just fyi

i'm glad he clarified that last bit :D

Haha. Intends and purposes. I am sleepy today

Thanks for fixing that Malco

@murgatroid99 Holy cow. A zone inside of a zone.

So we can attach creatures to creatures by animating an enchantment while Rules Lawyer is out, and we can animate a zone with this card, which means we can attach a creature to our library. This is fun!

I so wish I could judge one of these

Wait, you can create a 0/0 invisible creature with this

You have Rules Lawyer out, and your library is Animated. You draw your last card. Now you have a 0/0 invisible creature.

@Rainbolt Lovely. :D You actually don't use anything to represent it either! It's an empty library, it's already represented by the emptiness!

The question is, can you tap a nonexistent library to attack? :)

I would. And it wouldn't die if you blocked because I'm a rules lawyer

Oh, speaking of which, I wanted to share something i noticed!

@Rainbolt No problem, you were pretty quick with your answer

Left hand side: the Judge gift card version of Rules Lawyer. Right hand side: the ordinary player's version of Rules Lawyer.

There are so many things with this pairing I adore.

that is great

I remember hearing that the only complaint people had with it is that the judge promo had reminder text

"Were judges, we know what SBA are!"

@Malco Ha!

Were the previous unsets this much fun? From reading the old cards, this one seems just... higher quality somehow. But I didn't play Magic when the old sets were out.

Dunno, never played the other sets, from listening to the MaRo podcasts it seems like this one is designed to be more cohesive

also they had a looooong time to design it

I didn't even notice the card number... that's crazy

@Rainbolt From all I've read and understood, the previous un-sets were pretty terrible. They failed commercially, and they had tons of cards that were fun to read and look at, but weren't actually fun to play with, and that's even setting aside the disaster of Gotcha.

This one seems to be a lot more pushing the limits of stuff they might want to make black boarder

I think part of the reason Unstable is doing so well is that if you're trying to make a fun magic set, just make a regular magic set, because all of them are fun. Only they're pulling out all the stops in terms of crazy stuff they couldn't do elsewhere (d6's, enchant your library, steal a turn phase, steal/join text boxes as an object in its own right, destroy target player, etc).

@Malco Exactly!

Okay, I will temper my expectations then. Hopefully this one will be fun to look at and play

Unstable: Black Border Except Slightly Looney.

basically if they told MaRo no, can't do that, he just went fine it's going in unstable then :p

I did see him say on camera that he is constantly shot down by his rules team

An awful lot of the effects are very nearly black border effects, just turned up to 11 in terms of outlandishness.

Also Steam Flogger Boss is keeping it's place as the unwanted card in the pack, it is black boarder so it is in the land slot now apparently :P

@Malco Well also someone pointed out that one of the benefits of Unstable is it's a major collaboration between several people, and not just Maro's production -- meaning he has people to contribute things he wouldn't have, and still shoot down his ideas that are unsuitable even for Unstable.

oh and in terms of latest spoiler.... looks like you will need an internet connection for this set:

@Malco LOL.

.... HEADMASTER. It's his disembodied head!

looks like they were able to get at least one frame breaking card

So... this website is going to do something when the set launches? Like rolling an 8 ball to see what ability you got?

perhaps? They might be experimenting with some Hearthstone like randomness that they don't normally have access to

It kind of makes me happy to see a physical card that is prone to link rot.

@Rainbolt I'm already reaching out to Scryfall to ask that they archive its contents. :D

Nice

Might not be possible depending on what it is doing

maybe it connects different players to mix and match abilities

5 colour planeswlaker though... maybe it pulls loyalty abilities from existing planeswalkers?

Well we will find out either way on Dec 8 it seems

Yeah :)

Also FAQ is out tomorrow, so rules should be a bit clearer

My question now is when does the timer start on the timed effects?

is it like choosing modes? or is only after the ability resolves?

@Malco Woo!

@Malco like Hot Fix? Probably after the ability resolves, as soon as someone says "now!" or "go!"

After all it doesn't resolve until the table lets it resolve. :)

I will probably put this into a Q but... take this card for example:

I cast it, I pay costs, I run around to figure out how many highfives I get, then it goes onto the stack?

You don't follow the instructions on the card until it resolves

Or I cast it, I pay costs it resolves, then I run around

So more like "Does it resolve?" They nod. You start running.

But then you could hold priority to give your self a better chance (get out of your chair ect.)

Kind of like "You gain 1 life for each creature you control" always checks the number when it resolves, not when you cast.

Yes, and that would actually be pretty funny IMO (assuming I hadn't already heard the joke from you)

This one is simpler but, the more concerning one would be something like Modular monstoristy

mythicspoiler.com/ust/cards/modularmonstrosity.html

you only have 5 seconds, but when does the timer start?

if it is on resolution than you can just wait until it actually resolves

Hmm. That one is trickier. The "rulesy" answer would be "when the trigger resolves", but the spirit would be when it triggers

goes against the spirit of the card, but people are gona do what they gona do

The real question here is do you bend the rules or not, because I think the rules are pretty clear

If the time part is treated like paying an additional cost or choosing a mode then you would have to do it as part of putting it on the stack (ie immediately) but that also means your opponent can make you run around and then counter it anyway.....

I'd probably tell the player "Okay fine you can choose an ability this time but from now on we're going to play it how it was probably intended"

the timing thing is showing up in several cards, so hopefully it will be adressed in the FAQ

I hope so too. MaRo already overruled one of my answers that I thought was pretty clear in the rules (which is good - I'm glad he did)

You don't really appreciate how comprehensive the comprehensive rules are until you can't rely on them.....

@Rainbolt [puts trigger on the stack] [holds priority for ten seconds to think of a good ability] [passes priority] [gets it passed back] [actual five seconds start counting down]

If we consider it to have the timing of a modal choice, you have five seconds as of that ability triggering.

Speaking of modular monstrosity though, it is too bad you can only pull keywords from creature cards would be nice to give it Braid of Fire's cumulative upkeep

though if I do get a MM I plan on giving it Herald of Leshrac cumulative upkeep :p

especially since you will get to keep them when it leaves the battlefield.

@Malco oh goodness

Can't do Annihilator 999 but there are some broken keywords if you look hard enough :P

so, i'm partly expecting them to come out in the FAQ saying "stuff with a cost or number following it doesn't count. So lifelink and trample and flanking, but not annihilator or bushido."

They explicitly said that stuff with a number is allowed

There is a MaRo post on blog atog, the keyword you are copying needs to be printed on a creature card, and you can only use that ability once per day (resting at midnight)

so can't do Bushido 1, and then Bushido 2

Biggest Annihilator is 6 I think on one of the Emarkuls

yes. There aren't that many creatures with Annihilator, and Emrakul is really the only one that sees significant constructed play

oh ok

For the most part you can choose things found in 702 of comp rules as long as they have appeared on a creature

the number values you need to pull off an existing creature

It's probably good to know a few abilities for different scenarios. If you want to dodge removal, you can use Indestructible, Hexproof, Shroud, or Protection from everything. If you want to avoid blockers, Horsemanship and Shadow are basically "Can't be blocked". If you want to deal more damage, Exalted, Frenzy 2, and Evolve can be good.

and certain abilities like flash and buy back are valid choices but don't do anything

Also Bushido X if there's lots of creatures on the board :)

.... wait, maybe that's not legit

yeah, I don't think that one works, because X is defined by a non-keyword ability

don't think so, as X is determined by the other text on that card

looks like Bushido 5 is the largest Konda, Lord of Eiganjo

You can also choose Rampage or Art Rampage

Squirrellink is probably pretty good too

The non listed ones are kind of tricky to find

as some cards have shared mechanics that are Italicized but aren't actually keywords

Those are ability words

and then there are the Un- set and other joke card keywords

ah ya, couldn't remember the term for them

things like landfall and such

All of the real keywords are in 702. And you can check silver bordered creatures with the Scryfall search is:funny t:creature

hahaha, is:funny nice way to word the search

It gets Un cards and holiday cards, and maybe one or two others

Can pull out that denimwalk again I guess

Probably the Hascon cards too

Triple Strike, Frenzy 2, and Art Rampage 2 are probably the best keyword abilities that have never appeared on black-bordered cards

Last Stike as well from the slow zombie

can combine that with first to get effective triple strike

Last + First is split strike. It won't deal normal combat damage, and it's basically a worse double strike

ah, yup forgot that it would lose it's normal combat damage phase when it receives first or last strike

so it would need double and last strike

@murgatroid99 Wouldn't you need a special key-word for First + Last strike, since if you had both, you would only deal damage once?

@JonTheMon First strike + last strike = split strike (deal damage first & last)

ah so this is the vanilla creature people have been waiting for?

@Malco yes

i love it.

I expect the FAQ to declare what infinity-infinity is

hurrah lets do some maths

@murgatroid99 hopefully infinity+anything = infinity

@doppelspooker Sure, it's easy to get a playable and mathematically consistent definition for addition

It's subtraction that's tricky

Apparently you can solve that with the hyperreal numbers, but I just got that from someone else's comment and I don't actually know how they work

Also, continuing the theme of screwing around with math:

as long as you don't need to be some kind of mathmagician to figure the stuff out

@murgatroid99 sigh

well just desserts does fit squarely in red's colour pie....

@murgatroid99 Haaaa, I get it

And this results in a variety of ways to get irrational numbers elsewhere, basically for the same reason that the Infinity Elemental creates infinities in other contexts

Whenever a number is infinite in MTG, doesn't the player have to declare a number?

Hmm, well, I thought there was a rule that said it, but it seems to only apply to shortcutting a loop

There's this though "107.1. The only numbers the Magic game uses are integers"

This is silver-bordered Magic. It doesn't follow all of the rules

Now if I were judging an event and someone gained infinite life thanks to Infinity Elemental, and then his opponent stole the Infinity Elemental and whacked him back with it, I'd say that he was back to his original life total

Adjusted for any hits he took in the meantime of course

And then I'd probably concede to the players when they bashed me for not knowing good maths

Wait, we have a college math professor at our store...

Well, physics

But close enough

To be fair, someone explained the hyperreals, which I mentioned above, and that's actually how it would work with hyperreals

But I would bet on Wizards not saying "please learn advanced transfinite set theory to play this card properly"

If you're interested, here's the basic explanation of the hyperreal numbers