Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #503: Unstable Rules
Episode Date: January 19, 2018One of my many jobs is Un-rules manager. In this podcast, I talk about my role and about many of the weird rules of Unstable. ...
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I'm pulling out of the gas station. We all know what that means. It's time there's a drive to work.
And I had to teach Rachel how to pump a gas today. She's a good driver though. Learning the basics.
Anyway, so today I got a special guest. Unstable is out hopefully by now.
And so I got the rules manager to come and talk to you guys today. It's me, by the way.
Anyway, so I'm putting on my un-rules manager hat.
So I did a podcast once before about the fact that I'm the un-rules manager.
It's a job I kind of backed my way into.
But I actually had to do a bunch of work for Unstable.
And so today, I'm going to talk about Unstable rules.
So I'm hopefully going to explain a bunch of things.
I'll talk about some, I'll talk about the mechanics, maybe some cards that are complicated.
And we will dig into the rules of unstable specifically.
Although some of the rules will follow, some of the rules were created for previous unsets that I'm following the rule we set there.
But anyway, let's talk unstable.
Okay, so we're going to start with contraptions,
because contraptions are the big new hot thing in the set.
So I want to talk through some of the rules a little bit.
Okay, so the idea is you have a contraption deck.
Contraption deck has a different back.
Contraptions do not go in the library,
nor do they go in the graveyard.
When contraptions die,
they go to the scrapyard,
which is basically the graveyard
for the contraption deck.
Mostly the reason that's important
is that when contraptions get destroyed,
they don't go to the graveyard.
You can't get them out of the graveyard.
They're in their own place that you can't get to.
There's no cards that reference the scrapyard.
At least right now, there's no cards that reference the scrapyard.
Okay, so here's a couple of things about contraptions to make sure people understand.
So number one is they are artifacts.
They don't go in your deck.
But when you play a contraption, you are putting the contraption on the battlefield.
Now, there are sprockets you are putting them in.
So real quickly, for those that might not know exactly how this works,
the way contraptions work is you have a contraption deck,
you have cards that are in your normal deck that assemble contraptions.
When a contraption is assembled, you take the top card off of your contraption deck,
and then you can put it into one of three columns. Sprocket 1, Sprocket 2, or Sprocket 3.
And the idea is, each turn, you advance the crank counter, and a different column sort of goes off. All the contraptions in it happen.
So, and the way
it works is, it sits idle
until you make your first contraption.
And once you make your first contraption,
then the first turn after your first
contraption is made, sprocket one.
Beginning of turn, sprocket one will go
off. Then the next turn, sprocket two will go
off. Then the next turn, sprocket three will
go off. And the way it works is, any card that's in that sprocket, in that column, will happen. You can put them
in any order you want. So if you have, let's say you have two things, one that makes your
creature bigger and one that makes your creature fight. Well you can first apply the boost
to the creature and then apply the fight. You can go in whatever order you want. Also, they're all optional.
So if you don't want to do something,
that doesn't happen a lot.
They're all positive abilities.
But every once in a while is something in which,
oh, it's not beneficial to do it.
You're never forced to do it.
Contraptions are optional.
We were going to write may in all the text boxes
and I'm like, well, let's just make the rule
that it's optional rather than just adding extra words. So the idea in contraptions is you never are forced to do a
contraption you can do whatever you want you only do the contraption so in that sprocket in that in
that vertical column um so one of the interesting things about contraptions is figure out what you
want where there's a lot of combos that. We design contraptions so a lot of interactions can happen. So when placing, oh remember, when you assemble a contraption, you are allowed to put your
contraption in any sprocket you wish. It does not need to be in the next sprocket that goes off.
It does not need to be the sprocket that went off that turn. You can put it in any sprocket you want.
Now there are some cards that have you reassemble a contraption. What that means is, you basically, it's as if you drew it.
You sort of pick it up, and then you can put it in any sprocket you want.
So if I reassemble something, let's say I played it originally and put it in sprocket 2,
reassemble it, I can put it in sprocket 1 or sprocket 3.
I can put it back in sprocket 2, technically.
Not a great use of reassembling, but technically I guess you're
allowed to reassemble to the same place. Also, you can get control of your opponent's sprockets.
There are cards that let you sort of steal them. And what happens then is you're essentially
reassembling from theirs to yours. Now be aware when you do that, they still own it. It's their
card. And if it somehow gets destroyed, it goes to their scrapyard, not to your
scrapyard.
Now, there are some cards that allow you
to sort of get ownership of cards.
We'll get to that.
Okay. The
thing
to also remember about contraptions is
on the battlefield, and they are on the battlefield,
they are artifacts.
They're permanents. They're permanents that are artifacts.
Any way you can interact with artifacts, you can interact with contraptions.
If you want to destroy an artifact, you can destroy a contraption.
No, you're not destroying all the contraptions, unless you have to destroy all artifacts.
You're destroying each artifact.
Each contraption is its own artifact.
So destroy target artifact means you can destroy a single contraption,
but you can't destroy all contraptions or even a whole sprocket. You destroy one singular contraption.
Also, you can sacrifice. Let's say you want to sacrifice an artifact. Those are artifacts. You
can sacrifice them. There are actually two cards that let you sacrifice an artifact to assemble
contraptions. And so one of the things that it lets you do
is it lets you sacrifice one of the contraptions
to assemble a different contraption.
Oh, deck construction, by the way, real quickly,
is in constructed, you have to have at least 15 contraptions
and they're singleton, meaning you can have no more than one.
In limited, you have whatever you want.
Well, you can draft whatever you want. You can
play any number of contraptions. You can play zero contraptions. You can play as many as you have,
and you can play any duplicates that you want. The trick about contraptions in Draft is you have to
draft the contraptions. There's two in a pack. They need to be drafted. So if you pick up things
that assemble contraptions, you might also want to pick up contraptions
because if you go to assemble a contraption
and you have no contraptions in your contraption deck,
then guess what happens?
Nothing.
You don't assemble a contraption.
And so I will tell you strategically,
you kind of want to make sure
every time you assemble a contraption,
you have a contraption.
You're paying for,
the mechanic pays for that you're assembling a contraption. So not assembling a contraption. You're paying for, the mechanic pays for
that you're assembling a contraption.
So not assembling a contraption
is not getting the full value out of the card.
And I will tell you,
a lot of the value of the card
is the contraption itself.
The way the contraptions work, by the way,
is there are 45 contraptions,
five,
for each faction,
there's a different,
there's nine for each faction.
By the way, they make a picture.
If you put them in a three by three
card sleeves,
they make a three by three picture. So if you want
to have some fun, they
connect and everything. Remember, they bleed to the end.
Also,
contraptions
On contraptions, the bottom right-hand corner is a symbol.
All of the contraptions tie to one of the five factions.
There's a picture of their watermark, their symbol.
For purposes of watermark matters, those symbols on the contraptions are considered watermarks.
So anytime it talks about if you have a card that does such and such, those the contraptions are considered watermarks. So anytime it talks about,
if you have a card that does such and such,
those are contraptions.
So some cards say,
you can sacrifice a blah-de-blah.
Well, if it's the right one, you can sacrifice that.
So for things that care about watermarks,
those are counted as watermarks.
Any other contraption questions? I think that's all the contraption questions
so let's
let's segue, I'll segue into watermarks
real quickly because we're on watermarks
so there are a bunch of cards that
care about watermarks
there's some cards that care about specific watermarks
like if it has a spy watermark
and then there are a few cards that
either watermark it as the land that just cares about it, unless you, it makes two colorless mana,
but you can only use it on cards that have watermarks. So all that's looking for is watermark
or no, do you have a watermark? And oh, once again, let me, I forgot to mention this in the beginning.
What we call the silver rule,
kind of like the golden rule,
but the silver rule of magic,
of unsets,
is normal magic,
blackboarder magic,
the way blackboarder magic works is
if I have a card,
every card with that English title,
with the same English title,
works exactly the same.
They're identical.
They're all completely functional.
In the unworld, that's not true. In the Unworld, you need to care specifically what the version
you are playing with has. The reason that is so is we care about things in Silver Border that we
don't care about in Black Border. For example, artist, expansion symbol, watermark. And what
can happen is the same card can have different expansion
symbols or different artists or different watermarks, but be the same card. So in Blackboard,
you can't care about those things because they have to be treated, the cards have to be treated
the same. Here, if I care about a particular watermark or care about a particular artist or
care about a particular expansion symbol, I have to look at the card. I have to see what the card is.
So for purposes of watermarks,
let's say I'm using Watermarket.
It doesn't matter if there exists another copy of the card
with a watermark.
It's like, well, there is a version of this card
that has a watermark.
I don't care.
Does this version have a watermark?
If not, so when Watermarket says it can cast any card, it means
specifically cards with watermarks, not
cards that have other versions that have watermarks.
That's not how Silver Border works.
It looks specifically at the card.
Now there also is at least one card,
Stamp of Approval,
that you pick a watermark
and then it grants plus and plus one
to all creatures that have that watermark.
And so that one is looking at a specific watermark. You pick a watermark. Now that doesn't need
to be a watermark from unstable. It can be a blackboarded watermark. That is fine. You
could pick the Phyrexian symbol or the Myrren symbol or any of the guild symbols or any
of the clan symbols. For purposes of
people will ask, I'm
going to be kind and say that for
the five clan symbols, all the variance
is the same clan. I'll be
nice about that. The wing of the
dragon is the wing of the dragon, even though there's actually
three slightly different versions of the wing of the
dragon. We'll call those the wing of the
dragon and be nice about that.
So, Watermark, like I said, Watermark is the element, normally on a card, behind the text. The Ravnica Guild symbols, the Clan symbols, the Phraxin mark, the Planeswalker symbol on story spotlight cards.
Those are what I refer to when I talk about Watermarks.
Okay, let's get to the other named mechanic of the set.
Host and Augment.
Okay, so the way it works is host creatures are just creatures.
You can just play them.
They look weird.
They have a metal bar running through their art,
and their text box is a little quirky in the way it's laid out.
But basically the way a host creature works is
all host creatures have an enter the battlefield effect.
When you play them and they enter the battlefield,
they'll do their effect.
Most of them are just vanilla creatures,
other than their ETB effect.
The one exception...
They're all vanilla creatures,
except there's the one flying robotic angel that's flying.
Now, so the idea is I play a host creature.
It's a normal creature.
It just is a creature.
I can act like, you know, there's nothing weird about it game-wise.
It's a creature.
The layout is weird because we're trying to help you with the augment mechanic, but it
is, just works like a normal creature.
Okay.
trying to help you with the augment mechanic, but it just works like a normal creature.
Okay, augment are creature cards, meaning if I care about something being creature,
if a card says discard a creature card, they are a creature card. Search your library for a creature card, they are a creature card. The thing about augment is you can't cast
them. They have no mana cost, but they do have an augment cost. So the way an augment
cost is, if you have this in your hand,
and there's a host creature that you control on the battlefield,
you can augment the host.
So augment is only usable on host creatures.
So don't play augment cards in your deck if you don't have host creatures.
Likewise, when playing, you want to make sure you have more host creatures
than you have augment cards.
Because you can't... Host creatures you can just cast. Augment you can't cast unless you have a host creature. So augment are similar to auras
in the sense that you need the creature first before you can use them. They're
even more restrictive than auras though in that an aura can go on any creature,
or enchant creature can go on any creature, where an augment can only go on a host creature.
Okay, now, when you augment, now you'll notice that there is a metal bar
about a third of the way over on a host creature,
and then on the augment card, the bar's all the way to the right.
So basically what you're doing is, you are taking that metal bar on the AR
and you're overlapping them.
And the idea is, when you augment something, you are covering the front part of it and giving it a new front.
It'll keep its back, but it'll have a new front.
And the way it works is pretty much anything you cover up, anything you cover up is now covered up.
And anything that's on the augment card is now true about
the card. So augment will overwrite a bunch of things. Uh, it will overwrite, um, part of the
name. So the name changes. So let's say for example, I have, um, was it adorable pony?
Uh, it's a, there's a pony and then I have half, half. So I overlay it. Now it's half kitten, half
pony.
And that's now its name.
So cards that care about name, look at that
name.
Now it has a slightly different
card type line.
Usually what happens is it keeps
its creature type, but it loses
its host status, which is fine
because anything that cares about host or augment will mention
augment.
And then it has a new
trigger or activated or trigger ability.
So all the host cards have an
enter the battlefield trigger and then
ability. Well, the trigger goes away
when you enter the battlefield, trigger goes away,
but it still has its effect.
So now you have a new
I don't remember what Half-Kitten does, but But it still has its effect. So now you have a new...
I don't remember what Half-Kitten does,
but Half-Kitten is something like...
Whenever a creature,
a non-token creature gets put in the graveyard or something.
I don't remember exactly what it does.
But anyway, it does something.
And whenever that thing happens,
now you get to do what the pony, I don't remember,
actually, I'm using examples, I don't remember, but I think, for example, the example I used in
my article was you put monkey onto adorable kitten. So it's monkey kitten. Monkey cares
about when a non-token creature dies. the Adorable Kitten, its trigger is
roll a six-sided die,
gain life equal to the die roll.
So if you put monkey on kitten
to make monkey kitten,
you end up making a...
Whenever a creature dies,
you roll a die and get life equal to the total.
A non-token creature dies,
you gain life equal to six die to die roll.
Now, when you overlap them,
a couple things.
Artifact status stays.
You'll notice that we cracked off
the artifact part of the car type line
and moved it over so you could see it.
Pretty much we've helped you
that anything that stays true,
you can still see.
Oh, the one other difference is
the augment will have
power and toughness, it'll
change them usually. Or it will
always change them in some way. It doesn't always change
both. Sometimes it'll change one
and not the other. And by the way, it can not
just be pluses but mean minuses.
So let's say it says plus two plus two.
That now means, so for example I think monkey says plus two plus two. That now means, so
for example, I think monkey's plus two plus two. I think adorable kitten's a one two.
So now it's plus two plus two. So instead of a one two, now it's a three four. Now when
you augment a creature, it's considered a singular creature. So if I, if somebody destroys
the creature or does something to the creature, the whole creature is affected. It is not, it is not, the two cards have merged into one singular creature. So anything that
now cares about it treats it as a singular creature. The fact that it's made up of two
cards doesn't matter. They've been augmented, and so now it's a singular creature. Okay,
the other mechanic, well, the only two named mechanics were Contraptions and Host and Augment,
but there is a few more non-named things.
I talked about Watermark Theme.
So there's a mechanic that we called Outside Assistance.
It's not named, that's just the nickname R&D uses.
Outside Assistance, and I think there's eight cards that do this,
the way Outside assistance works is
it requires you to go get somebody who's
never played in the game
that you're doing. So what that means is, outside
assistance means I have to get somebody
that not only isn't currently
playing in the game, but hasn't
played in the game.
You can't go get back somebody that
got played and got knocked out in a multiplayer
game.
What you need to do then is you need to go get those people
and do the thing that it asks you to do on the card.
Does that person have to know magic? Nope.
I mean, the only time that you might want someone to know magic is kind slaver
requires them to play the turn.
Not that you couldn't get a non-magic player to do it,
but it's going to be
hard on that one card.
But the rest of the cards is like, hey, pick
something. And so they can pick
something. Pick a card in my hand
or pick a creature that's attacking.
So the other thing is you are
allowed an outside assistance to
use a phone. You can text somebody.
You can call somebody on the phone.
You might need to give them information so they know what to choose from.
Like it might be, here's your choices.
Here's a picture of your choices or something.
But the idea is you got to ask somebody that's not part of your game.
It can be somebody in another game.
It can be somebody working at the shop you're playing at.
It can be somebody walking by in the street. It can be your mom
if you're playing in your kitchen. It just needs to be somebody. And that person doesn't have
to have any knowledge of magic. In fact, a lot of fun things can happen when you involve
people that don't know magic into the magic game. Also, a lot of fun things can happen when
you involve magic players into a magic game that's another game.
But the key to outside assistance is that you need to pull in somebody that hasn't played.
The other thing that's a big theme in the set is die rolling.
So with one exception, all the dice rolling in Unstable is six-sided dice.
And when we say six-sided dice, we mean a die that has six sides,
has an equal chance of rolling all six sides,
and there's a one, a two, a three, a four, a five, and a six on each of the sides.
That's what we mean by six-sided die. Sword of Dungeon Dragons does let you roll a 20-sided die.
So one of the things you'll notice is sometimes we say six-sided die, and sometimes we say die roll.
If we, usually when we tell you to roll something,
we will tell you to roll what we mean for you to roll,
which is either six out of die or 20 out of die.
The cards that care about a die roll will often say die roll.
So, and there's a couple of different ways.
There's, I think, one or two cards that care about if you rolled a die,
and there's a bunch of cards that care about what you rolled.
If the card cares about an outcome, then it's looking for a number.
So as long as you rolled a die that created a number, then you are fine.
But if you are rolling a planar die or something else...
Also, when you have a card that cares about die rolls,
it is only caring about die rolls that are forced by a card in the game.
Meaning, you can't, oh, I have to discard a card?
I'll roll a die to figure out which card I discard randomly.
That doesn't count as a die roll for purposes of die roll mattering.
Nor does it count as a die roll for re-rolling dice.
That is only talking about if you roll a die
for the sake of a card.
Note that not only does Unstable
have die rolling, but Unglued also
has some die rolling. Those cards will
work together. Okay, so there's
a couple things you can do with die rolling to affect die rolls.
Number one is you can re-roll a die.
How does that work? So if I
roll a die, and I have an effect that
lets me re-roll a die,
then you are allowed to re-roll a die before the die effect will take effect. I know there's some
squishy rules thing here. Basically what I'm saying is if you're going to re-flip a coin
or re-roll a die, the things that let you do that let you do that. Before they resolve, they let you do that. Now, there are things that
care about rolling a die and care about the results of rolling a die. They look at both the original
roll and the re-roll. For example, there's a card called as Luckwood Habit that wants you to get up,
every time you roll a die roll, you get counters equal to the die roll, and you're trying to get
to 100, and it's an all-to-win condition. That does count originals and re-rolls.
Every time you roll a die, it just looks at, oh, I rolled a die. What did I get?
But for the sake of caring about the dice, if you re-roll it, you don't get to choose.
It is now the new roll.
Let's say I roll a 4 and then choose to re-roll it, and now I roll a 2.
I have a 2. I can't count the 4.
Now, there is an effect or two that lets
you roll an additional die and choose
which one not to include, like
the other
Kirk's thumb,
or Kirk's other thumb,
it's called. So when you use that,
you can roll two and then pick the one not to include.
Now, the interesting thing is,
when you roll two and pick one not to include,
I believe that doesn't get counted by things that care about die rolls,
because one of them sort of didn't happen.
I'll double-check on that one, but I believe that's how we ruled it.
Anyway, the other thing that can happen is,
you can have your die roll affected by snickering squirrel or, um, uh, there's the other squirrel, squirrel, uh, what's it called?
Squirrel power, squirrel power or something.
Um, uh, and they can make your die roll increase by one or by two.
Um, so the idea there is, um, when you can roll a score higher than naturally exists on the die.
If I roll a six and I, uh, Snickering Squirrel, it's a 7.
So whenever you roll, it's one higher,
and it doesn't matter whether the dice actually does that or not.
So yes, you can actually roll a 20-sided die using Sword of Dungeon Dragons
and add one and get 21.
I think Snickering Squirrel says all dice roll. If you care about rolling dice,
by the way, it just cares about any card that makes you roll a dice. So it will count planar
dice for did you roll a die. It won't count it for what's the outcome that you got, what's the
number that you got on it, because there's no number on a planar die. To the best of my knowledge,
the only dice that official Magic cards make you roll are six-sided dice, planar dice. To the best of my knowledge, the only dice that official magic cards make you roll
are six-sided dice, planar dice, and the 20-sided die for Sword of the Dungeons and Dragons.
To the best of my knowledge, there's no other dice that we have you roll.
Maybe that'll change in the future, but as far as I know, it's right now.
Okay, let's talk about a few of the abilities that show up.
So we're going to talk about Laugh Strike.
So there's a card with Laugh Strike, and there's a card with Triple Strike.
So Laugh Strike is essentially the mirror of first strike.
What that means is you get into combat, there's the first strike time,
and people who have first strike can attack.
Then there's normal strike. I think what Eli calls strike.
And that's when normal creatures, if it doesn't say anything else,
then that's when you do your damage.
Last strike though, with the addition of last strike, there's a new thing. After normal damage there is Last Strike damage
and if you have Last Strike you deal damage during Last Strike damage. So one
of the controversial decisions that I made was what happens if you get First
Strike and Last Strike. So let's say I have Extremely slow zombie and I did something to grant it first strike. There's a lot
of debate and depending on how you interpret the rules, there's a couple different ways to do it.
What I found was most people I talked to, only the people that really knew the Black Border rules
super, super well got the interpretation. There's two interpretations. One is that you only
ever get to do damage once, and once you do damage, you never
do damage again, which is kind of how Black Border works.
So in that case, you would just do First Strike and you're done.
That is not how
any of the casual people thought it worked, and I decided
that I'd rather play with how people
perceive it to work rather than
be... Anyway, I decided just to make it
work the way the majority of people thought it worked.
So if you have First Strike and last strike, you get to do
damage during first strike, you get to do damage
during last strike.
We call that split strike,
because double strike is first strike
and normal. Split strike is,
there's no card that grants split strike, but
first and last.
Then there is triple strike.
Triple strike means you do damage during first strike,
you do damage during normal strike, you do damage during normal strike,
you do damage during last strike.
In fact, it does damage three different times.
And if I'm not blocked,
I will actually do three times my damage to the opponent.
So triple strike can get pretty potent.
There also is an ability called Squirrel Link
that is on Earl of Squirrel.
So that ability is a lot like Life Link, meaning for each point of damage I do, there's a resulting action.
Now, Life Link is you gain a life.
For Squirrel Link, it is you make a 1-1 green squirrel token.
So Squirrel Link basically says for all the damage I do, I make squirrels.
And he also enhances squirrels.
So Earl Squirrel's pretty good.
There's
an ability called Just a Second,
which is a take on Split
Second. The idea of Just a Second
is
that is...
What's that card called?
It's the Praying Mantis, the wrestler.
Sometimes I blink on the names.
Oh, Slaying Mantis.
It's Slaying Mantis.
That's a good name.
Anyway, Slaying Mantis,
as soon as you tell your opponent
that you're going to cast it,
nothing can move.
Everything is frozen.
And you then get to cast the card.
The card basically has split second in that you can't respond to it.
But also, in addition to that, you're not allowed to move anything.
That it's about to flip and hit things.
Everything's locked in place.
You cannot move it.
And that, so...
Another card that causes some confusion is a card called Over My Dead Bodies.
This actually might be the most confusing card in
the set. Either that or there's the ninja that's in hand in play is also confusing. Okay, so the
way it works is when your creatures die, they go to the graveyard as normal. But when you attack
or block, creatures in your graveyard get to attack or block as if they were on the battlefield.
But with the caveat that they can only be blocked by other creatures also in the graveyard.
So essentially what you've done is you've created two zones.
And one zone, it's kind of like shadow.
It's kind of like the creatures in your graveyard have a special graveyard shadow
in that they can only be blocked by other creatures in the graveyard.
Now, all the creatures in the graveyard have an ability called Undeath Touch,
which is just me being funny of it's Death Touch for dead things.
What that means is if you're ever damaged by a creature in a graveyard,
if a creature's ever damaged by a creature in a graveyard, if a creature's ever damaged by a creature in a graveyard,
it's exiled.
So the idea essentially is when you're fighting in the graveyard,
any damage will remove you from.
So a lot of things you've got to figure out when you're attacking in the graveyard
is be aware that your big creature can be taken out by their tiny creature.
Now, the way it works is when we say can be treated as if you're attacking or blocking,
during the window, any creature that's attacking or blocking can be interacted with effects that
affect creatures, can affect attackers or blockers, or just any creatures. So for example, let's say
you have an ability on the battlefield that pumps all your zombies plus one plus one. Well, all the creature cards in your graveyard,
because of over-minded bodies,
makes your cards into
zombies.
All your creatures, while attacking or blocking,
would get the bonus, the zombie bonus.
Now,
also, if you, let's say
I attack, you can target
creatures with spells that are attacking,
because they are legal targets.
So what happens if I murder a creature that's in the middle of attacking from the graveyard?
Well, what'll happen is it'll go to, it sort of goes to the graveyard.
It's already in the graveyard, but it will remove it from combat.
But it's in the graveyard, so you didn't really, all you did, I mean, you can use it to stop
the damage for the turn, but you can't... It won't get rid of it next turn.
You know, murder doesn't stop a dead thing
from attacking next turn.
You can exile them in cards that...
Either cards that exile cards in the graveyard
or cards that exile creatures
if it's an incident you can do during combat.
You can't exile things and then they're gone.
So let's talk about...
What's the ninja's name?
It's like Masterful Ninja.
The ninja has this ability that's very similar to
Yet Another Aether Vortex
in that it can be at two zones at once.
The difference here is
when in your hand,
you can activate it to be
both in your hand
and on the battlefield.
And what that means is it gets the benefits of being in the hand and it gets the benefits
of being on the battlefield.
If anything ever happens to it, meaning if it dies, it goes to the graveyard, meaning
it will leave both your hand and the battlefield and go to the graveyard.
Likewise, if you're forced to discard it, it goes to the graveyard. It leaves both hand in the graveyard. So the idea is, it exists in both zones. It gets any benefit from being in each of the zones, but if it ever leaves one zone, or if it ever gets sent to the graveyard, it leaves both zones. The card has to be...
Now, you can play Masterful Ninja.
I'm not sure why you'd want to, since you get most
of the benefit of activating your hand, but
if you need to, you can.
But it has all properties of being on
the battlefield. You can sacrifice it,
but sacrificing it will require you to
discard it. That when it goes
to the graveyard in one zone, it goes to the graveyard
in both zones. It doesn't then... It doesn't then say, well, I'm now in hand
and in graveyard. It doesn't do that.
How am I doing on time? I've gotten to work. Oh, yes. Okay.
Well, I had a good 30 minutes. Anyway,
there are still other questions. I mean, I was trying to answer the major ones today.
At least how the major mechanics work. There will be other questions. I mean, I was trying to answer the major ones today, at least how the major mechanics work.
There will be other questions,
and if this is popular, maybe I'll do some card-by-card questioning.
There is plenty of rules.
I think the rule, the FAQ is like 60 pages long,
so there's a lot and lot of different rulings that had to be made.
But anyway, I will...
I'm now pulling up to our parking lot.
So I'm going to park.
But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this.
It's not often I get to talk rules.
Because it's not often I get to be the rule manager.
But in Silver Border world, I am.
So I hope you enjoyed the discussion today.
But anyway, I am going to...
We all know what it means.
I'm here.
We all know what that means. It means here. We all know what that means.
It means the end of my drive to work.
So instead of talking magic,
it's time for me to be making magic.
I'll see you guys next time.