text:
Are Summoned Monsters shuffled with other monsters when "returned to the box"?
My friend just got his Pathfinder Adventure Card Game set and I watched him go through a solo game. One point that came up quite a few times was Summoned Monsters. When returning them to the box, my friend shuffled them into the monster deck every time.
I pondered this: is "returning to the box" the same as Banish? Banish does say "put it back into the box, shuffling it with the other cards of the same type".
As is, I find it somewhat strange because it can lead to what happened to us: getting 3 Specters in a row, which was a horrible thing for a character with no magic, in a situation where the summoned monster needs to be defeated to close the location (Brigandoom, Farmhouse).

Yes,
Returning to the box is the same as Banish.  Check out the definitions on the last page of the rulebook.

Banish: Put it back in the box, shuffled in with the other cards of the same type.

Actually, there is a subtle difference between "Banish" and "Put back in the box". Once you start the third Adventure deck:

Whenever you banish a bane, you remove it from the game
Whenever you banish a boon, you may remove it from the game

...where "remove it from the game" means don't put it back in the appropriate deck in the box. (I set them aside in one of the adventure deck boxes.) This will slowly remove the less powerful cards from the game, increasing the odds of getting more powerful boons (and facing harder monsters and barriers).
"Banish" is common enough. However, if after a scenario there are extra boons that cannot be added to a deck, they are "returned to the box", not "banished". Similarly, if there are cards left in locations after the villain is defeated, they are returned to the box, not banished.


text:
Can I assign only some creatures to block Gorm the Great?
I played Battlebond with my friends yesterday. I attacked with Gorm the Great and his partner Virtus the Veiled. The opponents had three untapped creatures. They blocked Gorm using two creatures and blocked Virtus with another creature.  Can they block this way?

Gorm says the defending player has to block him if able. This has been satisfied.
Gorm says the defending player has to assign at least two blockers to Gorm if able. This has been satisfied.
Thus the block assignment is legal (assuming no other restrictions).
Compare to, for instance, Taunting Elf, which would almost guarantee that Virtus gets through.

Yes, you can do that.
Gorm the Great needs to be blocked by at least 2 creatures:

Gorm the Great must be blocked if able, and Gorm must be blocked by two or more creatures if able.

If the opponent has any more creatures they can choose to block any creature with them (unless there are any other restrictions).

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text:
Does blinking a Planeswalker restore its loyalty?
If I were to use a blink effect on a Planeswalker say after an ultimate (largest cost) Loyalty ability (and providing it still had Loyalty remaining), would its loyalty restore to the noted amount on the card?
From what I remember, if a card is exiled, unless stated otherwise, all counters are removed.
If this is so, when the planeswalker returns to the battlefield, would it then add the loyalty counters to match its noted amount back on the card?

As a note, this is why the flip walkers from Origins did not just transform, but exiled themselves and returned transformed, so the ETB trigger would go off, giving them loyalty counters.

Yes, a planeswalker will return as if you had just played it, with full loyalty counters.
Blinking a Planeswalker means to first exile it, which indeed removes all counters from it, and then returning it to the battlefield, with a number of loyalty counters on it equal to the loyalty printed on the card.

400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence.
121.2. Counters on an object are not retained if that object moves from one zone to another. The counters are not “removed”; they simply cease to exist. See rule 400.7.
209.1. Each planeswalker card has a loyalty number printed in its lower right corner. This indicates its loyalty while it’s not on the battlefield, and it also indicates that the planeswalker enters the battlefield with that many loyalty counters on it.

It doesn't matter how or from where a planeswalker entered the battlefield, it will always gain as many loyalty counters as it has loyalty printed on it whenever it does enter the battlefield.

As an added bonus, since the blinked planeswalker is a totally new object, you can still activate loyalty abilities even if you had done so before the blink. It's a great way to restore loyalty counters and use a planeswalker's abilities twice in one turn!

Note that this is how the recent Saheeli Rai / Felidar Guardian infinite cat combo worked.

Of note, the Planeswalker "Kaya, Ghost Assassin" (if I remember the name correctly) blinks herself as her ONLY way to restore loyalty.

This is brilliant news... I really need to get my hands on some Felidar Guardians.

@ThunderToes Felidar guardian was banned in standard because of this combo, it is still legal in eternal formats, however I don't think the combo is really as competitive in those formats.

Yeah @Andrew the combo was super fast for standard (especially with limited good removal) but not fast enough in the older formats like Modern and Legacy, at least from what I have seen/saw.

Yes, because it goes out and comes back in, making it a new object, so it is restored to the original counters, and can use it’s loyalty abilities again as well

Welcome to the site! This answer doesn't add anything to the already-accepted answer; and it lacks the rules citations that the other answer has.

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text:
How can I find all cards with flavor text from a certain set and colour?
How can I find all the cards from the Khans of Tarkir block (Khans / Fate Reforged / Dragons of Tarkir) that have flavor text? Preferably, I'd like to search just red and black cards.

A gatherer search for the vowels in flavour text with the block and colors you want selected in the gatherer advanced search feature will find you what you're looking for, since all english words must contain a,e,i,o,u or y. Here are all 146 red and/or black cards with flavour text from Khans block.
Note that the colors are added as OR, meaning it has to be at least red or at least black, if they were added as AND it would only find colors that are both. The no other colors is added using the exclude unselected terms more color option. (so it won't find cards that are black and blue for instance)
UPDATE - gatherer does have an issue in it's matching on empty spaces and block vs set matching. updated image and link for better

For information sake, the playable with only these colors is used to handle hybrid mana symbols, so it will allow for example a blue and black card like Nightveil Specter when searching for Rakdos colored cards.

Gatherer search seems to be not too accurate, just looking a bit it seems to have included Acid-Spewer Dragon which has no flavour text and misses Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Alesha's Vanguard which does.

Several cards have 1 word flavour text (Turn to Frog, Lava Axe, etc) although I don't know about in Khans block.

@Malco Yes I noticed that after, I adjusted for a better search that returned the exact list your Scryfall search returned.

@TimB Yes, some do exist, my adjusted query will handle that, particularly since it looks like gatherer may store blank flavor text with a space, or trim the ends of a search string. Somehow it matched no flavor text cards with the old search.

Such an awesome read those flavour texts... thanks for clearing this up for me :)

NOTE - Gatherer currently does not consider Fate Reforged a part of Khans block, so you need to search by set if you want results for Khans. This has been brought up with WotC's team.

The "spring" and "summer" printings of Extremely Slow Zombie have vowelless flavor text. So this answer is not fully general (though it seems to work fine for Khans block specifically).

@Micah yes, those are actually the only two cards in all of magic (I just did a search) that has flavor text with no vowels, I'm willing to accept two versions of a silver bordered card as an insignificant edge case, plus gatherer will still find Extremely Slow Zombie based on the other two variants.

You can check out this list on Scryfall, for a bit nicer layout than what gatherer provides.
If you want to tweak it the search term was (e:ktk or e:frf or e:dtk) ft:" " (c:r or c:b or c:rb).
To break down the search for you:

(e:ktk or e:frf or e:dtk): Show cards in Khans of Tarkir (KTK) or Fate Reforged (FRF) or Dragons of Tarkir (DTK).
ft:" " show cards with flavour text containing " " (a space). This is effectively any card that has flavour text.
(c:r or c:b or c:rb) show cards that are Red (r) or show cards that are Black (b) or show cards that are Red and Black (rb).

If you want to learn more about how to modify Scryfall searchs you can check out the syntax page.

As per Murgatroid99's comment, you can also use the more compact search string:
b:ktk c<=rb -c:c ft:/\w/.

This searches for the Khans block, with no colors other than red or black, and not colorless, with flavor text checking a regular expression match for any letters or numbers.

Gatherer gives 149 results, Scryfall gives 145, I haven't looked the results over but I am betting the difference is the ones that are (c:r and c:b), there's exactly 4 of those with flavor text

Addendum to previous comment - I looked at the scryfall results, and yes it definitely does exclude the gold cards. (c:r or c:b or (c:r and c:b)) doesn't seem to fix the problem,

@Andrew I am only seeing one rb card boltwing. What are the others?

@Andrew I suspect this might be because I am searching based on set, and you are searching based on block

@Andrew, it turns out gatherer just doesn't do a good job of searching, just by comparing lists, gatherer search includes Acid-Spewer Dragon which has no flavour text and misses Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Alesha's Vanguard

Yes I corrected that, Gatherer seems to ignore whitespace in the text search, as a search without the " " flavor condition returns the same list.

You can do this a bit more simply with b:ktk c<=rb -c:c ft:/\w/. This searches for the Khans block, with no colors other than red or black, and not colorless, with flavor text checking a regular expression match for any word characters.

And these cards (which do include a few that aren't actually flavor text) are the ones you miss by looking for spaces instead of word characters: https://scryfall.com/search?q=ft%3A%2F%5Cw%2F+-ft%3A"+"+

@murgatroid99 that gives back 147 cards, interestingly.

The block search appears to include supplemental sets related to the block, which seems to be why that happened.

If you go to the advanced section of Gatherer it lets you pick a multitude of different options, including all of what you are looking for.

There's not an obvious way to search for only cards that have flavour text, and this answer doesn't provide one either.

I guess it seemed obvious to me, but I'm probably making the assumption that people would realise an empty string as mentioned in the answer above would give the answer. I blame mysellf for thinking if you're on stack overflow you are 100% a programmer.

I'm a programmer, and there are times when I've asked for help only to be shown the obvious solution that I shouldn't have missed. But that doesn't stop me from asking for help.

@JoshGordon Except this isn't stack overflow, it's stack exchange, If this were SO yes you can assume safely a poster is a programmer, but don't assume what's obvious answer wise to you is obvious to everyone, that's why SO and SE in general exist. Other SE sites come up in google a lot, don't assume every SE user also is on SO.

@Andrew yeah I get it now, it was a mistake on my part. I've started trying to get involved more on overflow and exchange more recently, so forgive my errors. I'll make sure not to make the same mistake again

A short side not... I do believe I have an account on SO but I rarely ever use it because of the expectations and more often than not the bigotry from some users on that site. Obviously has no baring on this site and its users though.

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text:
Can an enchantment tutor find me auras?
Would I be able to use cards such as Enduring Ideal to search for Auras?
If so can I then attach them to a creature when they enter the battlefield?

Yes and yes, assuming the aura enchants creatures, you couldn't attach say Abundant Growth to a creature, though you would be able to attach it to any land in the same way if you fetch it with Enduring Ideal.
Enduring Ideal searches for any enchantment, and aura is a subtype of enchantment. When an aura enters the battlefield with no target, you are able to attach it to any legal object.
It's worth noting that this means you don't target when you put an enchantment into play this way, so you can power up a creature you have with shroud using an enchantment, or Arrest an opponent's shroud or hexproof creature using this. This doesn't help when a creature has protection from that aura's color, as 702.16c prevents auras from attaching based on protection, it does not care about targetability like shroud and hexproof.
From the comprehensive rules:

303.4f If an Aura is entering the battlefield under a player’s control by any means other than by resolving as an Aura spell, and the effect putting it onto the battlefield doesn’t specify the object or player the Aura will enchant, that player chooses what it will enchant as the Aura enters the battlefield. The player must choose a legal object or player according to the Aura’s enchant ability and any other applicable effects.
702.16c A permanent or player with protection can't be enchanted by Auras that have the stated quality. Such Auras attached to the permanent or player with protection will be put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action.

This effect is a big part of how Zur the Enchanter EDH decks play, he grabs an enchantment and puts it on himself as soon as he attacks so the effects are there before blockers and damage.

@Samthere That's all in the third paragraph

So it is! I must have had the tab open for a while before reading it or just have been struck by selective blindness!

Yes, Enduring Ideal can search for auras and when the aura is put onto the battlefield you will be able to choose what you want to attach it to.
This is because all Auras are a sub-type of enchantment cards.

303.4.: Some enchantments have the subtype “Aura.” An Aura enters the battlefield attached to an object or player. What an Aura can be attached to is defined by its enchant keyword ability (see rule 702.5, “Enchant”). Other effects can limit what a permanent can be enchanted by.

In addition you will get to choose any valid object to attach it to as per comphrehensive rules:

303.4f: If an Aura is entering the battlefield under a player’s control by any means other than by resolving as an Aura spell, and the effect putting it onto the battlefield doesn’t specify the object or player the Aura will enchant, that player chooses what it will enchant as the Aura enters the battlefield. The player must choose a legal object or player according to the Aura’s enchant ability and any other applicable effects.

One special thing to note is that putting an aura onto the battlefield this way is a bit special from the normal way. Attaching an aura that has entered the battlefield like this does not target, this means you are able to put the Aura onto an opponents creature that has Hexproof.


text:
Can I mill my opponent into defeat with Mindcrank and Duskmantle Guildmage?
Okay the scenario I'm thinking of is as follows:

I control a Mindcrank, Duskmantle Guildmage and 3 untapped lands (2
swamps, 1 Island to be perdantic).
In my opponents turn he casts a burn spell to kill my duskmantle.
I activate his first ability in response.

The way I am hoping the following interactions will go is:

Duskmantles ability will hit the stack at the top and resolve
The burn spell resolves dealing its damage to Duskmantle
The burn spell card hits the graveyard and triggers the infinite
loop for duskmantle and mindcrank killing my opponent
Duskmantle perishes

Is this the way that the stack would pan out?
Do I win in this situation regardless of the stack being correct or not above? (I am not fully familiar with how the stack really works in magic)
You can see the cards from my deck here.

To learn about how the stack works, I suggest reading this answer that helped me understand it in the beginning.

It is hard to imagine a time when @doppelgreener didn't understand the stack.

@doppelgreener Why the change the title to Mill? While I understand the rest of the title edit, to improve the archival nature of the question, they question doesn't care about milling or damage, just that the end result is he wins.

It's spelled "pedantic"

@Deo ironic comment is ironic :P hahaha

Your opponent will die
The first ability from duskmantle is a delayed triggered ability:

603.7. An effect may create a delayed triggered ability that can do something at a later time. A delayed triggered ability will contain “when,” “whenever,” or “at,” although that word won’t usually begin the ability.
603.7a Delayed triggered abilities come from spells or other abilities that create them on resolution, ...

After it is created, it does not matter what happens to the object that created it. Meaning that as soon as this ability resolves, the next time this turn that something goes to your opponents graveyard, they die.
Even though the last steps of the stack do not matter in this situation as your opponent has already lost after step 1, your stack is correct, because a spell going to the graveyard is the last part of resolving a spell and state-based actions that move your creature to the graveyard are only checked right before anyone gets priority.

608.2k As the final part of an instant or sorcery spell’s resolution, the spell is put into its owner’s graveyard.

I believe the OP's sequence is wrong.  Doesn't the dusk mantel die before the opponent dies?  Or does this loop somehow occur before state based actions are checked?

@John You are correct. SBAs are checked before triggers go on the stack, so Duskmantle dies before the loop begins. It doesn't change the outcome, but it is important enough that I decided to add my own answer.

This is not really an infinite loop. It also doesn't necessarily end with your opponent losing the game. The loop ends when your opponent runs out of cards or life, whichever comes first.
The burn spell resolves and goes to the graveyard. Then, state-based actions are checked and Duskmantle Guildmage is moved to the graveyard. Lastly, triggers go on the stack and you begin the loop that will eventually kill your opponent.
Here is the correct sequence of events:

Opponent casts a burn spell, targeting Duskmantle Guildmage.
You activate Duskmantle's first ability.
Duskmantle's ability resolves. It creates a delayed triggered ability.
The burn spell resolves and goes to the graveyard.
The delayed triggered ability triggers, but does not go on the stack yet.
State-based actions are checked. Guildmage dies.
The delayed triggered ability goes on the stack, and we enter the Mindcrank loop. If your opponent runs out of life first, you win. If your opponent runs out of cards first, the game continues.

You basically swapped the last two steps.
Most of the time this distinction will be irrelevant, but not always. If your opponent has a a card like Crypt Incursion in hand, the extra 3 life gained from Duskmantle being in your graveyard could give your opponent just enough life to survive the loop.

I understand your viewpoint here. There are ways round this loop. Just in the instance I was thinking of it would be against maybe a Red Green Ramp and/or a mono red burn deck... or Even infect... I despise infect decks...

@ThunderToes I love Infect. They are the reason I get to eat lunch at large tournaments (short matches). And yea, the distinction I made isn't going to be important against every deck. I only mentioned it because one of your sub-questions was "Is this the way the stack would pan out?".

The phrase "mill my opponent into defeat" would normally be interpreted as forcing your opponent to draw so many cards that they run out of cards. When a player is required to draw a card, but is unable to do so due to their library not containing any cards, they lose. However, the wording on Duskmantle Guildmage is not that your opponent draws cards, but that they move cards from their library. So you can't get a mill victory from just this combo, but you can get a damage victory, and you can leave your opponent with no cards in their library, which means that unless they can get more cards in their library, the next time they are required to draw a card they will lose.


text:
What would happen if you made Spellskite Hexproof?
I would like to know if making Spellskite hexproof would render him useless or make him ultra effective at fizzling spells?
I'm thinking about his activated ability: if he was hexproof, would I be able to pay the cost to change the target to him making the spell fizzle or would it mean I cannot use his activated ability?
Either way this would be a useful thing to know to either use to enhance him and take him out of the game with an enchantment.

So would this mean that comboing Spellskite with Ring of Evos Isle (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=253690) would do what I wanted if I controlled Spellskite?

I think I get what you mean. Change the target to Spellskite, then make Spellskite Hexproof, and finally cause the spell to fizzle. Yup, it works (but only for spells that can target Spellskite). You should be able to work this out, given the answers below. If there's still something you don't understand I suggest please post so that you not only get the easy answer, but a proper explanation as well.

You can fizzle a spell, but only once. Here are the two sequences possible:
1. Give Spellskite Hexproof, and then change target to it
Spellskite's ability resolves, and attempts to change the target. It fails because Spellskite is not a valid target. The spell or ability in question continues to target its original choice.
2. Change target to Spellskite, and then give Spellskite Hexproof
First you change the target of a spell (say, Lightning Bolt) to Spellskite, and let Spellskite's ability resolve. Lightning Bolt is now targeting Spellskite, but before it resolves, give Spellskite Hexproof. When Lightning Bolt tries to resolve, it will fail, as its current target is now invalid.
Basically, if you want to do what you're thinking of, you need to change the spell's target to Spellskite, and let the target-changing ability resolve BEFORE giving Spellskite Hexproof to fizzle the spell.

Just to be clear, here's a hard example of the second, more useful case.
Player A controls a Spellskite, and is at 3 life. Player B casts Lightning Bolt targeting Player A. In response, Player A activates Spellskite's ability targeting Lightning Bolt on the stack. Spellskite's ability resolves, so now Lightning Bolt is on the stack targeting Spellskite. Then, Player A casts Blossoming Defense targeting their own Spellskite, which resolves and gives Spellskite Hexproof. Lightning Bolt tries to resolve, and is countered as its target (Spellskite) is no longer valid.

That's what my thoughts were I think it's going to help me out if I ever run into it to enchant it with alpha authority or something similar if my aponent controls him that would essential silence him

This would not be effective
Gatherer has a pretty clear ruling:

You can activate Spellskite’s ability even if Spellskite wouldn’t be a
  legal target for the spell or ability. However, the target of that
  spell or ability will remain unchanged.

So you are allowed to pay the costs (it's 'pay 2 life' cost might be handy combined with Transcendence, for instance) but because Spellskite has Hexproof he is an illegal target; Spellskite's ability would resolve - but have no effect - and the original target of the spell would remain targeted.

It's highly effective if the spellskite belongs to your opponent ;)

People generally use the word "fizzle" to describe a spell or ability that is countered because all of its targets are illegal. That's not exactly what happens here. The target of Spellskite's ability is legal. The ability resolves, and its controller ignores all of the instructions that are impossible to follow. That happens to be all of the instructions, so the outcome in this case is essentially the same as "fizzling", but the distinction is important for abilities that have other effects.

@Rainbolt reworded.

Here's what the Spellskite's ruling says about that :

You can activate Spellskite’s ability even if Spellskite wouldn’t be a legal target for the spell or ability. However, the target of that spell or ability will remain unchanged.

This means you can still activate Spellskite's ability to redirect your opponent's spells and abilities to it, even if it has hexproof, but since it's not a legal target the original target will remain unchanged.


text:
How and where can I propose new MTG cards?
Where - if anywhere - can I go to put forward a proposal of a new card in magic the gathering?
I figured that the cards must go through a process before being released. I was wondering if I could get my ideas onto the process chain. Can I contact anyone to do this?
Looking on the Magic wizards site, I kinda got lost in the FAQs looking for this and run up a blank.

Wizards of the Coast employees are not allowed to look at unsolicited card designs, from the Wizards of the Coast FAQ on Idea Submissions:

Game Submissions
We do not review unsolicited game or card submissions, return submissions, or make comments on submissions we haven't reviewed.

If you want other people to look at and critique your designs you can go to places like MTG Salvation's Custom Card Creation forum, but the only way to make actual cards is to work for Wizards or submit your design for something like You Make the Card

As a side note, a common reason that companies don't accept unsolicited creative contributions is to avoid copyright violation lawsuits. If you design a card, you own the copyright, and without a contest like You Make the Card, the copyright does not transfer to Wizards when you send it to them. That makes for a sticky legal situation if they make it a real card without getting a license from you.

Another place to go for letting custom card get reviewed is the custommagic subreddit. I personally like the community there very much.

The only real way this could have been done was by winning the Magic Invitational Tournament but alas that no longer exists.

The Magic Invitational Tournament, formerly called the Duelist
  Invitational, is a tournament in which successful pro-players are
  gathered by Wizards of the Coasts to play round-robin in various
  formats, often joke formats or very unusual formats. During the
  tournament, the players submit card ideas. The winner of the
  tournament will get to design a card to see print in a future set, of
  course after R&D had it's input on the card. However, the card to see
  print is not necessarily the same card as submitted in the tournament
  and sometimes not even remotely related to it.

SOURCE

The other answer mentions You Make the Card as another way community members have created cards.


text:
Does untapping an attacker stop its attack?
If someone declares an attacker and that creature does not have vigilance, if I untap that creature, for example with Burst of Energy, does it stop the creature from attacking?

It doesn't remove abilities with {T} in their activation cost from the stack either.

No, it does not.
Once an attacker is declared, it is attacking. Tapping or untapping it after it has been declared as an attacker will have no effect on that.

506.4b Tapping or untapping a creature that’s already been declared as an attacker or blocker doesn’t remove it from combat and doesn’t prevent its combat damage.

While untapping does not stop an attacking creature, you can use an effect like Tumble Magnet in a player's "Beginning of Combat" step to prevent a specific creature from being tapped to attack. It is important to note, however, that you must do this BEFORE your opponent taps their creatures to attack.
There are cards such as Gustcloak Savior which do behave in the manner described in the question. However, these cards explicitly remove the creature from combat. The untapping element is unrelated and incidental. If an effect only untaps an attacker, it is still attacking. Similarly, if an effect only removes a tapped attacker from combat, it is still tapped unless the effect explicitly untaps it.

That's true, untapping (or tapping) a creature after it has been declared as an attacker can never stop it from attacking. (Same goes for blocking.) But there are some cards that will say things like "Untap target attacking creature and remove it from combat," which does stop the creature from attacking.

@DavidZ yes, i would assume you are referring to maze of ith and possibly others. However, i didnt want to confuse my answer by including any information on them. Thinking on it though it's probably safe to add a paragraph at the end, pointing to maze as the prime example.

Maze of Ith does not remove the targeted creature from combat, although in most cases the effect is the same. (Maze prevents combat damage dealt to and by the targeted creature.) A Maze'd creature can still be the target of spells like Arrows of Justice, and an effect such as that of Skullcrack would allow the Maze'd creature to still deal and receive combat damage. ('Remove from combat' effects do exist, just not on that particular card. Try Gustcloak Savior.)

@BrianS updated to your example, nice catch, i totally misremembered how maze works

No, once a creature is declared as an attacking creature, it remains so until removed from combat or when the combat phase ends.
The Combat Phase is broken up into five steps, in this order: Beginning of Combat Step, Declare Attackers Step, Declare Blockers Step, Combat Damage Step, End of Combat Step. During the Declare Attackers step, the Active Player follows rules 508.1a-508.1j, choosing attacking creatures and tapping them. After that, players have priority to cast spells and activate abilities.

508.1f The active player taps the chosen creatures. Tapping a creature when it's declared as an attacker isn't a cost; attacking simply causes creatures to become tapped. [...]
508.1j Each chosen creature still controlled by the active player becomes an attacking creature. It remains an attacking creature until it's removed from combat or the combat phase ends, whichever comes first. See rule 506.4.
508.3. Third, the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities.

Besides the combat step ending, there are several ways a creature can be removed from combat.

506.4. A permanent is removed from combat if it leaves the battlefield, if its controller changes, if it phases out, if an effect specifically removes it from combat, if it's a planeswalker that's being attacked and stops being a planeswalker, or if it's an attacking or blocking creature that regenerates (see rule 701.12) or stops being a creature. A creature that's removed from combat stops being an attacking, blocking, blocked, and/or unblocked creature. A planeswalker that's removed from combat stops being attacked.

Your last chance to prevent a creature from attacking is during the Beginning of Combat step, before it can be declared as an attacker.

506.4a Once a creature has been declared as an attacking or blocking creature, spells or abilities that would have kept that creature from attacking or blocking don’t remove the creature from combat.


text:
Can a 0/0 creature with +1/+1 counters on it (like a Hydra) be regenerated?
Since I fairly new to the Regeneration deal I have a question about regenerating Hydra creatures with +1/+1 counters on them. My friend seems to think that if he Doom Blades, Supreme Verdicts, or any destroy creatures/target creature on my side of the field, that I can't use the regeneraton effect from Golgari Charm on my Primordial Hydra or Savageborn Hydra. He thinks that they become 0/0's and the counters thus go away so regenerating a Hydra with no +1/+1 counters on it since I cant recast it means my Hydras are dead. Is this correct?

some of the confusion here may well be a result of the card Protean Hydra, which would behave exactly in the way your friend described if it had 3 +1/+1 counters on it and was targeted with lightning bolt.

Those two spells Destroy. Regeneration replaces destruction, which means the destruction doesn't happen, which means it doesn't cause anything to go to the graveyard. If you cast the regeneration mode of Golgari Charm in response to Doom Blade or Supreme Verdict, your Hydras will be safe. They will not lose counters, enchantments, or equipment; they don't gain summoning sickness; spells targeting them don't lose sight of them; LTB and ETB abilities don't trigger; etc.

614.8. Regeneration is a destruction-replacement effect. The word “instead” doesn’t appear on the card but is implicit in the definition of regeneration. “Regenerate [permanent]” means “The next time [permanent] would be destroyed this turn, instead remove all damage marked on it and tap it. If it’s an attacking or blocking creature, remove it from combat.” Abilities that trigger from damage being dealt still trigger even if the permanent regenerates. See rule 701.12.

Regeneration will not save the Hydras from being sent to the graveyard as a result of having non-positive toughness, but nothing in the scenario you gave reduces their toughness (by removing +1/+1 counters or otherwise).

Thank you. Looks like I will be making room for those Golgari Charms after all.

I think the confusion stems from a belief that regeneration causes the creature to leave the battlefield, but come back(like persist does).
But the rules just says to remove the damage and remove the creature from combat Instead of destroying it(it's a replacement effect).  It is continuously on the battlefield during the entire process.

Your comment makes me think a "resurrection shield" (akin to persist/undying) would be a cool, if confusing mechanic.

"Gains persist/undying until end of turn" kind of does it, I suppose.

@corsiKa Cauldron of Souls is one example that kind of does exactly that.

@Andrew No, it doesn't. Cauldron grants persist, where it comes back with a -1/-1 counter. Same with Undying Evil which grants undying. My suggestion was something that does the same thing but without any sort of counter. Simple, pure resurrection until end of turn.


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What are the differences between combat damage, direct damage, and loss of life?
From reading the rules it would appear there are two kinds of damage and then straight loss of life:

118.3 If an effect causes a player to gain or lose life, that player's life total is adjusted accordingly.

From reading that I would guess that effects like Extort are not sources of damage. You simply lose the life.

119.2a Damage may be dealt as a result of combat. Each attacking and blocking creature deals combat damage equal to its power during the combat damage step.

So damage from creatures during combat is combat damage.

119.2b Damage may be dealt as an effect of a spell or ability. The spell or ability will specify which object deals that damage.

And that is direct damage from an object.
So the arguments are these:
Does loss of life as outlined by rule 118.3 (at top) count as being dealt damage? Do triggered abilities that redirect or reduce damage effect loss of life?
My second related question: You put Arcane teachings on a Blinding Angel and tap her to deal one damage to your opponent. Am I right in saying that because the damage was direct damage (not dealt during combat) then the triggered ability of preventing the combat phase of the damaged player is not triggered?

"So damage from creatures during combat is combat damage" isn't really true - combat damage is specifically the damage attacking and blocking creatures do during combat because they have a power. For example, "when creature becomes blocked, it deals 1 damage to the controller of the blocking creature" wouldn't be combat damage, but if it had trample, the trample damage spilling onto the player would be.

well if you take the wording you have on that card and break it down it is obvious the damage is not stemming from combat. The damage is coming from the triggered ability of the creature. So the damage did not come from the creature during combat, the damage came from the ability as a result of combat. Different.

Yeah, I was just trying to point out that the concept of "combat damage" is even more nuanced than the wording suggested :)

yeah sadly the 'comprehensive' rules often require that you have read just about the whole darn thing before they make sense. It is super easy to take things out of context.

This is cleared up in rule 118.2:

Damage dealt to a player normally causes that player to lose that much life. See rule 119.3.

So you actually have it backwards. Damage to a player is loss of life, not the other way around. When a player is "dealt damage," they lose that much life. (See below for more on "normally.") This is emphasized in rule 119.1a:

Damage can't be dealt to an object that's neither a creature nor a planeswalker.

Spells that specifically say "lose life" cannot be reduced by spells that redirect damage. Damage is caused as "a result of combat" (119.2a) or "as an effect of a spell or ability" (119.2b). Spells that cause loss of life do not cause damage. Instead, they go around damage and just cause the loss of life. There are two ways to cause damage (quoted above as combat damage and damage from spells), and when these objects would inflict damage on a player, that player loses that much life.
If a player takes damage, they lose that much life; if a player loses life, they lose that much life. Additionally, if a creature takes damage, it takes that much damage; creatures do not lose life. Think of life as the currency of players, which damage can impact in a negative way.
This distinction between damage and loss of life is important. They are intentionally kept separate for cards like Griselbrand. The designers wouldn't want you to be able to prevent the loss of life caused by his ability by casting a simple damage reduction spell, like Reflect Damage, so loss of life is kept as a separate concept.
If a triggered ability says "whenever a player is dealt damage," it would not trigger when that player is affected by a spell that causes loss of life.
In regards to the Blinding Angel example, you are correct. Blinding Angel did not deal combat damage so its ability would not trigger.

The word "normally" in rule 118.2 refers to one way in which damage is modified, laid out specifically in 119.3b. This rules lays out an important exception to loss of life:

Damage dealt to a player by a source with infect causes that player to get that many poison counters.

This is an exception; players lose life when they are dealt damage 99.9% of the time.

The relationship can be summed up by two rules:

119.2a Damage may be dealt as a result of combat. Each attacking and blocking creature deals combat damage equal to its power during the combat damage step.
119.3a Damage dealt to a player by a source without infect causes that player to lose that much life.

So combat damage is a special subset of damage and non-infect damage to a player causes life loss.  Neither of the reverse statements are true.  There are many ways to deal damage without it being combat damage.  There are also many ways to cause a player to lose life without that player taking damage.
119.2a is the definition of combat damage.  To count as combat damage (such as for Fog or Curiosity), the damage must be dealt as a result of combat, not just during the combat phase.  This is specifically damage dealt by attacking and blocking creatures during the turn-based action at the beginning of a combat damage step (see below for more details).
119.3a is why damage to a player changes their life total.  Damage and life loss are two totally separate game mechanics, joined only by this single rule.  There is nothing to make the relationship go the other way.  So, for example, Lightning Bolt will trigger the ability on Exquisite Blood, but Circle of Protection: Black cannot prevent the life loss from Kaervek's Spite.

Details on combat damage

510.1. First, the active player announces how each attacking creature assigns its combat damage, then the defending player announces how each blocking creature assigns its combat damage. This turn-based action doesn't use the stack.
510.1a Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its power. Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don't assign combat damage at all.
510.2. Second, all combat damage that's been assigned is dealt simultaneously. This turn-based action doesn't use the stack. No player has the chance to cast spells or activate abilities between the time combat damage is assigned and the time it's dealt.


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Infractions/Player Communication - Infernal Tutor and Lion's Eye Diamond
In a Competitive REL tournament with an opponent, a player casts Lion's Eye Diamond, Lion's Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor, making a note of storm count after each spell is cast. If the active player has not declared immediately after casting Infernal Tutor that they are intending to respond to it, are they able to activate their Lion's Eye Diamonds in the following situations?
a) The opponent does nothing, and the active player goes to activate the Lion's Eye Diamonds after finishing writing down the storm count.
b) The opponent says, "In response," and the active player says, "Before you respond I need to activate my Lion's Eye Diamonds".
c) The opponent says, "That resolves," before the active player has finished updating the storm count (this may be a duplicate of a).
Are there any differences in rulings in these situations? Or is it a case of "Declare the maintaining of priority immediately, or the opponent can force you to lose it"?

Don't know exactly how a judge reacts, but the answer will center around "Whenever a player adds an object to the stack, he or she is assumed to be passing priority unless he or she explicitly announces that he or she intends to retain it."

that's my expectation, I guess my question comes down to "at what point is a player finished adding a spell to the stack" they clearly aren't finished until they have emptied the mana from their mana pool, which in a storm deck will be at the same point they are adding one to the storm count.

Woah, didn't notice it refers to adding to the stack, not casting. Technically, adding to the stack is done before you targets are picked and costs payed. But this is a from a game that explicitly allows out of order sequencing...

There is no way to give absolute answers to some of those scenarios in a vacuum on the internet.  I agree with Hackworth's answer as far as the 'most correct' interpretation based on the rules absent any other information, but you did ask about player communication in a CREL event.  Judges are in fact required to, well, apply judgement in some situations and there is not always a 100% correct answer or 100% repeatability.
Taking scenario C, it could be:
1) Storm player is leaning forward over table looking down, holding his hand of cards, taps a swamp and puts down a Ritual and a Tutor, still leaning forward, without looking up, grabs pen with other hand to mark paper then reaches for LEDs.  Opponent says some possibly more polite version of "Haha, you forgot to explicitly retain priority, picking up the pen isn't a game action so it implies you were done casting, GG sucker."  Storm Player calls for judge.
2) Storm player puts down Ritual and Tutor, leans back in chair, puts down hand of cards, makes eye contact with opponent, then picks up pen, marks, then reaches for LEDs.  Opponent calls for judge.
As much as we'd like paper magic to be an absolute black and white game as if we were on MODO, these are different situations and some judges will treat them differently.  That's the reality of a situation that has three human participants.  (Further compounded by the fact that the judge probably didn't actually witness it personally!)  If a head judge gives you a ruling on the day-of, that is the ruling.  "Some guy on the internet said XYZ" will get you nothing but reminded not to argue with judges.

re-reading i think this is the actual best answer. it really does come down to "what the judge on the day decides" and playing storm you are always best off being as explicit as possible.

Magic is Absolutely not a reaction-time game, in-fact it's 100% a turn based game.
So When you cast infernal tutor, you still have priority, and don't have any specific time restriction on when you can activate lions eye diamond.
However, If you do pass priority, then you won't get priority again until either after your opponent responds to your spell, or until after infernal tutor resolves.

Now what constitutes communicating that you've passed priority is a grey area.  If you pause, and wait for your opponent, that normally counts as passing priority.
what some people do is say "I cast X, retaining priority", so that there's no confusion, so if you want to be extra safe, you can say that after you cast your tutor

If you want to activate LED before Infernal Tutor resolves, you have to do it in response to casting Infernal Tutor, or you have to hope that your opponent casts a spell or ability of his own, passing priority back to you.
If the active player has not declared immediately after casting infernal tutor that They are intending to respond to it, are they able to activate their Lion's Eye Diamonds in the following situations?
I assume that means the following course of actions:

You play an LED, you both pass, LED resolves, both pass
You play an LED, you both pass, LED resolves, both pass
You play Infernal Tutor, you pass.

That means the opponent has priority now, and the stack consists of Infernal Tutor.

116.3. Which player has priority is determined by the following rules:
116.3a The active player receives priority at the beginning of most steps and phases, after any turn-based actions (such as drawing a card during the draw step; see rule 703) have been dealt with and abilities that trigger at the beginning of that phase or step have been put on the stack. No player receives priority during the untap step. Players usually don’t get priority during the cleanup step (see rule 514.3).
116.3b The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.
116.3c If a player has priority when he or she casts a spell, activates an ability, or takes a special action, that player receives priority afterward.
116.3d If a player has priority and chooses not to take any actions, that player passes. If any mana is in that player’s mana pool, he or she announces what mana is there. Then the next player in turn order receives priority.

a) No. The opponent passes priority, and since all players have passed in succession, the stack starts resolving. Since Infernal Tutor is top of the stack in this scenario, you will not get a chance to activate a Lion's Eye Diamond, because you can only activate it when you have priority.

405.5. When all players pass in succession, the top (last-added) spell or ability on the stack resolves. If the stack is empty when all players pass, the current step or phase ends and the next begins.

b) No. You cannot respond to a response that way - as long as the opponent has priority, he will get to play his spells and abilities (see 116.3c). You can only activate mana abilities during that time. Lion's Eye Diamond is a mana ability, but it has the additional timing restriction that it can only be activated as an instant, so unlike e.g. a land you may NOT activate LED if you don't have priority. Of course, if the opponent has played at least one spell or ability, then you will get back priority at least once, and you can activate one or both LEDs. But the opponent can play as much stuff as he likes before that, potentially adding to the Storm count.
c) No. It is indeed the same as a). Also I'm not sure why you found it important to mention that, but players don't have to update the Storm count. It is not  an action formally recognized by the game rules - "the game" (which means the players in the end, of course) tracks that for them. The only time when Storm count matters is during the resolution of a spell/ability with the Storm ability.

I thought this might be the case. thanks for the answer!

Just an addendum, because of the way you asked the original question, the correct answer for a communication issue in a CREL event is always "whatever the head judge that day thinks."

I don't see how that answers your question. He simply assumes an answer to your question to answer the subparts ("I assume that means the following course of actions: [...] You play Infernal Tutor, you pass." when your question is about whether you passed or not)

Isn't the answer to b) actually Yes, because the player still has priority after casting Infernal Tutor?  If the opponents says 'In Response' then 'No, I'm not done' is a valid reply


text:
Sensei's Divining Top activations
A player in a competitive REL tournament pays 1 mana to activate Sensei's Divining Top's ability to look at the top 3 cards of his library, looks at the 3 cards, changes the order and put them back.
Without performing any further actions or saying/implying that the spell is resolved, can that player then return to look at those 3 cards again?

this is a question that I have had come up while testing decks, but never actually in a tournament. interested to know the answer

No they can not look at the cards again.

1 : Look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in
  any order.

By placing the cards back on the library they have finished taking all the actions the  ability allowed and then it finishes resolving.
If you were playing a very competitive game, this is not a legal thing to do.
I do not think there is any way to interpret the above rule and all its parts to allow a player to re-do the last step of an ability.
Furthermore the rules do not have anything in them about a player stating that anything resolves. A spell resolves when all of the steps listed in its text have been completed.

608.2c The controller of the spell or ability follows its instructions in the order written...

could you please post  the text of rule 608, or at least a link to the source?

its in the comprehensive rules and it spans 11 sub sections. I only put it in there because it is the appropriate rule concerning resolving a spell. I could post the whole body of the rule if you really think it would help, but the importance of that rule in this situation is what is not defined there. this is the wizards of the coast page for the rules the comprehensive can be found there.

you mean here?

well I would mean there except that is going to link to the rules that are current today. The link I provided will bring a user to the page where the rules can be found and then they can click the link which will lead them to the rules that are most current in the future. :)

Hmm, I think you could probably trim that down to the pertinent sub-rules without losing the value. 608.2c is really the only interesting one in this case.

That is what I felt also but it is reallt only the first sentence in 608.2c


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What chance do I have of my foil being a rare or mythic?
If I open a pack, and it contains a foil, this foil could be any card in the set, from basic lands to the most expensive mythic rare. My question is, does each individual foil card have the same chance of being opened? Or does it follow the same distribution as boosters follow?
To illustrate, if you were to open boosters until you got 14 foils, would those foils be in a distribution equivalent to the number of commons/uncommons/rares in the set? Or would those 14 foils be in the distribution equivalent of a booster (e.g. 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare)?
Crucially, can you supply evidence to support this?

Good luck finding in this.

Clearly you would have 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 7/8 of a rare, and 1/8th of a mythic rare.

Anecdotally, there's roughly 1 foil rare per pack.  A few comments on the thread at http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=263332 suggest that mythics are about 1::7 with rares and that the ratio rare:uncommon:common is about 1:3:5, more or less.

I would have thought, considering the amount of product stores open, someone would have at some point figured out an estimate of how foils are distributed. It's hardly going to be business sensitive information

Why don't you just write to WOTC and ask? as you said it can't be sensitive information.

There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about this, and it seems like it may have changed over time.

there may well be specific changes at specific points, however I would have thought that the logistics of changing the printing and packing process would discourage that, so if it has happened, it would be rare. I would not expect each individual set to have its own ratios, as this adds expense with no value to WOTC. I would also expect that as things stand wizards are as unlikely to change their foil ratios as they are their common-uncommon-rares in a pack ratios

@StevenStadnicki, Do you mean "1 foil rare per box?" Because 1 foil rare per pack is demonstrably false!

In a standard full‐sized, Magic: The Gathering set, you have 15 Mythic Rares, 53 Rares, 80 Uncommons, 101 Commons and often 20 basic lands. A booster pack is 10 Commons, 3 Uncommons, 1 Rare, 1 Land, plus 1 Token or Advertisement card. When there is a foil in a pack, the Common is removed, having 9 Commons instead.
Everything is based off of sheets. That’s the way cards come off the printers. Sets are printed on sheets of 11 × 11. Rares are printed 2:1 to Mythic Rares on exactly 1 rare sheet (which can be evidenced in many images of uncut Magic rare sheets online, and more importantly, corroborated by Mark Rosewater himself in his article. These printed sheets form the boosters that customers purchase in retail stores.
Here’s what a sample print run looks like, using all the cards to build boosters:
 1 Rare sheet (121; 106 Rares + 15 Mythic Rares)
 3 Uncommon sheets (363; or 4.5 × 80 Uncommons spread across 3 sheets)
11 Common sheets (1331; or 11 × 121; 101 Commons + 20 Basic Lands)

   (Plus, extra regular sheets for tokens and ads)

We know foils have sheets just like regular cards do. There’s an image of a foil sheet posted as a different answer to this question, confirming they are print the same as Rares for regular cards: 2 Rare for every 1 Mythic Rare, filling up an entire sheet of 121.
So how often are foils from the foil Rare sheet pulled from booster packs? My experience matches many others, which is just over 1 every box or so. Most of the time I have gotten 1, but just a few times I have gotten 2 foil Rares. Boxes have 36 booster packs each. This fits nicely in the ratio of 4 foils from the foil rare sheet on a batch of 121 boosters (121:4, which is close to 30:1).
My experience also matches that of Hogan’s and many, many others, which is somewhere around 4:1 for packs per foil. In a sealed deck tournament, you get 6 boosters packs, and usually open one, but sometimes two. This forum post does a very decent job breaking the statistics down. The 15/63 mentioned, the best I can tell, is just a guess. If this was extrapolated, that’s about 30/121, which would be pulling 30 foils for our 121 packs (which, no surprise, is 4.033:1).
So, of the 30 foils you would see in 121 packs, you would get 4 Rares, meaning there’s a 4/30 chance of your foil card being a Rare or a Mythic Rare. (This is just a guess.)
The ratio of foil rarities is not the same as non‐foils. Maro actually says this in his article. It’s better than the standard ratio, and it has to be. We have about 1 foil in 4 packs, and 1 foil Rare/Mythic Rare in 30 packs — there just wouldn’t be enough foils to fill to have 10:1 Common to Rare foils! So, what is the correct foil ratio then?
If we have a single Rare foil sheet, we’ll have some number of foil Uncommon and Common sheets too. But why 30 choices? At this point, we probably should be basing this off of the total number of foil Rares rather than non-foil Rares. (At the very least, we can account for using every single foil card possible.) In other words, instead of 121 packs, we should look at expending an entire Rare foil sheet. Instead of pulling 4 Rares in 30 foils, why not pull all 121 Rare foils — for thirty times as many packs.
So let’s simulate a print run. Here’s how it will break down:
  1 Foil Rare sheet
  2 Foil Uncommon sheets?
  4 Foil Common sheets?
 30 Rare sheets
 90 Uncommon sheets (3× Rare)
330 Common sheets (11× Rare)

There should exist somewhere around 780 foil Uncommon and Common cards (26 of 30 foils in 121 packs is 780 in 3630 packs).
As far as Uncommons go, originally, Wizards printed 60 in a large set (which fits nicely, twice, on a sheet of 121 cards). It wasn’t until the last few years they increased this to 80, citing the need for more variation during draft without the prevalence of the cards from a third set. But that’s okay, because three runs of 80 happens to also fit nicely onto 2 sheets of 121 cards (80 × 3 = 240, or 2 sheets).
If we had 2 foil Uncommon sheets, this would give us a perfect distribution. Along with 4 foil Common sheets, that’s 845 total foils, distributing amongst 3630 packs, which gets us 23% chance of pulling a foil, which is close enough. This also matches my own experience with cracking open booster boxes.
I could certainly be wrong with the total number of cards. Wizards might actually use 4000 Common sheets and distribute the foils among them. But that’s fine, we’re not concerned about the chance of pulling a foil, we just want the ratio of the foil rarities, and 1:2:4 seems likely on how to do it on a print run.
Thus, we end up with the following:

14.28% or a 1/7 chance of your foil being a Rare or Mythic Rare
12.51% or 106/121 of a 1/7 chance of being a Rare
1.77% or 15/121 of a 1/7 chance of being a Mythic Rare

Wow, awesome first post, and welcome to the site! Look forward to seeing more answers like this in the future.

This is well understood at this point by people who open boxes.  There are around 6 foils per box (36 packs), with on average 1 of those being rare and one foil mythic every 8 boxes.  This follows the standard rarities (with mythic being 8:1 to rares.)
So the answer to your question is

1 in 6 rare
1 in 48 foil

NB - There have been some sets with additional foils or slightly different print runs -- I'm talking about the standard here, not the exceptions.

this sounds very plausible, however this doesn't follow the standard distribution of a booster pack (10 commons to 3 uncommons to 1 rare), it sounds more like it follows the ratio of the set (i.e. each foil has an equal chance to be any card in the set), but its very difficult to tell. To follow booster distribution it would be closer to 1 rare in 2 boxes. Has anyone taken the time to record a run of foils when they were opening cards?

@Rawrgramming - I was talking about mythic ratio in my standard comment.  Yes they have taken that time as I said in my first sentence, that is where I got my information.  Most of the major stores have a post about this.

Cool, it might be worth providing links to such information to help illustrate the answer

Just put "chances of foil mythic rare" into google and then ignore all the stuff that isn't from a major wholesaler.  I found 3 different posts that confirmed the above.  I'm at work so I can't browse those sites now.

Thinking about it, the ratio of foil mythics to foil rares essentially has to be the same as the ratio of regular mythics to regular rares, because the sheet layout is identical - there's just a 'rares and mythics' sheet, in regular and foil versions, and whenever a rare/mythic is needed a card from this sheet is slotted in.

You can see on the foil uncut sheets that every rare are twice per sheet, while mythics are only once.
(Sorry couldn't find an image of better quality)

Thus you can calculate easily. There is (in m14) 15 mythics and 53 rares, there's 106 for 15 so about 7 rares foil per mythic foil.

But this doesn't tell you the Rare:Uncommon or Uncommon:Common ratio.


text:
How can I used double-faced cards in casual play without checklist cards?
I recently bought a "deck builders" kit that included, among other things, a Dark Ascension booster with Scorned Villager (a double-sided card) in it. It did not include a checklist card for me to use.
If I wanted to use this in tournament play, I realize I'd have to buy sleeves or acquire more checklists, but for now I'm mostly playing casual games. Are there any alternatives that would be "generally accepted" among M:TG players for using these cards? e.g. marking up the face of some land card to indicate that it's really my Scorned Villager?
Alternatively, is there a good place to get checklist cards that won't also result in getting more double-sided cards to go along with them?

I always thought this was the reason for all the superfluous land cards one gets - spare backs.

Sleeves are a good idea either way.

I just dread going through my entire collection and putting sleeves on all of them. I already have clear plastic sleeves for the few dozen valuable ones (that I rarely use in play) but those obviously don't help with double-sided cards :)

You don't have to sleeve up your entire collection, and in fact I wouldn't recommend following that practice, as sleeves will tend to wear more quickly than the cards themselves, so you'd be playing with marked cards as soon as you played a few games and then switched out some cards.  No, instead you'd sleeve up a deck or decks, and swap the cards out by desleeving the cards out and resleeving the new cards - this means that it will be more of a hassle to swap out dozens of cards at a time, but it will save your cards wear, and is the best method for solving this dilemma.

A checklist card is simply a tournament-sanctioned proxy with a specialized purpose. In casual play, you could make a proxy more-or-less any way you want. Writing with a marker on a basic land is probably the most common custom.
I recommend including the mana cost as well as the card's name, so you can quickly tell whether you are able to cast it without having to look over at your double-faced cards outside of play.

If you wish to get some more of the official checklist cards, you can buy them online for about 10 cents each through a major singles dealer like Star City Games or Channel Fireball (since they resell the token cards that come in boosters).
Note that Innistrad and Dark Ascension have their own separate checklist cards.

Big support for using a basic land. I usually use a land that I don't already have in my deck. I don't usually use mountains, because unless my deck contains red, I use mountains to represent shock lands :-)

To mention explicitly what this answer hints at - using any kind of substitute for a checklist card is not tournament-legal. The only exception is if it's been issued by the head judge - for example because your checklist card got damaged; however, player-created proxies aren't allowed for several reasons, so please don't appear to a tournament with a proxy and ask the head judge whether it's okay to use it - just bring a proper checklist card, or use completely opaque sleeves.

Use a different card from your collection as a proxy (whether you mark it or not is up to you). This should be fine in a casual setting.
Make sure to let your opponent know before hand and pick a card that wouldn't normally be playable in your deck (eg off-color) to avoid confusion.

I Have a Wolves/werewolves deck, and I only had one marking card from Eldritch Moon since I traded it for the other werewolves I had. I used my marking card for my Smoldering Werewolf//Erupting Dreadwolf, and then took some plains basic lands and jotted down the name and mana cost. Everyone I played so far has accepted this, so I would probably do this.


text:
Would exiled cards from Gorex be usable after it dies?
I'm curious how a card like Gorex, the Tombshell works when it says "choose a card at random exiled with Gorex".  Take a deck with 4 Gorex in it, does each one only pull from the creatures exiled specifically by that card, or does each one use all exiled cards done by any of the 4?  What if Gorex is my commander, does it include all exiled cards from every time the commander has been cast?

No. Each Gorex can only choose from the cards which that specific Gorex exiled. If one Gorex leaves the battlefield and you recast that same card in any way, it's a new Gorex with its own set of exiled cards.
Whenever text references its object by name, it only means the object it's on. That means that each Gorex can only choose from the cards it exiled, even if you somehow controlled multiple Gorexes at once or sequentially.

201.5. Text that refers to the object it’s on by name means just that particular object and not any other objects with that name, regardless of any name changes caused by game effects.

When an object changes zones, it becomes a new object. It does not know that the previous Gorex object had cards exiled, even if it's represented by the same card.

400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence. [..]

When a Gorex dies or otherwise changes zones, the cards still exiled by it become inaccessible no matter what (Exceptions exist but none specific to Gorex).


text:
How is the rarity of cards in official preconstructed Commander decks determined?
As far as I am aware, the rarity of Magic: The Gathering cards is determined by how many times a given card gets printed, relative to other cards in the same set. I believe the standard distribution is for every 120 cards, you get 1 mythic, 7 rare, 24 uncommon, and 88 common, with cards of a given rarity equally likely to appear. This, in turn, determines how likely you are to pull a given card from a randomized 15-card booster pack.
Commander cards aren't sold in booster packs. The only way to obtain them is to buy one of the pre-built Commander decks. These decks have fixed deck lists, so every deck you buy has the same 100 guaranteed cards in it.
However, the Commander cards do have different rarities. For example, the Commander 2016 card Army of the Damned is a mythic rare, while Windfall is an uncommon. These two cards both appear in the 2016 deck Entropic Uprising, and no others. In other words, when purchasing Commander decks, you will always get the same number of Army of the Damned as you do Windfall, but they are somehow different rarities.
In addition, the distribution of rarities in the deck is off as well. Again, using Entropic Uprising as an example, there are 5 mythic rare, 33 rare, 26 uncommon, 15 common, and 20 land.
How are these rarity levels determined if there is no randomness or normal distribution of cards in the set?

There's also things like how Loxodon Warhammer is Rare in Commander '14 and '15, but Uncommon in '16.

You mention that each deck is a singleton deck, so each card is printed exactly as much as each other card within that product. This is true when considering just one deck, but if you look at multiple decks that are part of the same product (e.g. all of the C16 decks), cards at lower rarities are printed in more decks than cards at higher rarities. Common cards can be printed in 4 or 5 of the decks, while mythic rare cards are printed in only one of them.
Rarity also has some meaning other than the print run frequency in sealed products. In particular, the Magic Online format Pauper allows only cards that have been printed at common. Similarly, the unofficial format Peasant is similar, but has slightly less restrictive deckbuilding rules and allows some uncommons. So, we can assume that power level plays a role in determining the rarity at which a card should be printed.
In addition, Wizards' "New World Order" design philosophy, which has been in effect for several years, dictates that more complex cards should be printed at higher rarity levels. This is a less important consideration in decks of singletons, but it's likely that they continue to follow the same principles for consistency.

I considered the idea that multiple printings affected rarity, which I'm sure plays a role, but as I mentioned, there are a number of cards that only appear in 1 deck but have different rarities. The idea that "rarity" is no longer just about scarcity, but also complexity, makes a lot of sense though.

Both of the examples you mention (Windfall and Army of the Damned) were printed in other sets that were released in the booster format before being included in the preconstructed decks.  At least these two examples preserve the rarity they were previously printed at (Windfall was uncommon in Urza's Saga and Army of the Damned was Mythic in Innistrad).  Here, they are following the same convention they followed with the Duel Decks.
For new cards printed in these sets, such as Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, they are presumably given a rarity that would be appropriate in the event these cards are ever reprinted in a booster-pack format set.  Granted, this is less likely given they aren't making core sets any more, but there is still MTGO, and some of these cards may make it into the main story line sets.
Loxodon Warhammer is a great example in that it has been printed at different rarities in different Commander sets, but was also printed at different rarities in booster pack sets (it was Uncommon in Mirrodin but Rare in 10th Edition).  The assumption is that if they do reprint Loxodon Warhammer (such as in the as of yet unannounced Mirrodin 3 block!), it would be as an uncommon.

I wouldn't necessarily say that you could infer anything from the rarity in sets like Commander to future block set releases. After all, those sets are individually designed and balanced, which presumably was the reason for changing Loxodon Warhammer's rarity for its 10th Edition printing in the first place. At the same time, it's possible that they use the latest rarity for the basis of their decision process.

Warhammer at uncommon would be devastating in limited.

The rarity of a card determines how often it can appear in a booster pack, not the other way around. A card's rarity, in turn, is determined by the set designers according to the card's design and how often it is supposed to appear in its respective limited environment. That is why sometimes reprints of cards get a different rarity, to control their frequency in that block's limited environment, even though they're the exact same, mechanically.
Preconstructed decks, as you already noted, can in principle have any distribution of rarities. A precon deck is supposed to make thematic sense. In the case where cards are available only through those precon decks, the rarities don't matter at all, and their rarities can be freely assigned according to the (lack of) complexity of their design.

The first part of your answer seems like the same thing I'm saying in my question, or am I reading it wrong? As for the second part, that's really what I'm trying to find out: if the rarity "doesn't matter" and doesn't reflect "actual" rarity, why have them, and how are they determined?


text:
How does the wording "for each" work?
Some cards in magic has something happen for each {something}. For instance: Alive // Well makes you gain 2 life for each creature you control. Tapping Selvala adds one green mana to your mana pool, and you gain 1 life for each non-land card revealed.
How is this life gained: all at once or "one bit" at a time? Say I tap Selvala and 1 land, and 2 non-lands are revealed: do I gain 2 life, or do I gain 1 life two times? Would Ajani's Pridemate have one or two +1/+1 counters placed on it if I had it in play at that point?

nice question. My instinct says it is only one event. but can't find any rules that back that up

That's what I'm inclined to think as well, but from a conversation with someone it seemed like they thought otherwise.

Don't spells/abilities only add one effect to the stack unless they explicitly say otherwise? So in this case, the effect is "gain 2 life for each", so it's one effect and you're gaining 2*n life at one time.

@Ellesedil It's not just the stack that matters. When you resolve a spell or ability on the stack, you don't group all of its effects up into one and then determine triggers. If a card specifies two things separately (e.g. for some strange reason "gain 2 life, then gain 4 life") they happen separately, in that order. So the question is whether "for each" means, "gain a quantity of life equal to 2 per creature" or "for each creature, one at a time, gain 2 life".

How is this life gained: all at once or "one bit" at a time?

Count the verbs. There is only one instruction to gain life, so all the life is gained simultaneously.

608.2e Some spells and abilities have multiple steps or actions, denoted by separate sentences or clauses, that involve multiple players. In these cases, the choices for the first action are made in APNAP order, and then the first action is processed simultaneously. Then the choices for the second action are made in APNAP order, and then that action is processed simultaneously, and so on. See rule 101.4.

Life Burst has two instructions to gain life (two verbs), so there would be two life gain events.

Would Ajani's Pridemate have one or two +1/+1 counters placed on it if I had it in play at that point?

Since all life is gained simultaneously and it all came from the same source, there is only one life gain event, so it would only trigger once.
Note that if you simultaneously gained life from multiple sources, that would count as multiple life gains events, and the ability would trigger multiple times.

118.9. Some triggered abilities are written, "Whenever [a player] gains life, . . . ." Such abilities are treated as though they are written, "Whenever a source causes [a player] to gain life, . . . ." If a player gains 0 life, no life gain event has occurred, and these abilities won’t trigger.

That applies very narrowly to life gain. It doesn't apply to taking damage. For example, if Boros Reckoner is simultaneously dealt damage from two sources, its ability will only trigger once. It would need the wording of Nested Ghoul's ability to be triggered twice.

I don't think this answer helps clear up the ambiguity. You don't provide a rule for "count the verbs". The very question is in whether or not "for each" counts as having multiple verbs.

Note that a valid English and mathematical reading of "for each creature, gain a life" when there are 2 creatures is: "gain a life. Gain a life." This is how a computer would read and execute a program written that way. While I don't think that's the intent of the card or the rules, there is still not a rule defining "for each".

@GendoIkari I think the rule referenced is sufficient because it doesn't reference "verbs" but "separate sentences or clauses". "Gain 2 life for each creature you control" is a single verb clause, so by that rule all of the life gain "is processed simultaneously". And since it's a single source adding a certain amount of life simultaneously, it's a single event. And your point about a computer is irrelevant: I could just as easily write a program that specifies add 2*(number of creatures) as for creature in creatures: add 2.

@GendoIkari, Yes, I did. I just gave a tip that you can count actions by counting verbs.

@ikegami No, that's not what I meant. You said "that would be the case". I'm not sure if by "that" you mean "multiple life gain events" (as in the first section) or "only one life gain event" (as in the second section). Especially because the note is with the second section, but the correct answer is the first one (which I provided a rules reference for).

@murgatroid99, Gendolkari's math comment was in response to a paragraph I had in my answer I removed before he even made his comment because it didn't make things any clearer.

@ikegami Now I think that all parts of your answer relevant to the question are correct, but what source do you have that simultaneous damage from multiple sources counts as a single damage event?

@murgatroid99, It's not in the rules that it doesn't do more than specified. As per the English definition, "is dealt damage" doesn't check who did it or how much they did. Source of rule interpretation: Previous discussions on Wizards' Rules Q&A forum. It can also be inferred from the presence of the two different wordings.

@ikegami OK, based on rulings I found, you're right about that one.

@murgatroid99, Also, 118.9 wouldn't be necessary if "dealt damage" and "dealt damage by a source" were the same thing, because that would mean "gains life" and "gains life from a source" would already be the same thing.

@user1873, 1) Re "Maybe quote the section in the CR that deals with effects", 608.2 is too large to quote. I quoted the subsection that's relevant to the answer.

@user1873, 2) Re "Then you might want to mention spells than deal with LKI due to zone changing, and needing to look back in time at the game-state before and after an effect." ???? I don't see how LKI has any relevance.

@user1873, 3) Re "I don't buy the 'count your verbs' argument." Then give me a counterexample. I would be interested in what other kinds of words denotes the taking of actions.

@user1873, 4) Re "Do you have an emample of a one-shot effect that uses multiple verbs and causes you gain life in two separate events?" Of course not. Each verb is an effect. Like I said, count the verbs.

@user1873, You had asked about a single effect with multiple verbs. I did mention Life Burst in my answer, which has two verbs, thus two effects, and thus two events

@user1873, I don't see how 700.1 helps. (wtf is a "happening"?)

@user1873, I don't know what you're looking it, but 608.2 has nothing to do with APNAP. 608.2 explains how to resolve spells and abilities.

@user1873, Wall of Shards.... interesting. I'll have to bring this up at Wizard's Rules Q&A.

I was suggesting that 608.2g (which talks of getting an answer once if an effect requires it) is a better example than your 608.2e reference that is about APNAP order when effects involve multiple players.

@user1873, No, 608.2e is not about APNAP; it's about handling abilities with multiple steps or actions. It mentioned that each action is performed at once, which answers the OP's question. As for 608.2g, why do you bring up LKI again??? You've already agreed that LKI has nothing to do with the question! "getting an answer once if an effect requires it" doesn't help either.

608.2g isn't about LKI, re-read it. Interestingly enough, 112.2c An object may have multiple abilities. If the object is represented by a card, then aside from certain defined abilities that may be strung together on a single line (see rule 702, “Keyword Abilities”), each paragraph break in a card’s text marks a separate ability. [...] And 603.2c An ability triggers only once each time its trigger event occurs. However, it can trigger repeatedly if one event contains multiple occurrences. [...] Might lead you astray Does it contain multiple occurrences because of "for each"?

I contacted Wizard's MtG APAC Support last night. The response confirmed what we suspect: only one life gain occurs, but they didn't know any specific ruling about this either.
I think Ikegami's answer very soundly conveys the rules basis for it working this way, though.
For posterity, and for some level of official confirmation, here's the response from support:

When Riot Control activates the life gain triggers as a single event meaning that Archangle of Thune will only activate once. So in the situation that you provided, when you cast Riot Control the following will happen: You will gain 3 life and each of your creatures will receive a single (1) +1/+1 counter. Now if the card was Ageless Entity that states: "Whenever you gain life, put that many +1/+1 counters on Ageless Entity." you would be putting three (3) +1/+1 counters on Ageless Entity since you would have gained that much life through Riot Control.
I'm afraid that there isn't a specific ruling that would fit here, but the wording of the card itself describes what will happen.
(Ed: courtesies and administrative stuff omitted)
— Eric M.
Online Response Crew
Wizards of the Coast

As I said in the comments, I can't find any rules that specify it but according to this similar example here http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/3767486 it would only be one event. In the example it was actually two because of the wording of Life Burst, but the second instance on that card has also a "for each" wording that would only trigger one event.

Based on what though? Those people are just saying it happens once regardless of the "for each" calculation, but not citing anything, which is about the same as if you or I answered this saying "You only gain life once" and left it at that.

I find several questions on the web stating the same. I think it actual isn't covered by the rules, since I actually did a Ctrl+F on the comp rules for "gain" and also "for each" and found nothing. I guess it could only be settled by an actual judge then. I tried googling a similar question that is answered by a judge but unfortunately couldn't find one.

I'm surprised I can't find anything either, but I'm pretty sure you're right: the wording does sound much more like "gain a quantity of life equal to..." than "count your creatures and every time you count one gain 2 life".

It might be like the word "deals" for damage events. Each instant of the word "deals" is one event. So I think Jefromi's comment is probably pretty close: Congregate means "Target player gains 2x life, where x is ..."

@Jonathan Hobbs, See my answer. I provided the rule that does apply. You could argue the rule doesn't apply, but that would be wrong.

Just to clarify a little, even though I am not going to quote any rules, in this case simple logic will help.
If you have for example Ajani's Pridemate in play and you cast Well part of the Alive // Well card this is what happens.
Well on the stack resolves, the spell counts your creatures during its resolving process and gain you lives during one single event, there are not keyworded two or more instances to be resolved seerately. Ajani's Pridemate's abbility triggers and it gets 1 +1/+1 counter.

When other, much older answers have rules quotes and official confirmation from Wizards of the Coast, you might want to think twice before posting "It's common sense." This feels like noise.


text:
When does the Legend Rule take place?
Say my opponent has Elesh Norn on the table and plays Phyrexian Metamorph as a copy of her. As I understand from her Gatherer-page, all my creatures will now briefly have -4/-4.
So my question is now, suppose I have Obsidian Fireheart (or any other elemental with at least 3 toughness) in play along with two Incandescent Soulstokes, then obviously both my Soulstokes die as they have -1 toughness each, but will Obsidian Fireheart die as well? In other words, when exactly during this process does one copy of Elesh Norn leave the battlefield due to the legendary rule?

The Legendary rule is one of the state-based actions which are performed at several points in a turn.

704.3. Whenever a player would get priority (see rule 116, "Timing and Priority"), the game checks for any of the listed conditions for
  state-based actions, then performs all applicable state-based actions
  simultaneously as a single event.

State-based actions are also what kills created with non-positive toughness.
During the resolving of a spell, state-based actions are not performed. So when the copy of Elesh Norn enters the battlefield, there are temporarily two of them, and your creatures have -4/-4. The 3/3 creatures will temporarily be -1/-1.
Then state-based actions are performed, and those creatures and all but one of those Elesh Norns are killed simultaneously. From that moment, your remaining creatures have -2/-2.

704.4. Unlike triggered abilities, state-based actions pay no attention to what happens during the resolution of a spell or ability.

You said they die then the SBAs are checked, but it's the SBAs that kill them. Fixed your answer.

Since it's not clear in the answer, I'll clarify that Obsidian Fireheart survives because its thoughness is increased by both Incandescent Soulstokes. Since both Incandescent Soulstokes die at the same time that one Elesh Norn (because of rule 704.3), Obsidian Fireheart will survive as a 1/1.

When the second Norn enters the battlefield state based actions are checked and executed at the same time. This means one Born dies because of the legend rule and the 2 Soulstrokes die because of having 0 or lower toughness. This happens at the same time. And your Fireheart lives happily ever after.

This answer is right, I'm not sure why it was downvoted. Since Obsidian Fireheart thoughness is pumped because of Incandescent Soulstokes, it will survive.


text:
Can I cast adventures from my graveyard?
Say I have a creature with Adventure in my graveyard, for example Murderous Rider, and something allowing me to cast creatures from my graveyard (for example Liliana, Untouched by Death ).
Am I allowed to cast the adventure part of the card from my graveyard?
What if I'm allowed to cast instant and sorceries instead of creatures?

So this is what the Throne of Eldraine Release Notes have to say about this:

If you cast an adventurer card as an Adventure, use only its alternative characteristics to determine whether it's legal to cast that spell. For example, if Giant Killer is exiled with the last ability of Vivien, Champion of the Wilds, you can't cast it as Chop Down.

This settles your first question. If you are allowed to cast creature cards (or Zombie cards in case of Liliana) you are not allowed to cast them as adventures.
Moreover, in contrast to any other answer you have received, it seems you can cast your adventure card from the graveyard, if you are allowed to cast instants and sorceries from your graveyard, for example by the emblem of Jaya Ballard. I was pretty sure this is not how Wizards intends this to play out as well though, and I thought they will make use of this bit of text in the rules about casting a spell:

601.3. A player can't begin to cast a spell unless a rule or effect allows that player to cast it. If that player is no longer allowed to cast that spell after completing its proposal, the casting of the spell is illegal and the game returns to the moment before the casting of that spell was proposed (see rule 721, "Handling Illegal Actions").

Edit after rules update:
The rules update clarified this rules interaction by adding rule 601.3e to the rule book:

601.3e. If a rule or effect states that only an alternative set of characteristics or a subset of characteristics are considered to determine if a card or copy of a card is legal to cast, those alternative characteristics replace the object's characteristics prior to determining whether the player may begin to cast it.
Example: Garruk's Horde says, in part, "You may cast the top card of your library if it's a creature card." If you control Garruk's Horde and the top card of your library is a noncreature card with morph, you may cast it using its morph ability.
Example: Melek, Izzet Paragon says, in part, "You may cast the top card of your library if it's an instant or sorcery card." If you control Melek, Izzet Paragon and the top card of your library is Giant Killer, an adventurer creature card whose Adventure is an instant named Chop Down, you may cast Chop Down but not Giant Killer. If instead you control Garruk's Horde and the top card of your library is Giant Killer, you may cast Giant Killer but not Chop Down.

So, as it stands, it is legal to cast Chop Down with Jaya's Emblem from your graveyard. Note that in this case, the adventure card, if it is not countered, is exiled by its own ability, which means you could still cast the Giant Killer afterwards...
Note though, that what the other answers said about finding instant cards is still valid. You won't be able to cast Chop Down (or Giant Killer) with the ability of Torrential Gearhulk or any other card that specifically targets a non-creature card in your graveyard, because in your graveyard, it is not an instant and it would thus be an illegal target. As murgatroid already mentioned, if a card that targets creature cards allows you to cast that card, this is not restricted to casting it as a creature spell, so in this case you could also cast the adventure, if it is an adventurer card.
I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact, that cards that allow you to cast instants from your graveyard specifically mention instant CARDS, which is the term usually used for instants in the graveyard (or anywhere except the stack). Instants on the stack are usually referred to as instant SPELLS (Technically there is a difference here since copies of instants are spells but not cards). In this case, the card is the object itself as it CHANGES ZONES. The rules clearly state now, that only the characteristics of the part of the card you actually want to cast matter at that point, which is counterintuitive, because it behaves like it's on the stack already, whereas usually, the oracle text would not refer to a spell as a card (even if it obviously also is a card on the stack).
tldr: No for the first, Yes for the second question.

Backdraft Hellkite would not work, correct?

@ArcanistLupus Yes, you are correct. Backdraft Hellkite reads: "[...] each instant and sorcery card in your graveyard gains flashback [...]". Since adventurer cards are creature cards in the graveyard, they don't gain flashback.

You can cast the Adventure spell if a card allows you to cast instants or sorceries from the graveyard, but not if a card allows you to cast creatures from your graveyard. You can also cast the Adventure spell using an effect that allows you to cast a targeted creature card in a graveyard.
Some subrules of section 601 "Casting Spells" describe how to determine whether this kind of spell can be legally cast:

601.3 A player can begin to cast a spell only if a rule or effect allows that player to cast it and no rule or effect prohibits that player from casting it.

601.3e If a rule or effect states that only an alternative set of characteristics or a subset of characteristics are considered to determine if a card or copy of a card is legal to cast, those alternative characteristics replace the object’s characteristics prior to determining whether the player may begin to cast it.

The following subrules of section 715 "Adventurer Cards" explain how this applies to those cards:

715.2. The text that appears in the inset frame on the left defines alternative characteristics that the object may have while it’s a spell. The card’s normal characteristics appear as usual, although with a smaller text box on the right.
715.3. As a player casts an adventurer card, the player chooses whether they cast the card normally or
  as an Adventure.

715.3a When casting an adventurer card as an Adventure, only the alternative characteristics are evaluated to see if it can be cast.

Rule 601.3e also has a specific example that covers casting adventures using these kinds of effects:

Melek, Izzet Paragon says, in part, “You may cast the top card of your library if it’s an instant or sorcery card.” If you control Melek, Izzet Paragon and the top card of your library is Giant Killer, an adventurer creature card whose Adventure is an instant named Chop Down, you may cast Chop Down but not Giant Killer. If instead you control Garruk’s Horde and the top card of your library is Giant Killer, you may cast Giant Killer but not Chop Down.

So, if the effect of Liliana, Untouched by Death's third ability is active, then you can cast the creature part of the card, but not the Adventure part. If instead you control Kess, Dissident Mage, you can cast the Adventure part, but not the creature part.

The card Havengul Lich has the ability:

You may cast target creature card in a graveyard this turn. When you cast that card this turn, Havengul Lich gains all activated abilities of that card until end of turn.

If you activate that ability targeting a creature card that has an Adventure in the graveyard, you can cast either the creature or the Adventure from the graveyard. This is because "creature card" is just the target condition; once the ability resolves, you have an effect that allows you to cast that card from the graveyard this turn, plus the delayed triggered ability.
On the other hand, you can't target the card at all with an effect like on Snapcaster Mage, because rule 715.4 says

In every zone except the stack, and while on the stack not as an Adventure, an adventurer card has only its normal characteristics.

I'm still not understanding this.... if the card in your graveyard only has the characteristics of the creature part, how can an effect that lets you cast an instant or sorcery "find" that card?

I think I understand.... is it because of the way casting a spell works, and 601.2e? Can you effectively just always cast any card from your graveyard, and then when the rules get to 601.2e it will normally see that the casting was illegal because it wasn't coming from your hand?

The example given is especially confusing though... "You may cast the top card of your library if it’s an instant or sorcery card".. but at no point is the top card of your library an instant or sorcery card. It is only an instant or sorcery card while it is on the stack.

Yes, I'm still confused too. And local judges I asked are too.

It seems to me that these objections are covered by 601.3e. When you are checking whether you can legally cast a card, you can check its alternate characteristics and see that the card would be legal to cast with those characteristics. Then you can cast it.

@murgatroid99 But how does 601.3e work with something like "the top card of your library if it's an instant or sorcery card"? By the time you are looking at 601.3e, the card you are casting isn't the top card of your library. Does 601.3e look "back" to see where the card was cast from? If so it seems a bit odd that it wouldn't then also look "back" to see if the card was legal to cast at that time...

In other words, it seems like "You may cast the top card of your library if it’s an instant or sorcery card" actually means "when checking 601.3e, the cast is legal if the card was the top card of your library before it was moved to the stack, and the card is currently an instant or a sorcery". It seems like it must work that way; but that's awkward and unintuitive.

What I'm saying is that you determine whether it's legal to cast a card according to 601.3 in order to decide whether you can put it on the stack and start casting it in the first place.

I added a quotation of 601.3, which I think explains it. You can only start to cast the spell (i.e. put it on the stack) if it is legal to cast according to whatever parts of 601.3 are relevant.

It appears that part of my confusion came from misreading the rules number... I was talking about 601.2e, not 601.3e; and didn't notice that indeed 601.3 is clear... 601.2e is the one that is a bit weird, because it says the game checks to see if the spell can be legally cast; but it has already been put on the stack by that point; if it were illegal to cast then 601.3 would have prevented it from being put on the stack in the first place.

Right, you have to check legality again after making all of the choices for the spell, to verify that none of those choices make the casting illegal. For example, a choice of value for X can make a spell illegal to cast with Void Winnower on the battlefield.