MTG Magic The Gathering Ask A Judge - 「 R U B Y T U E S D A Y 」

>>52769760
Thead is dead.

What's the most common graveyard related mistake you see?

>>52771158
Probably people who put their exiled cards in a sideways pile under their graveyard, and it inevitably gets mixed up. That, or people misunderstanding in what situations you can re-order the cards in your graveyard.

>>52769760
I know that Wither can destroy indestructible creatures. Can Wither/Infect also destroy creature that regenerate? My friend said that yes, since the regenerating creature goes to 0 it goes straight to the graveyard.

>>52771280
>I know wither can destroy indestructible creatures
No it can't. Indestructible things, by definition, cannot be destroyed. What Wither does is reduce a creature's toughness to 0 or lower, which means it's put into the graveyard. It is not 'destroyed', so Indestructible won't stop it.

Similarly, regeneration can only replace a destruction event; you can't regenerate through anything except a destruction event. Wither or Infect reducing a creature's toughness to 0 or lower are not a destruction event, so you can't regenerate through it.

>>52771312
Wow, so Wither is even better than I thought. Is there any protection to it besides 'protection from color' or 'prevent'?

>>52771408
Well, Wither is just an ability that makes the source deal damage in the form of -1/-1 counters instead of marked damage, so look at it from that angle. Damage prevention will work, and for the few instances of the damage coming from a targeted spell or ability (Puncture Blast, Hateflayer) you can juke it with Hexproof or Shroud or Protection (and Protection will also stop the combat damage portion). There's also Melira preventing -1/-1 counters from hitting your creatures, and the upcoming Vizier of Remedies to lessen the impact, or loading your creatures up with +1/+1 counters to cancel out the -1/-1 counters.

But there's not something specifically anti-wither other than Melira or Tatterkite, no.

>>52769760
How do you feel about this set gA? I feel like there's alot of things that can be overlooked.
For example, Decimator Beetle. I bet there will be alot of player at prerelease who didn't realize the 2nd ability can still be used to give -1/-1 counter to opponent's creature even if you don't have any -1/-1 counters on any of your creature.

I read the release note and i noticed there's alot of things that i would have played wrong.

>>52771842
I think it's neat, but it does seem to have a lot going on, and it's going to cause some issues. I can already tell people are going to be using creatures with Embalm to represent the tokens and forgetting about it (whether they forget it's white instead of black, or is also a Zombie, or forgetting to put it in exile a few turns later when it dies, or forgetting it's IN EXILE at all for Processors), there's going to be issues with Exert (especially the targeted 'when you do' triggers), and some of the cards like Decimator Beetle are going to reward proper knowledge of the rules, and feel like cheating to your opponent at a prerelease if they're unskilled.

>>52771940
Another one is Bounty of Luxa. If you destroy it when it's trigger is on the stack, you get to draw a card. I was like wow i didn't expect that.

>>52771211

>people misunderstanding in what situations you can re-order the cards in your graveyard.

Standard, Modern, most limited formats?

I don't think "when I'm Dredging" counts, since you're not rearranging anything, just choosing the order for it to go in.

>>52773682
There's a bunch of really old cards that give a shit about things like "top card of your graveyard".
If they're legal, you can't rearrange your graveyard at all. Even if nobody's running them.

How do I explain the Duskwatch Recruiter with infinite mana combo and can I shortcut it or do I have to go through each activation?

>>52773893
The MTGJudges subreddit has a thread up where Toby Elliot explicitly okays it, because:

a) You CAN state a number of iterations after which it will complete (although it might complete beforehand)

b) Your opponent can't just stop you after an arbitrary number of iterations unless they somehow know the ordering of your library

I assume that ruling will be entered into Recruiter's Gatherer page at some point for easy reference.

>>52773969
Thanks bitch

>>52773682
In Modern, Standard, and any Limited formats post-Urza's, you're free to rearrange your graveyard as you like because it doesn't matter.

Legacy, Vintage, and older Limited formats, you can't, because there's cards that care about graveyard order, so you can't manipulate it.

>>52773893
Same logic as being able to Scry 2 infinitely; given a high enough number of activations, it's possible to sort of "bubble sort". Since there is a finite max number of times you'd have to do it to get the exact result you want (unlike the Four Horsemen thing, which TECHNICALLY could happen after 2 iterations, or never), and since it doesn't change the visible game state in between, you can just say "Do this ten billion times, and at some point in that ten billion I will get the result I want, at which point I'll stop".

>>52773969
Actually, I don't agree with the second point. If they want to interrupt a proposed shortcut at any point, they can. They can say "I'd like to Doom Blade your guy after the fifth activation" or something.

>>52774281
>Same logic as being able to Scry 2 infinitely; given a high enough number of activations, it's possible to sort of "bubble sort". Since there is a finite max number of times you'd have to do it to get the exact result you want (unlike the Four Horsemen thing, which TECHNICALLY could happen after 2 iterations, or never), and since it doesn't change the visible game state in between, you can just say "Do this ten billion times, and at some point in that ten billion I will get the result I want, at which point I'll stop".

Actually, it takes two different loops for the Recruiter.
See, Rec ALWAYS puts the 3 cards on the bottom. That means you need one cycling algorithm to get all the cards in the right relative order, but the start of your desired list might not be the top of the deck.
So you'd have to do another (really simple) loop to just move cards from the top to the bottom until the top card is the right one. Without knowing the initial state, you can't tell how many activations this loop will take.

Also, if your deck has a number of cards evenly divisible by 3 and no creatures (or none you're willing to withdraw) then you can only sort within three-card sets but not switch their order beyond that. This is because you will always move cards in sets of three unless you pull a creature.

The same basic algorithm works, but anybody who proposes it as the scry 2 loop version is incorrectly executing it.

>>52774453
I worded it poorly, you're right. I meant that because it's a deterministic loop, we can just set the number of iterations to "fuck it" and jump ahead, similar to the Scry 2. I shouldn't have included the 'bubble sort' line.

>>52774479
No problem, I'm just taking an algorithm design class right now so I'm conditioned to be autistic about it.

>>52774281
>Actually, I don't agree with the second point. If they want to interrupt a proposed shortcut at any point, they can. They can say "I'd like to Doom Blade your guy after the fifth activation" or something.
So if A declares "Recruiter trigger, 10k times", and B responds with "OK, Sudden Shock in response to the 1243rd instance resolving, then Time Stop to clear the stack", how in the world do you deal with that?

>>52774495
That's a fair point. I guess I was more meaning I don't like a blanket "You can't interrupt this shortcut unless you know the exact makeup of the deck". I'd say it's more like "If you want to interrupt this shortcut, it either needs to be for a specific reason that you're acting there, or somewhere that we can easily manually execute up to that point".

If someone wanted to jump in just a few activations in, that's easy enough to manually execute those activations, then have their response wedged in. But yeah, 1200 in, I hadn't thought of that.

>>52769760
Who's your Cardfu?

>>52775384
I'm not really sure! I try to avoid using the same cards in multiple decks so they feel a bit more unique amongst themselves.

>>52771449
A key example where wither doesn't have an effect in current standard is Gideon, who is Indestructible *and* had "Damage that would be dealt is prevented", so wither has no effect on him.

Does Toolcraft Exemplar get the +2 +1 buff before or after he can crew a vehicle?

>>52777834
Both!

Your last chance to crew a vehicle you want to attack with is in the Beginning of Combat Step, which is where Exemplar triggers. NORMALLY it's a bitch and a half to get priority in that step (which I hope to god they're fixing with the Amonkhet rules update, because it's stupid), but one of the exceptions is if you have a trigger in that step, like Exemplar. If that's the case, just say "Beginning of Combat, Exemplar triggers, crew this vehicle". Your opponent can still respond, but you do have the chance to use it to crew something AFTER the boost to 3 power.