Why I'm no longer posting in this blog, an update

Almost six years ago I made a blog post where I described why I stopped writing in this blog and, moreover, why I had completely lost my passion for the game and its rules.

Has my interest in the game reinvigorated since? Have I once again gained that old passion for the game and its complex rules interactions? Have I once again started to avidly buy and collect new cards? Have I perhaps been secretly participating in MtG discussion forums?

Nope.

Even after over six years, the game is still as dead to me as back then. I literally have no interest. I don't really care about new rules changes and additions, no interest in new cards, sets and mechanics, and pretty much zero interest in tricky rules interactions and questions. And, indeed, I have not purchased as single WotC product since. Nothing.

I still occasionally play the game with a group of friends, using a couple of my decks from almost 10 years ago, but I do that primarily because of the social aspect, not because of the game. In fact, I think the game is a bit on the boring side. I'm not exaggerating that if it wasn't for the social aspect, I wouldn't be playing at all. And, in fact, if this group decided to start playing something else, like some board game, I would be happy to move to it and throw those decks into some closet never to be taken out again. I don't really care about the cards nor the game, I only play it for the socialization aspect. And I never come up with tricky rules questions like before, because I am genuinely not interested.

And WotC isn't receiving a penny from me, and I have completely stopped talking about the game and recommending it to others. In fact, I haven't even checked this blog in something like five years; this is literally the first time in all that time.

And I can genuinely say that this is not out of some kind of stubbornness or principle or some kind of empty "revenge", like I'm suppressing my interest for the game for the sake of pettiness. I can completely genuinely and sincerely say that I literally am not interested in the game, and haven't been interested in it in all this time.

So yes, the administrators of the mtgsalvation forums did successfully and completely kill my passion for the game, for good. Nothing has changed. Not that those psychopaths would care even if they knew, of course.

So this is pretty much a "non-update" update post. 

Why MtG rulings discussion is important

In my last (well, I suppose now second-last) post in this blog I explained how the draconian rules enforcing and moderator behavior at the MTG Salvation forums completely killed my passion for the game and its rules, and why I stopped posting in this blog. It is my understanding that the forum is actually moving more and more towards an even more draconian attitude when it comes to the rulings forum, where less and less discussion is allowed.

This is actually a very common thing when it comes to MtG rulings forums out there: Many (perhaps most) of them are absolutely and completely draconian: Only one question and one singular answer from an approved judge is allowed. Period. In many forums everybody else is banned from giving any answer (or if not banned per se, any further posts and discussion is generally quickly removed and the thread locked.)

Honestly, I never understood why this is done, nor why it seems to be so common. The rules of the game are very complicated, and judges are sometimes wrong. They are people, and they are not perfect. The people who understand the entirety of the Comprehensive Rules inside out, from beginning to end, and every single one of even the most complicated and obscure tidbits, is quite small. There are literally tens of thousands of L1 judges, and even L2 judges, out there that get some things wrong, and don't know every single tiny detail and complicated interaction.

And, as it sometimes happens, sometimes the Comprehensive Rules themselves are actually deficient and might need improvement and corrections. I believe that I myself once noticed such a defect in the rules, which eventually led to its fix.

Some time in early 2013 I noticed a curious situation involving an effect instructing a player to cast a spell (without paying its mana cost), and that spell having a mandatory additional cost involving revealing a card of a particular type from the player's hand. I asked about this at the MTG Salvation rulings forum. Back then the forum was still more open-minded, and an actual lengthy discussion ensued. A bit later I made a blog post about that exact question I posed: A hole in the MtG rules?

As a result of that discussion, one of the more senior judges participating in the discussion asked the question at the official Wizards of the Coast rulings forum (which still existed back then), and a similarly lengthy discussion about it ensued there.

Eventually this led to fixing the hole in the Comprehensive Rules with the addition of rule 118.8c: "If an effect instructs a player to cast a spell “if able,” and that spell has a mandatory additional cost that includes actions involving cards with a stated quality in a hidden zone, the player isn’t required to cast that spell, even if those cards are present in that zone."

What I find particularly interesting is that the release notes for the set that introduced that rule change specifically mentioned the cards Wild Evocation and Disaster Radius as an example of such an interaction. These were the exact cards I used in my original question (and the blog post made based on it)! From all the possible cards that could have been used as an example, they chose the two that I had used. This led me to believe that it was precisely my question that eventually led to this rule fix.

I think this is a perfect example of why allowing free discussion in rulings questions is important.

If back then the MtG Salvation rulings forum had been the absolute draconian type where only one answer from an approved judge is allowed on any question, and zero discussion, what would have likely happened is that some judge would have just given an answer like "in a tournament you would need to call the judge to verify that you don't have a creature card in your hand", and that's it. No discussion would have ensued, and this hole in the Comprehensive Rules would probably had never been patched, and it would still exist to this day.

Why I'm no longer posting in this blog

Short answer: The administrators at the mtgsalvation forums successfully killed my passion for the game.

Long answer:

Since I started playing Magic the Gathering, some time in 2010 or such, I always found the complex interactions between different cards, and the difficult rules questions, very interesting. I quite quickly found the mtgsalvation forums, and the rulings forum was to me the most interesting one in the entire site. I loved learning the game there, asking questions, and reading other people's questions and the answers to them. It was extremely didactic, informative and interesting.

In fact, many of the posts in this blog are directly from questions that people asked in that forum (or questions I asked myself).

Eventually I became so acquainted with the rules that I could start answering people's questions myself. It was actually something I loved to do. In fact, no matter how simple or rudimentary beginner question it was, I loved to teach people the game, even the basics of the game. Be it an extremely complex question about an extraordinarily obscure interaction between cards that requires profound knowledge of the intricacies of the comprehensive rules, or be it just a simple question about how eg. trample works, I loved to answer those questions, and teach people about how the game works, at all levels. I would say that I knew the rules of the game better than most L1 judges (perhaps even better than some L2 judges).

There was one problem, though. Even though the mtgsalvation rulings forum would have been ideal for this kind of interaction between people asking questions about the game, and other people answering those questions, the forum was not run (and probably still isn't run) like that. It's much more draconian.

For one, the forum implements a rather draconian infraction system. I have never seen any such system being used in any other forum I have ever been to (there probably are some forums out there with similar systems, but I myself have never encountered any). If you violate the rules, you get an infraction. Get too many infractions, and you may be penalized in some way.

That all in itself wouldn't be bad. Sure, if someone insults somebody, or attacks somebody verbally, or harasses somebody, is overtly rude, condescending, or shows other form of inappropriate behavior, it's sensible to put a stop to such a behavior.

That's not the problem. The problem is that you could get infractions from the most innocuous things, and completely at random. For example, if you correct an error in somebody's answer, you could get an infraction for "nitpicking". Not consistently, though (which makes it worse). Completely at the whim of whichever moderator happened to be there at the moment. I witnessed over the months and years dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of instances of somebody correcting someone else's erroneous answer, and seemingly completely at random perhaps about 10% of those corrections got an infraction. I swear there was no consistent pattern to it; it was completely random. (And no, in most of those instances it was not a question of somebody actually nitpicking about some complete triviality, like a completely inconsequential minor detail that wasn't relevant to the question at hand. Oftentimes the correction was completely valid and pertinent to the question at hand, yet some moderator still issued an infraction on it, even though you could find at the same time very similar posts with no infractions.)

What's worse, if you answer the "wrong" kind of question, even if that question is completely related to Magic the Gathering, you could get an infraction for "spamming". Yes, "spamming". For example, if a beginner player made a follow-up question to their original question, for example asking for an actual example of cards that do something related to the original question, and you answer that question, you can get an infraction for "spamming". It doesn't matter if the question is related to the original post in the thread, and the answer is 100% correct, you can still get an infraction.

As you may have guessed, I got myself infractions for precisely these kinds of things. Every single infraction was completely ridiculous. I never misbehave, I never said anything bad to anybody, nor attacked or insulted anybody, and all my posts were always on-topic, about Magic the Gathering, and the thread in question. The "worst" offense I ever did was making, completely by mistake, a reply post that wasn't actually an answer to a question that was being presented (the post was something akin to, paraphrasing, "wow! that's a really cool flavor!". I made the post by mistake because I thought I was in the general forum rather than the rulings forum. Explaining the mistake to the moderator didn't help. The infraction stood. No mercy, no leniency, no understanding.)

Because of all these random infractions, for the most ridiculous of things, the climate in the rulings forum was always really oppressive. You could never anticipate when some random moderator would randomly decide to give you an infraction for the most ridiculous of reasons, no matter how on-topic, proper and correct your post may have been.

And I got banned from the rulings forum because of these infractions. In particular, the last infraction I got before the ban was precisely what I described above: A beginner asked a question about whether something worked with some particular card (I don't remember the details because it has been so long, and I obviously have no access anymore), and the answer was no. He then made a follow-up question asking if there are any cards for which that thing works. The question was completely on-topic, related to the original question, and related to the game. I answered, completely correctly, by giving an example of a card for which that thing worked.

Completely at random, a moderator decided to give me an infraction for "spamming".

That labeling of "spamming" has always irked me. Actual, real spam was always a problem in the forums, with spambots flooding the forums with spam posts (ie. those kinds of automated posts that advertise all kinds of products and so on, that are completely unrelated to anything in the forum). Whenever I saw such posts, I diligently reported them for being spam.

By labeling someone's answer (correct answer, may I add) to someone's question about Magic the Gathering as "spam", that's in essence calling that post worthless garbage. I always felt it as an insult. I always posted to try to help people, and these moderators were labeling my posts worthless garbage, and giving me an infraction because of them, even though the posts were always on-topic, and never out of line.

I had complained about this, in private, to the moderators in question several times in the past. I did so this time as well.

I obviously cannot know what happened behind the scenes, but I suspect that this particular moderator decided to teach me a lesson, and convinced the other staff to ban me from the rulings forum.

And mind you, this ban came completely out of the blue, and was permanent. No warnings, no grace periods, nothing. There was no warning like "if you keep doing this, you will be banned". It was not a temporary ban to teach me a lesson. No. No warnings, nothing. Completely out of the blue, a lifetime ban from the rulings forum, with no possibility of appealing the decision.

And why? Because I answered somebody's question about Magic the Gathering.

The rulings forum was the main reason why I was a regular visitor of the site in the first place. As I described in the beginning, I was very passionate about the game and its rules, and I loved to ask, read and answer questions related to the game. Banning me, permanently, from the rulings forum was in essence no different from banning me entirely.

I tried to appeal to reason in the proper appeals thread. It made absolutely no sense to ban someone (and ban them permanently for that) for answering people's on-topic questions about the game. It made absolutely no sense for the forum rules to punish people for answering people's on-topic questions.

What I encountered in that thread was a completely unwavering hive mind. Something like 4 or 5 site moderators and administrators participated in that discussion, and they all behaved like clones of each other, repeating the same mantras about the forum rules, and never conceding anything, never presenting any dissenting opinions, or anything.

At one point I posted a list of something like 5 questions to these moderators. These were questions like (paraphrasing): "Should the purpose of the rulings forum be to teach people how to play the game?" "Should people be able to correct errors in other people's answers without the fear of receiving an infraction?" and so on. Not a single one of those moderators answered even a single one of those questions, even though I asked them to do so several times. They completely ignored the questions, repeatedly.

It's hard to describe the atmosphere in that discussion, but it really felt like speaking to a hive mind, or a cult. The forum rules were absolute and unchangeable, and the moderators were always right when implementing those rules and giving infractions, and at no point did any moderator present even the slightest sign of dissent towards the others, or of understanding and leniency towards me. Even a simple request of them stopping labeling people's clearly non-spam posts as "spam" had absolutely no effect. Even that one word could not be changed in the rules.

It became quite clear that I was permanently banned, with absolutely no possibility of appeal, and they would not listen to any reason or arguments. So I just got fed up and got myself completely banned from the site. It made no difference to me, since if I was banned from the rulings forum I could just as well be banned from the entire site.

I could have easily created a new account. In fact, a year or so after that incident I did exactly that, just to try if it would work, and there was no problem. I created the account, and could post just fine. However, I never used that new account for anything but a couple of initial posts.

This whole incident with the forum administrators just killed my passion for the game, and my desire to keep interacting in the forum. The oppressive nature of the rulings forum, and the amazingly oppressive cult-like behavior of the administrators, somehow just gave me a really bad taste in the mouth to even think about participating in the forum anymore. Even though I read through posts in the rulings forum a couple of times, the passion, the willingness to answer people's questions and teach them the game, just wasn't there anymore.

And the amazing thing about all this is that the mtgsalvation forum is, in essence, the only viable MtG forum out there. In the past Wizards of the Coast had their own forum for precisely this kind of thing, and it was quite awesome. People would ask sometimes really complex questions, and sometimes quite long threads discussing that situation, and its implications, would ensue. (In a few instances I even witnessed such a question resulting in actual rules changes in the game.) But then WotC, for some reason, ended that forum. And mtgsalvation became the only viable forum out there. (There are, of course, myriads of smaller MtG related forums out there, but they are usually very small and not very active. And many of them have even more draconian rules, such as not allowing anybody to answer any questions in their respective rulings forums.)

Given that lately the MtG community has been slowly been overtaken by social justice warriors, making the whole community even more oppressive, I suppose I don't even long back anymore. It's just not for me. The mtgsalvation administrators killed my passion for the game, and now social justice warriors are killing the community, so I suppose that's it. It's just not for me.

But it's a shame, really. I loved creating these blog posts.

Forced to cast a split card... What to do?

Suppose there's an Omen Machine on the battlefield. Your turn comes, and its effect makes you exile the top card of your library, which happens to be Wear // Tear.

The machine doesn't give you a choice: You have to cast it, if possible. However, there aren't any enchantments, nor any other artifacts, on the battlefield. However, you really don't want to destroy the machine, because you like it.

Question: Could you choose to cast the Tear half (ie. "destroy target enchantment"), have it fail because of a lack of legal targets, and have the card remain in exile?

A few clarifications for those readers who are unsure how Omen Machine (and such similar effects instructing players to cast a card) works: When an effect instructs a player to cast a card ("if able"), and there is no word "may", that means that the player has no choice, and is forced to cast the card, if it can be legally cast. For example, if the card had been a Doom Blade, and you are the only player who controls a non-black creature, you would be forced to cast it targeting your own creature. You can't choose to not cast it (nor can you choose an illegal target for it.)

However, if there are no non-black creatures on the battlefield, in that case Doom Blade cannot be legally cast (because there is no legal target for it). In that case the card is not cast and simply remains where it is (which in the case of Omen Machine is the exile zone.)

With a card like Wear // Tear, however, the situation is a bit more complex. When the effect instructs you to cast a split card, you have to choose one of the sides to cast (fusing is not an option because that can be done only when casting from your hand; here we are casting from exile.) Perhaps you could simply choose the Tear half, and then have it fail to be legally cast (because there are no legal targets for it) and have it remain in exile?

However, the correct answer is that if there are no enchantments on the battlefield, you have to choose the Wear half. Choosing the Tear part is not an option. The reason for this is a bit complicated, though. There is no direct rule in the Comprehensive Rules that states this, and instead it has to be inferred more indirectly.

We have to start by pointing out that in this situation casting Wear // Tear is an "effect", as per (the relevant part of) rule 609.1:

609.1. An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a spell or ability.

Anything that happens as a result of a spell or (as in this case) ability is an "effect". This includes casting a card, if it's the ability that's instructing a player to do so.

Rule 608.2d, in turn, states (emphasis mine):

608.2d If an effect of a spell or ability offers any choices other than choices already made as part of casting the spell, activating the ability, or otherwise putting the spell or ability on the stack, the player announces these while applying the effect. The player can’t choose an option that’s illegal or impossible, with the exception that having a library with no cards in it doesn’t make drawing a card an impossible action (see rule 120.3).

Although it might be completely trivial and unnecessary to state, which half of a split card to cast is a choice (made during the casting process). For completeness sake:

708.3. A player chooses which half of a split card he or she is casting before putting it onto the stack.

Part of the process of casting a spell is to check if can be legally cast:

601.2e The game checks to see if the proposed spell can legally be cast. If the proposed spell is illegal, the game returns to the moment before the casting of that spell was proposed (see rule 720, “Handling Illegal Actions”).

Since the choice of half was what made the casting illegal, it's an invalid choice, prohibited by rule 608.2d above. The player has to make a choice that makes casting the card legal, if possible. In this situation choosing the Wear part makes casting the card legal, and thus that choice is mandatory.

Splendid Genesis

Splendid Genesis is not an actual real Magic card (not even an "un-card"). Thus it's not legal in any way in any format, because it's not an actual valid card at all.

It was commissioned by Richard Garfield (the creator of Magic the Gathering) to celebrate the birth of his first son. Only 110 copies were created (ie. one printing sheet), and he handed these copies to friends and family. Even though this isn't a real Magic card, it's nevertheless a humongously expensive collector's item. (As far as I know, you might be able to buy one for some tens of thousands of US dollars, if somebody is willing to sell their copy.)

So why am I writing about this non-card? I want to discuss a common phenomenon I have seen surrounding this card. Namely, many players express the desire to try this card in an actual game, because it sounds so fun.

I would posit, however, that this is a rather nonsensical idea for two major reasons: One rules-technical, and another practical.

I consider this a highly interesting card from a psychological perspective. Not because it would be fun or reasonable to play (for the reasons I describe below), but because it so easily fools even experienced players into thinking that it would.

The technical reason why this would be a completely nonsensical card to use in an actual game is that it interacts abysmally poorly with the rules of the game. The rules just don't support the mechanic depicted in the card. If you tried to play this card in an actual game, you would run into tons of rules interaction problems and situations that are just not supported by the rules.

As one, and the most obvious, example, this messes up completely with the notion of the "owner" of a card. There are myriads of rules and other cards that refer to the "owner" of cards, and this would mess up with that quite badly, and raise tons of conflicting situations. The rules of the game simply don't support the notion of the ownership of cards changing mid-game. And, as said, this is just one example.

The practical reason why playing this card is rather nonsensical is that, when you think about it for longer than a few seconds, this actually isn't such a fun idea in an actual game. I mean, this requires three players, and the third player is supposed to... do what, exactly? Just sit there watching the game, and just hope that one of the players happens to draw this card and happens to be able to play it? Chances of this not happening at all are quite high. Personally I would much prefer playing a three-player game from the get-go, rather than have one of the players just sit down there with nothing to do, just waiting for the random chance of joining the game. This card is not so fun in practice, in an actual game. It would be rather boring, in fact (especially for the player chosen to not play from the start.)

And this isn't even going into the fact that even if the card were to be played during a game, it would completely mess up with the deck contents, with each player essentially having random cards from two decks, with no guarantee that they will be playable (eg. because of too few lands, or too few lands of the proper mana colors.) Most likely the game would just become a random mess that screws one of the players, making it completely unfun.

Notice also that all cards are reshuffled into three decks, which effectively means restarting the game (except for life totals), but the card says absolutely nothing about drawing opening hands. In other words, the game is reset and becomes a top-deck mode game.

Some people would still protest and say that they would still like to play this card. The rules problems can be circumvented with house rules invented on the fly. Well, if you want to experience this, you don't need this card, nor do you need to have a third player waiting doing nothing: Just take two decks and shuffle them together and split it into three, and then start the game without opening hands. It will be pretty much the same thing as what this card would do. (And let me assure you that it would not be much fun. I have actually tried "top deck mode" Magic, ie. a game without opening hands, and it was random and boring as heck. And that was with normal constructed decks, not randomized ones.)

But yeah, I find the card interesting for this reason, ie. how easily it fools people into thinking that it would actually work and be fun to play.

Are 7 mash shuffles enough?

An extremely prevalent sentiment among most players is that mash-shuffling is not enough to evenly randomize the deck. They have the strong feeling that cards will not be "separated enough" from each other, and that if, for example (the most common example), they put all their lands on the top of the deck and start mash-shuffling, they will end up with huge clumps of lands, and huge clumps of non-lands (and thus they will either mana-flood or mana-screw). They feel that most certainly 7 mash shuffles (which is the oft-quoted figure) is not even nearly enough. For this reason they will often resort to pile-shuffling to "separate the cards". No matter how they are explained that 7 mash shuffles is indeed enough, and that nothing else is needed, they just can't accept it. They might accept something like 20 or 30 mashes, but certainly not 7.

But I'll try to explain it.

Let's assume that the deck uses decent sleeves (ie. not those cheap transparent thin sleeves intended for double-sleeving that can get sticky and pretty much glue cards together). Let's consider two cards that are adjacent in the deck, and let's examine how their relative separation will behave during mash shuffling.

You'd agree that with one mash, there's roughly speaking an approximately 50% chance that at least one new card will be inserted between them. Question: What are the chances that they will still be adjacent after 7 mash shuffles, on average?

Answer: Approximately 1 in 128, or about 0.8%.

Ok, there's only a very minuscule chance that they will still be adjacent after 7 mash shuffles. But they will still very likely to be very close to each other, right?

No. The thing is, the more separated they are already of each other, the more likely it is that more cards will be inserted between them. If you think about it, you'll realize that, in fact, their distance will, on average, roughly double with each mash shuffle. This means that their separation will grow exponentially with each mash.

What does this mean in practice? On the first mash, their separation will increase on average by 0.5 cards (which is what a 50% chance of a card being inserted between them means). This separation will, on average, double with each mash. Thus their average separation will roughly double the 0.5 seven times, ending up with an average separation of 64 cards. (And this is the average separation between them, not the maximum. The maximum could theoretically be anything.)

Since there is (typically) only 60 cards in the deck, a separation of over that means in practice that the card "wraps around" in the deck, to the other side. In practice this means that it will end up pretty much at a random place within the deck. There's a big chance that the relative order of the two original cards in the deck we were examining will switch (probably somewhere around the 50% figure, which is exactly what should happen.)

Yet, no matter how precisely this is explained, most players will not accept it. They will trust their own intuition more than mathematics. And they will waste everybody's time with useless pile-shuffling, and mash-shuffling dozens of times.

A non-existent mana cost

There's a principle (well, rule really) in Magic that goes like this: A non-existent mana cost cannot be paid.

What does this mean?

Consider this scenario: You have a Living End in your graveyard, and you cast a Snapcaster Mage, and use it to give the Living End flashback. Can you then proceed to cast Living End from your graveyard?

The answer is no, you can't. And the reason for this is the principle: A non-existent mana cost cannot be paid.

Living End has no mana cost. This is not the same thing as having a mana cost of 0. (If its mana cost were 0, then it would have a mana cost symbol with 0 on its upper right corner.) It has no mana cost at all. This means that it can't be cast in the normal way (because paying its mana cost is part of the casting process, and in this case that step cannot be done, because it has no mana cost.)

(Note that Living End has a converted mana cost of 0. However, this is a completely different and unrelated thing. That value is used only for effects that look for converted mana cost explicitly. Casting does not look at converted mana costs.)

Snapcaster Mage adds flashback to the card when it's in your graveyard, and it states that the flashback cost is its mana cost. However, as stated, the card has no mana cost! This means that it has no flashback cost either, and a non-existent cost can't be paid. Therefore you can't cast it using Snapcaster Mage either.

So how exactly is Living End cast, then? Using its suspend ability. Suspend works like this: If the card is in your hand, any time you could cast the card (ie. obeying timing restrictions for the card type) you may pay the suspend cost, which moves the card into exile with the specified number of time counters. At the beginning of your upkeep you remove one time counter from it, and when the last time counter is removed, you may cast the card without paying its mana cost.

That last part is the crucial difference: The effect allows you to cast the card "without paying its mana cost". Any effect that uses that wording bypasses completely the mana cost of the card, and thus we don't even look at what it is (or, like in this case, whether it even exists.) The effect instructing you to cast the card doesn't require paying any mana cost, and thus the card can be cast.

Consider Living End with these two cards:

Act on Impulse exiles the top three cards of your library, and allows you to cast them (from exile) until end of turn. Even though the cards are in exile rather than in your hand, the casting process is identical. Therefore you can't cast Living End this way, because you can't pay its mana cost. (Incidentally, you can't suspend it either, because the suspend ability can only be used if the card is in your hand.)

Chandra's third ability exiles the top ten cards of your library. You then choose an instant or sorcery card among them, copy it three times, and then you may cast these copies without paying their mana costs. This, thus, does allow you to cast (the copies of) Living End, as mana cost is irrelevant.

As an unrelated side note, notice that these two effects behave different with regards to timing restrictions.

With Act on Impulse you have to obey the timing restrictions of the card (in other words, if the card is a sorcery or a creature without flash, you can only cast it whenever you could normally cast a sorcery, ie. in your main phase when the stack is empty.) With Chandra's third ability, however, you cast even sorceries immediately, ignoring their timing restriction (ie. even if the stack is not empty, and even if this somehow wasn't your main phase.)

The reason for the difference is that in the former case the effect allows you to cast the cards during a time period (ie. "you may cast these cards until (some time in the future)"), while in the latter case the effect instructs you to cast the cards immediately, while the effect is resolving. Whenever an effect instructs you to cast a card immediately, you do so disregarding the card's type; whenever an effect allows you to cast a card during a period of time (ie. until end of turn or whatever), you have to obey the timing restrictions of the card type.

The problem with shuffling in MtG

Most competitive card games, where each player has a deck of cards that needs to be randomized, have one very major problem: Experienced cheaters can masterfully manipulate and "stack" the deck while shuffling, without their opponent or anybody else noticing. (This kind of cheating is sometimes caught on camera. With camera footage we have the advantage of seeing the shuffling as many times and as closely as we want, and in slow motion. In a real-life situation it's much harder, especially if we don't know what to look for, and sometimes even then.)

Experienced cheaters can stack the deck by moving certain cards to the top or the bottom of the deck.

To minimize the possibility of cheating, MtG tournament rules require for the opponent to also shuffle the deck afterward. The problem with this is that even though you can't stack your own deck, you can do it for your opponent's deck. For example you can mana-flood or mana-screw your opponent by stacking their deck appropriately.

Poker doesn't really have this problem because if you shuffle the deck, you have to present it to an opponent, and said opponent must only cut the deck once. (In fact, cutting it more than once, or even outright shuffling it, is forbidden at most places. It must be cut, and cut only once.) This way neither player can manipulate the deck. The shuffler can't know where the opponent will cut the deck, so there's no way to make certain cards end up on the top. (The only exception to this is that if both players are working together, and the other player cuts the deck where the shuffler "marked" it. This is a common cheating tactic in poker, but it only works if two players are working together, and only if they are sitting side by side on the table, as the cut is always made by the next player.)

Many have suggested using this same principle in MtG. In other words, shuffle your deck, and then your opponent cuts it once, and that's it. However, unlike in poker, this isn't a very effective anti-cheat measure in Magic. Yes, it prevents you from getting the cards you want on the top (or bottom, in the case of your opponent's deck in some situations), but there's another cheat that a single cut doesn't prevent: Mana weaving.

Mana weaving is distributing the lands evenly in the deck, so that you get a steady supply of lands and do not get mana flooded or mana screwed. An expert cheater can more or less easily mana weave their deck (eg. by shuffling in such a way that most lands go eg. to the bottom of the deck, and then mash-shuffling that bottom part into the rest of the deck once.) This is blatant cheating, of course, because the deck is not randomized.

And the thing is, a single cut to such a deck isn't going to undo any such mana weaving. And that's why the poker way doesn't really work in Magic. The opponent really needs to shuffle the deck in order to undo any possible mana weaving, and make the deck truly randomized. But, of course, when you can fully shuffle a deck, it allows cheating.

This is a dilemma that has no practical solution.

At the highest levels of poker cheating by shuffling trickery is impossible because players do not shuffle nor are allowed to touch the deck in any way. It's shuffled by a neutral dealer, employed by the tournament organizer or the casino.

In MtG tournaments the same could work if judges always shuffled the players' decks. The problem is that a typical tournament has over a hundred players and only a few judges. This solution is just impossible to implement in practice. (This could work on the top-8 matches, but for some reason it's not done that way. Perhaps it's not really needed either. The top-8 matches are always videoed and very closely watched, and it can be fairly assumed that nobody dares to cheat there. Although it does happen from time to time...)

Is color a copyable value?

Simple question: Is the color of a permanent a copyable value? (In other words, if something copies that permanent, will it also copy its color?)

The intuitive answer would be "of course it is!" Naturally it's not that simple.

Copyable values are listed in rule 706.2. They are: "name, mana cost, color indicator, card type, subtype, supertype, rules text, power, toughness, and/or loyalty".

Note that "color" is not among them. "Color indicator" is, but that's not the same thing. To understand the difference, assume that the color of a permanent were changed by something like Thoughtlace (which says "Target spell or permanent becomes blue.") That spell won't add a color indicator to the permanent; it will simply be a continuous effect that changes its color. If that permanent were to now be copied, it won't have that changed color, but the original one of that permanent.

The color of a permanent is derived from its other info. This is actually explicitly explained in the next rule, ie. 706.2a, which says: "A copy acquires the color of the object it’s copying because that value is derived from its mana cost or color indicator."

In other words, to derive the (copyable) color of a permanent, we look for one of these:

1. If it has a colored mana cost.
2. If it has a color indicator. (If it does, it overrides the color derived from the mana cost.)
3. If it has an ability of the form "(this) is (color)". (Very rare nowadays.)

So the next question is: If something creates a token that is, for example, a "1/1 green Snake creature", it will have no mana cost, no color indicator, and no abilities. If now something copies this permanent, will it be green?

From all the information given above, the answer would seem to be "no". After all, the copy has no mana cost, no color indicator and no abilities either, and as rule 706.2a said, those are the ones that would determine its color.

However, the real answer is "yes", but the reason for it is quite unclear and indirect (and, in my opinion, one of the shortcomings of the current rules, as they do not state this very clearly).

The list above was actually incomplete. There is a fourth case, but this additional case is very indirectly implied in a completely different rule pertaining to tokens. This fourth case would be:

4. If it's a token, and the effect that created it specified its color.

A special rule governs this situation. In this case "color" does become a copyable value of the permanent, and it will become copied if something copies it. This fact, however, is currently very unclear, and can only be inferred indirectly. The actual rule where this is inferred from is the following:

110.5b The spell or ability that creates a token may define the values of any number of characteristics for the token. This becomes the token’s “text.” The characteristic values defined this way are functionally equivalent to the characteristic values that are printed on a card; for example, they define the token’s copiable values. A token doesn’t have any characteristics not defined by the spell or ability that created it.

If you are confused, don't worry. So am I. But yes, that rule effectively means that "color" is a copyable value of the token (even though it's usually not for any other permanent).

Can zones be targeted?

There are several things in Magic the Gathering that can be targeted by spells and abilities: Cards, permanents, players, spells (including copies of spells)...

Question: Can zones be targeted?

At first this question might seem silly. After all, what sense would something like "target battlefield" make? (After all, there is only one battlefield, and it would make little sense to "target" it with anything.) However, perhaps a bit surprisingly, the rules of the game support the possibility of targeting a zone. The exact rule that defines targeting is (emphasis mine):

114.1. Some spells and abilities require their controller to choose one or more targets for them. The targets are object(s), player(s), and/or zone(s) the spell or ability will affect. These targets are declared as part of the process of putting the spell or ability on the stack. The targets can’t be changed except by another spell or ability that explicitly says it can do so.

There are some zones that are more sensible to be targeted because they exist per player. Namely graveyards, libraries and hands. Of course normally these are always referred to by targeting the player, not the zone (ie. "target player's graveyard", "target player's library", and "target player's hand".)

To my knowledge, however, there exists one card that targets a zone directly: Circu, Dimir Lobotomist.

It says: "Whenever you cast a blue spell, exile the top card of target library." (Also the second ability targets a library directly.)

The funny thing about this card is that there's no reason why it couldn't say "target player's library", other than that the text wouldn't fit if it said so. Even more curiously, as far as I'm aware, the possibility of targeting a zone was added to rule 114.1 precisely for this one card.

Attacking costs

Question: You control a Floodtide Serpent enchanted with Ordeal of Heliod. You attack with the serpent and return the ordeal to your hand. Does the triggered ability of ordeal trigger?

Most players' intuition would be that it doesn't trigger. In this case the intuition is correct (rare for this blog.) The interesting question is, however, why exactly.

Declaring attackers is a bit more complex of an operation than most players are aware of. It actually resembles the process of casting spells and activating abilities.

Casting a spell technically follows the following procedure (highly condensed here): Announce the spell you are going to cast by revealing it (it moves to the stack), make any possible choices for the spell (possible modes, value of X, alternative or additional costs to be paid, color choice of hybrid mana symbols), choose targets (if it has any), determine the total cost of the spell, activate mana abilities, and finally pay the costs. After all this has been successfully and legally done, the spell is considered successfully cast (and anything that triggers on such a spell being cast triggers now.)

(If at any point it turns out that one of those actions is illegal, everything above is reversed, and none of it is considered having happened.)

Activating abilities is almost identical to the above (with the only difference being that it's not a spell that's put on the stack, but an ability.)

Perhaps a bit surprisingly, but very consistently, declaring attackers (and also declaring blockers) follows a procedure that's very similar. First you announce which creatures are going to attack, then you choose what they are attacking (ie. which opponents or planeswalkers those opponents control), then you determine the possible costs required for this to happen, then you can activate mana abilities, and finally pay the costs (if there are any). After all this has been successfully and legally done, the creatures are considered successfully declared as attackers, and anything that triggers on such a creature attacking triggers now.

(If at any point it turns out that one of those actions is illegal, everything above is reversed, and none of it is considered having happened. This includes in this case checking that no restrictions are broken, and that the amount of requirements that can be fulfilled with a legal declaration has been maximized.)

Note how costs are paid before a creature is considered having attacked, and returning an enchantment to its owner's hand is a cost for Floodtide Serpent to attack. Thus the ordeal returns to your hand before the serpent has attacked, and thus it doesn't trigger.

Abilities and layers, redux

I have touched this subject before, but here's a much simpler case:

1. You control a Bonescythe Sliver, and someone casts Snakeform on it. Will your other slivers have double strike?
2. You control a Stormtide Leviathan, and someone casts Snakeform on it. Will all lands be Islands in addition to their other types?

Instinctively the answer to both questions would be "no", but of course it's not that simple.

In the first case, even though the Sliver's ability has an earlier timestamp than the ability-removing effect created by Snakeform (which normally would mean that all other slivers get first strike before the Snakeform effect removes Bonescythe's abilities), these are dependent effects. In other words, both continuous effects exist on the same layer (the "ability adding/removing" layer, ie. layer 6), and the existence of one depends on the other. This makes them dependent, and for this reason Snakeform's effect is always applied before Bonescythe's, regardless of their relative timestamps. Which means that no slivers get first strike. This makes it intuitive even without knowing about layers, timestamps and dependent effects.

What is much less intuitive is what happens in the second case. One could easily think that it works the same way: Snakeform removes the ability, and thus lands are not Islands in addition to their other types. However, it doesn't work like that.

The Leviathan's effect is not an ability-adding effect, but a type-changing effect. Types are set in a lower layer (more precisely layer 4). This means that the effect is evaluated before any ability-removing effect.

These two effects are not dependent because they are on different layers. Only effects on the same layer can be dependent.

This means that even though Leviathan ends up not having any abilities, all lands will still be Islands in addition to their other types, as unintuitive as that may be.

Doubling season... or is it?

This is Doubling Season (click on any card image to see a larger version):

It has the text: "If an effect would put one or more tokens onto the battlefield under your control, it puts twice that many of those tokens onto the battlefield instead. If an effect would place one or more counters on a permanent you control, it places twice that many of those counters on that permanent instead."

Seems simple enough. Here are some statements. Can you figure out for each one if the statement is true or false? All of the statements assume that you control a Doubling Season.

---

1) You control a face-down Hooded Hydra, and you turn it face up by paying its morph cost. The hydra will only get five +1/+1 counters.

Hooded Hydra says: "As Hooded Hydra is turned face up, put five +1/+1 counters on it."

---

2) You control a face-down Hooded Hydra, and your opponent casts Break Open targeting it. It will get ten +1/+1 counters.

Break Open says: "Turn target face-down creature an opponent controls face up."

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3) You control a Words of Wilding, and you activate its ability during your upkeep, and proceed to the draw step. When you would draw your card, you instead put a 2/2 green Bear creature token onto the battlefield. Only one.

  

Words of Wilding says: "1: The next time you would draw a card this turn, put a 2/2 green Bear creature token onto the battlefield instead."

---

4) You control a Words of Wilding and an Alchemist's Apprentice. You activate the ability of the former, and then the ability of the latter. Instead of drawing a card, you instead put two 2/2 green Bear creature tokens onto the battlefield.

 Alchemist's Apprentice says: "Sacrifice Alchemist's Apprentice: Draw a card."

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5) You play a Vivid Grove as your land drop. It will enter the battlefield with just two charge counters.

Vivid Grove says: "Vivid Grove enters the battlefield tapped with two charge counters on it."

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6) You control a Sakura-Tribe Scout, and you use its ability to put a Vivid Grove from your hand onto the battlefield. It will enter the battlefield with four charge counters.

Sakura-Tribe Scout says: "(Tap): You may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield."

---

It may be a surprise to many players, but the answer to each one of the statements above is "true".

Why does Doubling Season sometimes double the number of counters/tokens, and sometimes it doesn't? The reason for this is quite obscure and technical.

The key word here is Doubling Season's wording "if an effect would put..." It's also related to a technical aspect of replacement effects.

The word "effect" in the card's text is not just random or inconsequential. The rules of the game explicitly define "effect" as meaning "spell or ability". In other words, what the text in Doubling Season is really saying is, effectively: "If one or more tokens would be put onto the battlefield under your control as a consequence of a spell or ability..." (and the same for counters).

Turning a face-down permanent face-up by paying the permanent's morph cost is not activating an ability. Instead, it's a special action (this is explicitly specified in the rules), and special actions do not count as activated abilities. Hooded Hydra's "As Hooded Hydra is turned face up..." is a replacement effect (as specified in the rules), and replacement effects do not change the nature or type of the event they are affecting; they simply modify the event in some way. Thus the reason why the hydra is getting counters is a special action, not a spell or ability, and thus Doubling Season has no effect on it.

If the hydra turns face-up due to a spell like Break Open, this changes things. Now it's a spell that's turning it face-up, and thus Doubling Season now has an effect on it.

Drawing a card at the beginning of the draw step is not a spell or an ability either, but a so-called turn-based action. A replacement effect like that of Words of Wilding doesn't make it anything else. Even though the event was modified, it's still a turn-based action, and thus Doubling Season has no effect on it. Thus you get only one bear token.

However, if you are drawing a card with an ability like the one on Alchemist's Apprentice, this once again changes things. Now it's not a turn-based action, but a resolving ability that's making you draw a card. Thus Doubling Season affects it (or rather, the modified version of it by Words of Wilding).

Likewise playing a land is also a special action. It's not casting a spell nor is it an ability. This is why playing a vivid land as your land drop won't double the counters on it. However, putting a land onto the battlefield due to a spell or ability (like the one on Sakura-Tribe Scout) does double the counters.

(Note that this is a consequence of the rules that may change in the future, as the rules coordinators have expressed the sentiment that they may want to change this so that it becomes more intuitive. The rules work like above as of writing this blog post, but may become different in the future.)

One of the reasons why Doubling Season is worded like that (ie. "if an effect would put..."), and why it's so difficult to change so that the abovementioned interactions would become more intuitive, is that they don't want it interacting with things like costs that put counters on permanents (such as activating planeswalker abilities).

Goblin Test Pilot shenanigans

There's a handy combo that can be used to get an unlimited amount of copies of almost any creature, which consists of enchanting said creature with Splinter Twin and having an Intruder Alarm on the battlefield. (This way each time you create a copy of the creature, Intruder Alarm will untap the creature, which means you can create another copy, and so on.)

It's fun to think what happens with certain creatures when they are copied without limit. One such case is Goblin Test Pilot. This can create some very interesting rules nightmares.

Goblin Test Pilot has power 0, so it can't be used to win the game by attacking (unless something boosts all your creatures). However, it has an ability that deals 2 damage to a target creature or player. (Because the copy will have haste, you can use it right away.) The thing is, the target is chosen at random. This creates interesting situations.

The game supports the notion of "shortcuts". In other words, if you wanted to create a thousand copies of the goblin, you don't have to go through the motions one at a time, but you can propose a shortcut. You can simply demonstrate how the combo works and say "I create a thousand copies of the goblin; they'll all end up untapped at the end." If your opponent has nothing to interrupt the combo, then they can agree with the shortcut.

However, suppose that now you would want to activate the ability of each copy. Can you shortcut this? Normally you could, but in this case you can't because the target is chosen at random. You pretty obviously just can't propose a shortcut for a repeated random effect. You would need to choose the random target individually for each activated ability. So what exactly are you supposed to do in this case? You can't take forever to activate them.

This isn't just a "troll" combo, however. There's a way to arguably use this combo to win, by following this procedure:

1. If there are no untapped goblin copies, create a copy and let Intruder Alarm untap all creatures.
2. Activate the ability of an untapped goblin copy.
3. If it targets your opponent, one of his or her creatures, or one of your goblin copies, let it resolve and then jump to step 1.
4. Else (in other words, if it targets you or your original goblin) do not let it resolve and instead jump to step 1 in response.

While this is not a formal proof, this informal argument can be used to show that you will eventually deal enough damage to your opponent to win the game, no matter how many iterations it takes. It doesn't really matter if this takes ten iterations or ten million iterations, eventually you will have dealt enough damage to your opponent to win.

Can you propose this kind of shortcut? The official answer is no: You can't. The reason is that the number of iterations is not fixed, but random, and that just can't be shortcut. The rules of the game don't support this.

This creates a curious situation where, at least in a tournament, you would probably be disallowed from running this loop, or even imposed a game loss for stalling, even though there's nothing illegitimate about the combo and you are not really stalling. You are just doing what the cards say, without any kind of stalling. However, if the loop is taking hours, you won't be able to just continue it in an actual tournament. You can't shortcut this either (at least if the judges are strict with the rules of the game.)

Is pile-shuffling useful?

I posit that it is not, and here's my argument.

"Pile-shuffling" is the method of distributing the cards into a number of piles, and then just collecting the piles together. This is rather different from the traditional "mash shuffling" and "riffle shuffling" methods.

This is an important fact: Pile-shuffling does not evenly randomize your deck. This might sound like something self-evident and trivial, but nevertheless surprisingly many people have all kinds of misconceptions about it. Some people believe that pile-shuffling two times into a different number of piles is "sufficient randomization". Many even mention prime numbers (even though they have nothing to do with how randomized the deck will become.) Pile-shuffling does not evenly randomize your deck even if you put each card on a random pile.

Assume that at the end of a game you simply collect all your lands and put them on top of your library, and then pile-shuffle for example into seven piles. This means that you know that each 8th card in your deck will be a land. This is obviously not even randomization. Even if you couldn't tell which land will come after the next seven cards, it's still not randomized because you know for certain that it will be a land. This ought to be pretty obvious.

Moreover, if you did this, it would be effectively mana-weaving (ie. deliberately distributing your lands evenly in your deck, with no randomization afterwards), which is illegal.

Most players who pile-shuffle will mash-shuffle or riffle-shuffle extensively afterwards, and they argue that this is sufficient randomization which nullifies the "mana-weaving", and therefore it's not cheating. And that's the crucial point: If they are going to sufficiently randomize it afterwards, undoing any ordering that the pile-shuffling achieved, then the pile-shuffling was a complete waste of time because it did nothing useful.

Pile-shuffling does not increase the randomness of the deck (by its very nature), and the deck is going to be randomized afterwards anyways, so why exactly do it? What's the use?

Some may ask "why not? What's the harm?" There's no other harm except that pile-shuffling takes time, and thus it's a complete waste of it. So why waste time on a procedure that achieves nothing useful?

Some people argue that pile-shuffling is useful to count your cards (in order to verify that no card ended up in the wrong place during a game, and that there aren't any extra cards). Ok, that's fine. However, especially tournament players often pile-shuffle several times. These extra shuffles do not have even this excuse.

The main reason why people pile-shuffle is because they feel that normal mash-shuffling doesn't "separate" cards enough from each other. They feel that pile-shuffling separates the cards from each other in the deck, and thus increases randomness and evens out the deck more (especially in terms of land distribution). But this is once again borderline mana-weaving: If you feel that your mash-shuffling is not randomizing the deck enough, and thus you feel the need to pile-shuffle to compensate, then you are borderline mana-weaving, ie. borderline cheating. If you argue that your mash-shuffling is enough to randomize the deck afterwards (and thus undo any possible mana weaving), then you are arguing that the pile-shuffling was indeed useless and a waste of time.

I find it curious how defensive people get when these things are brought up. Many, if not most, players will vehemently defend pile-shuffling no matter what arguments against its usefulness are presented. I have yet to find a player that simply agrees.

(Often the conversation will quickly start going in circles. When you argue that pile-shuffling effectively amounts to stacking/manaweaving your deck, they will argue that the mash shuffling afterwards will undo any such stacking. When you then point out that they just confirmed that the pile-shuffling achieved nothing useful because of the mash shuffling, they will insist that it was useful because it separates clumps of lands etc. In other words, you can point out, they are indeed stacking/manaweaving with the pile shuffling. And in circles the conversation will go...)

If you don't think pile-shuffling is all that slow, watch this video. (Note that the several pile-shuffles the player does eg. starting at 2:25 in the video have zero benefit in terms of deck randomization because of the rather massive amount of mash shuffling done in addition to them.)

An oddly-worded replacement effect

In Magic, replacement effects are very recognizable because they typically use the word "instead". In fact, the vast majority of them conform to the template:

"If (something) would (do something), (do something else) instead."

For example, Rest in Peace says:

"If a card or token would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead."

This form is so ubiquitous that when one gets used to it, a card like Knight of the Holy Nimbus sounds very strange.

It says: "If Knight of the Holy Nimbus would be destroyed, regenerate it."

Note how it almost conforms to the standard template, except that it does not use the word "instead". In fact, it doesn't seem to conform to any standard template for replacement effects. These templates are defined in rule 614.1, and are (paraphrasing):

• Effects that use the word "instead".
• Effects that use the word "skip".
• Effects that read "[This permanent] enters the battlefield with ...", "As [this permanent] enters the battlefield ...", or "[This permanent] enters the battlefield as ..."
• Effects that read "As [this permanent] is turned face up ..."

None of those templates seem to fit Knight of the Holy Nimbus. So what exactly is it?

It turns out that this is a special wording defined in rule 701.12b. Said rule effectively states that

"If [this permanent] would be destroyed, regenerate it."

means

"If [this permanent] would be destroyed, instead remove all damage marked on it and tap it, and if it's an attacking or blocking creature, remove it from combat."

The "instead" is implied in this particular template.

Casting an opponent's commander

Question: In the Commander game format, is it possible to construct a situation where you can cast an opponent's commander from the command zone?

Of course the answer is "yes" (and the image below spoils the answer), but the interesting rules question is why it's possible.

One way to achieve that is to make the opponent's commander go to the top of that opponent's library (for example with Excommunicate), and then attack with an unblocked Daxos of Meletis. After that, even if your opponent decides to put the commander in the command zone instead of exiling it, you can nevertheless cast it.

This is a little quirk of the rules of the game (and is in fact something that WotC fully acknowledges as a valid thing to do. In fact, a recent rules change clarifies the situation, making it even clearer.)

The key reason why this is possible is because the effect uses the wording "that card", rather than for example "the exiled card". (For example the same would not work with something like Oblivion Ring, which says "when Oblivion Ring leaves the battlefield, return the exiled card to the battlefield under its owner's control." Because it uses that wording, if the card is not in exile when the ability resolves, it won't do anything. This is delineated in the rules of the game.)

Because Daxos uses the wording "that card", if the exiling is replaced with the card going to another public zone, the effect will keep track of it (until it changes zones to somewhere else, after which it loses track of it because it's now a different object.) Note that it won't be able to track it if the exiling is replaced with going to a hidden zone.

So the next logical question is: What about the commander mana tax? Do you have to pay 2 extra mana for each time it has been cast from the command zone?

You don't pay the owner's mana tax. Instead, you have your own mana tax imposed for that particular commander (and which is independent from the mana tax of your own commander.) In other words, the first time you do this, there is no tax. However, if you manage to repeat the same feat with the same commander during the same game, you'll now have to pay 2 extra mana to cast it (and so on.)

Damage replacement and redirection

Suppose you control a Force Bubble and a planeswalker (it doesn't matter which for the intents of this question; I'm putting Jace in the image just as a random example). Your opponent casts a damage spell, like Lightning Bolt, targeting you. Question: Is it possible for your opponent to redirect that damage to the planeswalker or not?

An intuitive answer would be that "of course not; the Bubble is replacing the damage with something else, so there's nothing to redirect to the planeswalker." However, it's not that simple. This is actually a bit contrived part of the game.

The Bubble's ability is a replacement effect. The redirect-damage-to-planeswalker rule is also a replacement effect (this is defined so in the rules of the game. It doesn't really matter that the replacement effect is optional, it still applies here.) Thus there are two replacement effects trying to modify the same damage. So what happens?

The rules state in this case that the affected player (ie. in this case you) decides the order in which the two replacement effects are applied. Thus you have two options:

If you decide that the Bubble's effect is applied first, then the damage is replaced with putting counters onto the Bubble. After that the planeswalker-redirection effect does nothing because there's nothing to replace anymore.

However, you could also choose to have the redirection effect apply first (in most cases this wouldn't be sensible, but in some cases it could well be.) What happens then?

The effect in question now asks your opponent whether he or she wants to redirect the damage to the planeswalker. If your opponent does, then the damage is redirected, and then Bubble's effect does nothing (because likewise there's nothing to replace anymore).

However, if your opponent does not want to redirect the damage, now the Bubble's replacement effect is applied, and in this case there is something to replace, so the damage is replaced with putting counters on the Bubble.

So this is an interestingly contrived situation. To recapitulate, these are all the options:

1. You decide to apply Bubble's effect first. The damage is replaced with counters on the Bubble, and the other effect then does nothing.
2. You decide to apply the redirection effect first. Now your opponent chooses whether to redirect the damage to the planeswalker or not.
   1. Your opponent decides to redirect, thus the planeswalker gets the damage and nothing else happens.
   2. Your opponent decides not to redirect. Then the Bubble's replacement effect is now applied, and it takes place.

Phasing out Banisher Priest

Suppose you control a Banisher Priest enchanted with a Splinter Twin. You make a token that's a copy of Banisher Priest, and exile some creature with it. Then someone phases the token out using Reality Ripple. Question: Will the exiled creature return to the battlefield?

Banisher Priest has the following ability: "When Banisher Priest enters the battlefield, exile target creature an opponent controls until Banisher Priest leaves the battlefield" (emphasis mine.)

An object that phases out is not considered to change zones nor leave the battlefield.

A token that phases out ceases to exist as a state-based action. As far as I know, it's undefined by the rules whether "ceases to exist" constitutes "leaving the battlefield".

Likewise it's apparently not defined whether Banisher Priest's ability (or any of such new-style temporary exiling abilities) will end when the object they are tracking phases out. (After all, they are looking for the event "leaves the battlefield", and this event never happens.)

It seems to be that (as of writing this post) this is yet another situation where the rules of the game are incomplete, as they do not clearly and unambiguously define what should happen.


Update: It seems that the official interpretation from Wizards is that the creature does not return and will remain exiled indefinitely.

Humble God

Assume that there's a Humility on the battlefield, and you control Heliod, God of the Sun. Question: Will Heliod be indestructible? But more interestingly: Will your other creatures have vigilance?

(Note that the Oracle text of Humility is: "All creatures lose all abilities and are 1/1." Humility doesn't make anything a creature, nor does it remove any types.)

There are four possible combinations here depending on which one entered the battlefield first, and whether your devotion to white is less than five or not.

The first question depends solely on your devotion to white. If it's less than five, the question is whether Humility removes the ability that makes Heliod a non-creature or not. Since Humility only affects creatures, and Heliod's ability may make it a non-creature, this might at first seem like a chicken-and-egg problem. (If Humility removes the ability, then there's nothing to make it a non-creature, but if the ability makes it a non-creature, then Humility won't affect Heliod.)

However, the seeming problem is resolved thanks to the layering system. Heliod's ability is evaluated in layer 4 (the layer where type setting and removing abilities are evaluated). This happens before evaluating Humility's ability, which is done in layer 6 (the layer where ability adding and removing is evaluated.) Thus Heliod's ability trumps Humility's, and thus if your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod won't be a creature, Humility won't affect it, and it will be indestructible. If your devotion to white is five or more, then Heliod will be a creature and Humility will remove all of its abilities and make it 1/1.

The more complex question is whether your other creatures will have vigilance.

If your devotion to white is less than five, and thus Heliod is not a creature, then it depends on timestamps. This is because there are now two effects that add or remove abilities (and thus are in the same layer.) If Heliod entered before Humility, then your other creatures won't have vigilance, but if Heliod entered after, they will.

Something more complicated happens if your devotion to white is five or more, and thus Heliod is a creature. This is because now the two abilities are dependent: They exist on the same layer, and the existence of one depends on the other. Thus in this case Humility's effect is evaluated first regardless of timestamps, and thus no creatures will have vigilance.