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Why was Kird Ape banned in very first Extended ban list?
I'm curious as to what sort of reasoning went behind Kird Ape being too strong for Extended play? Granted this was many years ago but I was surprised to see that it was banned in a format that allowed powerful cards like Necropotence.

I would wager that an answer would be primarily opinion based as the card is now legal in every format according to gatherer.

@JoeW I don't understand your logic. All that matters is whether Wizards ever explained the ban; reversing the ban later can't take away that explanation.

@JoeW Wizards routinely publishes explanations of bans nowadays, so this kind of thing is not guessing at all. If they didn't communicate about it at all back then, and you're 100% sure of that, then sure, this is just guessing. (Though "what made it good back then?" still wouldn't really be guessing.) Is that what you're saying?

@Jefromi Do they also publish explanations of why a card wasn't banned?

@JoeW If you're talking solely about the question's mention of Necropotence, then no, they don't explain about every card that wasn't banned. That might be a reasonable thing to just remove from the question. (I didn't understand that from your previous comments because you started out clearly talking about Kird Ape ("the card is now legal in every format") but I see you alluded to it in the next, sorry.) But if you're asking if they publish explanations when they unban cards, the answer is yes.

I edited to try to clarify that the question was just using Necropotence as motivation, not actually asking why it wasn't banned.

This is speculation, but I think Kird Ape was banned because it was legal at the same time as Taiga in the format, as were the moxes. Getting one or perhaps two of these turn one, and having it active since your land drop is also a forest, it's a strong showing out of the gate.

The simple answer is that at the time of the banning, WotC saw this card as a problem for the metagame in Extended. It could put an opponent pretty far behind pretty early, and many decks had to tailor early plays just to deal with Kird Ape. As Mark Rosewater notes in an article from 2003 (emphasis mine):

We ban and restrict cards because we believe there is something worse than not allowing players to use a particular card, and that is having a play environment become so degenerate that the game is no longer fun. Sometimes individual cards have to be sacrificed for the needs of the larger game.

When an individual card takes over a format because it seems unbalanced, WotC bans it in order to try and change the metagame. This is constant battle for them in the Modern format, where they're trying to figure out a way to ensure it's a four-turn format.

If it's any consolation, in the same article by Rosewater he admits the Kird Ape ban may have been a mistake:

Why did you ban Kird Ape in the original Extended format when Hypnotic Specter was not?

I’ll let you in on a little secret. We’re not infallible. We occasionally, gasp, make mistakes. We correct them when we catch them, but hey nobody’s perfect. Was the above a mistake? To quote my grandfather: “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has a giant sign on it that says: ‘I’m a freakin’ duck!’, odds are, it might be a duck.”

I'm also skeptical that you are going to find a direct quote online referencing the Kird Ape ban. The earliest articles on the WotC website for Magic are from December 2001. I legitimately can't figure out when Kird Ape was actually banned and then unbanned, but this timeline shows Hypnotic Specter being banned in October of 1997. Since the above Rosewater quote references the banning of Kird Ape instead of Hypnotic Specter, I can only assume Kird Ape had both its banning and unbanning before then, more than four years before WotC decided to start using the internet to disseminate information about their game.

This is just speculation and my thoughts about it but I think that at that time a 2/3 for 1 mana was really very strong. I remember myself when they printed Isamaru, Hound of Konda and everyone was like, wow a 2/2 for 1 mana, (so strong that it had to be legendary). And even cards like Watchwolf people really liked, because also at that time you simply didn't get a 3/3 for 2 mana

Mostly, the given reason for the ban was that it was too good of an aggro card. It outclassed every other 1 drop, and likely was better than many 2 drops as well. Of course, Wizard never really knows which cards are completely broken (a la Necropotence), so after time it was unbanned.


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Where does the phrase "MTG is not a game about reflexes" come from?
I recently got talking to a long term payer who when I asked him why he got into MTG told me that he was heavy into the FPS shooters of the 90's but as a teenager developed a tremor in his hands that made dexterity-based FPS games impossible for him to play competitively.
He told me that he read somewhere that MTG is not a game based on dexterity and he got curious as to what that meant and got into the game from there.
I'm curious as to where this phrase originates from. I have heard rules experts quote it before. It seems rather famous.

Long term payer....god I know that's accurate.

The only cards I can think of where this is not true: Chaos Orb and Chaos Confetti

The reasons for mentioning dexterity might well be pretty different from mentioning reflexes.

This answer states the message slightly differently: "MTG is not a real-time game, it's a turn-based game. In other words, it's not a game of chicken." It then proceeds to explain this.

@MT0 The black-bordered dexterity cards are Chaos Orb and Falling Star. Dexterity cards are also banned in all formats, along with ante cards.

@MT0 and @ BrianS There are however Silver boarder cards that break these rules and can make Magic more physical. See Slaying Mantis, and Knight of the Hokey Pokey

When people say "Magic is not a game about reflexes", they mean that you never have to react quickly to anything in the game. Beginners have frequent misunderstandings of the rules such has "Whoever announces that they're casting a spell first gets to have it resolve first.", which is incorrect because spells and abilities use the stack, and there is a turn-based priority system to ensure that only one player has the opportunity to take action at any one time. Similarly, people commonly believe some variation of "If you don't respond within five seconds, the spell resolves unopposed", which is simply incorrect: you have as much time as you need to respond to anything.
Brandon Burton has cerebral palsy. Brandon has competed at Worlds and the Pro Tour (two of the highest levels of competition in Magic). That goes to show that dexterity and reflexes are not a requirement to play competitively.

That is, this probably isn't really a famous quote, it's just something that a lot of people have had to explain and they tend to end up saying it in about the same way.

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In what order should I present the basics of Magic?
I am working on a multimedia presentation (a series of images with an audio of explanation; video can be used too but should be less than the images) about Magic The Gathering. The scope is to explain to an audience of new players, who don't know anything about the game, the basis about how to play a game; it should be a replacement for the MtG Basic Rulebook that shops giveaway during the Magic Celebration event.
I found that the Rulebook is structured in a way some concepts have to be explained more than once and in different parts of it (e.g. the stack is introduced under the "sorcery" section, partially explained under "the stack" section and further information can be found under "casting a spell"). I would love to be more clear and consistent in my work.
This is the structure I'm thinking about:
1.  The basics
    a.  What is MtG
    b.  Parts of a card
    c.  Tapping
    d.  Making mana
2.  Card types
    a.  Land
    b.  Creature
    c.  Sorcery
    d.  Instant
    e.  Enchantment
        i.  Aura
    f.  Artifact
        i.  Equipment
    g.  Planeswalker
3.  Game zones
    a.  Library
    b.  Hand
    c.  Battlefield
    d.  Graveyard
    e.  Exile
4.  Basic playing
    a.  The stack
    b.  How to cast a spell
    c.  Attacking and blocking

But I'm still not convinced: the stack is one of the most important concepts of the game, yet one of the most difficult to understand. It's required to understand how cards interact, thus it should be explained before the card types, but if done this way people learn about the stack without knowing what a card is. The same problem happens with the concept of tapping, which requires knowing what a card is but is one of the first things to say when taking about the mana, lands and attacking.
Is this a reasonable order, or is there possibly a better structure for the presentation? When should I present tapping, and the stack? And why? Please remember that the audience has never heard of MtG and thus knows nothing about it.

I would recommend checking the tutorials of the various Duels of the Plansewalkers games to help find a starting point. Obviously don't copy them directly (not only is it somebody else's work, but it's an incomplete picture, missing things like planeswalker cards and a strong explanation of the stack), but the DotP games are designed to get people into the card game, so they should be helpful for creating a presentation to do the same thing.

How long is your presentation? If it's 5 minutes, you might need a lot fewer sections.

@corsiKa Since it's multimedia is can be as long as I need. The optimal range is between 15 and 20 minutes of presentation

After a long discussion with another user, I think this question should be closed as primarily opinion-based. At best, it belongs on an an academic stack exchange where experts talk about the best ways to teach in general. At worst, it is begging for the opinions of other users to share the way they think your presentation should be organized. For what it's worth, this is how Mark Rosewater would do it.

Or at best it's asking for subjective but well-supported viewpoints on organization, and particularly for specific issues (like when to explain the stack and tapping).

@Rainbolt I'm saying the best case scenario isn't a general question on an academic stack exchange, and it doesn't have to be the worst case scenario (begging for opinions). It can just be a slightly more focused question right here. Has nothing to do with whether Mark Rosewater's method of teaching is good or not.

@Rainbolt I don't get it. In the related questions you can find http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/how-to-play-teaching-game-and-give-a-useful-review and http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2364/how-should-i-approach-teaching-magicthe-gathering-to-a-new-player?rq=1 and many others. Those questions are even more opinion related, at least in my case I need a functional solution, in which is difficult to say if there is just ONE solution and this is why you say it's opinion based.

I'm going to say this here because it got buried in the other discussion. In my opinion, this question perfectly matches the Good Subjective guidelines, and should therefore stay open.

@Rainbolt Proving organizations better is not a helpful criterion to attempt to apply to subjective questions. I think this question does have the potential for good, well-supported subjective answers.   (Remember that well-supported doesn't mean proof.) There may be ways to formulate it a little better to avoid certain kinds of bad answers, but that doesn't make it a bad subjective question - I pretty much agree with murgatroid.

Mangusto, since there's some debate about whether your question is too subjective, I've tried to edit this to be slightly more focused and clear what you're looking for - please feel free to edit even further!

Start simple, build their knowledge step by step and only introduce new concepts when they're comfortable with what's gone before.  When I introduce a new player, I always start with the basics:

MtG is a card game using a deck of shuffled cards
The colours of magic and their themes (Red - destruction, blue - subversion, green - power etc)
The types of cards - creatures, instants, sorceries, artifacts
Life totals
How to win the game
Creature and spell damage
Phases of a round
The stack

With that information, a person can watch a game and more or less understand what's going on, without having to understand all the complexities.  After watching a few games, most players can start to step through games at which point, they learn by making mistakes. :)

I like the order in which you would explain the game, which is just a little different from mine. Do you think that the colours and themes are relevant for new players? I mean, in their first games I think it's just going to be a creatures beat down, no matter which colour(s) they chose for their decks..

@mangusto Colors and themes are important IMO. The very first thing I was taught is that I am a powerful mage casting spells from memory. Knowing that helped me understand the victory conditions, because knowing the "WHY" helps understand the "HOW".

@Rainbolt Quoting the Basic Rulebook: "White is the color of law, order, and structure. The sprawling Plains, populated by soldiers, clerics, and angels, provide white mana. You send coordinated armies of smaller creatures into battle to teach the enemy a lesson." I think this is a pointless explanation - maybe because it's not the may I learnt how to play the game - that does not increase the knowledge of the new player. Btw, I agree about telling that each player is a powerful mage.

@Mangusto Understanding colors can be useful, but perhaps not the way they explained it. I agree that the explanation given in the comprehensive rules is too verbose for a five minute presentation, but it could be useful for an hour long presentation. White typically does have many smaller creatures. Blue typically evades or controls. This knowledge can help players recognize archetypes while drafting. Drafting is the stepping stone into competitive play and obtaining more cards.

Could you perhaps explain why you think this is a good idea? See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ for more about what kinds of answers we're looking for.

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Do I get more cards if my hand is empty at the end of my turn?
What do I do if I have zero cards left in my hand at the end of my turn?  Do I wait until the end of my turn then draw the usual one card at the beginning of my next turn or do I draw a new seven card hand?

I just wonder: what makes you think that you would be drawing a new seven card hand?

@murgatroid99, I have seen it before in "lunchroom Magic," where grade-school students play during their extremely short lunch breaks (during which they also need to eat!), and drawing a full hand when you empty it speeds up the game. It breaks card balance in half, certainly, but it does make the game faster.

@murgatroid99 Some games do have mechanics like that, including I think some simple playing card games as well as board games that were designed with the idea that everyone should always have something to do (cards in hand). It's a common enough notion that someone asked about Munchkin too.

If a game doesn't want you to run out of cards, it usually has you top off your hand. ("If you have fewer than X card, draw until you have X.") The only time MTG has you draw is at the start of the game, one card in the Draw step, and when you are instructed to by effects.

Cosmic Encounter has you refill when you're empty [or don't have any of a certain type of card]. Because card trading is possible, sometimes giving away your entire hand can be beneficial both to you and the person receiving it.

Yu-Gi-Oh The Forbidden Memories also had this feature, because game play was focused on combining several cards from the hand each turn.

When you get to your draw step, you must draw a single card, unless some effect lets you draw more or less. If you attempt to draw a card when your library is empty, you lose the game.
Even if your hand is empty, the rules remain the same, and you still only draw one.
Here is how the comprehensive rules states it.

The draw step is the third step of the beginning phase.

Draw Step
504.1. First, the active player draws a card. This turn-based action doesn't use the stack.
504.2. Second, any abilities that trigger at the beginning of the draw step and any other abilities that have triggered go on the stack.
504.3. Third, the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities.

I think it is important to add to this answer that there aren't any other steps or phases when the rules say that you draw cards. The main confusion in the question seems to be about drawing extra cards from an empty hand.

Rule is you draw 1 card during draw and 1 card only. You only draw more cards if you are instructed by a card to do so.

During casual games with my friends we draw 3 cards during our draw step instead of 1 because that's how my brother taught me to play Yu-Gi-Oh (we played that before I found mtg) and it sort of transferred over to MTG in my head all my friends thought it was better then only drawing 1 so we use that.
However if you play in an official game then that's a big no-no.

This answer is a house rule and will not apply to 99.99% of places where magic is played.

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Does an Archetype affect summoning cost effects?
If I have say an Archetype of Imagination:

Creatures you control have flying.

Creatures your opponents control lose flying and can't have or gain flying.

and a Warden of Evos Isle:

Creature spells with flying you cast cost 1 less to cast.

Will a card that does not normally have flying receive the cost reduction or do they not gain flying until they reach the battlefield?

Short answer: "Creatures" means "creature permanents". "Creature permanents" and "creature spells" are mutually exclusive, so the abilities affect different objects. No cost reduction.

No, Archetype of Imagination does not interact with Warden of Evos Isle.
When Archetype, or any other card, refers to "creatures", it means creature permanents. So it does not affect creature cards or creature spells while they are in any other zone besides the battlefield. The relevant rule here is 109.2:

If a spell or ability uses a description of an object that includes a card type or subtype, but doesn't include the word "card," "spell," "source," or "scheme," it means a permanent of that card type or subtype on the battlefield.

Do you "control" cards not on the battlefield? In Yu-Gi-Oh, that would be another criterion to show why it doesn't work. Not sure about the definition of control in MTG.

Yes, you control spells you have cast, but they are not permanents

What about in your hand? Do you start "controlling" them once they hit the stack or as soon as you get them in the first place?

No, you don't control cards in your hand (control only makes sense in zones where multiple players can have cards at the same time), but that doesn't matter here because when you cast a spell it goes on the stack before you determine the cost.


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What does Will of the Council do with 2 Players?
Will of the Council -- Starting with you, each player votes for X. The X with the most votes does YZ.
What happens when you have only two players, therefore making it in some cases impossible for there to be a larger amount of votes than the other?
For example, Council's Judgement:
Will of the Council -- Starting with you, each player votes for a nonland permanent you don't control. Exile each permanent with the most votes or tied for the most votes. With two players, one might for one permanent, and the other for another permanent. What happens then?

The card itself states what to do in the case of a tie. In the example of Council's Judgement, it says "or tied for the most votes". This means that if 2 different permanents gets 1 vote each, then both of them will be exiled because they both are tied for the most votes.
This is not only an issue in 2 players, but could occur with any number of players.

Rules-wise, Gendolkari is right; the result is whatever the "tie" result is. This is important because strategically speaking, the outcome of the vote should generally be predictable in two-player. For instance:
In the example you gave, you will pick a permanent. That permanent is getting destroyed no matter what because it will at least tie for first, meaning your opponent should only vote for something else if they have something they want to sacrifice ("I vote for my own Hatching Plans")
In the cards with an either/or effect, they should be treated as though they have the "tie" effect because that's going to be optimal in the game-theoretic sense. As a specific example, consider Tyrant's Choice ("Death" -> each opponent sacs a creature, "Torture" -> each opponent loses 4 life, tie goes to "Torture").

If you want your opponent to lose 4 life, you can choose "Torture".
If you want your opponent to lose a creature, your opponent can still pay the 4 life by choosing "Torture".
If "Death" is chosen, that means both players chose "Death". This means that either "Death" and "Torture" had identical EV (unlikely), or both of you thought "Death" was preferable and one of you is wrong.
Therefore you can't ever vote for "Death" unless you think your opponent will believe "Death" to be preferable to "Torture" and also be wrong in that belief.
By similar reasoning, if you vote "Death", your opponent can only vote "Death" if they believe that you're trying to trick them, but made a mistake instead.
Therefore, if both players think the other player will always vote correctly, "Death" can never win the vote.


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Is there a program/game i can build a deck and play against AI's without a net connection?
When i build my deck i like to try and test it out to see what flaws could be exploited and cards used to exploit those flaws while also seeing how difficult it is to implement my strategies while also learning of new cards i may want to get in order to strength my deck.
problem is that the i can't test it out how i want to, i'm not privilege enough to have many players (if at all) to help test my deck in my area and if i go into the city players tend to reserve their opinion, assuming that it's because they don't want me patching up my deck to potentially defeat them in a rematch.
I use a program called YVD (Yu-Gi-Oh Virtual Desktop) which is normally up to date with every card currently released and allows me to duel players however random duels with human players tend to be nonconstructive as when i loose my opponent doesn't stick around for me to learn where i went wrong and while i could rig a couple of machines to connect locally and duel an identical deck this fails in me learning of new cards or strategies which could be used against me.
Now i am looking for a program/game similar to YVD however has a single player aspect for dueling AI players, while pale in comparison to human players who can come up with strategies and see and exploit flaws in my deck, an AI can help me prepare a better deck.
the things YVD has which i also want

Complete database of cards (or can be updated)
Allowing both tournament and non-tournament decks (my non-tournament tend to have tournament banned cards like Change of Heart and tends to get close to 100 cards)
Preferable free to download but i am willing to pay for it however to get cards that has to be free, i dont want to be spending money getting digital versions of my cards just as a test before i go off to buy them physically
Has AI Players or a single AI Player which is assigned decks meaning i can recreate decks posted on forums/wikis and duel against them as a test
Can be played Offline without ever needing to connect to the internet (not even for installing), this is because my main computer doesn't connect to the net and my laptop which does is getting on in the years and tends to burn up during summer

Platform must either be Windows, iOS or Android, while i can accept consoles most console Yu-Gi-Oh games on consoles start you off with a starter deck and it takes forever for you to get all the cards needed to mimic a deck you have created in real life

This probably doesn't exist. MtG has a fan made AI, but the designer notes some of its flaws. Most video game AI for this sort of games have a very limited number of cards in their decks, and have custom tuned responses for the cards it knows it has in its deck. You want some sort of generic AI that can play any card, and play that card properly in any deck. You want some sort of human level intelligence that no one is capable of (especially for free).

@user1873 i'd like to point out, the AI you posted a link to is for Magic the Gathering, not Yu-Gi-Oh (Duel Monsters) and i can't read there of anything that says it would be compatible with Duel Monster's Rules

@user1873 i also said "Has AI Players or a single AI Player which is assigned decks" while i would prefer the second one the first one would be ok, the main point was i didn't want a single AI with a single deck

@user1873 "Preferable free to download but to get cards that has to be free" i thought this explained itself however i'll edit the question to make it clearer, the program/game i would rather get for free if i had to pay for it i will (after i evaluate it) however the cards have to be gotten for free as i said it's be a waste of money to buy the digital cards just for experiments to build a physical deck

Nice try, SkyNet.  We will not help you become self-aware!

@Memor-X Yes, it's a Magic AI - user1873 said it was. The point was to demonstrate the kinds of limitations these things usually have, by way of explaining that you probably won't find what you're looking for. The other details you're discussing don't really change that. The problem is just that it's difficult to impossible to build an AI that can play with arbitrary decks, whether or not it plays as one player or multiple, and whether or not the resulting software costs money.

Try YGOPRO it actually works and does everything you need. It even has an offline AI.

Not sure what the guy above me is talking about.  YGOPro is free, and you don't need to pay for cards.  He may be confusing it with some other program, I'm not sure.

No, there is no such thing.
The best you might get is random opponents via Internet. Or outdated programs with a programmend AI. But if you want to stay up to date, there is no other option than playing actual opponents.
If you decide to go for random opponents, Dueling Network and DevPro are the most well-known online sites that offer playing Yu-gi-Oh!, DevPro being somewhat better due to a Rules Engine (Dueling Network is basically a virtual playing table like YVD) taking care of rules stuff for you. Seeing as they can do that, it might be realistic to find an AI on there someday, but it won't come as an offline version.


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Can a disease be eradicated at the beginning of the game?
During the setup the players are required to draw 9 cards to infect the starting cities before the game starts. What if for example no red disease card is drawn? Is the red disease already eradicated before we start the game?

No, a disease with no cubes at the beginning of the game is not eradicated.
For a disease to be eradicated, it must be cured in addition to there being no cubes left of its color. At the beginning of the game, it is clearly not cured. If you subsequently draw an infection card for that color, you still add a cube to that city. If you manage to discover the cure before that happens, then it's eradicated.
Various snippets from the rules:

If the last cube of a cured disease is removed from the board, this disease
  is eradicated.
[when discovering a cure] If no cubes of this color are on the board, this disease is now eradicated.
To infect a city, place 1 disease cube matching its color onto the city, unless this disease has been eradicated.

To expand on this answer, it is quite possible to eradicate a disease on your first turn - it's happened to me twice playing the game. So while not having a given color played is not the same as eradicated, you can eradicate as your first turn.

@warren I edited accordingly - though without specifically focusing on the first turn, since that's a bit confusing in the context of the OP's question.

@warren - possible but highly unlikely in 2-player, and impossible in 3+-player games. You only start the game with 4 cards in a 2-player game, and that's only enough if you're the Scientist. So, you must play this game a lot; in the first edition, with 5 roles (2e has 7) and 12 city cards in each of 4 colors, the chance of you personally drawing the Scientist randomly, and having a "flush" as your initial hand, are something like 1 in 2000. With two of you playing, seeing it happen at all is 1 in 1000. Specifically choosing the Scientist as your role only improves those odds to 1 in 400.

@KeithS - it is improbable ... but it still happens :)

@KeithS I would say it is possible (but highly unlikely) in a 3 player game if the Researcher is in the game and has 2-3 cards needed to cure. Then a player can spend their first few actions grabbing cards from the Researcher's hand, and then use their last action to cure.


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Do multiple Archetypes work together?
What if I had three different archetypes on the field: Archetype of Imagination (gives flying), Archetype of Endurance (gives hexproof), and Archetype of Finality (gives deathtouch)? Would all three of their effects work on my creatures at once or not at all because of the Archetype of Endurance?

Yes, they'll work together. The definition of hexproof is:

702.11b "Hexproof" on a permanent means "This permanent can’t be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control."

The Archetypes' abilities don't target, and they're not controlled by your opponent, so hexproof definitely does not prevent them from applying.


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When a creature is summoned but still on the stack is it considered a permanent?
Suppose I cast a creature spell, let's say Elvish Mystic. It enters the stack, then in response another player casts Counterspell targeting it. Could I, in response to that, cast Avoid fate or is the Elvish Mystic not considered a permanent until the spell resolves and thus Avoid Fate has no effect?

It's not a permanent while it's on the stack.

110.1. A permanent is a card or token on the battlefield.
111.1. A spell is a card on the stack.

Before it resolves, it's a spell (on the stack). After it resolves, it's a permanent (on the battlefield).
So no, you cannot cast Avoid Fate targeting a Counterspell that's targeting your Elvish Mystic on the stack. (It's not that Avoid Fate has no effect; you can't cast it in the first place.)

No. A permanent is an object on the battlefield. If an object is on the stack, it's not on the battlefield. Only spells and abilities can be found on the stack. This particular spell would be called a "permanent spell", which means a spell that would become a permanent on resolution, but it's not a permanent. (This is the only case I can think of where something is said to be something of the form XXX YYY without being both XXX and YYY.)


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Do deathtouch and deathtouch-like effects stop trample damage?
My friend has a trample deck, and I have a Stinkweed Imp that says "Whenever Stinkweed Imp deals combat damage to a creature, destroy that creature."  Can a creature destroyed this way still deal trample damage?
What if I block with a creature that actually has deathtouch?

Yes, a creature destroyed by Stinkweed Imp will still deal trample damage. Basically, the sequence of actions in combat goes like this:

Your opponent attacks with their creature that has trample.
You block that creature with your Stinkweed Imp.
All damage is resolved. This includes the damage dealt to and by Stinkweed Imp, and the trample damage to you. Because Stinkweed Imp dealt damage to a creature, its triggered ability goes on the stack.
If there is 2 damage marked on Stinkweed Imp, it dies. Then your opponent gains priority with the triggered ability on the stack.
The triggered ability resolves, and the creature with trample dies.

If you replace Stinkweed Imp with a creature with deathtouch (Deadly Recluse, for example), steps 3, 4, and 5 are replaced with this:

All damage is resolved. This includes the damage dealt to and by Deadly Recluse, and the trample damage to you. Because the creature with trample took damage from Deadly Recluse, it dies, no matter what it's toughness is (see rule 704.5h

Could be useful to note that the trigger is when Stinkweed Imp deals combat damage, and isn't simply a blocking trigger like Engulfing Slagwurm.

I did say that it happens when damage happens, and not when blockers are declared.

Minor thing: it might be useful to be clear that Stinkweed Imp dies before the opponent gets priority. It doesn't matter for this case, of course, but I could imagine that it might throw off a new player reading this sometime in the future.

I fixed it. But they basically happen at the same time, so I don't really think it matters.

A question about just deathtouch (not pseudo-deathtouch) got duped against this one, so I edited the question to ask about actual deathtouch in the body not just the title; maybe worth making it more prominent in the answer too?

OK, I've expanded the part about deathtouch

Combat damage is dealt all at once, and so a creature destroyed by or in response to combat damage will still deal all of its damage, including any trample damage.

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. This is a change from previous rules.


text:
Polymorphous Rush targeting Young Pyromancer and X Tokens
If I cast Polymorphous Rush targeting X tokens, turning them all into copies of a Young Pyromancer, do I get an elemental token from each copy, similar to Scapeshift with Valakut on the battlefield?

@doppelgreener The information in the title is all the OP provided; I filled in the rest, figuring it was about trying to put together a combo deck. But... even if it's your opponent's Pyromancer, the spell is still cast before the tokens become copies, which is I think what the OP was trying to figure out. I don't think there was confusion about whether your spells trigger your opponent's Pyromancer.

Young Pyromancer's trigger happens when you first cast a spell, which in this case is before Polymorphous Rush will resolve and create more copies. At the time that Polymorphous Rush was cast, there was only 1 Young Pyromancer around, so that it the only trigger that there is.
The stack would look like this:
A: (Cast Polymorphous Rush)
Stack:
-Polymorphous Rush

B: (Young Pyromancer triggers from spell being cast)
Stack:
-Young Pyromancer's triggered ability
-Polymorphous Rush

C: (Players pass priority; Young Pyromancer's triggered ability resolves; red elemental token enters battlefield)
Stack:
-Polymorphous Rush

D: (Players pass priority; Polymorphous Rush resolves; targeted creatures become copy of Young Pyromancer):
Stack:
-(Empty)

As you see, when the other Pyromancers are all created, there is no spell being cast at that point; Polymorphous Rush was already cast. You would need to cast another spell after this in order to trigger all the new Young Pyromancers.

Thanks for this. As an addendum, if I have a Purphoros, God of the Forge

@user3730788 You forgot to actually ask a question, but the answer is nothing happens. Purphoros triggers when creatures enter the battlefield, and nothing is entering the battlefield here. Creatures already on the battlefield are turning into other things, but they were all already there.

Young Pyromancer triggers when you cast a spell. Polymorphous Rush is just one spell, no matter how many targets you give it, so it triggers your Pyromancer just once. Once it resolves, you'll have plenty of Pyromancers around, so if you cast another spell you can trigger all of them.
Remember, you cast a spell, it goes on the stack, and then it resolves. (After anything else that happened in response, of course.) Young Pyromancer triggers when it's cast, and the tokens are turned into copies when it resolves.


text:
How does the four card limit work?
I'm new to the game and trying to make my first constructed deck. My understanding of the card rule is I can only have four cards of one kind.
What does this precisely mean?
For instance, does this mean I can only have four rat cards total or four rat cards of several kinds? If two different cards do the same thing (like Remove Soul and Essence Scatter), can I have four of each?

I'm voting to reopen, because while it's true that ideally "is this deck legal" would cover this, the answers on the general legality question are quite reasonable for that question but don't really directly address this issue. The closest they come is linking to 100.2-100.5 without even quoting.

I think this question should be re-closed as a duplicate of How should I determine whether a deck is legal in a particular format?. The answer depends on the format, which the other question and top answer address, whereas this question and answer pair do not.

Other than basic lands (Island, Forest, Plains, Swamp, Mountain, and Waste) you are only allowed to have four cards in your deck with a given name. (Barring a few exceptions where the card itself says otherwise, or the card is restricted in the format you're playing.)
As an example, you are allowed to have four copies of Plague Rats, and four copies of Ravenous Rats, you can also have any number of Relentless Rats, as the card has specific text allowing "any number" which overrides the four card limit.
In short, you are allowed any number of distinct card names, but only four instances of any given name.

For reference, rule 100.2 is covers this.

As a minor note singleton formats (the most popular being Commander) only allow 1 copy of any non-basic card (with the same exceptions that you listed).

Perhaps it would help to add the new basic land (Wastes) to this answer.

If you're going to list the basic lands, you should probably list all of the basic lands. There are the six listed there, plus Snow-covered Plains, Snow-covered Island, etc.

Worth noting that the English name is what counts. You can’t get around the rule by using the same card in a different language.

100.2a In constructed play (a way of playing in which each player creates his or her own deck ahead of time), each deck must contain at least sixty cards. A constructed deck can have any number of basic land cards and no more than four of any card with a particular English name other than basic land cards.

You can't have more than 4 copies of one card, except for basic lands and cards that specifically say so in their text box(so far there are only two cards like that - Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle).
Although this rule applies only to Constructed formats. In Limited formats you can include any number of copies of card if you opened them in your cardpool or picked them during draft

100.2b In limited play (a way of playing in which each player gets the same quantity of unopened Magic product such as booster packs and creates his or her own deck using only this product and basic land cards), each deck must contain at least forty cards. A limited deck may contain as many duplicates of a card as are included with the product.

In some formats there are restricted cards of which you can have only one copy in your deck. These cards are listed in official banlists for those formats.

Dominaria adds Rat Colony to the list of "any number of copies" cards.

And with RNA, Persistent Petitioners joins the list

All that matters is the English name of the card, not what it does. You can have at most four copies of a card with a given name:

100.2a In constructed play (a way of playing in which each player creates his or her own deck ahead of time), each deck must contain at least sixty cards. A constructed deck can have any number of basic land cards and no more than four of any card with a particular English name other than basic land cards.

The main exception is the basic land cards: Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest, the five corresponding Snow lands, and Wastes. The only other time you can have more than four of a given card is when the card itself says so, like Relentless Rats:

A deck can have any number of cards named Relentless Rats.

So yes, you can have four copies each of several different Rat cards: four copies of Typhoid Rats, four copies of Pack Rat, and so on.
And it also doesn't matter if the cards do the exact same thing, as long as the name is different. You can indeed have four Essence Scatter and four Remove Soul..
Of course, you can only have up to four copies of cards you're actually allowed to play. If a card is banned or otherwise illegal in the format you're playing, you can't have any, and if it's restricted you can have only one copy. See How should I determine whether a deck is legal in a particular format? for discussion of that and other deck restrictions.
Finally, there are also some singleton formats like commander where you do construct your deck ahead of time, but the usual four copies rule is replaced by a one copy rule. Again in those cases, only card name matters, so you can have one copy each of several cards that do the same thing.

Actually a legacy deck could have four Remove Souls, four Essence Scatters and four False SUmmoning

All the above are correct.
One note however: in the earliest days of magic this rule did not exist.
Legend has it that this rule-change came to pass after a totally bonkers combo-deck that used a combination of only two cards: black lotus and ancestral recall, both printed in alpha.
If you use the ancestral recall correctly, this means you win the game turn one, every single game.
People realized this was not fun...

Do you have any evidence to back this up? From what I remember Magic was released in 1993 with a 40 card deck limit and either that same year or early 1994 the deck size was increased 60 and the 4 card limit was added. I have also heard this rumor in relation to lots of other early cards that where over powered and in 1993 tournaments where divided into 1 turn win decks and the rest.


text:
Can we extend the game by playing Multiple Boards At Once?
I play Ticket To Ride with my gf and friends and we love it! So much so that we always reach the end thinking, 'this went too quickly!'. We've toyed with playing two maps simultaneously, has anyone else tried this? If so, what was the experience like? Is this a viable way to get a longer version of Ticket to Ride? Would we need to modify other things to make it work? Is there a better way to achieve this?
I'm expecting that playing two at once can be even more infuriating and head-hurting than just one! Trying to complete different tickets on different maps, trying to keep up with what I need on this map while you're doing something on the other one! I have the Europe and Asia versions.

I've voted to close, since there doesn't seem to be anything to this question other than "What do you think of this variant?" and I'm not sure that there's any other question that can come from it.

I see no reason to close this question.  Per [tag:house-rules] - "Discussion about ways to vary a boardgame are definitely on topic here." and "As with most other subjects, you will get the best answers if you make the question specific. For house rules, this typically means giving a specific goal that you would want to achieve with a house rules."

And there's no specific goal. "What's playing with two boards like?" isn't an objective of any kind. This question is subjective at its core. @ConMan is right here.

@generalcrispy I think it's fairly clear that the OP wants a longer game. I edited to make it a little more explicit, but honestly, it's even in the title.

I can't see that this would work in a satisfactory manner.  You're only extending the game by playing what would effectively be two separate games.  The only ways I can see to extend the game are to add extra requirements to lay track.  e.g. require a loco on top of existing requirements (so for 2 green you would require 2 green + loco), or to treat all track as tunnels (ugh!).

Firstly, to extend the game you will need to add twice the train pieces as well as 2 boards. Maybe you should double the tickets too. This soon degrades into playing two different games at the same time, where you choose which one to play each round.
The second problem is all the advantage is on the side of playing on only one board. This is because adding more trains to a single board makes it easy to get more tickets on that board, while trains on both boards leads to spreading yourself thin. My solution to this is to modify (or replace) the longest railroad card to include a benefit for using both boards.
(eg. longest railroad on board A * longest railroad on board B)
I think this variant is not a good idea, but you can try it and see what its like. Seems to me  an interesting experiment at least.

If you want to get creative, you could also add a third set of cards with some additional variations.  I was thinking a simple one would be to use letters, perhaps from cards or tiles from Scrabble-based games, to offer comparable bonus points for building into all the towns starting with some of the common letters on both boards.  More complexities could be quickly thought up, but making a game your own with some peculiar unique rules is fun and challenging.

We just tried a variant of this last night, having six players and wanting to use two boards (Europe & North America). This seemed to work, but probably needs some tweaking:
TEAM RULES
- 3 teams of 2. Each team gets two bags of one colour of train.
- Each player gets a turn. Arrange the players so that team-members are separated.
- 2 short* Europe tickets for each player, 2 short NA tickets for each player
- 1 long** Europe ticket for each team, 1 long NA ticket for each team
- Teammates can discuss strategy, but must do so openly, giving the other teams a chance to block them. No whispering or notes or codes! Don't share personal tickets, only team tickets.
- All points are for a team, not an individual.
* Short is under 17 points
** Is over 17 points
BOARD RULES
- Start play in the 'old world' board, but have the 'new world' set up.
- Each team must complete their 'long' contract in EU to start building in NA. So achieving your long ticket 'unlocks' the new board.
- You can still build on either board. The NA deck now comes in to play, only for those teams who have unlocked NA.
- Once you have achieved 100 points on the EU board, switch your point-maker over to the NA board to continue counting.
CARD RULES
- You can on only draw from the NA deck once you have unlocked NA
- You can draw face-up from only one of the two decks (EU and NA)
- You can draw face-down from one or both. So you could draw one face-down EU ticket and one face-down NA ticket.
- You can spend either cards in either continent
This was a lot of fun and there was a lot of anticipation for the new board, and a reward for those who got there early. We will probably try adjusting the tickets.

While I like the idea of "unlocking" the second board, it seems that tying this to completing your long ticket is way risky. For Europe, at least, it's really not too hard to block a player from completing a long ticket once you have an idea which one they're going for (and since there's only six, experienced players should be able to figure it out pretty quickly)

@goldPseudo well, Europe has stations, and since nothing in text mentiones changes about them, I suspect they are used as per usual rules. That way you always can complete your main ticket.

This is an interesting idea. However, it can use some streamlining and tweaking. First of all - I would throw away team aspect, since it's irrelevant. Second, why do you separate NA and Europe train cards, those two decks are supposed to be the same, aren't they? Third: I would propose a variant, that you can't build on either board, once you switch to second board, you're locked to it. This would create an interesting decision point: do I switch to NA and rush to finish my tickets there, or do I build up in Europe and farm some more points?


text:
Can I use Mirror Strike on Ink-treader Nephilim when it's not attacking?
So I am making an EDH deck featuring Ink-Treader Nephilim (yes I know its not legendary but the deck will be like five bucks to make and I'm sure someone will want to play with it). As I am looking up decklists online I see that people keep mentioning Mirror Strike. The idea is to target Inky with Mirror Strike when someone attacks, turning the entire attack against them.
As good as that sounds, I don't think it works.  For a creature to be 'unblocked' it has to be attacking right?

Yup, unfortunately you're right. Unblocked means attacking and unblocked, after blockers are declared.
This is in the comprehensive rules for the declare blockers step:

509.1h An attacking creature with one or more creatures declared as blockers for it becomes a blocked creature; one with no creatures declared as blockers for it becomes an unblocked creature. This remains unchanged until the creature is removed from combat, an effect says that it becomes blocked or unblocked, or the combat phase ends, whichever comes first.

And there's a friendly summary from the glossary at the end:

Unblocked Creature
An attacking creature once no creature has been declared as a blocker for it, unless an effect has caused it to become blocked. It remains an unblocked creature until it’s removed from combat or the combat phase ends, whichever comes first.

So your opponent could make good use of Mirror Strike, letting your whole team hit in, targeting the Nephilim (and thus the rest of your team), and sending it all back at you, but... I don't think that's quite what you were looking for.

It also has to be after blockers are declared. There are no unblocked creatures in the Declare Attackers Step.

Just on the off chance someone reading doesn't understand why this doesn't work - the targets of your spells have to be legal.  If you somehow manage to make spells that target illegal targets, such as someone responding to a kill spell with Vines of Vastwood, the game rules counter the spell with an illegal target.


text:
How does Rageblood Shaman's ability work?
How does the static ability of e.g. Rageblood Shaman work?
The wording is "Other Minotaur creatures you control get +1/+1 and have trample. "
The questions I have are:
a) If Rageblood Shaman is on the battlefield and another Minotaur comes into play does it get/have trample and/or +1/+1?
b) If Rageblood Shaman is removed from the Battlefield do other Minotaur creatures still in play lose +1/+1 and or trample?
c) Since this effect has no cost and no trigger it is a static ability, it applies at any time as long as Rageblood Shaman is on the battlefield. If a Minotaur gets +1/+1 at any time it becomes a infinity/infinity creature. I assume this to be wrong but why?

This ability is a static ability. The important rules from that page say

604.1. Static abilities do something all the time rather than being activated or triggered. They are written as statements, and they're simply true.
604.2. Static abilities create continuous effects, some of which are prevention effects or replacement effects. These effects are active as long as the permanent with the ability remains on the battlefield and has the ability, or as long as the object with the ability remains in the appropriate zone, as described in rule 112.6.

From the first rule, Minotaurs "getting" +1/+1 isn't an event that happens (and definitely not repeatedly), it's just stating a fact: that each other Minotaur has one more power and toughness than it would otherwise.
Regarding continuous effects, the rules say

611.3a A continuous effect generated by a static ability isn’t "locked in"; it applies at any given moment to whatever its text indicates.
611.3b The effect applies at all times that the permanent generating it is on the battlefield or the object generating it is in the appropriate zone.

Basically, any time Rageblood Shaman and another Minotaur are on the battlefield, that Minotaur gets +1/+1 and trample. It doesn't matter which entered first, and it only works when the Shaman is on the battlefield.

The first part of (c) in your question is essentially the answer:

Since this effect has no cost and no trigger it is a static ability, it applies at any time as long as Rageblood Shaman is on the battlefield.

So the answer to (a) is yes, a Minotaur that enters play after the Rageblood Shaman has +1/+1 and trample. And the answer to (b) is that yes, if Rageblood Shaman leaves the battlefield, other Minotaur creatures no longer have +1/+1 and trample. (Though if they had trample for another reason, they of course keep it.)
As for this bit:

If a Minotaur gets +1/+1 at any time it becomes a infinity/infinity creature. I assume this to be wrong but why?

Yes, that is indeed wrong. Rageblood Shaman's ability does exactly what it says, no more, no less: it gives +1/+1 and trample. It applies at all times, but the effect is still just applied once. If you Rageblood Shaman along with a Pensive Minotaur (which says 2/3 on the card), it has +1/+1 and is a 3/4. And since it's a static ability, that keeps on being true, it doesn't end at the end of the turn.
That is, it's not that at every moment it gets +1/+1 compared to the previous moment (I think this is what you were suggesting). It's that at every moment, it gets +1/+1 compared to what it would be before applying that effect.

In case you wanted a 2/3 Minotaur for your answer (I'll let you decide if you want it)

@Rainbolt Gatherer hasn't been loading for me, but I went ahead and linked to one anyway (not sure if it's the one your link is).

Not loading for me either. Bad timing I guess.

@Rainbolt The fact you didn't choose Pensive Minotaur makes me cry. "Why eat leg?"

I'm more disappointed that neither of you picked Hurloon Minotaur!

Hurloon Wrangler???


text:
Can I use an ability granted to a land by an aura immediately?
This is fairly simple question, but I'm unsure. Suppose I use enchant my basic land with an aura like Caustic Tar. The enchantment's ability says to tap the land. Can I tap it immediately to use the ability, or do I have to wait till my next turn? I thought you could tap it, but my opponent didn't think it was valid.

A small detail to note: your original phrasing referred to using the enchantment's ability, but it's not the enchantment that has the ability, it's the land. Caustic Tar grants the land a new ability.

It's worth noting that the answer would be the same no matter which object had the ability.

@murgtroid99 If the enchantment had the ability, then the enchantment would tap but the land would not. If the land had the ability, the land would tap but the enchantment would not. Definitely two different scenarios.

Yes, you can immediately tap it to activate the ability.
Your opponent was perhaps thinking of "summoning sickness", which prevents creatures from attacking or using abilities that have the tap or untap symbol in their cost. But that only applies to creatures, not lands - just as you can tap your Swamp for mana the turn you play it, you can tap it for another ability immediately if it somehow gets one, like from Caustic Tar.

Yes, you can immediately activate the new ability by tapping the land. The enchantment gives the land a new ability, and that ability can be activated just like any of the land's other abilities. Of course, you can only do this if the land is untapped, like any other ability with a tap symbol in the cost.
The one exception is if the land is a creature and it just entered play that turn (for example, if it's a Dryad Arbor or it was animated by Nissa, Worldwaker). In that case, like any creature, it has summoning sickness and can't activate abilities with a tap symbol in the cost until your next turn.


text:
Where can I search by card for decks in major tournaments?
Where I can search by card for decks from major modern tournaments? By major tournaments, I mean Grand Prixs, StarCityGames Open Series, TCGPlayer Max Point Series, and other large (200+) player tournaments.
For example, I need to be able to find modern decks that use a specific card. I have a Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded that I would like to find a use for (other than as a bookmark).

"Is Tibalt in any popular decks?" is a tricky question to answer because one poster could say "no, I've never seen anyone play it in my playgroup" and another could say "yes, i see it get used all the time in my playgroup" and they could both be right.

@Kevin While I agree it could probably be worded a little better I don't think 'popular' has the problem you are describing. Popular wouldn't mean 'I know this one guy that plays it' it is more 'It was played at X and Y tournaments in Z deck.

Ideally, OP would give us an objective definition of "popular" for this context. For example, if he defined it to mean "appeared in any deck that made the top 8 of a Modern pro tour qualifier", the answer would be fairly easy to find here.

To those that are still down and close voting, notice that the question was extensively edited after the above comments were made. And then if you still want to downvote, go for it.

@Kevin Honestly I think it's fine even if it's not super super specific about what "popular" means; you could imagine data about top 8s, top 64s, day 2, the entire tournament... the OP (or future readers) might be interested in any data along these lines, and restricting the question too much runs the risk of excluding resources just because they don't happen to match the guess the OP made about a good criterion.

The question now has little relationship to the original. 'What are some top 8 decks that use /card/"  is vastly different than "What are some decks that use /card/". unless the card happens to be one that is used in top decks. The asker has specifically mentioned a card that is not a top card (hence the 'bookmark' comment), so this is now edited into something unrelated.  How Ye's answer is good for the current question, but is useless for the original.

magic.tcgplayer.com allows you to search deck lists based on a particular card being used.  Here's the search for Tibalt.  You can also use their Deck search tools to limit by format and place finished in addition to specific cards.
Limiting your search to include decks using Tibalt, in the Modern format, that placed at least 1st through 64th returns zero results, indicating that no successful deck in the entire TCGPlayer database has ever used Tibalt.

mtgtop8.com appears to collect some of the data you're interested in (top finishes at GPs, SCG events, MTGO, etc.). It has decks broken down by format and by archetype, so that you can see what trends in the meta-game.


text:
Celestial Flare Question declaring blockers
Celestial Flare is an instant that says:

Target player sacrifices an attacking or blocking creature.

Suppose the instant is played on on the attacking player after the defending player has declared blockers, and the attacker sacrices a creature that was being blocked. What happens to the creature that was blocking the now-sacrificed attacking creature?
Does the blocker now block nothing, or is it assigned to a different attacker, or are blockers redeclared?
This was done in a multiplayer game by a third party who was not involved in the blocking or attacking.

The blocking creature now blocks nothing. You cannot have it block another creature and blockers cannot be assigned again.

Also, since nothing is blocked, no combat damage gets exchanged.

at least, not between the blocker and any other creature. (It'll still get exchanged between others!)

Assuming it was only blocking one creature, it no longer has any creature to which to assign and deal damage, so it doesn't do either of those things.

The Combat phase progresses as follows:

...
[CR 509] Declare Blockers Step:

[CR 509.1] Defender declares blockers.
[CR 509.2] Attacker declares damage assignment order.
[CR 509.3] Defender declares damage assignment order.
[CR 509.5] Players get priority.

[CR 510] Combat Damage Step:

[CR 510.1] Attacker assigns combat damage.
[CR 510.2] Damage is dealt
[CR 510.4] Players get priority

...

Celestial Flare is cast and resolves in 2.4. The next thing that happens is the Combat Damage Step. The blocking creature has nothing to which to assign damage, so it won't, so it won't deal any damage.

510.1c A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. [...]
510.1d A blocking creature assigns combat damage to the creatures it’s blocking. If it isn’t currently blocking any creatures (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. [...]


text:
Dominion remodel card -can I trash a card already played?
Can you trash a card that you have already played, when remodelling? E.g. I play a village, then a Worksop, then Remodel - trashing the Workshop I just played? It says from your hand, but am unclear if there is a distinction between hand and play.

No, you cannot do this. Your "hand" always refers to cards that you physically keep in your hand. Cards that you have played this turn are in a different place, the "in-play" area.
On page 6 of the rulebook:

To play an Action, the player takes an Action card from his hand
  and lays it face-up in his play area.

Pages 9 and 10 also show picture examples of the different places cards might be; including hand, deck, discard, or in-play.

If you have played the card, then it is on the table, not in your hand.

The rules (including card text) call this "in play" - see for example Peddler.


text:
Does heroic trigger when the creature is in a graveyard?
I have an Agent of the Fates in my graveyard. I return it to my hand with Disentomb.
Does my opponent have to sacrifice a creature?

No. The Heroic ability only works if the creature you target is a permanent on the battlefield. Most abilities only work from the battlefield. From rule 112.6:

112.6. Abilities of an instant or sorcery spell usually function only while that object is on the stack. Abilities of all other objects usually function only while that object is on the battlefield. The exceptions are as follows:

There's a few exceptions, but the ones regarding activated or triggered abilities are i and j. They're quoted in full below. The basic gist of these exceptions, and rule 112.6, is that no activated or triggered abilities work outside the battlefield — unless it involves a cost or trigger condition that can't work on the battlefield, in which case it works wherever it can work.
A good example of these exceptions (specifically exception i) is Scavenge or Bloodrush. The former requires you to exile the card from your graveyard, and the latter requires you to discard it (and cards can only be discarded from your hand, nowhere else). Since those costs can only be paid somewhere outside the battlefield, Scavenge works inside your graveyard, and Bloodrush works inside your hand. (But that's the only places they work, since their costs can't be paid anywhere else.)
Since Heroic works just fine on the battlefield, though, it isn't covered by these exceptions (specifically the one regarding triggered abilities, exception j) and doesn't get to work elsewhere too.

112.6i An objects activated ability that has a cost that can't be paid while the object is on the battlefield functions from any zone in which its cost can be paid.
112.6j A trigger condition that can't trigger from the battlefield functions in all zones it can trigger from. Other trigger conditions of the same triggered ability may function in different zones.
Example: Absolver Thrull has the ability "When Absolver Thrull enters the battlefield or the creature it haunts dies, destroy target enchantment." The first trigger condition functions from the battlefield and the second trigger condition functions from the exile zone. (See rule 702.54, "Haunt.")

I think the golden rule of magic is more relevant here. 101.1. Whenever a card's text directly contradicts these rules, the card takes precedence. Some cards specifically say you can activate the ability only from a specific zone (usually the graveyard), and so their rule takes precedence.

@Rainbolt The explanation I've provided is what got me understanding it when I was new. 101.1 doesn't make sense here, because the card doesn't contradict the rules - it doesn't have anything saying "this works in the graveyard" or "this works in your hand". Without 112.6 and its exceptions, some abilities just appear like some idiot wrote an ability that can't possibly work.

@Rainbolt, Jonathan Hobbs's assessment of why 101.1 doesn't apply is completely correct.

Both are valid. 112.6 is the rule, and 101.1 is applicable. 112.6i and 112.6j seem to be redundant corollaries of 101.1

@LuisMasuelli Not really. If "Exile this card from your graveyard:" is the cost, that doesn't actually state that you can pay this effect while the card is in the graveyard, any more than you can tap a mana elf while it's in the graveyard. 112.6 solves this problem.
Otherwise it would be argued that Elder of Laurels says you can pay mana to pump your creatures, and thus by 101.1, you can do that anywhere (after all, the card doesn't state that this is only true for cards on the battlefield, and if card "always beats the rules"...)

What @deworde said is precisely it. Pretty sure 101.1 is more applicable as the foundation of cards like Platinum Angel.

@LuisMasuelli Note that Common Sense would also do the job, but the Judge program stopped using Common Sense long ago, after the realisation that a) two people can have legitimately conflicting views of what is sensible, and b) some players (who am I kidding, most players) would claim to speak like Yoda if it bought them an incremental advantage.

As evidence I present various questions genuinely asked about Worst Fears:  "Can I force my opponent to concede?" "Can I force my opponent to attack himself with his creatures?"  "Can I force my opponent to tear up his own cards with Blacker Lotus if he doesn't concede?" "Can I force my opponent to let me take cards from his deck?" "Can I force my opponent to take his top off if he doesn't concede?" "Can I force my opponent to rob a bank if he doesn't concede?" "Can I force my opponent to give me his wallet?" "Can I force my opponent to not concede so that he has to tear up his cards?"

The logic approached by those saying 101.1 is applicable when it isn't is invariably "X doesn't work in this situation by the rules, X should work in this situation, therefore X must override the rules, therefore X works in this situation", but the premise that X should work in this situation is entirely invented. A card only overrides the rules when it says something that directly contradicts a rule. (e.g. "You cannot lose.") There's nothing of the kind here.

I actually agree with @Ikegami here (a rare occasion). I wish to retract my comment about rule 101.1 being more relevant. However, I still have a problem with 112.6i. It only applies if the cost can't be paid. Consider an ability like "2B: Return this card from the graveyard to your hand." I can definitely pay the cost of 2B while the creature is on the battlefield, and yet this ability still only functions from the graveyard. There must be another rule that applies here.

Does such an ability actually exist? If you know of an example, I'll gladly look into it and update my answer. I'm only aware of abilities like Flashback, where part of their ruling is "You may cast this from your graveyard." (Kapow, 101.1.)

Ashen Ghoul, Chronosavant, etc. @Rainbolt The answer is 112.6k, which handles exactly this situation.

@Jonathan Hobbs, Flashback's allows casting from the graveyard (a 101.1 situation), but what allows Flashback itself to operate in the graveyard? It's not actually covered by any of the 112.6 exceptions! Oddly, it's only allowed by the definition of Flashback. ("It represents two static abilities: one that functions while the card is in a player’s graveyard and another that functions while the card is on the stack.") "You may cast this from your graveyard" wouldn't actually work on a card.


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Does Athreos work on countered or discarded creatures?
So I know that if I have Athreos, God of Passage on the field and a creature spell is countered, it still counts as dying and Athreos's effect still kicks in. I was told it's because the creature (even though it never officially hit the battlefield) will still go into my graveyard. Would this also be true for discarded creatures, since they will go into the graveyard and not exile? I am using Athreos with Pack Rat and I was wondering if it would give me the ability to clone Pack Rat for basically free so long as he is on the field.

I think you were asking about triggering Athreos off of the cards you discard to Pack Rat, but just in case: remember that while the Pack Rat copy tokens do "die", they can't be returned to your hand, so Athreos won't do much good for them either.

To clarify on what @Jefromi has said, a token dying will go to the yard and will still trigger Athreos' ability. Your opponent should (pretty much) never choose to pay the life, as there is nothing to return to your hand.

What you were told about Athreos triggering for countered creature spells is incorrect.
The official definition of "dies" in the comprehensive rules is:

700.4. The term dies means "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield."

Since a countered creature spell is never a creature on the battlefield, it didn't "die".
Similarly, a discarded creature card would not trigger Athreos either.
In fact, note the terminology here: "creatures" only exist on the battlefield; they are "creature spells" when on the stack, and merely "creature cards" or "creature tokens" elsewhere.

""creature cards" only exist in the non-battlefield". Are you sure about this? I thought that a card is still considered a card while on the stack and the battlefield.

108.2a. In the text of spells or abilities, the term "card" is used only to refer to a card that's not on the battlefield or on the stack, such as a creature card in a player's hand. For more information, see section 4, "Zones."

Thanks, I guess I was mistaken. I thought "card" was sometimes used to differentiate a token on the battlefield from a non-token, but I guess they just use "non-token" for that.

I think that used to be the case for old cards like Apocalypse Chime and Chaos Orb, but they've since been errata'd.

They are still cards. "X is only used to refer to Y by Z" does not mean "Y isn't an X". 108.2a is a templating guideline for abilities. e.g. It says you won't say "Creature cards get +1/+1." Despite that, both the rules and abilities refer to creatures on the battlefield as cards. e.g. 110.1 includes the passage "A permanent is a card or token on the battlefield." They are still cards.


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How to make a hexagonal board?
Two of my friends and I are developing a board game based on moving around a hexagonal board. We're testing it on the map printed on 4x A4 sheets merged with adhesive tape. What I'm trying now is to make it on a cork board.
Do you guys have any ideas of how to construct hexagonal grid on a cork board? I've already tried to draw it using a pair of compasses, but it isn't a good idea to do this on a cork board. And the board is pretty big (about three hundred hexagons) so it would take a lot of time to draw each hex separately.

I'd use my laser cutter, either to etch the lines, or to create a stencil. Unfortunately, most people don't have one of these handy, but there might be a maker space with one near you.

I think the easiest way to do this would be to use a stencil:

Most craft shops should stock something like this.
Paint the cork one colour, then use the stencil with a different colour / shade of paint (spray paint would probably be best).

If you can't get a stencil (which I agree is the best way to do it), you could draw an equilateral triangular grid with horizontal, 60° left and 60° right lines, then just ink the hexes on them. 6 triangles = 1 hex, so be prepared to draw them small.

Instead of drawing a hexagonal board where you move between spaces, you could draw a triangular board where you move between vertices. This map perfectly represents the adjacency graph of hexagonal spaces (you can visualize this as drawing a line between the centers of adjacent hexagons), and will be far easier to draw than the hexagonal grid, as it's just a series of parallel lines. Here's an image of the hexagonal and triangular boards overlaid:

You might run into issues if you need the spaces to carry different visual representations, like if the spaces should be different colors or represent different resources - this will be a bit harder to represent on a vertex rather than a space. But if all you need is the adjacency, a triangular grid might be the way to go.

Could you provide a visual representation of this?

You can make a paper template by printing a hex grid, then make a hole in each intersection. Use that template to put small dots where you want all the intersections on the board to be, by shifting the template around and aligning it to earlier dots. Then connect the dots.
I have not tried that, but I saved a link to a blog post that shows this method and to me it looks easier (or cheaper) than other methods I have seen suggested.

You can make hexagons with rectangular cards.
Many years ago I did a print a play game which did had a hexagonal board printed on playing cards.
Each card had 4 blue lines added around the corners.  When the cards were laid adjacent to each other the blue lines would form hexagon shapes across cards.  Depending on what you're trying to do this might be good enough for prototyping without having to cut out hexagons.

I and found a tutorial in the WikiHow website.

Answers here are expected to be more than just links. They need to be answers on their own, in case the linked page disappears.


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When can lands be tapped?
I'm completely new to Magic the Gathering. I've read the basic rulebook pretty thoroughly and have a pretty good grasp of the basic rules, but it's unclear to me as to when you can tap lands to generate mana.
First off,  mana is supposed to dry up after each phase in a turn. Can I untap my land cards and then tap them again in the next phase if I need more mana to power a spell? Or does a land card remain tapped until my next turn like everything else?
Second, the rules mention that I can play instants and activate abilities during my opponent's turn. Does that then mean that I can tap my land cards during my opponent's turn to power those spells?
Third, does my opponent's untap step for their turn only apply to their cards? Or can I untap mine as well? Not closely related to land cards, but when I can tap and untap my land cards would make a huge difference as to how I play.
Hope these questions aren't painfully obvious, but I've just started playing the game. Thanks for your time!

He said in his question that he's read through the basic rulebook pretty thoroughly.

@GendoIkari Oops, sorry, that he does, I skimmed too fast and assumed - the basic rules do say "Untap step: You untap all your tapped permanents." (not "everyone untaps all their permanents") I think generally you can trust that while they're obviously not comprehensive, the basic rules didn't omit something that would fundamentally change the entire game.

Lands may be tapped at any time for mana, though it's usually pointless to do that when you aren't casting a spell or activating an ability.
What actually happens is there is something called your "mana pool". This is what is actually emptied at certain phases. The appropriate ruling is as follows:

305.6. The basic land types are Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest. If an object uses the words "basic land type," it’s referring to one of these subtypes. A land with a basic land type has the intrinsic ability "{T}: Add [mana symbol] to your mana pool," even if the text box doesn’t actually contain that text or the object has no text box. For Plains, [mana symbol] is {W}; for Islands, {U}; for Swamps, {B}; for Mountains, {R}; and for Forests, {G}. See rule 107.4a. Also see rule 605, "Mana Abilities."

The basic lands are permanents that can add to your mana pool. Since this is an activated ability, it can be used during your opponent's turn. Other than that, though, they ordinarily untap during your turn at the same time as everything else. Technically, the order of casting a spell is as follows:

Tap cards to add mana to your mana pool
When the spell is played from your hand, it subtracts the appropriate amount from your mana pool.

Until Magic 2010, having excess mana at the end of your turn would cause "mana burn", which does damage to you equal to however much is leftover. The Magic 2010 rules changes did away with this.

Not all lands abilities are mana abilities. You can't tap lands for mana at any time, though you can tap them for mana any time you'd need to. You also forgot to answer a couple of questions.

"though it's pointless to do that when you aren't casting a spell" This is simply not true. There are many reasons to tap a land that do not involve casting a spell

The other two main reasons are: activating an ability or paying a cost. The only other reason I can think of is if tapping the card protects it from some effect. (@bengoesboom)

@bengoesboom First of all, he's asking about tapping it for mana. I was answering with regards to tapping it for mana. Second of all, I edited to say "usually pointless" to allow for other cases.

By "very early" do you mean "all by the last 5 years?" Mana burn existed until Magic 2010.

Wait, really? Even in official play?

@Garan Yes, really! And official play uses the official rules. If anything, it's casual play where things might've been different - older players continuing to play with mana burn, or people removing it as a house rule before it was officially removed.

Also, I don't want to mess with your answer too much, but... it's not really true that you must tap things for mana before playing spells. You can activate mana abilities during the process of casting a spell, immediately before you pay the costs (rules 601.2f-g). You don't actually have to produce the mana before announcing the spell.

@Garan Turns out that it really doesn't come up that much (basically, when it exists, you simply don't make the moves that would burn you unless you get massive advantage, and when it doesn't, it merely enables wacky stuff like pouring more and more mana into the Kruphix effect, which isn't exactly a common thing to occur)

@bengoesboom, And what would you do with those excess mana then?

You can tap lands for mana at almost any time. Pretty much any time you could do anything else, anyway. Among other things, you can tap land for mana any time you want to play a spell or ability and you need mana to do so.
You can only untap a land when you untap your other cards during YOUR untap step (or if a spell or ability instructs you to untap a card). So no, you cannot untap your lands after each phase when the mana they produced goes away, or during your opponent's untap step.
So without getting into the specific details of the comprehensive rules, which would just cause confusion for beginners, what you really need to know is that you can tap a land any time you need mana, and your lands will normally only untap at the beginning of your turn.
Relevant rules from the Basic Rulebook:
Under "Casting a Spell"

Now check what the spell’s cost is. Tap your lands to
  produce the mana necessary to pay that cost, and pay it.

Also note that mana will empty from your mana pool at the end of every step, not just at the end of each phase. Each phase is divided into multiple steps.

You can however tap a land at the beginning of your turn use the mana cast a spell then still untap it during your untapp phase. I think. I used to run a squerrel deck with a herd gnar it's a (2)g or (3)g I forget 2/2 creature that whenever a creature comes into play under your control herd gnar gets +2/+2 until end of turn. So I would use my lands at the beginning of my turn to cast instants to put out creature tokens then untap during my untap phase and cast more tokens.

You can do this during your opponent's end step, but there's no opportunity on your own turn to do cast spells until your upkeep, after your untap step.


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Elder Sign charater traits
Some of the characters' special abilities allow them to have an additional card, such as a spell card, at the beginning of their setup. What does this mean?

These cards are starting equipment.  At the beginning of the game draw those cards and place them in front of yourself.  They are no different than cards that you squire through out play.
These abilities grant no ongoing benefit once the game starts

It just means they have an additional item, clue, spell, or ally card to draw during game setup.

This is simply giving the same information as the other answer. Do you have anything new to add?

There is nothing new to add. My answer describes succinctly exactly what it means when the cards have those characteristics. It's not just starting equipment; it can be a clue, spell, or ally in addition to equipment/item.


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Thrashing Wumpus and Keen Sense
If I control a Thrashing Wumpus, with Keen Sense on it and I spend 3 black mana to activate the ability of the Thrashing Wumpus, I get to draw 3 cards right? (If I have only one opponent that is) It doesn't matter if I tap all the mana in the same phase of my turn does it? The 3 black mana spend is still considered 3 individual activations of the Thrashing Wumpus' ability right?

Yes, Keen Sense will trigger three times. Thrashing Wumpus' ability only costs one black mana to activate, so if you've spent three black mana, you've activated it three times. There's nothing weird in the rules about combining identical spells/abilities. When you activate an ability, you simply pay the cost (one black mana in this case) and put it on the stack.
You can choose to let the first activation resolve before activating it a second (and third) time, drawing your card before deciding whether you want to activate it again. Most likely this is the way you want to do it, in case you draw something you'd rather spend your mana on.
But even if you use the ability three times consecutively (without letting the previous ones resolve first), they still all go on the stack separately. If you then let everything resolve, the stack would evolve like this:

{deal 1 damage} {deal 1 damage} {deal 1 damage}
{deal 1 damage} {deal 1 damage} {draw a card}
{deal 1 damage} {deal 1 damage}
{deal 1 damage} {draw a card}
{deal 1 damage}
{draw a card}

So what happens when he has two opponents?  Does he get to draw 6 cards total?  Or just 3?

@John Six. If there are multiple events that match a trigger condition, it triggers multiple times. Maybe a more obvious example of the same thing: Blood Artist says "Whenever Blood Artist or another creature dies, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life." and it will trigger multiple times if multiple creatures die simultaneously.


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What if someone attacks with Master of Cruelties and another creature?
My mate constantly plays Master of Cruelties which can only attack alone,

Master of Cruelties isn't forced to attack, but if it does, it must do so alone. If you control another creature with an ability that says it must attack if able, that creature must attack and Master of Cruelties won't be able to.

If Master of Cruelties attacks alone, another creature entering the battlefield attacking will have no effect on it. Master of Cruelties continues to be an attacking creature. The other attacking creature will assign combat damage normally, regardless of whether Master of Cruelties's last ability triggers.'

He always makes the mistake and attacks with multiple creatures with Master of Cruelties. What would the ruling be on this? I am unsure but I would guess maybe it just taps out?

I would also point out that, which it is illegal to declare MoC as an attacker alongside another creature, that doesn't mean it must always be the only attacking creature. If MoC or another creature is put onto the battlefield already attacking (skipping the attack declaration entirely), there's no problem. This is a fairly common strategy in Kaalia EDH decks, since MoC is a demon.

Attacking with Master of Cruelties and other creatures is an illegal action, so they should just undo it and declare attackers again. Specifically, from rule 508.1c:

The active player checks each creature he or she controls to see whether it's affected by any restrictions (effects that say a creature can't attack, or that it can't attack unless some condition is met). If any restrictions are being disobeyed, the declaration of attackers is illegal.

Illegal actions don't have consequences in game, they are just reversed. Rule 717.1 says:

If a player realizes that he or she can’t legally take an action after starting to do so, the entire action is reversed and any payments already made are canceled.


text:
Creatures with variable power and toughness
If I summon a creature like Boneyard Wurm whose power and toughness depends on the number of creatures in my graveyard, and afterwards another creature of mine dies, do the Boneyard Wurm's power and toughness increase? What about the opposite: if a creature card is removed from my graveyard, do its power and toughness decrease?

I picked a card that has power and toughness depending on number of creature cards in your graveyard as you described - pretty sure it's what you had in mind, but let us know if you had something different in mind.

To get really technical P/T of a creature is only checked as a creature's state.  This means that if a spell says remove all creatures from your graveyard and put back 4 of them.  While The Wurm will be 0/0 for a period during spell resolution it does not die because the p/t will be 4/4 when it is checked.  See 704.3 in CR

Yes, that creature's power and toughness will change as the number of creatures in your graveyard changes. It doesn't say something weird like "when it enters the battlefield, count the creatures in your graveyard, etc etc". It just says:

Boneyard Wurm's power and toughness are each equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard.

So that's what it does. However many creature cards are in your graveyard right at this moment, that's its power and toughness. Add one, they go up by one, remove one, they go down by one.

Also worth noting is that / creatures have that power and toughness in any zone, so if, for example, an effect allows you to search your library for a creature card with power >= 4, and you have >= 4 creatures in your graveyard, you could select Boneyard Wurm.


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Can I sacrifice the same creature twice?
If I Use Plaguemaw Beast's Activated ability of "{t}, sacrifice a creature: Proliferate" and then target Vampire Hexmage with the activated ability of "Sacrifice Vampire Hexmage: remove all counters from target permanent", what happens?
Will Plaguemaw Beast force Hexmage to be sacrificed without being able to activate the ablity?
Will Plaguemaw Beast lose a valid target if Vampire Hexmage's ability is activated in response to sacrificed, so now Plaguemaw cannot Proliferate?
Will the Plaguemaw Beast's ability activate along with Vampire Hexmage's Activated ablity with Hexmage as a target?

The duplicate I proposed explains this: you can't even activate both abilities as you're trying to. Sacrificing a creature is a cost for both abilities, and as the duplicate says, you can't sacrifice the same creature to pay for two abilities any more than you can use the same mana to pay for two spells.

As a side note, there's no targeting involved here. Neither of those abilities says "target", so "sacrifice a creature" never involves targeting. And things that you pay as costs aren't ever going to be targets.

@jefromi Hexmage's ability targets. It sounds like that's what he means.

Though I at first read it as him using target incorrectly also.

@GendoIkari Sorry, should've said there's no targeting in the way the OP said it - the question seems to talk about Plaguemaw Beast targeting, not the Hexmage. I understood that to mean targeting the thing to be sacrificed.

@jefromi It appears he uses "target" twice. The first time I believe he means targeting Vampire Hexmage with its own ability, which is correct.. But the. He does refer to plaguemaster losing a valid target, which as you point out is wrong.

Ah gotcha, missed that. I'm not sure why you'd want to sacrifice your own Hexmage in order to remove all the counters from itself, but that's indeed what the question says!

The question is a bit unclear. If you're trying to sacrifice the Vampire Hexmage to pay for its own activated ability, and to satisfy the Plaguemaw Beast, then no.
For each Plaguemaw Beast and Vampire Hexmage, the act of sacrificing a creature is a part of the cost of activating the ability. If you fail to be able to pay the cost, the ability will fail to resolve.

"If you fail to be able to pay the cost, the ability will fail to resolve" is misleading. If you don't pay the cost, the ability will never be activated at all.

@GendoIkari 602.2 details the process for activating an ability, following the process of 601.2. An object representing the activated ability will exist on the stack, costs are determined in 601.2.f, and the costs are paid in .2g and .2h.

602.2b says that 601.2 applies. "601.2i  Once the steps described in 601.2a–h are completed, the spell becomes cast." Same for abilities. The ability is not activated until all steps are completed. You cannot activate an ability without paying its costs.

You are right that it is on the stack when you pay the costs. But it hasn't been activated yet. And saying that it fails to resolve implies that it gets countered or something similar.

Comes down to the joys of semantics. The process of 'activating' the ability puts it on the stack, and costs aren't yet paid. It isn't 'activated' until all requirements of 601.2 are met. The important measure is that effects that use the stack can't take place between the stated intention to activate the ability and the ability being activated.

It is illegal to announce an ability that you cannot finish activating, so in a valid game of Magic, you will never have a case where you announce but fail to activate. So, it would be more accurate to say "If you are unable to pay the cost, then you cannot activate the ability".

@murgatroid99-They can commence activating the ability, until they've realized they can't pay the costs. At that point, 717 applies; the ability won't be activated, and play will be reversed. If this occurs repeatedly in a tournament, then Game Play Errors.

717 is called "Handling Illegal Actions" for a reason. You're not actually allowed to partially activate an ability, but they provided 717 to give you a way back to a workable game state if you do break the rules. And the existence of 717 doesn't mean that illegal actions aren't Game Play Errors every time you commit them; it just gives a way for players to resolve them without calling a judge.


text:
Can Winds of Qal Sisma trigger Willbreaker's ability?
If I use Winds of Qal Sisma to prevent damage from a creature, does Willbreaker trigger and let me gain control of that creature?

No. Willbreaker triggers specifically when something "...becomes the target of a spell or ability...". Spells and abilities only target if they say "target" (or if they're an aura being cast). Winds of Qal Sisma doesn't say "target", it just prevents all combat damage, regardless of where it came from, so Willbreaker never sees anything that'd cause it to trigger.

In addition, Winds doesn't even affect creatures directly, it changes the rules of the game for the turn.


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What do shiny ovals mean on Magic the Gathering cards?
I have just bought a set of Oath of the Gatewatch cards, and a few of them have a small shiny oval on the bottom center, like Corrupted Crossroads.
What does this mean?

It is similar to the Eye of Anubis that the yugioh cards have.

As of the Magic 2015 redesign, rare and mythic rare cards will have a spot at the bottom of the card frame containing a small holofoil stamp. This has two effects:

It makes it harder to produce counterfeit versions, so it's a sign of authenticity.
It makes the card seem more special. Look, shiny!

Some promo cards (like the FNM promos) also have it regardless of rarity.

Can you explain what FNM is?

Friday Night Magic


text:
Can King Macar the Gold-Cursed be tapped without attacking?
So a buddy and I were playing a game of Magic that turned out to be a really quick game because he got King Macar, the Gold-Cursed out on the battlefield early. He was tapping it without attacking because of its obviously awesome ability but I don't know if you can tap a creature for its Inspired (untap-triggered) ability without attacking for it to then be tapped. Are you allowed to tap a creature whenever you want?

As a side note Aura of Dominion is an awesome card with inspired creatures. They can then tap themselves to untap themselves for 1 mana

And Mothdust Changeling is a nice cheap creature that gives you a way to tap your creatures for free

@IvoBeckers Which is nice, because you get the golem for an extra mana. :-D

@IvoBeckers I'm really wishing Macar had blue in his identity now...

You can't just tap your creatures whenever you want. You can only tap it at one of the following times:

When the game tells you to tap it (like when you attack).
When a card tells you to tap it (like Twiddle).
When you can tap it to pay a cost (like Endless Obedience).

Cards that would allow you to tap King Macar include spells with conspire and convoke, cards that grant tap abilities (that has a couple of false positives), and cards that tap creatures as an effect.

And of course, this is the reason that Inspired is an interesting mechanic. If you could tap creatures at will, Inspired abilities would basically just be "at the beginning of your upkeep" abilities.

Further, consider the implication on the "Untap as a cost" mechanic in Shadowmoor. If you could tap your creatures whenever you wanted, that would be a pretty silly "cost".


text:
Will double strike still do anything if I Cloudshift my blocker?
My friend attacks with a creature with double strike (e.g. Boros Swiftblade). I block with a creature, then I Cloudshift it. Do I or my creature take any damage from the double strike?

If you cast Cloudshift during the Declare Blockers Step, specifically rule 509.5, than your creature will not suffer combat damage (506.4), but the Creature with Double Strike is still considered Blocked for the Combat Damage Step. It will assign no damage for either the first strike or normal combat damage portions.

510.1c A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage.

The crucial rule that should be mentioned is that a creature that leaves the battlefield for any length of time (e.g. through Cloudshift) is also removed from combat.

The two relevant rules are probably "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." and "506.4. A permanent is removed from combat if it leaves the battlefield, ..."

And it will be the full damage, since there is no longer a blocker to 'soak' up some of the damage with its toughness.

Trample is beyond the scope of the question.


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Hexproof vs enchantment affecting all creatures
My opponent controls Plated Crusher, a 7/6 hexproof creature. I control two Dampening Pulses, which give opponents' creatures -1/-0. Would Dampening Pulse affect the hexproof creature? I think it would because it's not directly targeting the hexproof creature.

Yes, Dampening Pulse will affect creatures your opponents control that have Hexproof. The entire relevant part of the definition of Hexproof (rule 702.11b) is

“Hexproof” on a permanent means “This permanent can’t be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.”

Then, rule 114.9a says

Just because an object or player is being affected by a spell or ability doesn’t make that object or player a target of that spell or ability. Unless that object or player is identified by the word “target” in the text of that spell or ability, or the rule for that keyword ability, it’s not a target.

Dampening Pulse doesn't use the word "target" and it doesn't have any keyword abilities (targeted or otherwise), so Hexproof doesn't affect it.

You are correct--hexproof only prevents spells and abilities which use the "target" keyword. Dampening Pulse does not specify a target, so it will still affect your opponent's creature.