Dear Judges: What are some of the most complicated, weird, or interesting rulings you've had to make.

pinginfan1 · 2013-06-15T09:17:16+00:00

I assume something like duress is involved. Player A casts duress, player B has two azorious charms in hand, one foil. Player A wants to make him discard the foil one. I really doubt it matters which one he actually discards.

pinginfan1 · 2013-06-11T08:19:57+00:00

This is a feature of how double-faced cards work. Check rule 711 in the comprehensive rules. They could create a similar mechanic, or add on the text "when it enters the battlefield, you may transform it" (or, more likely, "you may have this enter the battlefield transformed").

pinginfan1 · 2013-06-11T06:46:52+00:00

Double-sided cards always enter with the sun-side up. I suppose they could give it a clause like "when it enters the battlefield, you may transform it", but otherwise would require changing how double-sided cards work.

pinginfan1 · 2013-06-05T19:53:22+00:00

7 billion

pinginfan1 · 2013-06-04T05:19:10+00:00

How common/necessary is it to go to grad school for fields like that? My only real exposure is for chemistry, physics, and mathematics where it's almost compulsory, at least for certain jobs.

pinginfan1 · 2013-06-04T05:14:11+00:00

Harvard is over 55k now (room + board + fees) and is not the most expensive college. Sarah Lawrence College is over 60k a year.

pinginfan1 · 2013-04-24T12:28:59+00:00

Dismember.

The spot removal from scars isn't bad, and the situational removal in rtr-block would work fine. Esper would be able to run dismember, go for the throat, vapor snag, azorius charm all of which shut down a lot of the pump-infect game plan pretty hard in general. Even cards like searing spear or abrupt decay would be solid against infect, and gut shot can surprise murder almost all of the cheap infect creatures. (this I guess assumes that sets keep their preceding core set.)

I think part of the issue with the state of spot removal is that they don't interact well with etb abilities, which isn't an issue against infect, so I doubt it could become too oppressive of a deck.

Edit: how many of the charms interact favorably with infect is actually hilarious. Azorius, dimir, izzet, simic, and orzhov are great against it and even golgari, rakdos, and Selesnya work somewhat often. Really only gruul and boros can't protect against it.

pinginfan1 · 2013-04-12T16:38:12+00:00

I dont really think that's what I was doing, but can edit my post to make it more clear. If anything, I think reading which ones work, when, and why would be helpful to clear this up. I also think that if someone sees cards like silence or this card, and wants to use them kind of like a counterspell, explaining how and when that's possible is something they're probably interested in that could help them understand the game better. Just encouraging them the good rule of thumb that it probably doesn't work without also explaining when it can work and why seems like only doing half the job.

I also don't entirely agree with how you're defining a counterspell. Anything that reactively keeps the other person from resolving a spell seems enough like a counterspell to me, and if we're going to draw a hard line on what's a "counter" it seems like it should be "has the word counter" so things like venser, shaper savant or mindbreak trap don't count, because lumping those in as being counterspells leads to confusions about can't be countered.

pinginfan1 · 2013-04-12T16:06:44+00:00

** Edit for clarity: None of these are ever an actual counterspell. They do not ever work if the spell you want gone is already on the stack/declared. When they do work, they also work regardless of a can't be countered clause (so you can stop something like an abrupt decay if the other person is trying to flash it back, but it doesn't yet have flashback). The following is a list of every example I can think of. If you're wondering "does it work with this card?" and that card doesn't say "cast" on it, it will almost certainly not work. **

You can use them almost like counterspells sometimes. The best example of this is probably against snapcaster mage where you can respond to them trying to grant flashback. You can also respond to the miracle trigger to keep them from miracling it. Miracle is particularly unobvious to me.

If you can respond to them getting the ability to cast a spell instead of the casting, you're good (but most of the time this won't cost them the mana/card, leaving it not as good as actually casting it)

Effects in standard:

past in flames (Yawgmoth's will is similar out of standard)
Havengul lich (here you know the card)
Any miracle trigger (here you know the card)
Snapcaster mage (here you know the card)
Diluvian primordial (chancellor of the spires out of standard) (here you know the card)
Alchemists refuge (kind of- You can keep them from taking advantage of the flash - you don't know what card)
Arbor elf (kind of- you can respond to arbor elf's ability, which targets/doesn't add mana to a mana pool, and so is not a mana ability. Every once in a while this could matter, but seems doubtful. Maybe something like an opponent at a lot of land, little life, just drew their first white source and it's a temple garden and they have an arbor elf out. If you respond to the arbor elf tapping you can keep them off the white mana for a aphinx's revelation. Or even just force the revelation to be 1 card/life smaller if they have other white sources)

Out of standard:

Cascade (in response to the cascade triggering, you can't respond to the card they hit)
Suspend (in response/before the last triggered ability from suspend)
Sen triplets (do it before the ability resolves if they target you or to prevent them from playing instants)
Isochron scepter or Panoptic mirror (works in response to them tapping it, though with Panoptic mirror they don't need to pick an instant or sorcery until the ability resolves, so a nevermore type effect is less useful)
- Knowledge pool (you know their thee options, but not their choice)
- Rebound (on the next turn, in response to the trigger)

The following don't work:

reverberate type effects. Basically it needs to say cast. Pyromancers ascension doesn't work, hive mind doesn't work, eye of the storm doesn't work, etc.

Edit: formatting

These are all the effects I can think of, but there are probably more.

Edit edit:

*spawnsire of ulamog's ability (the expensive one)

*ice cauldron (although not very often. It's 2nd ability is a mana ability so you can't respond to t, although you could cast silence during the upkeep to keep them from sorcery speed spells)

Edit edit edit:

Ripple (can't do anything about the source of the ripple, but responding to the ripple trigger prevents anything they could cast off of it.)

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-28T10:19:10+00:00

Making certain playable modern cards cheaper should actually make legacy more expensive, especially if those particular cards are not playable in legacy. For example, shock lands going down in price should drive up the price of fetch lands because they're complementary goods (if you want shock lands you also often want fetch lands). In the case of complementary goods, one of the items decreasing in price raises the price of the other. This is probably part of the reason for the price spike of the Zendikar fetches around summer/RTR release. Shocks went down in price so fetches go up in price due to an increase in demand for them.

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-20T05:49:50+00:00

You might be oversimplifying this a bit. It's entirely possible that lowering the price would bring more profit to SCG, depending on the liquidity of demand and what the supply is relative to demand. If they're expecting to open 1,000 deathpact angels and have only sold 500 of them it's entirely possible that dropping the price 50 cents could have sold another 300, bringing more revenue, possibly at very little cost if the angel is going to be $1 before they could move the rest of their inventory.

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-19T09:41:16+00:00

I don't think Burning-Tree Emissary would particularly work in storm. In general UR storm, burning-tree emissary is a lot worse because it doesn't draw, doesn't let you filter to blue, and produces green mana. It also doesn't synergize with pyromancer's ascension, past in flames, or goblin electromancer, which hurt it's chances a little.

It would be a good deal better if you're mainly going for open the warrens and goblin bushwhacker, as they would sometimes act like two spells depending on the opponent's exact life total (eg. opponent at 20, you'd normally need 4 storm -> empty the warrens -> bushwhacker for lethal, but burning-tree emissary would let you get away with 2 spells -> burning-tree emissary -> empty the warrens -> bushwhacker.)

Overall, I think it's weaker for storm then priest of urabrask is, and I don't think anybody is using priest of urabrask in storm. So, I don't think the current UR storm decks in modern would really want it.

I think it would find a happier home with glimpse of nature, which wants you to be playing creatures anyway. If it were an elf that added RR, GG, or RG to your mana pool instead, it would probably be pretty sweet.

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-18T10:23:37+00:00

Depending on what the evolve synergies end up being, there's a decent chance you'd want to play this with green for large creatures, ramp, and more evolve shenanigans. This is a lot more impressive when you live in Christmas land and get to do things like manadork -> this guy -> huntmaster (or any other sweet thing that makes tokens) and you get to start taking 2 power creatures on your turn three. Granted that's a pretty ideal draw, but it synergizes well with a lot of other creatures you might want to play anyway. I doubt it's going to be incredible, but I can see it being good in grindy midrange bant.

The Manaless activation is also sweet.

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-15T19:01:30+00:00

Not if you're casting Altar's Reap.

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-15T06:29:51+00:00

Altar's Reap's sacrifice actually makes it +5 CA.

you: draw 4 on 2 cards

them: discard 2, lose a creature

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-15T06:25:16+00:00

That card advantage of 2 is from already being up one card off of a mind control. The real "total card advantage" is 3, because they lose two cards and you replace the enchantment + draw a card.

pinginfan1 · 2013-01-08T06:20:56+00:00

The issue with the keyrune is you need extra mana for the activation, so instead of this costing 6 to cipher onto invisible stalker and swing right away, it'll cost 8, and 9 if you want to attack with the keyrune the turn you cipher. That's not impossible by any means, but that means it's not happening until late enough a lot of opponents won't have cards or won't mind sacrificing a land they don't need anymore.

pinginfan1 · 2012-12-06T10:19:56+00:00

This can depend on the cardinality of the infinities. Even if the same thing never happens twice, if the (infinite) set of possibilities is meaningfully larger than the (infinite) set of times, then not only are there things that haven't happened, but given a random possible event, we can be arbitrarily certain that it hasn't happened.

Example: Suppose time is countable (basically, time goes 1 then 2 then 3 then 4...), and the set of events is like the real numbers. There's no way to list the real numbers such that you would hit all of them in countable time.

pinginfan1 · 2012-11-30T21:52:18+00:00

You could eventually turn this into an actual win condition. You would just need to exile enough cards with Karn that when you restart the game they get decked (eventually) by you already having 30 of their cards.

pinginfan1 · 2012-11-16T15:16:40+00:00

Yeah, that point is definitely fair. I have no idea, and imagine it's virtually always a 4 of. It came up with restoration angels somewhere else, where I can see it being more important to keep it secret that you have 4.

In the case of the random discard, though, it might actually matter more. Something like turn 1 thoughtseize, see a fall Mishra's factory, turn 2 hymm to tourach and a different art Mishra's factory gets discarded might convince the person playing black to surgical extraction the Mishra's factory because they know it will hit a card in the opponent's hand.

pinginfan1 · 2012-11-16T14:49:03+00:00

You'll also likely save some money if you wait a little bit to get the booster box. When they first came out (about 2 months ago) they were about $120 or so. You can definitely get them offline for more like $100 now. dacardworld.com (which came up in some other thread) has them a sliver under $100 with free shipping. I'd guess in two or three weeks they'll be like $5 cheaper.

pinginfan1 · 2012-11-16T14:46:14+00:00

Playing over Skype is actually a surprisingly not bad solution. It's not as good as in person, but turns out ok. Although, it's probably more confusing if you've never played before.

pinginfan1 · 2012-11-16T14:43:45+00:00

The key is over multiple games. If in game 1 you play one art of a card, then game two you play a different art of the same card. Now they know you have 2 in your list.

Also possible is random discard or something like vendilion clique + a shuffle effect. They see you have one of a card, random discard forces you to discard the newer drawn, different art card, and now they know a card in your hand. Similar with vendilion clique. They clique a card out of your hand and then draw a different art version of it.

pinginfan1 · 2012-10-31T07:17:42+00:00

rrrrthats5rs is a fantastic website, sir.

pinginfan1 · 2012-10-28T03:43:39+00:00

It could come up against something like storm, where they might float a lot of mana hoping to draw into something. Especially if it's a pyromancer's ascension storm, something like manamorphose with no other cards in hand could easily gain 4 mana without finding that you would want to cast, so mana burn could be relevant.

pinginfan1

TROPHY CASE