Can an opponent stop your untapping of lands and/or creatures from a Prophet of Kruphix by rushing his untapping phase and drawing quickly?
Asked by PureBerserker7 9 years ago
In games with some of my more educated MTG playing friends, I play my Prophet of Kruphix. During their untap step, they say that because they have untapped all of their permanents, before I finish untapping my permanents, and have drawn their card that I cannot untap those permanents that are still tapped. What are the rulings in regards to a situation like this?
Do I get to untap all of my appropriate permanents and only after I have untapped them does my opponent's untap step end, or does it work in the manner that they described?
Rhadamanthus says... #2
Your friends aren't as well educated as they think. Magic isn't a game of reflexes. Cards do what they say, and no one can trick you out of getting a card's effect by playing quickly. If another player rushes ahead while you still need to take care of something, ask them to either wait for you to catch up or back up and wait for you to finish.
February 24, 2016 7:37 p.m.
merrowMania says... #3
Then, in the same vein, if a player were to miss the untap step, as in the opponent said untap, paused, then said upkeep, then draw, all the while giving ample opportunity to the player with the Prophet, would the player be able to untap their permanents later in the turn?
February 24, 2016 8:03 p.m.
ComputerizedMTG says... #4
As the two players above me have already mentioned MTG is not about reflexes. I always see MTG as a scripted program, and it must follow steps and finish whatever it is that needs to happen within the current step to move on to the next.
That means that no matter how badly your "friends" want to rush through the game or don't want to lose to a possible winning play by you, they must follow the steps and priorities.
During your turn you hold priority at the beginning of every step: Untap, Upkeep, Draw, 1st Main, Combat (Beginning of combat, declare attackers, declare blockers, damage,end combat), 2nd main, end step, and clean up. All of these steps must happen in order before the next player can begin their turn and follow this same structure. As mentioned already, at the beginning of every step you hold priority and can make the first play before anyone else can, then once you decide to either play a spell or move onto the next phase, you must first pass priority and see if any player has a response, if not then your spell resolves or you move onto the next phase. Mind you even after your spell has resolved priority still is in place so that doesn't mean that just because your spell resolved does not mean the current phase is done and you can move on, you still need to pass priority first.
Example:
Your main phase begins and you have a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar on the field and you want to make a token using his 0 ability, your opponent cannot simple prevent you from doing that by casting a Hero's Downfall faster than you can say you want to use Gideon's ability. You hold priority so what would happen is you activate your walker putting his 0 ability on the stack, you now pass priority, your friend can now respond with by putting Hero's Downfall on the stack, and he now passes priority, and if not players wish/can respond spells will now resolve in such order: Hero's Downfall will destroy Gideon, and you then get a 2/2 Knight Ally.
Similarly your friend cant just untap his permanents, skip over upkeep, draw a card, and say "Too late!". The way it would work is as follows:
Your friend Untap step begins, Prophet of Kruphix's condition is met and you untap your permanents along theirs, priorities are passed, ukpkeep begins, priorities are passed, draw step begins, and so on and so forth.
Magic is a game with rules, conditions, and restrictions; and ontop of that it is a very literal game, players cannot give their own interpretation of the rules or enact and activate abilities and conditions in the game as they see fit. Again, very much like a code written to run a program a structure exists for a reason, guess what happens when you try to skip steps in the code of a program? I crashes.
I hope that helped and didn't simply confuse you hehe. Those "friends" are not very informed if they think MTG is a game of reflexes :)
February 24, 2016 8:06 p.m.
ComputerizedMTG says... #5
People need to pay attention, if you pause and give verbal queues of what step you are on and that you are about to advance, and once you do advance the player says "Oh I missed a trigger" or "I meant to cast this spell during your upkeep!" then it's too bad for them as you passed priority and made it clear what was going on.
If however you just do what most players do out of habit, and just untap and draw right away, which is understandable as usually there is nothing happening in between and it isn't often that people may want to play spells during untap, upkeep, and draw, unless it is something like instant speed hand disruption when you are top decking and want to avoid giving you the chance to play what you drew; and the player says "Hey, hold on, I want to cast something during your upkeep, you didn't pass priority and just drew a card right away after untapping" then the game should be re-winded.
But if as you say you give queues and pauses to give your opponent a chance to play something, and he does not, then he missed his chance. I normally let my opponent know after I end my turn "On your upkeep I am going to cast XYZ" so he knows that after untap steps something is going down in his upkeep and it avoids awkward situations like him drawing a card, seeing what it is, and me forcing him to put it back.
February 24, 2016 8:15 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #6
@merrowMania: Because Prophet of Kruphix's ability isn't triggered, it can't be "missed", and both players are technically responsible for keeping up with it and maintaining the game state. In a tournament setting you should call a judge if you're having to repeatedly remind your opponent about these things.
In a casual setting, be polite, but I understand if you get to a point where you just want to say "Listen, I'm trying to help but I can't play the game for both of us. You need to pay attention," and leave your opponents to fend for themselves.
February 25, 2016 12:17 a.m.
merrowMania says... #7
Thanks Rhadamanthus and The_Riddlebox. I have yet to look into judge calls for maintaining the boardstate etc. This will help me in the future :)
February 25, 2016 3:55 p.m.
PureBerserker7 says... #8
Thank you all for your answers. Your detail has helped me to better understand the rules governing MTG and you all have cleared up this issue quite nicely. Once again, thank you all.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
Link all cards in your question.
Prophet of Kruphix
Magic is a game of order, not of speed. You can never rush past something in order to prevent it from happening or prevent someone from doing something. If a player attempts to do this, a judge should be called (if you're playing in a formal setting) and the game will be rewound to the point at which the other player should have had a chance to do something.
February 24, 2016 7:18 p.m.