I'm Mike, from The Mana Pool.

I first learned to play around the release of Ice Age (1995-ish) and was strongly involved with playing casually and at local events until early 2020, when I had to back off for obvious reasons. I got back into playing a little bit in 2022 with a few prereleases and casual meet-ups here and there and I still enjoy keeping up with Magic news and new sets.

As a general rule, my deckbuilding is influenced far more than it should be by what I think would be "interesting/fun/funny" instead of what's probably the better choice of cards. The friend who first taught me how to play had a very strong philosophy of "Not every card is good, but pretty much any card can be made good" and the casual groups I spent the most time playing with over the years were always keen on figuring out how to make effective game plans from odd ideas. It was all immensely fun and it's still a big influence on my approach to the game.

I also tend to design and build strictly from my existing collection. If there's a good card for a deck that I don't have in a list, there's a good chance I don't own any, but please suggest it anyway so that maybe I'll remember to go out and find it.

I was a DCI-certified Rules Advisor under older versions of the Magic Judge program and I still keep up with new mechanics and rules changes. I'm the "rules guy" of my casual play group and I like to hang out in the Rules Q&A area here on Tapped Out. If you notice a mistake in one of my responses, don't be shy about pointing it out because above all else, I want whatever question I'm responding to to be answered correctly!

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Said on Altar of the …...

#1

tonylomas: An answer to your question has been up for a while. Since there don't seem to be any follow-ups or corrections that need to be made, I marked it as the "Accepted answer" so this topic can move out of the list of unanswered questions. In the future, you can take care of this yourself using the "Mark as Answer" button on the response that you feel is the most helpful answer to your question.

I try to avoid marking my own responses when I do this, but in this case it was the only option.

July 9, 2025 11:01 a.m.

Said on Chaos Orb and …...

#2

The word "battlefield" is being overloaded in Chaos Orb's rules text. The first instance of the word is being used to mean "the battlefield zone" and the second is being used to mean "the physical representation of the battlefield zone". The Orb's text doesn't say anything about a zone change before flipping it, so that means it doesn't change zones and it's on the battlefield through this whole process until it gets destroyed at the end.

I agree with Polaris that it would be best to use related Un/silver/acorn rulings as a guide here, since the "normal" rules of the game don't have any more details on exactly how to play and use dexterity cards and those effects have been solidly in Un/silver/acorn territory for many years now. I remember reading an urban legend of a kitchen-table player who animated Chaos Orb, made a token copy with Dance of Many, then went and got a couch cushion for the token to wipe the entire battlefield.

It's interesting to note that the current Oracle text of Falling Star still says "onto the playing area", so it avoids a lot of the ambiguity and confusion in the Orb's rules text. I wonder why Chaos Orb wasn't re-templated that way as well.

July 7, 2025 10:09 a.m.

Zurgo Stormrender

You get triggers for all the tokens. "Leaves the battlefield" triggers (including "dies" triggers) use information from the last moment something was still on the battlefield to determine their results. In your example, Zurgo was on the battlefield at the last moment the tokens were still there, so that means Zurgo's ability will trigger for all of them leaving.

July 3, 2025 10:59 a.m.

No, it doesn't go infinite. The reason is in the rules for how to handle damage prevention/redirection effects and replacement effects. Prevention, redirection and replacement effects modify the result of an event as it happens, and any such effect that could apply to an event can only be applied to that event once. Shock will only get its damage increased one time, even if it gets bounced around a bunch of times.

In the example of Shock, Warrior en-Kor and Furnace of Rath: You cast Shock targeting the Warrior. You respond by activating the Warrior's ability some number of times, let's say 4 (note the Warrior was printed at a time when some rules and text templates worked differently - the current Oracle text reads ": The next 1 damage that would be dealt to Warrior en-Kor this turn is dealt to target creature you control instead"). Shock starts resolving, and let's say you want to apply Furnace's replacement effect before the Warrior's redirection effect (since you control the object that would be affected by the event, you decide what to apply first). Now the event is that Shock is going to deal 4 damage to Warrior. Warrior's redirection effect is applied and now the event is that Shock is dealing its 4 damage somewhere else. The Furnace effect won't be applied again after this point, even if you sent the damage towards another Warrior and activated them a bunch of times to bounce the damage back and forth.

July 2, 2025 9:34 a.m.

Said on Altar of the …...

#5

Altar of the Brood, Traveling Chocobo

Yes, that works. The Chocobo's effect cares about whether a land or bird entering caused an ability to trigger. It doesn't require the ability to be specifically written to trigger from lands. With the Chocobo on the battlefield, the Altar will an extra trigger from each land that enters, an extra trigger from each bird that enters, and no extra triggers from any non-land, non-bird (if the permanent is somehow both a bird and a land, there will just be one extra trigger).

July 1, 2025 2:10 p.m.

Said on Why Not Simply …...

#6

They do use smaller fonts for cards with more text. Compare Teferi, Master of Time and Balamb T-Rexaur. There's just a minimum font size they're willing to use, meaning any text that wouldn't fit at that minimum font size is a no-go. Something like Takklemaggot might not be able to be printed anymore under the current font minimums and current rules templating conventions.

July 1, 2025 12:23 p.m.

Some cards from Arena Alchemy 2025 (Y25) seem to be missing (don't know if there are others, these are just the ones I'm currently trying to add to a Brawl decklist): Desert Cenote, Illuminating Lash, Song of Seasons

June 26, 2025 4:15 p.m.

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Commander / EDH Rhadamanthus

100 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

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Fumiko the Lowblood

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SCORE: 64 | 47 COMMENTS | 25388 VIEWS | IN 20 FOLDERS

Finished Decks 107
Prototype Decks 8
Drafts 2
Playing since Ice Age
Points 349
Avg. deck rating 10.63
T/O Rank 27
Helper Rank 73
Cards suggested / good suggestions 58 / 46
Venues Lucky's Card Shop, The Toy Factory
Cards Added/Fixed 10
Joined 15 years