To clarify, Fade_To_Black means ''when the triggered ability resolves".
What happens exactly here with one Mad Auntie and one Goblin Chieftain in play, starting with the resolution of the Murderous Redcap spell, is this :
1) Murderous Redcap resolves : he enters the battlefield as a 4/4 (because the pumping abilties are static, they apply as soon as the creature hits play. The Redcap is never in play as a 2/2).
2) Murderous Redcap's triggered ability triggers. As it goes on the stack, you choose its target. The ability doesn't yet check the Redcap's power at this time.
3) Players may respond to the Redcap's ability with spells and abilities. If your opponent plays, say Path to Exile on Mad Auntie, it will affect the power of your Redcap in time to change the triggered ability's effect. Same if you use something like Giant Growth on it.
4) Once both players pass priority (i.e.: decide to not respond to Redcap's ability with anything else), the ability resolves and deals damage to its target equal to the current power of the Redcap.
Brings up a question, does anyone cover Pauper? It would be nice to know something about some of popular decks. I've read a few articles on EDH here and there, but I honestly can't recall hardly ever seeing an article on Pauper. Maybe once on magicthegathering.com, but that was a long time ago.
Jacob Van Lunen, the author of the Building on a Budget column on the mothership, talked about Pauper in some of the articles of said column a few months back. He built some decks himself, one of them being his version of GW Slivers. He talked about other decks of the metagame without giving lists, but it still gave readers a good idea of what the format is like.
1) Right, while you can stack the abilties as you wish, you must choose their targets as they go on the stack, so you won't control the bears yet when you choose the targets for the Efreet.
2) Any permanent that was chosen for the Efreet ability and that changes controller before the ability resolves becomes an illegal target, because the controller is a targeting restriction for each of the three choices. What happens in the example you describe is that is when the ability resolves, only your opponents' bears remain as legal targets, and one of the two at random will be destroyed.
Assuming they mana weave and then don't shuffle or shuffle very little, they should clearly be getting an Insufficient Randomization penalty. You shouldn't be taking advantage of it, but simply call a judge who should take care of it.
But if where you play simply ignores the mana weave you've got a pickle on your hands. I don't understand that if you allow people to mana weave you don't allow people to the sort the deck right back, both players are basically doing the same thing.
I would either report the store or simply stop playing there.
Most small shops don't actually have a real judge at their events, as they are not required to by the DCI, so their events are very casual on the rules aspect, and it is expected that players solve rules issues among themselves. This means that problems with mana weaving and such must often be settled by the players, which is why I think intentionaly screwing someone who blatantly mana weaves is understandable in those circumstances. I know this normally would be wrong, but there is no judge to prevent the mana weave cheat nor the other's response to it, so what are you gonna do ?
With things that are universally recognized as cheating, players will naturally get banned from shops and tournaments and are gonna be rejected by the community, judge or no, sanctioning or no, but mana weaving is accepted by many players of the more casual kind, and players who do it don't consider it as cheating, so it's much harder to end it that way.
In addition, many people don't have the luxury of having multiple close enough shops they can go to.
Tatsumasa is activated with Doublilng Season in play, thus creating two tokens and exiling itself. One of the tokens is killed, causing Tatsumasa to return from the Exile zone to the battlefield. Now, some other effect - say, an Oblivion Ring - exiles Tatsumasa again. Finally, the second token is destroyed: Does Tatsumasa return to the battlefield?
No. The trigger that returns Tatsumasa to play from the Exile zone will only work if it was exiled by its own ability, because it's part of that very ability.
Well, lifelink is static now, so he gains 2 at the same time he takes the 13, so it comes out as a -11 to lifetotal.
No, he doesn't get life from lifelink, because Child of Night died in the first combat damage step, before she could deal damage in the normal combat damage step.
It all depends on how you were seated and whose turn it was, as triggered abilities that are put on the stack at the same time (such as Prince of Thralls' and Myr Retriever's here) do so in the following order : active player (the player whose turn it is), then each nonactive player in turn order. Those triggered abilities then resolve in reverse order.
So, for example, if it was Mr. Pestilence's turn, and you were seated to his left, thus being next in turn order, your Prince's trigger would go the stack first, then Myr Retriever's. Retriever's ability would resolve first, meaning its controller could return the Silver Myr to his hand and then ignore the Prince's ability for that Myr. But if it was him seating to the left of the Pestilence player, then your Prince's trigger would go on the stack last and resolve first, and the Myr player would have to pay 3 life for his Retriever's ability to work, or else the Silver Myr would return to the battlefield under your control before.
Q: Does the Ethersworn Canonist's ability apply even after it's destroyed? If a player throws a lethal Grapeshot at it, are they able to cast more non-artifact spells afterwards?
Lol, Grapeshot to kill Ethersworn Canonist... It struck me as kind of a weird choice of removal spell among all other possible ones for an example here, as it's somewhat harder to make it happen than with other removal spells. It sure can happen though, if for example the Canonist blocked a 1/1 earlier in the turn. But if by "lethal Grapeshot" you mean Grapeshot and/or some storm copies of Grapeshot, the only way it could happen is if the first spell(s) casted that turn were artifact. I could easily envision a situation involving Lotus Bloom getting unsuspended, though, which is probably what the person asking had in mind, in a likely situation of a storm deck Vs Canonist.
The adding of a loyalty counter is a cost. You can't respond to costs; you can only respond to abilities once their costs are paid and they're on the stack.
Well, white doesn't have an uncommon like Overrun. An active Ajani can be pretty fierce to play against, and roughly equally powerful. Which would you pull if you opened a pack with both in a draft?
Anyway, I'm quite happy with blue/black not having access to an overrun-type effect, as they're evasive, controlling colors by nature.
Overrun, provided that I have no reason to rare-draft (in my area, we draft the rares in standings order at the end, so nobody rare-drafts). They're very close picks, but Ajani can be killed or raced by evasive creatures; with Overrun, if your opponent doesn't have a counterspell, Safe Passage or Fog AND the mana open to cast it, you win the game right now.
I honestly believe Overrun is the best card in the format, period. It should at least be a rare, but then people would rightfully be mad to open it in their packs since it's been uncommon for so long and in so many sets before. Granted, I think perhaps it shouldn't be in the set at all.
The "new" Lifelink ability modifies the damage dealt by the permanent that has it by adding to it the effect of gaining life. As a source deals damage, the game checks if that source has lifelink, and adds the effect if it does. If, when the damage is dealt, the source is no longer in play, the game instead checks last known information about the source to see if it had Lifelink. Magma Phoenix left play with the Lifelink ability, so the damage its triggered ability deals is from a source with Lifelink.
The "old lifelink" ability (Whenever [this] deals damage, you gain that much life), which still exists on pre-Future Sight cards because the errata that gave them the keyword Lifelink has been removed since it no longer corresponds to their printed text, as well as Spirit Link, Vampiric Link, and Armadillo Cloak's abilities, however, are triggered abilities. For them to trigger, the permanent they're on must be in play when the damage is dealt. So the card Lifelink allows you to gain life from Magma Phoenix's ability, but the card Spirit Link doesn't.
The third instance of Ashling's ability to resolve deals damage based on the number of counters on her, and putting a counter is part of the resolution of her ability, not a cost. In your example, the first three activations to resolve each put a counter on Ashling, and in addition, the third activation deals damage. The fourth and fifth activation to resolve do so too late to increase the damage dealt.
Ashling deals damage the third time her ability resolves during a given turn. If, say, you put her ability into the stack four times in a row without passing priority, the third instance that resolves (which is the second one activated) will do the damage effect, and chances are Ashling won't be there anymore to receive the counter from the last resolving instance.
Note that she can deal more than 3 damage if you pumped her during previous turns without doing it three times within a turn.
To clarify, Fade_To_Black means ''when the triggered ability resolves".
What happens exactly here with one Mad Auntie and one Goblin Chieftain in play, starting with the resolution of the Murderous Redcap spell, is this :
1) Murderous Redcap resolves : he enters the battlefield as a 4/4 (because the pumping abilties are static, they apply as soon as the creature hits play. The Redcap is never in play as a 2/2).
2) Murderous Redcap's triggered ability triggers. As it goes on the stack, you choose its target. The ability doesn't yet check the Redcap's power at this time.
3) Players may respond to the Redcap's ability with spells and abilities. If your opponent plays, say Path to Exile on Mad Auntie, it will affect the power of your Redcap in time to change the triggered ability's effect. Same if you use something like Giant Growth on it.
4) Once both players pass priority (i.e.: decide to not respond to Redcap's ability with anything else), the ability resolves and deals damage to its target equal to the current power of the Redcap.
Jacob Van Lunen, the author of the Building on a Budget column on the mothership, talked about Pauper in some of the articles of said column a few months back. He built some decks himself, one of them being his version of GW Slivers. He talked about other decks of the metagame without giving lists, but it still gave readers a good idea of what the format is like.
Here's some links if it's OK with the mods :
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/boab/20
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/boab/21
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/boab/27
2) Any permanent that was chosen for the Efreet ability and that changes controller before the ability resolves becomes an illegal target, because the controller is a targeting restriction for each of the three choices. What happens in the example you describe is that is when the ability resolves, only your opponents' bears remain as legal targets, and one of the two at random will be destroyed.
Most small shops don't actually have a real judge at their events, as they are not required to by the DCI, so their events are very casual on the rules aspect, and it is expected that players solve rules issues among themselves. This means that problems with mana weaving and such must often be settled by the players, which is why I think intentionaly screwing someone who blatantly mana weaves is understandable in those circumstances. I know this normally would be wrong, but there is no judge to prevent the mana weave cheat nor the other's response to it, so what are you gonna do ?
With things that are universally recognized as cheating, players will naturally get banned from shops and tournaments and are gonna be rejected by the community, judge or no, sanctioning or no, but mana weaving is accepted by many players of the more casual kind, and players who do it don't consider it as cheating, so it's much harder to end it that way.
In addition, many people don't have the luxury of having multiple close enough shops they can go to.
No. The trigger that returns Tatsumasa to play from the Exile zone will only work if it was exiled by its own ability, because it's part of that very ability.
Nevermind, what SaschaW said is what's relevant.
No, he doesn't get life from lifelink, because Child of Night died in the first combat damage step, before she could deal damage in the normal combat damage step.
It all depends on how you were seated and whose turn it was, as triggered abilities that are put on the stack at the same time (such as Prince of Thralls' and Myr Retriever's here) do so in the following order : active player (the player whose turn it is), then each nonactive player in turn order. Those triggered abilities then resolve in reverse order.
So, for example, if it was Mr. Pestilence's turn, and you were seated to his left, thus being next in turn order, your Prince's trigger would go the stack first, then Myr Retriever's. Retriever's ability would resolve first, meaning its controller could return the Silver Myr to his hand and then ignore the Prince's ability for that Myr. But if it was him seating to the left of the Pestilence player, then your Prince's trigger would go on the stack last and resolve first, and the Myr player would have to pay 3 life for his Retriever's ability to work, or else the Silver Myr would return to the battlefield under your control before.
Lol, Grapeshot to kill Ethersworn Canonist... It struck me as kind of a weird choice of removal spell among all other possible ones for an example here, as it's somewhat harder to make it happen than with other removal spells. It sure can happen though, if for example the Canonist blocked a 1/1 earlier in the turn. But if by "lethal Grapeshot" you mean Grapeshot and/or some storm copies of Grapeshot, the only way it could happen is if the first spell(s) casted that turn were artifact. I could easily envision a situation involving Lotus Bloom getting unsuspended, though, which is probably what the person asking had in mind, in a likely situation of a storm deck Vs Canonist.
Overrun, provided that I have no reason to rare-draft (in my area, we draft the rares in standings order at the end, so nobody rare-drafts). They're very close picks, but Ajani can be killed or raced by evasive creatures; with Overrun, if your opponent doesn't have a counterspell, Safe Passage or Fog AND the mana open to cast it, you win the game right now.
I honestly believe Overrun is the best card in the format, period. It should at least be a rare, but then people would rightfully be mad to open it in their packs since it's been uncommon for so long and in so many sets before. Granted, I think perhaps it shouldn't be in the set at all.
The "new" Lifelink ability modifies the damage dealt by the permanent that has it by adding to it the effect of gaining life. As a source deals damage, the game checks if that source has lifelink, and adds the effect if it does. If, when the damage is dealt, the source is no longer in play, the game instead checks last known information about the source to see if it had Lifelink. Magma Phoenix left play with the Lifelink ability, so the damage its triggered ability deals is from a source with Lifelink.
The "old lifelink" ability (Whenever [this] deals damage, you gain that much life), which still exists on pre-Future Sight cards because the errata that gave them the keyword Lifelink has been removed since it no longer corresponds to their printed text, as well as Spirit Link, Vampiric Link, and Armadillo Cloak's abilities, however, are triggered abilities. For them to trigger, the permanent they're on must be in play when the damage is dealt. So the card Lifelink allows you to gain life from Magma Phoenix's ability, but the card Spirit Link doesn't.
Note that she can deal more than 3 damage if you pumped her during previous turns without doing it three times within a turn.