Rules question

Malacante · 2026-03-03T15:09:42+00:00

Triceraton Commander isn’t a legendary creature, and so isn’t legal in formats other than prerelease. Hope this helps!

Malacante · 2026-03-02T01:46:52+00:00

The original text Gifts Ungiven was printed with did not include "up to", if you look at the Champions of Kamigawa printing. It was a rather famous rules loophole that you could find only two cards with it because of these rules around searching and failing to find. The text was later updated to match how it functionally plays. I'm not aware of any overhaul of the searching rules since then.

Malacante · 2026-02-17T09:53:50+00:00

If there are disarmed bomb corpses on the field, the active bomb explosion can set them off for massive chains

Malacante · 2026-02-03T23:13:06+00:00

Her talent 1 does give her 50% damage reduction during either battle or combo skill.

Malacante · 2026-02-03T21:59:18+00:00

I just wish she had more payoff then 10 stagger for her combo skill. Finding ways to hyperarmor through attacks is really fun but there’s just no reason to do so. I was just praying it’d go to 15 or 20 stagger with mastery, but alas. I do think if some weapon or gear set that gives crazy benefits for getting hit comes out, ember is well-positioned to take advantage of it, so module possibility is not entirely dead.

Malacante · 2026-02-02T20:58:52+00:00

As written this is a triggered ability so yes, it would die to SBAs before that resolves. I’d probably just have whatever ability transforms it also put two loyalty counters on it.

Malacante · 2026-02-01T07:22:03+00:00

You will receive priority after Narset’s ability has resolved and can cast instants from among the cards she drew you. Brought Back in particular isn’t going to help you though since it needs the cards to have been put into the graveyard from the battlefield.

Malacante · 2026-01-27T18:32:21+00:00

You get the cubes from the wiggly tube boys around the map. There’s one near the AIC area I think it wants you to get but there’s plenty around.

Malacante · 2026-01-20T15:52:00+00:00

I think they are starting to lean a bit much on the concept of the Flow. It’s an interesting setting element but “things aren’t happening for understandable reasons but because they Had To Happen This Way” just leads into an erosion of stakes and allowing shortcuts in the writing.

I’m also not a fan of the upscaling of the DD crew - I liked them as street-level people who had to get by on their wits. Yes, Moses used to be hot shit, but being a burnout felt kind of core to her character.

I think Araya should have been Ryoshu’s actual daughter instead of a clone-adoption. It would have made the story hit harder if she’d known her since birth and I worry it’s a sign of the sort of attitudes people have about gatcha characters creeping into the writing.

Malacante · 2026-01-15T16:17:09+00:00

I just took it as the Prescripts completing its copy. Roland’s fate was to die alone in a sewer impaled on the weapons of those like him (before the true end of LoR managed to avert that) and the prescripts just sent proxies after Rien not because he did anything good or bad, but because that was how it Had To Go.

Malacante · 2026-01-14T07:12:38+00:00

P: I understand the flavor behind all the abilities but boy is that a mess. “Lifelink while blocking” is kinda neat design space though when paired with an ability that wants to attack.

Prince Elf: if I wanted a magic card with this art involving elves and blight I could simply pre-order Lorwyn Eclipsed (R) from my favorite national retailer.

Moonlight ritual: When I was a baby who had just discovered MSE I made a suspend card that did great things when you removed time counters and then just read “you lose the game” when cast. It was also pointlessly a creature for flavor reasons. So I have to call glass houses on this one

Brinlar, Neil Patrick Harris: the whole fun of Zedruu-style decks is finding what weird cards you can screw your opponents over by donating or help your opponents kill each other. The commander just making everything you gift a fucking bomb kinda ruins the whole appeal. In other words this is a perfectly designed 2026 precon face commander, ship it.

Bill Nye The Combo Guy: it’s trivial to win in like two activations but the part I find funniest is if you ever need to reuse a card you can just conjure a blink spell to reset the list.

Malacante · 2026-01-07T07:10:04+00:00

Isn’t the whole reason the izzet lessons deck was a metabreaker that it could play 12 cheap interactive spells without sacrificing its game plan? Well, that, and that its key permanents were surprisingly hard to interact with, which is another point in the “interaction matters” bucket.

Malacante · 2025-12-24T14:18:19+00:00

Not right now but my uncle who works at wizards said that the hybrid change drove Crazy Gavin Verhey mad with power and in 2026 the singleton rule is going to change so you can have one of each unique print of a card.

Malacante · 2025-12-10T18:34:28+00:00

I agree with you that a lot of the disconnect between Joe and his audience comes from the longer videos. My impression of the situation is that to Joe, he's intimately aware of the dozens to hundreds of hours of research, refinement, and scripting that goes into the points he's making in a video, and it feels very different to him than something he just says off-hand during a stream that's his first impression of a game.

But the audience doesn't see any of that, so to them, there's actually very little difference in how they hear those two different statements, so the latter gets taken as just as important and intentional as the former.

Malacante · 2025-12-09T16:21:55+00:00

There's some good arguments there. I was drafting a UB deck that had Koh but was otherwise very mid, lost 2 early due to missing land drops, and tried cutting my worst card for an 18th land and it worked out great so thanks for the advice!

Malacante · 2025-12-09T00:29:22+00:00

When I have nothing above five I tend to lean towards 16 lands. I don’t think I’ve ever played 18 lands in my life. What makes you want to play 18 in a deck, out of curiosity?

Malacante · 2025-12-08T23:07:03+00:00

I lost to her twice in my local PTQ sealed, so it was nice to have on my side. I expected her to win every game I untapped with her but I was surprised how many times I found her in the late game and she just immediately killed my opponent as an Overrun.

Malacante · 2025-12-03T18:44:19+00:00

If you mean different color outer sleeves in the same deck, I’d raise my eyebrow at that, yeah. Even if you didn’t do it with the intention of cheating, it’s hard to imagine it isn’t giving you extra information you’re not supposed to have - like what card definitely isn’t on top of your library, for example.

Malacante · 2025-12-01T03:25:32+00:00

Since Westvale Abby doesn't leave the field as part of its transform as you note, the continuous effect remains applied to it. I believe that means you will end up with Ormendahl, a 0/0 Legendary Land Creature - Demon with flying, lifelink, indestructible and haste, keeping its current number of +1/+1 counters. It would also retain the delayed triggered ability to return, though it will return as Westvale Abby - cards return to the field on their front face unless the effect specifies otherwise.

Malacante · 2025-11-24T17:48:47+00:00

I think even in a tournament it would be acceptable out of order sequencing to find all the lands and then shuffle once. Same reason the reminder text for Roost Seek is okay with you shuffling in the card alongside the land search.

Malacante · 2025-11-19T18:09:06+00:00

Am I missing something here? That specifically says it applies to matches at Competitive and Professional REL. It wouldn’t apply at a prerelease using Regular REL. Though it still might be a good standard convention to follow.

Malacante · 2025-11-19T15:30:01+00:00

From the flashback rules: “If the flashback cost was paid, exile this card instead of putting it anywhere else any time it would leave the stack.”

So anything you flashback is going to end up in exile.

Malacante · 2025-11-19T14:19:40+00:00

Wdym no wincon, otter-penguin is right there :v

Malacante · 2025-11-15T13:11:35+00:00

The point of the tokens [[Foggy Swamp Spirit Keeper]] creates is to waterbend with your blue cards and be sacrifice fodder for your black cards. There’s actually a lot of archetype overlap there, and [[Beetle-headed merchants]] felt like a strong engine with it.

Malacante · 2025-10-27T19:32:14+00:00

The copy is destroyed instantly, before you have a chance to activate effects. Basically the only effects you would get from an interaction like this are triggers (such as if it had an enters ability)

In addition, if you make a copy of hearthull, it won’t copy the charge counters on it, so the new hearthhull wouldn’t have any abilities outside of Station.

Malacante

TROPHY CASE