Basically yes. His shortcut allows you to see every spell he is going to cast so if he is concerned about it, he should cast them one at a time and wait for your response.
In the second example given, there is nothing that your opponent has done that forces you to unsummon the creature after the first Giant Growth. How would he know you want to unsummon it then anyway? After all, if you are at 5 life, and he tries to pump up a 1/1 with Giant Growth, maybe you are fine with taking 4 and going down to 1. But, once he represents lethal, you obviously want to respond at that point.
Keep in mind that you free to accept the shortcut he just proposed and since he proposed it, he needs to abide by the shortcut (assuming you don't do anything to interrupt it). So, he cast 2 Giant Growths and you can say they both resolve. Then, before damage, you can just unsummon his 7/7 creature (or however big it is). You don't have to respond to either Giant Growth with your Unsummon.
And again, there is only one stack. There are spells and abilities on the stack, but only one stack at any given point.
That's true, I am having trouble with the rules for the stack. That is why I am posting here, so thanks for your answer. But isn't there something about checking the "state" of the creature during resolution of items on the stack? Also, is there ever a reason you wouldn't wait for a spell to resolve before casting the other in this situation? It seems like you're asking for that lighning bolt if you just lay down all your buffs at once.
Thanks everyone for answering my questions. I started playing magic in 1994 and the rules were different back then.
Also, the forum rules say you should link [cards] but it doesn't say what the code is. I've tried [ and [[ but neither work.
Most players lay down their spells as a form of shortcut. You are free to interrupt that shortcut (with a Bolt for example) but them proposing that shortcut does not mean they are casting every spell at once. There also isn't really anything about checking the "state" of an object during resolution of a spell unless a spell requires it. For example, if you cast Defeat on a creature and they pump it up, the power is now greater than 2 so the spell will be countered on resolution due to having an illegal target. However, if you replace Defeat with Murder, the creature will still be destroyed no matter how big it gets.
I think you misunderstand how casting spells, and possibly the stack, works.
If a player has 3 spells to cast, they can do it this way (and again, it is assumed they are casting them one at a time unless they explicitly hold priority):
Active player attacks with a creature (Declare Attackers Step)
Opponent declares no blocks (Declare Blockers Step)
Active Player casts Giant Growth (Declare Blockers Step)
Giant Growth resolves. Cast Mutagenic Growth. (Still in Declare Blockers Step).
Mutagenic Growth resolves. Cast another Mutagenic Growth (again, still in Declare Blockers Step).
Once they have all resolved, and neither player casts any more spell, the game moves to the Combat Damage Step to actually deal damage.
As you can see, you can cast multiple spells in a single Step while also allowing each one to resolve before casting the next. The game will only move to the next Step when both players pass priority on an empty stack. Since the stack was never empty when the attacking player passed priority after casting a spell, the active player will get priority again in that same step. If they pass priority again without putting casting a spell or activating an ability (or performing a special action such as Morph), and their opponent does the same, the game will then move to the next step.
Cataclysm says to "choose a creature" (and artifact, land and enchantment) and sacrifice everything you don't choose. If you only have 1 creature, you need to choose it and then sacrifice every other creature. It doesn't matter that "every other creature" is 0 creatures. You will save one creature and sacrifice 0.
now the question is, will the 5 cards previously exiled with Karn Liberated #1 still be counted for Karn Liberated #2's ultimate and be put into play under your control?
Thanks!
No. When card refers to itself (rather than something like "a card named...") it means that object only. So, if the Karn that exiled the first 5 cards is not the same one that is using the ultimate, you will not get those cards.
Also, if Karn is bounced to your hand, exiled and brought back, reanimated from the graveyard, or leaves the battlefield in any other way and comes back, it is a new object in that case too and will lose track of the cards exiled previously.
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature- Human Horror
You may have ~ enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature on the battlefield. If you do, it gains "UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield". UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield
1/1
Note that you need to the "if you do, it gains..." since if it clones something, it will normally lose the ability to blink itself. Even in your original example, the Copy ETB Trigger ability would always be overwritten by the copy effect.
i didn't want to word it like clone because if you word it like clone, the creature would get the ETB from the get go...which is fine, but i want you to have to work for that ability.
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature - Human Horror
Haste
T: Timothy Toast Man becomes a copy of target creature and gains this ability. UUBB: Activate this creatures enter the battlefield trigger as if it had just entered the battlefield.
1/1
is this it?
No. Again, you will lose the second ability. Your wording just lets it retain the ability to become a copy. Also, you don't "activate" a triggered ability, so the second ability still doesn't work right.
I still think the "clone" aspect is the best way to do it. So, something like this maybe:
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature - Human Horror
Haste UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield tapped. You may have it enter as a copy of a creature on the battlefield. If you do, it gains this ability.
1/1
I am not sure if you need the tap ability, but I worded it to enter tapped in case you want it to be tapped after becoming a copy of another creature for some reason as this closely matches your original design.
The reason this is cleaner is that it allows the creature to retain the ability to keep triggering triggered abilities of the cloned creature (though, admittedly, this version doesn't work if the original creature is gone).
Or, you can try this:
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature - Human Horror
Haste
T: Timothy Toast Man becomes a copy of target creature. It gains this ability and "UUBB: Put a copy of this creature on the battlefield and then exile it.".
1/1
This wording allows you to keep re-using EtB triggers of the creature itself without a weird wording. This wording does give you extra EtB triggers off things like Aura Shards though. But, maybe that works to the benefit of your intent?
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature- Human Horror
You may have ~ enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature on the battlefield. If you do, it gains "UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield". UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield
1/1
Note that you need to the "if you do, it gains..." since if it clones something, it will normally lose the ability to blink itself. Even in your original example, the Copy ETB Trigger ability would always be overwritten by the copy effect.
Maybe some sort of mana denial deck with Aggressive Mining? Granted, you can't cast it until turn 4, which may be too late for the effect, but it is an option. Or, maybe you can find something to work with cards like Steel Golem, Pyromancer's Swath, Abyssal Persecutor, or Immortal Coil (and grave hate). All of them seem pretty janky (including Demonic Pact), but these seem to be the best options I could find.
I didn't bother looking something up, and the 5 damage came from the OP's card, but I think I remember Tabak saying that spells like that were the attempt to put Trample on spells. As mentioned, it doesn't really do the same thing though as you can just deal all the damage ti the creature's controller.
However, after looking at that card, I can see that they had to errata it to be more wordy than what the original was (and what I suggested).
No, it doesn't really work. One thing is that you are not able to "trample" over Indestructible creatures with this since they are never destroyed by damage. Another, probably more important, point is that spells dealing damage don't destroy creatures. The damage they deal eventually causes the game rules to destroy the creature, but the spell never directly destroys a creature. Just look at the Lightning Bolt + Tarmogoyf interaction. It is why targeting a 2/3 Goyf with a Lightning Bolt and without an instant in either graveyard will not kill it.
Another issue is that creatures aren't destroyed by damage in the middle of a spell resolving anyway so there is no real way to check if a creature is destroyed by a spell in order to trample damage over.
One possible template is something like "deal 5 damage to target creature and that creature's controller divided any way you choose". That takes into account damage already marked on the creature, but it also means it ends up just being a burn spell for 5 to a player. I guess you could do something like "deal damage to target creature equal to its toughness and then deal damage to that creature's controller equal to 5 minus the creature's toughness". It starts to be a little wordy and still doesn't cover every situation (it doesn't take into account previous damage marked on it).
That's good to know and my answer was to alleviate the possibility of "Gotcha" moments, but I can see where it could cause them. In either case, the answer is still to make sure communication is as clear as possible to determine the current step of the game.
Wow, so after I've done everything I can for my turn, even discarded the other player can then play before his actual turn?
Well, no, but you can't just move to discard without letting your opponent do anything. Since you mentioned you declare each phase, do you also say "Move to Discard"? If so, this is your opponent's cue to play their spell as this is treated as a shortcut to bypass the End Step entirely. If they say OK, then they have passed priority through the End Step (discarding happens during Cleanup and no one gets priority unless a trigger occurs) and then you can Discard. You should not be discarding without first allowing your opponent to cast their spells.
This falls into making sure everything is communicated properly but the examples you have provided so far indicate your opponent was well within his or her right to cast a spell before their turn started.
Aside from the fact that they don't work, they look interesting. There are a few big limitations though:
In terms of what you are trying to accomplish, I am not sure what the advantage to playing one of these would be. Seedling Grove, for example, costs 2 mana to suspend (so your entire turn on turn 2) and then hits the field on turn 4. Yes, you can drop another land that turn to get to 5, but there are so many better ways to ramp to more than 5 mana by turn 4.
I see absolutely no advantage to playing Crumbling Volcano. You spend your first turn to suspend a land (which requires having another land to play) that comes down turn 3. Effectively, you just give up your turn 1 play for no gain.
To expand on why they don't work:
Suspend specifically says "when you could cast...". Since you never cast lands, you can never suspend them. If you find a way to suspend them, you would be able to play them (oddly enough) but suspending them first is an issue.
The rules for Suspend would have to be updated to allow you to even suspend lands, but even then there is very little gain. Any land you play off Suspend would count as your land drop for the turn so you can't play another land that turn. If the suspend counters were to be removed on another player's turn, you couldn't play the land at all and the land would remain in exile.
Cryptolith fragment is only interesting for me in limited and EDH. Limited is where it will probably shine most for me, since EDH has to see people lose 30 life each, so 60 life with 2 players, 90 with 3, 120 for 4. It's crazy!
I'm sad Gisela is so cute and yet so ugly. Poor Gisela
Where do you play that EDH is 30 life?
ArvinLarn is remarking on the fact that the Transform ability is hard to achieve in EDH as each player needs to have 10 or less life. 30 comes from the amount you have to subtract from 40 to get to 10 (40 - 30 = 10). Since every player needs to be 10 or less life, this is almost unattainable in EDH.
In the second example given, there is nothing that your opponent has done that forces you to unsummon the creature after the first Giant Growth. How would he know you want to unsummon it then anyway? After all, if you are at 5 life, and he tries to pump up a 1/1 with Giant Growth, maybe you are fine with taking 4 and going down to 1. But, once he represents lethal, you obviously want to respond at that point.
Keep in mind that you free to accept the shortcut he just proposed and since he proposed it, he needs to abide by the shortcut (assuming you don't do anything to interrupt it). So, he cast 2 Giant Growths and you can say they both resolve. Then, before damage, you can just unsummon his 7/7 creature (or however big it is). You don't have to respond to either Giant Growth with your Unsummon.
And again, there is only one stack. There are spells and abilities on the stack, but only one stack at any given point.
To add card tags do this:
[c]Mutagenic Growth[/c] = Mutagenic Growth.
Most players lay down their spells as a form of shortcut. You are free to interrupt that shortcut (with a Bolt for example) but them proposing that shortcut does not mean they are casting every spell at once. There also isn't really anything about checking the "state" of an object during resolution of a spell unless a spell requires it. For example, if you cast Defeat on a creature and they pump it up, the power is now greater than 2 so the spell will be countered on resolution due to having an illegal target. However, if you replace Defeat with Murder, the creature will still be destroyed no matter how big it gets.
If a player has 3 spells to cast, they can do it this way (and again, it is assumed they are casting them one at a time unless they explicitly hold priority):
Active player attacks with a creature (Declare Attackers Step)
Opponent declares no blocks (Declare Blockers Step)
Active Player casts Giant Growth (Declare Blockers Step)
Giant Growth resolves. Cast Mutagenic Growth. (Still in Declare Blockers Step).
Mutagenic Growth resolves. Cast another Mutagenic Growth (again, still in Declare Blockers Step).
Once they have all resolved, and neither player casts any more spell, the game moves to the Combat Damage Step to actually deal damage.
As you can see, you can cast multiple spells in a single Step while also allowing each one to resolve before casting the next. The game will only move to the next Step when both players pass priority on an empty stack. Since the stack was never empty when the attacking player passed priority after casting a spell, the active player will get priority again in that same step. If they pass priority again without putting casting a spell or activating an ability (or performing a special action such as Morph), and their opponent does the same, the game will then move to the next step.
Also, if Karn is bounced to your hand, exiled and brought back, reanimated from the graveyard, or leaves the battlefield in any other way and comes back, it is a new object in that case too and will lose track of the cards exiled previously.
No. Again, you will lose the second ability. Your wording just lets it retain the ability to become a copy. Also, you don't "activate" a triggered ability, so the second ability still doesn't work right.
I still think the "clone" aspect is the best way to do it. So, something like this maybe:
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature - Human Horror
Haste
UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield tapped. You may have it enter as a copy of a creature on the battlefield. If you do, it gains this ability.
1/1
I am not sure if you need the tap ability, but I worded it to enter tapped in case you want it to be tapped after becoming a copy of another creature for some reason as this closely matches your original design.
The reason this is cleaner is that it allows the creature to retain the ability to keep triggering triggered abilities of the cloned creature (though, admittedly, this version doesn't work if the original creature is gone).
Or, you can try this:
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature - Human Horror
Haste
T: Timothy Toast Man becomes a copy of target creature. It gains this ability and "UUBB: Put a copy of this creature on the battlefield and then exile it.".
1/1
This wording allows you to keep re-using EtB triggers of the creature itself without a weird wording. This wording does give you extra EtB triggers off things like Aura Shards though. But, maybe that works to the benefit of your intent?
Timothy Toast Man 3UB
Legendary Creature- Human Horror
You may have ~ enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature on the battlefield. If you do, it gains "UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield".
UUBB: Exile ~ and return it to the battlefield
1/1
Note that you need to the "if you do, it gains..." since if it clones something, it will normally lose the ability to blink itself. Even in your original example, the Copy ETB Trigger ability would always be overwritten by the copy effect.
Maybe some sort of mana denial deck with Aggressive Mining? Granted, you can't cast it until turn 4, which may be too late for the effect, but it is an option. Or, maybe you can find something to work with cards like Steel Golem, Pyromancer's Swath, Abyssal Persecutor, or Immortal Coil (and grave hate). All of them seem pretty janky (including Demonic Pact), but these seem to be the best options I could find.
Grinning Totem seems to be the only other card besides Life's Finale that gets you close to what you want.
I didn't bother looking something up, and the 5 damage came from the OP's card, but I think I remember Tabak saying that spells like that were the attempt to put Trample on spells. As mentioned, it doesn't really do the same thing though as you can just deal all the damage ti the creature's controller.
However, after looking at that card, I can see that they had to errata it to be more wordy than what the original was (and what I suggested).
Another issue is that creatures aren't destroyed by damage in the middle of a spell resolving anyway so there is no real way to check if a creature is destroyed by a spell in order to trample damage over.
One possible template is something like "deal 5 damage to target creature and that creature's controller divided any way you choose". That takes into account damage already marked on the creature, but it also means it ends up just being a burn spell for 5 to a player. I guess you could do something like "deal damage to target creature equal to its toughness and then deal damage to that creature's controller equal to 5 minus the creature's toughness". It starts to be a little wordy and still doesn't cover every situation (it doesn't take into account previous damage marked on it).
This falls into making sure everything is communicated properly but the examples you have provided so far indicate your opponent was well within his or her right to cast a spell before their turn started.
In terms of what you are trying to accomplish, I am not sure what the advantage to playing one of these would be. Seedling Grove, for example, costs 2 mana to suspend (so your entire turn on turn 2) and then hits the field on turn 4. Yes, you can drop another land that turn to get to 5, but there are so many better ways to ramp to more than 5 mana by turn 4.
I see absolutely no advantage to playing Crumbling Volcano. You spend your first turn to suspend a land (which requires having another land to play) that comes down turn 3. Effectively, you just give up your turn 1 play for no gain.
To expand on why they don't work:
Suspend specifically says "when you could cast...". Since you never cast lands, you can never suspend them. If you find a way to suspend them, you would be able to play them (oddly enough) but suspending them first is an issue.
The rules for Suspend would have to be updated to allow you to even suspend lands, but even then there is very little gain. Any land you play off Suspend would count as your land drop for the turn so you can't play another land that turn. If the suspend counters were to be removed on another player's turn, you couldn't play the land at all and the land would remain in exile.