on top of it? I ask because the revealed information is relevant.

[phlip]

You definitely don't need to reveal the other cards you're scrying... the cards you're scrying are still technically in your library until/unless you move them elsewhere... but I don't know for sure with your other question.

Based on a literal reading of the rules, unless I'm misreading, Scry has you do 3 things: Look at the top n cards of your library. Move any number of them to the bottom. Rearrange any remaining cards on top. If you're playing with the top card revealed, I'd think you'd have to keep the top card revealed throughout each of those steps... so you'd have to reveal the card that was on top after you'd moved some cards to the bottom, but before you'd rearranged the top cards... so your opponent would know in your case whether you'd moved that top card to the bottom, or just rearranged it on top.

But I've never seen that happen... even based on watching Pro Tour Journey Into Nyx and seeing large numbers of Coursers and Sphinges in play... never saw any top cards being revealed mid-scry... but I can't see anything specific in the rules to back that up.

[SilPho]

I'm posting this without full consultation of the rules, but here's what I can remember off the top of my head:

The full Scry action happens instantly as far as the game is concerned. This means you only show the top card before you start and after you finish.

I'll try to find the rules to back this up later.

[korvys]

I knew I'd seen this before.
Judges, you can see this here:http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/8535/.

For non-judges, I'll quote it:

While scrying, the cards are still in the library (even though when playing the physical game they're most likely being manipulated away from the physical library). The top card doesn't change when you look at the top 2 cards.

The second part of scrying is putting the cards back. As you do whenever you put back several cards into your library at the same time, you choose the order but don't reveal it to the other players.

The top card is revealed before the card movement and after it, but not during (since for the rules the movement is atomic).

(In this case he was asking about Scry 2, and some other stuff, but I've bolded the important part)

[SilPho]

Thanks, korvys. 'Atomic' is the perfect word to describe that

[Firbozz]

Another way to look at it: Cards must always be a zone. Since the action of scrying doesn't remove the cards from the library, the card "below" the cards you're scrying is never actually the top card of the deck (until you scry everything to the bottom, if you choose to do so). Essentially, until the scrying action is complete, since the top card of the library hasn't been put elsewhere in the library, and it hasn't changed zones, it must still be the top card of the library.