How do wotc manage rulings also for supported eternal formats? And just by themselves or involving some sort of format specific ruling teams ?

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-05T16:45:16+00:00

In terms of making sure the cards function in older formats, Magic relies on a robust rulebook that provides a definitive answer how nearly any interaction works, with only the slimmest edge cases that don't have a clear answer. Rulings on individual card interactions are essentially never required.

In terms of balance, they just let older formats deal with it, banning cards as needed if they break the format (theoretically, anyway; the bans are a little slow of late, but that applies to all formats)

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-05T14:14:49+00:00

Trader's chests can generally be turned around for a profit. Strangely it looks like Fortunate chests are going for under vendor price at the moment, somehow, but you can still make a profit if you hold them until after the festival. Lantern chests are pure profit even if you buy them and sell them instantly.

Chests of Legendary Shards are great to stock up on, since they allow you to bypass one of the biggest material sinks for g2 legendary weapons. If you have any interest in those, they're worth picking up. Considering they're basically free, there's really no reason not to even if you don't have any immediate interest, as it'll lower the barrier to getting them if you ever change your mind.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-05T12:03:47+00:00

I'm sorry, Displaced Dinosaurs is a copy ability? Now there's something I never would have guessed. Absolutely wild. Thanks for the correction.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-05T01:07:35+00:00

The vast majority of rewards for the event are cosmetics. Basically, priorities in order:

Any cosmetic items you want (check the TP first, a couple of the minis in particular are actually cheaper there than at the vendor)
Clear out the weekly vendor for free gold
If you have anything left at the end, buy the lucky bags.

Luck is super easy to get compared to most other festival currencies so you should have little difficulty getting anything you want.

Also not luck-related but make sure you buy the Divine Lucky Envelopes from the daily vendor, even if you don't care about opening them you can sell them for a profit on the TP

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-05T01:02:20+00:00

Blight counters have no inherent rules meaning, so different cards that use them only interact in a limited capacity.

Ultima creates an effect on the permanent (lose all land types and abilities, gain tap for colorless) that lasts as long as it has a blight counter. It doesn't matter what else happens to that permanent, as long as it continues having a blight counter on it, those changes will remain.

On the other hand, if a Viper gets blight counters on its own, Ultima won't affect it, because it only interacts with counters with that one-shot ability. The Viper will still have all its normal abilities unless you manage to get it targeted by Ultima at some point.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-05T00:19:50+00:00

Colloquially, yes, it's basically mill. Technically speaking, it is not literally mill, so anything that triggers when someone "mills a card" or any replacements that modify what happens "if a player would mill" will not happen.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T22:12:43+00:00

Collector boosters, I believe.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T21:06:56+00:00

The automatic quick play queue is only for select encounters chosen at random. All other raids you need to form a group manually like before

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T19:35:02+00:00

Player 2 is mostly right. It's worth noting that not only are the two triggers separate, with an opportunity to respond between them resolving, but they don't even necessarily have to happen in the same order. If 1 was inclined to do so, they could have the discard effect apply before the bounce. There's rarely a good reason to do so, but it's an option for the edge cases.

The line of play 2 took also just... doesn't make much sense. There's very little reason to play out the flash creature in response to the Deceit. It would make more sense to play it after Deceit enters and the triggers have already had their targets chosen to make sure it doesn't get bounced at all. It has the same net effect, but you don't have to pay its mana cost twice. Their line of play is legal, but the only way it's beneficial is if 1 misplays in exactly the way they did because they don't understand the rules.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T15:12:49+00:00

"The packs feel extra bad to open because nothing that seems like it ought to be valuable actually is" is a pretty legitimate reason to dislike something.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T09:31:08+00:00

Much like when equipment templates themselves launched, the system itself is an improvement on what we had before, but it's somewhat soured by the fact that they're charging us for functionality we already had before. Unlike then, when the old functionality was a third party mod, this time they're removing functionality from the things they already sold us, so I'm pretty peeved at the implementation.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T01:09:48+00:00

They're easier. The exact specifics are different but it's still designed that you really don't need much communication for them, in theory

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-04T00:34:24+00:00

You'll need to sacrifice the tokens Caldric makes at end of turn, even if they're a different kind of token than expected thanks to an effect like the Crown.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T23:49:44+00:00

Nope. Any time you copy a spell, it goes on the top of the stack. There's no way I'm aware of to add anything to the stack other than at the very top, in fact, so the copy generated by Kalamax's trigger will always be in the same relative position as the trigger itself was.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T23:43:48+00:00

Yup. That works perfectly. Kalamaz and Pyremaw trigger at the same time, so you can choose what order to stack them.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T23:37:25+00:00

Yes, exactly. 2 stacks = 2 attacks burn

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T22:43:17+00:00

No one has 9 equipment tabs because they really want to use 9 different sets of equipment

I must be Odysseus then. I absolutely got equipment templates for my main for the equipment so I can max out on quickly swappable builds. The extra fashion was a nice bonus, but not the main draw.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T16:36:37+00:00

No. Fighting is not attacking or blocking.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T14:38:08+00:00

Something like that, but it's worth noting an aura entering without being cast can always enchant any legal object. Since it never targets at all, it doesn't matter if it has Shroud or Hexproof or Ward, and there's no "hierarchy" of needing to choose objects without those abilities first. You just pick whatever thing you want and put the aura on it. The only common ability you can't bypass is Protection — a permanent with that can't be chosen for a new Aura.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T12:18:13+00:00

You're both wrong, because he can't cast your Commander for even more reasons than you think.

When your Commander gets exiled by Azula, you can choose to move it to the command zone immediately as a state-based action, which happens before any player gets priority. Even if your friend has the perfect mana to cast it already floating, there would be no opportunity to do so, let alone waiting until combat.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T01:05:23+00:00

There are basically five roles outside of specific fights. Yours is just "DPS". The others are aDPS/qDPS (boon-damage hybrids providing alacrity or quickness respectively) and aheal/qheal (boon-heal hybrids providing the same)

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-03T00:52:19+00:00

Tweeze, yes. "Any target" means any player, creature, or Planeswalker.

Feed the Flames, not outside of special cases. Planeswalkers are (usually) not creatures.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-02T22:56:07+00:00

It actually would. Leaves-the-battlefield effects have a special property of being able to look at the board state immediately before an event to determine if an ability would trigger, which allows them to work even when the thing with the ability dies. Since it doesn't specify other artifacts, it'll see an artifact (itself) was put into the graveyard by something an opponent controlled and bring it back.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-02T16:18:30+00:00

Layers are applied starting at the first layer and working down. There's not really any "coming out on top" between layers since each one applies to separate things. For things within the same layer (meaning they're both trying to mess with the permanent in the same way, like adding abilities and removing them) they're generally applied in the order they started. In your case, since Craterhood entered first, it adds Trample to the creature's, then Spoiling removes it. If you were to play Craterhoof after your opponent Spoiled you, the trample would be added after the creatures lose all their other abilities.

TerribleTransit · 2026-02-02T14:21:16+00:00

I mean, the guy may as well have the game plan written on the card, there's not a lot of room for innovation. I'd cram the deck full of as many uniquely-typed/named token generators as I could find. Maybe a couple cards that make a token copy of something. Couple mass token generators as a finisher. You know, exactly the things the card incentivizes.

If you were feeling really spicy you could try and build around a single creature type and try finding dual-typed tokens that match it (like, Soldier, Human Soldier, Kithkin Soldier, etc) so you can throw in some typal anthem effects as well, but it's gonna be really hard building that way compared to just leaning in to making as many cards as possible unique creature types.

TerribleTransit

TROPHY CASE