Am I missing something? The article linked in the first post says this:
That guild pack will have a secret allied guild, which will share one color with your chosen guild, and also always be from the opposite set as your chosen guild.
That explicitly says that each allied guild pair has three colors, not four.
Actually, a spell is something on the stack that isn't an ability. You can counter copies of spells, because the copies ARE spells, even though they're not cards. It's defined basically in the comp. rules as a card on the stack, but things that aren't cards can be spells.
Correct. More specifically, the three kinds of object-on-the-stack that count as a spell are cards, copies of cards, and copies of spells. Yes, those second two are different. Things like Fork make copies of spells; things like Isochron Scepter make copies of cards. The difference is most apparent when dealing with split cards, where both halves can be cast from the copy of the card Isochron Scepter makes, but Fork can only copy whichever half actually got cast as a spell.
Those creatures controlled by that opponent that can't avoid combat (no T activated abilities or what have you) must be declared as an attacker if able, and they must attack Gideon Jura.
I don't believe that bolded part is correct. The "attacks if able" requirement only applies during the declare attackers step. Nothing prevents a player from taking actions before that to put creatures in a position that leaves them unable to attack.
EDIT: Whoops. Sorry; I misread your statement. What you have is correct, but it can easily be misread as though you said the creatures aren't allowed to use tap abilities.
Sure, like I said, it only works if the card that was drawn is a white card.
How do you figure?
Reveal the top card of your library and put into your hand. Sarkhan the Mad deals damage to himself equal to that card's converted mana cost.
Sarkhan the Mad deals damage to himself. The revealed card does not deal damage to Sarkhan the Mad. (The color of the revealed card (which is, by the way, not drawn, but placed into your hand) is therefore irrelevant.) Sarkhan the Mad is normally black and red, but the second ability on Eight-and-a-Half-Tails can make Sarkhan the Mad white. The first ability on Eight-and-a-Half-Tails can give Sarkhan the Mad protection from white. (The combined cost of activating these two abilities is 2W.) If Sarkhan the Mad is white and has protection from white, damage he deals to himself is prevented.
WotC hasn't exactly tried to explain to us exactly what hieromancy is yet, so im just going off of what google says which is that hieromancy is the divination of objects used in sacrifice
While the suffix -mancy means "divination," I doubt pyromancers and gigantomancers do that much divining. When used in fantasy, that suffix usually just means "magic."
ok i guess the idea didn't get across... It wouldnt produce the colored mana just colorless, but it can still be searched up as an island and still counts for cards like flow of ideas
I think you got the point across; your card just doesn't work the way you want it to. See how Island (at least any modern version thereof) doesn't have any abilities printed on it? But you can still tap it for blue mana? That's because there's a rule that specifically gives anything with the island subtype the ability to tap for blue mana.
See Watery Grave for another example. It doesn't have any printed abilities to tap for blue (or black) mana, but it has the ability to tap for blue mana by virtue of its island subtype (and for black mana by virtue of its swamp subtype). This fact is pointed out in the (parenthetical) reminder text.
Not going to happen. Which colors would be its allies? Which colors would be its enemies?
That argument is pitiful even in a discussion about a basic land of a sixth color. Here, in a discussion about a colorless basic land, that argument is completely worthless.
It would be much more sensible to just do them as monocolor hybrid cards and change the comprehensive rules to say that such a card is colorless in addition to the color in its mana cost if it has no fully colored mana symbols.
An object's color characteristic is a mathematical subset of { white, blue, black, red, green }. A colorless object is one whose color characteristic is exactly the null set, { }. A red object is one whose color characteristic is a set containing red. It is impossible for an object to be both colorless and red (or any other color).
Now, they could completely change the rules to make objects have an additional "colorlessness" property so they could have one or more colors and still be colorless, but then you'd also end up with the potential for things that had zero colors but were still not colorless.
I'm not saying that Eldrazi won't be a creature/tribal type. I actually fully agree that it makes the most sense. But, people shouldn't be so set in their logic as to believe there is no possibility whatsoever of Eldrazi being something completely new and beyond our current conventions.
Your comment would certainly have been relevant a week ago.
However, it's not just a matter of "most likely" anymore. arsenick_wrath is not jumping to conclusions in stating that we know Eldrazi is a creature type. We've known (barring lies or errors on WotC's part) that Eldrazi is (will be) a creature type ever since the Worldwake FAQ was released and WotC has flat-out told us that was the case.
Again, from where are you drawing this conclusion? "Eldrazi" is the name of a species of sentient beings, like "goblin," "merfolk," "human," and other words that are not proper nouns and not capitalized in normal (not Magic templating-specific) English.
I'm drawing this conclusion from the fact that the word "Eldrazi" is capitalized in official material alongside other names of sentient beings that are not capitalized. For example, the blurb for the "In the Teeth of Akoum" novel:
Nissa Revane, a planeswalker and proud elf warrior of the Jorga Nation, is witness to what the brood lineage can do. She sees that they pose a bigger problem than most suppose. Sorin, an ancient vampire planeswalker, knows this as well as anyone because he was among the original jailers of the ancient scourge. He has returned to Zendikar to make sure the Titans do not escape. They both want the Eldarzi threat extinguished but each has their own agenda. Nissa wants the Eldrazi off her plane entirely. Sorin wants to put the lock back on their cell. And there are still others who want the Titans to escape.
Note that "elf" and "vampire" are not capitalized, while "Eldrazi" is. "Eldrazi" is being treated as a proper noun.
At any rate, it's a moot argument at this point, since we know from the FAQ that it's a creature subtype.
supertypes are not capitalized, subtypes are capitalized. That's a rule.
The "rule" could probably be more accurately described as follows: Words are written in lowercase unless there's a reason to capitalize them. A word's being a subtype is such a reason. A word's being a supertype is not such a reason. The "rule" doesn't say to decapitalize already-capitalized words that are used as supertypes; it just says that a word's being a supertype is not enough reason to capitalize it in the first place.
But if it were a supertype the word would (a) be not capitalized unless it's breaking a templating rule
Or unless the rules of English say that the word should be capitalized. Like if it comes at the beginning of a sentence or if it's a proper noun. In English, a proper noun is capitalized whenever it is written, no matter the context. "Eldrazi" is a proper noun. "Eldrazi" is capitalized whenever it is written, no matter the context.
and (b) come first in the sentence, since supertypes in general are ordered before color-words (which include the colors and the word "colorless").
That seems to be true for abilities that generate legendary tokens. It does not seem to be true for the current Oracle wording of the ability on the ancient Adventurers' Guildhouse, which is a closer usage to that of Eye of Ugin (but may be an obsolete wording). I didn't find anything that refers specifically to a colored Snow, Basic, or World object.
Capitalisation does not stand alone and is a valid argument even if only a suplemental one.
No, it is simply not a valid argument in this case. If a word is lowercase, that indeed "proves" that it's not a subtype. If a word is capitalized, however, and that word is always capitalized, you can't use that to "prove" anything.
That explicitly says that each allied guild pair has three colors, not four.
Sounds like "I sac'ed a squirrel."
Or, "And I sac' the squirrel."
Correct. More specifically, the three kinds of object-on-the-stack that count as a spell are cards, copies of cards, and copies of spells. Yes, those second two are different. Things like Fork make copies of spells; things like Isochron Scepter make copies of cards. The difference is most apparent when dealing with split cards, where both halves can be cast from the copy of the card Isochron Scepter makes, but Fork can only copy whichever half actually got cast as a spell.
I don't believe that bolded part is correct. The "attacks if able" requirement only applies during the declare attackers step. Nothing prevents a player from taking actions before that to put creatures in a position that leaves them unable to attack.EDIT: Whoops. Sorry; I misread your statement. What you have is correct, but it can easily be misread as though you said the creatures aren't allowed to use tap abilities.
Sarkhan the Mad deals damage to himself. The revealed card does not deal damage to Sarkhan the Mad. (The color of the revealed card (which is, by the way, not drawn, but placed into your hand) is therefore irrelevant.) Sarkhan the Mad is normally black and red, but the second ability on Eight-and-a-Half-Tails can make Sarkhan the Mad white. The first ability on Eight-and-a-Half-Tails can give Sarkhan the Mad protection from white. (The combined cost of activating these two abilities is 2W.) If Sarkhan the Mad is white and has protection from white, damage he deals to himself is prevented.
While the suffix -mancy means "divination," I doubt pyromancers and gigantomancers do that much divining. When used in fantasy, that suffix usually just means "magic."
I think you got the point across; your card just doesn't work the way you want it to. See how Island (at least any modern version thereof) doesn't have any abilities printed on it? But you can still tap it for blue mana? That's because there's a rule that specifically gives anything with the island subtype the ability to tap for blue mana.
See Watery Grave for another example. It doesn't have any printed abilities to tap for blue (or black) mana, but it has the ability to tap for blue mana by virtue of its island subtype (and for black mana by virtue of its swamp subtype). This fact is pointed out in the (parenthetical) reminder text.
Same deal for Moonring Island.
Your card would likewise have the ability to tap for blue mana simply because it has the island subtype. That's what Cr4v3m4n was referring to.
That argument is pitiful even in a discussion about a basic land of a sixth color. Here, in a discussion about a colorless basic land, that argument is completely worthless.
Swirling Sandstorm
An object's color characteristic is a mathematical subset of { white, blue, black, red, green }. A colorless object is one whose color characteristic is exactly the null set, { }. A red object is one whose color characteristic is a set containing red. It is impossible for an object to be both colorless and red (or any other color).
Now, they could completely change the rules to make objects have an additional "colorlessness" property so they could have one or more colors and still be colorless, but then you'd also end up with the potential for things that had zero colors but were still not colorless.
That does not sound sensible to me.
Zendikar is not a small set.
Except that has only two thirds of an ellipsis, doesn't have the attribution on a separate line, and says "MOCKUP" at the bottom.
Your comment would certainly have been relevant a week ago.
However, it's not just a matter of "most likely" anymore. arsenick_wrath is not jumping to conclusions in stating that we know Eldrazi is a creature type. We've known (barring lies or errors on WotC's part) that Eldrazi is (will be) a creature type ever since the Worldwake FAQ was released and WotC has flat-out told us that was the case.
I'm drawing this conclusion from the fact that the word "Eldrazi" is capitalized in official material alongside other names of sentient beings that are not capitalized. For example, the blurb for the "In the Teeth of Akoum" novel:
Note that "elf" and "vampire" are not capitalized, while "Eldrazi" is. "Eldrazi" is being treated as a proper noun.
At any rate, it's a moot argument at this point, since we know from the FAQ that it's a creature subtype.
The "rule" could probably be more accurately described as follows: Words are written in lowercase unless there's a reason to capitalize them. A word's being a subtype is such a reason. A word's being a supertype is not such a reason. The "rule" doesn't say to decapitalize already-capitalized words that are used as supertypes; it just says that a word's being a supertype is not enough reason to capitalize it in the first place.
Or unless the rules of English say that the word should be capitalized. Like if it comes at the beginning of a sentence or if it's a proper noun. In English, a proper noun is capitalized whenever it is written, no matter the context. "Eldrazi" is a proper noun. "Eldrazi" is capitalized whenever it is written, no matter the context.
That seems to be true for abilities that generate legendary tokens. It does not seem to be true for the current Oracle wording of the ability on the ancient Adventurers' Guildhouse, which is a closer usage to that of Eye of Ugin (but may be an obsolete wording). I didn't find anything that refers specifically to a colored Snow, Basic, or World object.
No, it is simply not a valid argument in this case. If a word is lowercase, that indeed "proves" that it's not a subtype. If a word is capitalized, however, and that word is always capitalized, you can't use that to "prove" anything.