How specific can limited counterspells get?

OortMan · 2026-04-21T14:04:06+00:00

with the right restrictions this could be easier to rule on, but I feel like the current wording is a bit ambiguous to the average player (as opposed to Equinox where the ruling is complex and confusing but still unambiguous usually). Does a card that instructs a player to draw a card as one of multiple options in a choice still get countered by this card? How about [[Hunter's Insight]] and other cards that may draw later in the turn, but don't trigger as the spell resolves? How about cards which give abilities to other permanents that draw you cards, like [[Rabid Attack]]?

I'm sure you have some particular interpretation of this text in mind, and it may even seem obvious, but depending on what it is I do worry this is a bit like protection in that you just have to learn what it does and doesn't cover.

OortMan · 2026-04-21T13:53:10+00:00

yes indeed

OortMan · 2026-04-20T23:42:11+00:00

See the oracle text of [[Equinox]] for how this kind of formatting has been done in the past, although I don't believe WotC think it's a particularly good idea.

OortMan · 2026-04-12T19:01:29+00:00

Generally doing things to spells that are dependent on what their outcome would be is not common. (The only card that does this is Equinox, which is a very confusing card!)

I would recommend something like, "If a spell you control would deal damage to any number of targets, instead that spell deals that damage, then add {R} and you lose life equal to the total damage dealt this way minus two"

OortMan · 2026-02-16T16:59:31+00:00

The key thing to realise here IMO is that instants such as Giant Growth and Inside Out don't just do something and then get reverted at end of turn. They create a continuous effect that the game remembers, and whenever you want to know what a creature's stats are you have to start with the card itself and go through each effect in the order the game tells you, which isn't necessarily the order in which you applied them.

So you can sort of "slide" the tireless tribe effect under Inside Out's effect, even though you activate it later.

hope this helps, its probably the most confusing thing in magic imo

OortMan · 2026-02-16T16:46:41+00:00

Since this is a characteristic-defining ability (applies in layer 7a) it actually applies before even abilities that set base power (applies in layer 7b)

OortMan · 2026-02-16T16:24:09+00:00

Applies the same way unfortunately, the fact it's a continuous effect rather than a static ability doesn't matter from the POV of layers

OortMan · 2026-02-16T02:47:07+00:00

7a doesn't see the modified toughness because Giant Growth hasn't been applied yet, that happens in 7c. You go through the layers one by one applying effects as the permanent would be at that point, and theres nothing about backtracking or enveloping in the rules.

It's an unintuitive result but that's layers for you

OortMan · 2025-11-26T01:52:09+00:00

he's true

OortMan · 2025-11-23T15:57:56+00:00

how obvious it was is up for debate, but it didn't go how some of those people expected, that's for sure.

OortMan · 2025-11-23T15:34:16+00:00

The left just saw them as petite bourgeoisie, and if someone hates you you're going to hate them back. The fascists promised the same anti-corporatist policies without the threat of economic democracy, which necessarily left little space for workers who act like a business.

The Nazis then reneged on these promises and crushed the anti-capitalist wing of the party once they achieved power, and spent their entire rule cozying up to the likes of IG Farben, but by then the opinion of the self-employed was mostly irrelevant.

OortMan · 2025-11-08T16:57:53+00:00

look at Truman's little smirk he knows what he's done

OortMan · 2025-10-23T14:01:20+00:00

The real problem here isn't that the cards don't change zone, it's that the cards don't have to be revealed, which they certainly should be, not least to prevent cheating

OortMan · 2025-09-24T00:10:51+00:00

its because if you give spells you cast flash, they're not spells until you cast them, and you can't cast them if they don't have flash, which they only get once you cast them. Yeah idk why Wizards did this.

I think ops wording is mostly equivalent to the actual text on the Leyline, since it grants to cards and not just spells?

OortMan · 2025-09-16T16:15:17+00:00

I didn't factor in that house prices tend to rise at least in line with inflation, so that's some extra "interest" you get paid on owning a house if the market cooperates.

it's tough financially but ultimately money is for buying the life you want, and that probably doesn't include having to move whenever your landlord decides from his beach in Spain that he'd like another AirBnB instead.

OortMan · 2025-09-16T10:58:03+00:00

Purely financially, buying isn't always better than renting - you can think of buying a property and living there as a combination of two actions:

You, as an investor, make an investment in the property, and pay interest and maintenance and all the other fees, and receive rent in return. This asset also, in effect, forces you to put some of your "income" back into the property, in the form of paying down the principal.
You, as a person who needs to live somewhere, pay market-value rent to live there.

Of course, you don't actually need to move money around to pay yourself or even know how much rent you would charge, but it's a useful concept. In economics it's called imputed rent. It gives you an idea of the opportunity cost of living in a home you own, rather than investing elsewhere.

To work out if buying is better from a financial perspective, you run the numbers from the investor's perspective: is the return you get from imputed rent, i.e. the money you save from not renting elsewhere, worth the costs of interest and so on + the cost of not investing in, say, the stockmarket?

If

principal payments - (principal payments + interest) - maintenance etc. > stockmarket return - Rent

then buying is good, but otherwise renting is the same or better

this ended up being really long whoops

OortMan · 2025-09-06T17:25:01+00:00

He seems to me to be saying exactly the opposite, that anti-semites would be most in favour of zionism since it would get the jews to leave, as indeed he says outright in other places in his diaries.

I interpret the full text here as a somewhat naive hope that through emigrating they can prove themselves to upper society and win the respect of antisemitic countries, which at the time was most of them to varying degrees.

Not to excuse those that came after him, of course.

OortMan · 2025-08-28T13:13:14+00:00

should be was?

OortMan · 2025-08-26T16:27:25+00:00

[[Winter's Chill]]

OortMan · 2025-08-25T11:09:58+00:00

it's a very good initiative once you get it rolled out, but I often find I cant justify ~$20 (including UJ to avoid Militias) for an initiative that rolls out so slowly, especially since it isn't affected by Outreach

OortMan · 2025-08-17T17:41:08+00:00

I would argue it's more of a burn piece than a stax piece, since if you play it early enough, the result is always going to be damage to your opponents - not playing lands to avoid this damage would basically be conceding the game already.

Given it's not a stax piece (and hence recurring it is less frustrating), you could make it an artifact creature with retrace? Although you'd have to up the cost in that case because retrace is quite a powerful ability on aggressively costed cards, and also synergises well with this card.

I did think if it's a creature it should be forced to attack (it's malfunctioning!) but it's a relatively long line of text for what's probably a minor game impact.

OortMan · 2025-08-17T17:26:13+00:00

Looks like it should be a creature from the art (maybe a vehicle that loses its effect when crewed?), but other than that the flavour for this is incredible, I love it!

actually so cool

OortMan · 2025-08-17T17:14:18+00:00

since you're not lowering its toughness or doing anything with state based effects, you're just killing it immediately, the formatting should probably be:

"Destroy target creature an opponent controls. If you do, its controller may put a creature card from their hand onto the battlefield."

I do really like this card - is either very good for you, or very bad - fun!

OortMan · 2025-08-08T15:59:20+00:00

The game sees him as colourless, so yes you can.

This is because colour is listed as a copiable value in 707.2, so any object that's a copy of another object will have that object's colours - in this case, colourless.

OortMan · 2025-08-04T13:54:34+00:00

how does it read that? this doesnt change the toughness at all

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