text:
Are there times it's actually advantageous to wait to pay mana abilities until casting a spell?
In Magic, you have two ways to pay for a spell (or ability):

Collect the mana first, then cast the spell and spend the mana to pay for it.
Cast the spell, play some mana abilities as part of the casting, spend the mana to finish the casting.

I can name some situations when the first approach is more advantageous.
For one, you can collect mana from other sources, like spells.
As spells aren't mana abilities you can't use those in the second approach.
Are there some situations where the second approach is more advantageous mechanically? What kinds of situations are those?
Let's assume no mistakes are made, so no need to rollback an illegal casting.

You ask what the point of the rule is in your title, but ask under what circumstances it's more mechanically advantageous in your body. What if the point of it isn't mechanical advantage at all? (There are many things MTG's designers do just because it's more intuitive and easier for players to deal with.) Which are you interested in? The actual reason for the rule, or the situations where it's mechanically advantageous to use it? I think if you're after the former, presuming it's got anything to do with mechanical advantage might be doing the question a disservice.

I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing you're looking for, so I'm not posting it as an answer: You cast Mycosynth Golem with an affinity count of five, so its cost is six mana. You only have two mana from lands available, but you have a Krark-Clan Ironworks in play, so you sacrifice two artifacts in order to generate the four mana you need. Since you cast the Golem before paying its cost, you get the locked in cost of six. If you had added the mana first, you would have needed to sacrifice four artifacts to generate the appropriate mana to cast the golem.

Yes, SocioMatt, that was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
@doppelgreener I guess this mostly adresses your doubts as well.

Ok, I've given your title an edit accordingly.

Is this question worth keeping or should I delete it?
It's a shame I can't downvote my own question.

@tsuma534 Keep it. I am not looking forward to the flood of "Oh! I have an example that matters!" answers, but the question is totally fine.

@tsuma534 Sure, it's worth keeping. MTG's a big game with lots of interesting interactions even long-term players haven't considered yet, and this one's highlighted some.

I'm editing this question slightly to just ask about the general idea ("are there situations?"); we appear to be accidentally spawning answers of exactly the scenario Rainbolt is describing. A good answer here probably ought to cover a broad swathe or general principles, rather than list yet another one-off.

A lot of relevant comments here: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/13062/why-do-mana-abilities-not-go-on-the-stack/.

I can think of one that I used to use back in the Mirrodin days using Mycosynth Golem and Krark-Clan Ironworks. The short version is that in the case where you cast the spell before paying its cost, you can save yourself from sacrificing more artifacts than necessary.
As an example, you have five artifacts on the battlefield, so your affinity is five. You also have two available land that produce two mana, and an Ironworks. Here are the two ways you could play it:

You pay the costs first. You tap your 2 land, so now you need 9 more. In order to get this to work, you have to sacrifice 4 artifacts to generate an additional 8 mana. This leaves you with an affinity of 1, which gives you enough to pay for the Golem.
You cast the Golem first. The Golem goes on the stack with an affinity of five, reducing the cost to six mana. You then pay the six mana by (1) tapping your two land and (2) sacrificing two artifacts to the Ironworks for four mana.

In most cases, the second option is better (unless you are wanting to sacrifice more artifacts for some reason). This is a case where casting your spell before paying costs is beneficial.

In a more general sense, the cases where you'd want to cast the spell before paying costs are ones where you want to lock in a casting cost that has the potential to change as you're paying for it. The example above illustrates this principle, and rule 601.2h in JonTheMon's answer has an equally important example.
This is going to be a little verbose, but the standard is probably something like:
"If you are going to be paying a reduced cost for your spell because of effects of cards on the battlefield, but in paying the cost for your spell you will be removing those cost-reducing cards from the battlefield, you should put the spell on the stack first and then pay costs."

Another relevant example.

We get a pretty good example from rule 601.2h:

The player pays the total cost in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can’t be paid.

Example
You cast Altar’s Reap, which costs {1}{B} and has an additional cost of sacrificing a creature. You sacrifice Thunderscape Familiar, whose effect makes your black spells cost {1} less to cast. Because a spell’s total cost is “locked in” before payments are actually made, you pay {B}, not {1}{B}, even though you’re sacrificing the Familiar.

Now I'm ashamed. I recall reading this one.

Yes, there is at least one situation where the special timing rules for mana abilities allow plays that would be impossible with non-mana abilities:
If you want to activate the Skyshroud Elf, and pay for its ability's activation cost by sacrificing the elf to an Ashnod's Altar, you can do that.


text:
Can I legally make a boggle variant?
Is it legal to create a boggle version that has a different name, language and rules without being sued by hasbro?

If it has a different name, language, and rules, what makes it a Boggle variant instead of it being a completely different game?

Sorry but legal advice should be gotten from a lawyer not a board game Q&A.

This is a legal question, not one about a board game.

Bound to be legal to make — but do you want to sell it?

You can use the Boggle game mechanics, but have to avoid any Intellectual Property that falls under trademark or copyright, because Hasbro will definitely go after you if you do, and possibly even if you don't. If you change the rules, I think you can avoid this potential liability entirely.  I highly recommend researching Words with Friends vs. Scrabble

Copyright only covers specific implementations, i.e. the exact wording of the rules.  Patents are a nonissue in this case, Boggle was released in 1972 so any patent applying to it would have expired years ago.

Copyright, trademarks, and patents are complicated subjects and if you are really concerned about this sort of thing you should consult an Intellectual Property attorney.  Or if you don't want to spend money on this problem I hope you're covered by fair use.

Copyright is unlikely to arise in this situation; patents possibly, passing off almost certainly.  But +1 for 'consult an attorney': you get what you pay for in legal advice, and SE is free.

You forgot about trademarks.  Answer updated to include more things you should consult a lawyer for.

source: Stack Exchange

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What do I do if mandatory actions will inherently take a very long time to resolve? (Splinter Twin + Tyrant of Discord example)
Basically, if a game is already out of time, and we're within the resolution of a stack, yet the resolution will take an obnoxiously long time, what would the ruling be in a competitive environment where the tournament will have to wait for the resolution? Note that this isn't an infinite effect and thus not a draw, it's not unsportslike conduct - stalling because the game is already at time and that rule is for trying to drag a game to time, and I can pick any number of twins I want, it's my right to use that shortcut to pick an arbitrary number. Don't necessarily focus on deconstructing the example (but feedback on that is welcome), help me out on what the resolution would be.

Here's an example:
Let's say I'm going off with my Splinter Twin combo. I have at least 1 land and a bunch of other permanents. I create a very, very large number of tokens (let's say 10^1000).
My opponent uses Aether Vial to vial in Tyrant of Discord. The resolution of the Tyrant's "enters the battlefield" trigger will take an extremely long amount of time to compute. Consider that we'll be randomly picking copies until a land gets sacrificed, which could mean all my creatures get sacrificed one by one, or possibly none of them do (the land gets randomly picked first).
What are the rules for game time here? Random number generators can't even handle numbers that large, but let's assume we have some way to handle this. I can choose an arbitrarily large amount of Twins to create here. What are the rules for resolving this situation? Even if the game goes to time, 5 turns will not pass, this will take place within one turn's stack, and it's not an infinite loop so the game cannot be declared a draw. Is it acceptable to spend, for example 5 hours, if not several days resolving this effect?
Assume the number is just obnoxiously large enough that it actually takes a computer several hours to spit out a result.

I just noticed the "if they sacrifice a nonland permanent, repeat this process" clause. I think at this point you would take what Kevin did and write a Python script to simulate what happens.

I wonder if producing a gratuitously large number of tokens could count as unsportsmanlike conduct...

@Kevin I reviewed the rules and according to my interpretation of the letter of the rules it is not considered unsportsmanlike, I might be wrong though.

Trying to rules-laywer the definition of "sportsmanlike conduct" seems like the wrong approach

@murgatroid99 sure, but I'm purely curious about the rules about running out of time. What is an acceptable amount of time, after time has been called, within a single turn, to keep playing the game? Is there technically no limit? If an effect will take 3 hours to resolve during a large tournament, will we have to actually sit down and resolve the effect and make hundreds of people wait?

Types of unsporting conduct are: Minor, Major, Improperly determining winner, Bribery and wagering, Aggressive behavior, theft, stalling, cheating. Stalling is the only one that can possibly apply, but the definition of stalling is "A player intentionally plays slowly in order to take advantage of the time limit." and thus it is irrelevant since the time has already run out in this scenario.

Very interesting question. Note that in order to create that many tokens, the player has to announce a looping shortcut, and his opponent does not have to agree to that. The opponent can interrupt the loop at any time and use that aether vial.

@Hackworth But the vial trigger will go on the stack and, I can construct a scenario where I have a backup combo and keep going after his vial goes on the stack.

@Hackworth The second player does not have to agree to any shortcut. The first player merely has to demonstrate the cycle, and make it clear that he will perform this cycle X number of times unless and until the second player chooses to intervene: "A player may interrupt a tournament shortcut by explaining how he or she is deviating from it or at which point in the middle he or she wishes to take an action". You should read 4.2: Tournament Shortcuts for more information.

The tournament rules document http://wpn.wizards.com/sites/wpn/files/attachements/mtg_mtr_17jul15_en_0.pdf makes no mention of a time limit on extra turns ("If the match time limit is reached before a winner is determined, the player whose turn it is finishes his or her turn
and five additional turns are played in total.") so it seems this isn't covered in the rules. Someone more familiar with tournaments can probably say better, but I assume this would either be up to a judge's discretion or would be forced to end as a draw.

I don't think you can say that choosing the huge number could be slow-play or unsportsmanlike conduct, because you didn't know when you chose the number that your opponent would have something that makes your number impossible to play out.

Picking a random object from an infinitely large number of identical objects is easy.  Just pick the first one

@ikegami They aren't all identical. The outcome will be different depending on when the land eventually gets picked.

@GendoIkari Exactly. Depending on when it reaches a land, I could have a billion twins or zero.

Of course, with the numbers you've given, the probability that you don't end up with enough tokens to deal lethal damage is absurdly small. The best way to resolve something like this is probably to just roll dice determine whether each non-token, non-land permanent dies, randomly pick a land to die, and then sacrifice more tokens than you probably would have sacrificed. Your opponent gets more kills than they would expect to, and you still have lethal by an extraordinary margin.

To expand on my last comment, if you have N lands, the probability of losing each non-land permanent is 1/(N+1), because at each roll, you have N chances to choose a land and 1 to choose that permanent. So you can just roll an (N+1) sided die for each non-land non-token permanent. Then, if you have K tokens you can almost exactly model the number of tokens that die as an exponential distribution, with base N/(N+K). Then you can determine the probability of enough tokens dying to not deal lethal, and then plug that into a random number generator. Then you don't have a very long process.

@murgatroid99 that is a good approach, but I can still pick a number for K that is so large that any random number generator will take hours to spit out an answer.

The beauty of this method is that as K gets larger, that probability gets smaller. If K is too big to do useful calculations with, then that probability is so small it's not worth considering.

@murgatroid99 even if the chance is infinitesimally small, the number still needs to be computed. The computation time would still be very long.

@HalT I'm not sure that's true. If the math/logic can show that the odds you not having enough creatures left to win the game are so small that it is completely unreasonable for one to expect it to actually happen, then a judge may declare that that's good enough, and declare you the the winner.

@GendoIkari That is very much not the case.

If such situation as described by you really applies, only the judge can help in this situation.
I have various examples how a judge handled alike situation, but most of them had one thing in common: It ended in a draw.
The examples that didn't, had in common that the player determined a way to shorten the "choose randomly" process. Here it becomes quite tricky.
In the end the judge with the right authority does have the last word on this and it cannot be generally determined for all tournaments. This is an example of a gap in between the rules that propably needs some fixing for a fair ruling.

The fundamental issue here, is that you and your opponent appear to be unable to identify a mutually agreeable shortcut.  As such, it's a slow play violation.  I would tend to think the player "at fault" is the player generating the excessive number of tokens.  But I'm only the referee in my house, not in tournaments.
None of the short cuts defined in section 4.2 in the tournament rules describe a mechanism for your particular conundrum.  But a variety of short cuts exist, each having a different amount of fidelity to the situation.
This particular question about Tyrant of discord has been addressed before.  But to summarize.  If you have 8 land, and 10^100 other permanents, generate 8 random numbers between [1, 10^100+8].  Those numbers represent the order in which the lands will be destroyed by Tyrant.  So, take the smallest of them, and that tells you how many tokens got destroyed.
If you don't have a random number generator available with that kind of range, you can use a 10 sided die to represent the first digit of the number for each of the 8 lands.  Then, find the numbers tied for smallest, roll again for the second digit.  Etc.  Once you get a single number, you can round up, and that will be the number of tokens destroyed.
An alternative approach is to take the average (i.e. mean) number destroyed.  That requires a bit of math, but on average, you will destroy (10^100 + 8 + 1) / (8 + 1) tokens, which will leave you with roughly 10^99 tokens.  You can drop it down to 10^93 to account for "1 in a million" type chances to placate your opponent, and you should still be good to go.
A final approach, but I haven't worked out the details, is to approximate the number destroyed using a gaussian/normal random variable.  You need to compute the standard deviation of the number (it's a computation that's more difficult than the mean referenced above, but can be done.)  And then generate an appropriately shifted/scaled normal random variable.

I think this issue with assigning fault here is that the huge number of tokens by itself isn't a problem; it only becomes a problem once the other player casts a certain thing. The player generating the tokens can't have predicted that the other player was going to do that; and the other player can't be expected to refrain from casting it.

Your answer explains how the "shorten the choose randomly process" from my answer could be implemented. It could be applied, if the judge actually would agree to it, but it is the judges claim to allow that. There are unforunately no general, always applying rules that could be used in this case. No player actually is necessarily doing a particular violation in here, but this could vary from judge point of view as well.

There is no rule that covers this situation. So call a judge an he will make a decision that allows the tournament to keep running.
One rule that perhaps could be applied here is that you must be able to represent the game state accurately and clearly. IMO, there is no clear way to represent 10^1000 token. Yes, you could write 10^1000 in a paper, but once a few of those tokens die, then it is no longer clear. If we restrict the number of tokens to a number that can actually be represented in the game, we should be able to manage the resolution of Tyrant's trigger.

Is it not common practice to call out a large number like "a million twins" when executing an unlimited combo?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "represent". You could write "1,000,000" to represent a million tokens, and "999,995" if 5 die. But then you could also write "10^1000" to represent that many tokens, and "10^1000-5", if 5 die.

Pretty sure it can be accurately represented.

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For Monarch, how do you consider which are Garments and Beasts?
For Monarch, there's no way to know if a court card is a beast/garment. Such as for example: The court card Wardrobe Master states that "get 3 crown values per each GARMENT court cards". Is it just going to be a consensus among sisters if they consider a card as a garment card? Such as the Ceremonial Comb court card? Or how about for beasts? Is a pomeranian court card a beast?

I've consulted the official manual.There, it says you can identify certain card sub-types by their emblems. All Beasts have a white beast-emblem printed behind the text, all Garments have a cloak, etc. Here's an excerpt from the rulebook, page 4:

See the white emblem laced in the text on the lower part of the card?
Also, this exact question is featured in their FAQ.

Hi, I'm assuming you meant the ones such as Bounty, Wisdom, and Culture? Those are Court Card Types, there are 4 of them to be exact, the other one being Might. They don't say which ones are Garments or Beasts though, such as Dragon Phoenix Gown, I'm assuming is a garment due to it being a "gown".

@Takeshi I've found the manual and edited my post accordingly.

Omg @steenbergh, That's perfect! I didn't quite took notice of those emblems! Wow! Great find!


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Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, and cards with a * as their power
So my question is if I have Alesha, Who Smiles at Death on the battlefield can I use her ability to bring back a creature where * is the cards power, for example Kolaghan Forerunners?

There's a ruling for Kolaghan Forerunners in Gatherer answering this very question.

The Forerunners have what is called Characteristic-Defining Ability, and those function in all zones. So you can only return them with Alesha if you have less than 3 creatures on the battlefield.

208.2a The card may have a characteristic-defining ability that sets its power and/or toughness according to some stated condition. (See rule 604.3.) Such an ability is worded “[This creature’s] [power or toughness] is equal to . . .” or “[This creature’s] power and toughness are each equal to . . .” This ability functions everywhere, even outside the game. If the ability needs to use a number that can’t be determined, including inside a calculation, use 0 instead of that number.

ok, that's kind of how I figured it would play out but wanted to makes sure. Thanks

It would be useful to point out that not all creatures with * as their power have characteristic-defining abilities, and fall under rule 208.2b. For example, Sewer Nemesis.

@HaoYe I'm not sure offhand, but it looks like Sewer Nemesis does have a characteristic-defining ability, just one that doesn't do anything without a player being chosen. Not that the distinction matters in practice.


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Can Body Double copy the back face of a card in the graveyard?
Just wondering, if the Ludevic's Test Subject is in the grave, can Body Double enter play copying the Abomination side?

No, it cannot. Rule 711.4a says

While a double-faced card is outside the game, in a zone other than the battlefield, or on the battlefield with its front face up, it has only the characteristics of its front face.

Thought I had a cool combo going... oh well. Thanks for clarifying.


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Does Hellkite Tyrant in combination with Mycosynth Lattice steal lands?
Say you attack someone for player damage with Hellkite Tyrant whilst Mycosynth Lattice is in play (played by you if it makes a difference). Do you get control of all of your opponents lands? The answer to this question says that lands are permanents, and since all permanents are turned in to artifacts does Hellkite Tyrant steal them? I'm asking this because it feels so OP that I'm wondering if there is more to this.

In regards to the comment that it's OP, it's just one of many combos in Magic. It requires two cards from very distant sets (so it won't come up in Standard), both costing 6, and it also requires that the Hellkite is able to get an attack through. While it is a very impactive combo if it goes off, it's also relatively easy to deal with or stall out.

I know, I use the combo ;) I've just been wondering if what I was doing was really "legal". Thanks!

By the way, the phrase "player damage" is rather odd to my ear. I guess you meant damage dealt to a player, but it just seems strange because who or what the damage is dealt to is not a property of the damage itself. (For comparison, we say "deathtouch damage", "infect damage", "lifelink damage", etc. because those are effectively properties of the damage - though if you want to get technical they're properties of the source.)

Yes, as you stated correctly, lands are permanents:

110.1. A permanent is a card or token on the battlefield.
...
110.4. There are five permanent types: artifact, creature, enchantment, land, and planeswalker.

Enemy Lands are Artifact [Basic] Lands now due to Mycosynth Lattice, and nothing stops you from getting control of them if you deal combat damage with Hellkite Tyrant.


text:
Calculate Mind Funeral efficiency
I was wondering about the formula on how to calculate the average number of cards milled by Mind Funeral.

Target opponent reveals cards from the top of his or her library until
  four land cards are revealed. That player puts all cards revealed this
  way into his or her graveyard.

Just to have an example scenario, let's assume it's an EDH/Commander deck (99 cards total) with 40 lands in it. With no mana ramp or extra draws, let's assume we had the first turn and can cast Mind Funeral on turn 3. Target opponent should have 90 cards left in his library at that point.

No formula but someone simulated it (for 60-card decks with 19-26 lands) and posted the results in a Gatherer comment. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=179599

I would reword your question so that it requires zero knowledge of MTG, and then ask on Mathematics Stack Exchange. It's totally on topic here of course, but I think you would get a better answer there.

If you're okay with an approximation, modeling it as a hypergeometric distribution would give you a nice(-ish) formula. The draw without replacement means it's not exactly right.

The other benefit of asking on a math site is they can actually show math in their answers, because they have mathjax enabled :-/ I can answer this, but writing an answer clearly is hard.

These kinds of questions are almost always better done through simulation.  The simulation pointed to by Michal Politowski is very enlightening, and reasonable.  I think that should be made into a real answer.

Good idea, I was just about to re-phrase it and post it to Mathematics - but two answers popped up right then. I'll go with these for now, since they seem to answer the problem in a good way :) (not that I'm the best judge of that)

This situation can be approximated by the following model: you have an infinite sequence of lands and non-lands, where the probability P that each is a non-land is equal to the fraction of the deck that is non-lands. So, in a 60 card deck with 36 non-land cards, we say P=3/5.
Now, starting at any point in the sequence, the probability that we see exactly N non-land cards followed by a land is simply P^N * (1-P). From there, to get the expected number of non-lands followed by a land, we calculate
Sum {for all N} of N * P ^ N * (1 - P)

The 1 - P factor is independent of N, so that's the same as
(1 - P) * Sum {for all N} of N * P ^ N

This is then equal to (see Wolfram|Alpha)
(1 - P) * P / (1 - P) ^ 2 = P / (1 - P)

So, the expected number of cards that we mill when we mill until we see one land is 1 + P / (1 - P) (adding 1 to also count the land)
Then we simply multiply that by the number of lands that we mill until.
If we apply this to Mind Funeral targeted at a 60 card deck with 24 lands, or at a 100 card deck with 40 lands, in either case about 3/5 of the deck is non-land, so the expected number of total cards milled is
4 * (1 + (3/5) / (2/5)) = 4 * (1 + 3/2) = 10

We expect to see 10 cards milled from a deck that is about three fifths non-land.

There is a little simplification we can apply to the formula above, based on information we can infer from the initial definitions. Specifically, P is the fraction of the deck that is non-lands, or in other words non-lands/(total cards). And 1-P is the faction of the deck that is lands, so that's lands/(total cards). Then
1 + P / (1 - P)
= 1 + (non-lands/total) / (lands / total)
= 1 + non-lands / lands
= (lands / lands) + (non-lands / lands)
= (lands + non-lands) / lands

And of course the number of lands plus the number of non-lands is just the total size of the deck. So, the overall formula for the expected number of cards that you mill is
(lands to mill) * (library size) / (lands in library)

or, perhaps more clearly
(library size) * (lands to mill) / (lands in library)

In other words, the fraction of the library we expect to mill is approximately equal to the fraction of the remaining lands that will be milled.

This turns out to be quite close to the actual answer.

Good, that probably means I did the math right. This approximation should be close enough that the difference doesn't matter as long as the number of lands remaining in the library is significantly larger than the number of lands you have to mill.

The average is 400/41, approximately 9.76. In general, if you have a deck of size d containing l lands and you mill until you hit m lands, the average is (1+d)t/(1+l).
The math here is actually pretty simple. To mill n cards, you have to have 3 lands in the top n-1 cards, a land at position n, and 36 lands in the bottom 99-n cards. So there are binomial(n-1,3)*binomial(99-n, 36) ways for this to happen, out of binomial(99,40) total positions for the lands, and the probability p(n) is the ratio of the two.
(The binomial coefficients are 0 when this is impossible, e.g. when you're trying to cram 36 lands into the bottom 10 cards because you only put 4 in the top 89.)
To get the expected value, you just sum n*p(n). You could get the approximate version with your choice of calculator/software. Mathematica gives the exact solutions as above.
(Apologies, I don't know a better way to write binominal coefficients than binomial here, and I haven't had time to work out an actual proof.)

I assume that in this answer, 400 is not a constant, but rather something like 4 * library size. So, in other words, I'm guessing that your formula is something like number of lands to mill * number of cards in library / (number of lands in library + 1).

In contrast, I think the formula in my answer works out to number of lands to mill * number of cards in library / number of lands in library.

@murgatroid99 Yes, the general form does appear to be what you said, with a +1 in the numerator too but I don't have a proof so I didn't add it yet.


text:
Activating an ability that affects blocking after Declare Blockers step
My opponent had on the battlefield a Swarm Guildmage and three other creatures. My opponent then enters Combat and declares his three other creatures as attacking.
After this happens I then declare two of my creatures as blockers, each blocking one of his creatures, to which then he responds by activating Swarm Guildmage's ability that grants each of his creatures Menace. His argument is then that, because now his creatures have Menace, my blocks are illegal and I have to re-assign blockers.
My assumption is that once blockers are declared then no matter what happens afterwards during combat the blockers initially declared would remain legal.
Is this true, or is it that my opponent was correct and my blockers suddenly became illegal after the activation? If so, are there any other scenarios in which a blocker can be made illegal after being declared as a blocker?

Your friend is wrong.  His creatures are blocked.
Blocking goes through a series of steps outlined in rule 509.  The first step is declaring blockers (509.1).  To sum up, you declare which creatures are blocking, what they are blocking, check any restrictions and pay any costs.  At the end of all that we get to 509.1h:

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. A creature remains blocked even if all the
  creatures blocking it are removed from combat.

That's it.  Your opponents creatures are blocked.  The only chance he has to activate abilities or cast spells are once he receives priority which comes much later (outlined in 509.4).  Once 509.1h happens, restrictions (like menace or flying or whatnot) are never checked again.  And since nothing in Swarm Guildmage's effect instructs you to make a creature unblocked, those creatures are still considered blocked.

If your opponent wanted to use Swarm Guildmage's ability to give his creatures menace and have that effect blocker legality, the last chance he has to do so is after attackers are declared and each player gets priority but before the declare blockers step starts.

Might be helpful to point out what was the latest point his opponent could have activated Swarm Guildmage's ability that would actually have an effect. Is it before he announces he's attacking? Before he decides which creatures he's attacking with? Is there a point after he's declared attackers, but before blockers have been declared that it could worked?

Technically, they do have Menace. They are still considered blocked, so this changes nothing. But they technically have Menace.

Restrictions on blocking (including evasion abilities) are checked in 509.1b, and only then. Once the process of blocking has made it past that step (and not restarted because it fails a later step, like disobeying "This creature blocks each turn if able") evasion becomes meaningless.

@Shufflepants Good idea.  Done.

Note that as the active player, the attacking player gets priority first after declaring attackers. This is the last opportunity he has to (reliably) activate the mage. If he passes priority (thinking to lure out some combat tricks first, for instance), and the defending player then passes without playing anything, the game automatically continues to declaring blockers and it's too late to activate the guild mage.

Restrictions on blocking are checked exactly once, during the declare blockers step. Evasion abilities or other restrictions that take effect after that point don't matter, as described by comp rule 509.1:

509.1b The defending player checks each creature they control to see whether it’s affected by any restrictions (effects that say a creature can’t block, or that it can’t block unless some condition is met). If any restrictions are being disobeyed, the declaration of blockers is illegal.
A restriction may be created by an evasion ability (a static ability an attacking creature has that restricts what can block it). If an attacking creature gains or loses an evasion ability after a legal block has been declared, it doesn’t affect that block.

Once a legal set of blockers has been declared, it's too late for players to add restrictions or requirements to it, whether that's through evasion abilities, protection, unblockable effects, Lure effects, etc.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Why do cards use the "(ability) / Other creatures you control have (ability)" wording?
The card Bellowing Tanglewurm has the following two clauses...

Intimidate
  Other green creatures you control have intimidate

...and Felhide Petrifier has these two clauses...

Deathtouch
  Other Minotaur creatures you control have deathtouch

It seems to me that the two above cards are needlessly wordy. Instead of Bellowing Tanglewurm's two clauses, I'm thinking it could just be shortened to

Green creatures you control have intimidate

since Bellowing Tanglewurm is also a green creature.
Same would apply for Fellhide Petrifier,

Minotaur creatures you control have deathtouch

since Fellhide Petrifier is also a Minotaur creature.
Is there a reason that the former two wordings are used instead of the latter two? Is there some rule I'm missing that requires the former two be used instead?

After thinking about it, I can understand the wording on Bellowing Tanglewurm, as the first clause includes the reminder text for the keyword ability Intimidate.

Although the answer points out that there is a slight functional difference; I think the answer and discussion here about redundant text is relevant.

There is basically only one case I can think of where those things are put together into a single line of text, and that's slivers

@Arthur Also the Theros archetypes.

The current template is easier for players to understand
From the horse's mouth:

What the point of making creature with "Trample. Other creatures you control have trample" when you can just put it as "Сreatures you control have trample"?

The former has proven to be less confusing to a larger number of players. Remember, the number one goal of templating is comprehension, not brevity.

I think this is the more important point.  Yes, there is a slight functional difference, but the current templating is driven by player understanding, not by edge cases where a creature's color or type is changed.

I definitely think it's far more likely that they went with what they thought was clearest; not with trying to preserve certain interactions in certain rare cases. With the proposed shorter wording, newer players would ask if the ability applies to itself; and also players would be more likely to forget that a creature has an ability.

While I do agree that it likely was done to provide a clearer understanding it should also be pointed out that there are some edge cases where the wording does make a difference.

It's very common for cards that say things like "All ... have / gain / get ..." to not include themselves. Either by being a different type (see Glorious Anthem) or by explicitly stating "other" (see Shalai, Voice of Plenty). Thus, when a player (especially an experienced one) reads such an ability, they expect it to not affect that card itself (without characteristic changing shenanigans). Except on slivers.

@BJMyers in case anyone is unclear, something like Search your library for a creature with Trample couldn't fine a creature with Creatures you control have trample.

Also of interest if anyone is curious about the history of how they change effects over time, very old cards would often give everyone's creatures a benefit, not just your own. See Planeshift's Lord of the Undead as an example. It says All Zombies get +1/+1, not Zombies you control.

The proposed wordings are not functionally equivalent.  If Tanglewurm's color is changed by some effect, the original wording means it would continue to have Intimidate, while the proposed "shortened" wording would not.  Same deal with Petrifier and creature type.

There are other cards that care about abilities on creatures that don't require them to be on the battlefield. For example Soulflayer has the ability (in addition to Delve):

If a creature card with flying was exiled with Soulflayer's delve ability, Soulflayer has flying. The same is true for first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, reach, trample, and vigilance.

In addition you can change a creatures colour through the use cards like [mtg:Purelace] and others. So the change in the OP would be a functional one.

Mwonvuli Beast Tracker (searching libraries for cards with specific abilities) is another great example.

There are actually a few cards in MtG that care about the abilities on a card while it is in zones other than the battlefield. Writing the ability as "Minotaur creatures have deathtouch" would only give Fellhide Petrifier itself, along with all other minotaurs, deathtouch while it was on the battlefield, not in the grave or in the deck as it does now. Archetype of Aggression is written the way you suggest, which means you cannot search for it using Mwonvuli Beast Tracker but you CAN use Mwonvuli Beast Tracker to find Fellhide Petrifier.
A short list of other cards that would care about the ability existing in other zones: (there may be more)

Cairn Wanderer
Corpse Cur
Dermoplasm
Isperia the Inscrutable
Soulflayer
Vizier of the Anointed
Animus of Predation

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to clone a Legendary permanent?
I want to clone Geist of Saint Traft without falling prey to the legend rule and without using Mirror Gallery. Are there any cards that allow you to copy a card's text without copying its name? I was unable to find any but might have failed to search the right wording.

Mirror Gallery is cool!  Curious why you don't want to use that?

Mirror Gallery is cool, but it costs 5 mana. That's not competitive in my particular local meta. Game would be over before it was out long enough to be useful. I play Legacy.

FWIW it would be better to say that you want a cheaper alternative in the question, rather than just specifying "not Mirror Gallery". (Not that it really matters now.)

You can legally clone any legendary with any clone, it will however trigger the legend rule and cause you to remove one, that said you won't find anything that can do what you want for less than 4 mana, and if five is way too much in your meta you're probably going to be pushing it with Sakashima's cost.

Sakashima the Impostor copies a creature except its name; Spark Double copies a creature or planeswalker except it loses legendary. There are other cards as well.
The rule that is responsible for preventing the existence of multiple identical legendaries is the so called "legend rule". It is a state-based action:

704.5j If a player controls two or more legendary permanents with the same name, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.”

The only ways to get around the legend rule are if the creatures all have different names, or at most one of those with identical names is legendary.
This Gatherer search include all sanctioned-legal cards that can copy a legendary creature to keep (plus a few that don't apply)
Lazav, Dimir Mastermind only copies creatures that go to your opponent's graveyard, so the creature you want to copy has to go to your opponent's graveyard somehow, which requires either elaborate setup, or that your opponent also happens to play Geist.
Both creatures restrict you to one additional Geist each, because the legend rule still applies to Lazav and Sakashima, respectively.
Helm of the Host creates non-legendary token copies of the equipped creature. It costs 4 mana to cast and 5 mana to equip, but it lets you get any number of copies with only 1 reusable card invested.
If your group allows Un-sets, there is also Rules Lawyer, which makes state-based actions not apply to you and your creatures, which disables the legend rule check.
Any creature with Mutate and a second copy of the (non-human) legendary creature will allow you to avoid the Legend rule.  Mutate your first legendary creature, and be sure to put the mutation on top. Then, when another copy of the legendary enters the battlefield on your side, you get to keep it.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty added Mirror Box which is a strictly better version of Mirror Gallery

Given that this is the top answer, Spark Double should be added so that people can see it as an option they might miss if they only read the selected answer. Likewise Mirror Gallery.

If the legendary creature is human, mutate will not work.

If what you care about is cost, you shouldn't be trying to copy the whole creature.  It's much cheaper to copy just the ability you care about, such as with one of the following: Strionic Resonator, Tawnos, Urza's Apprentice, Illusionist's Bracers, or Rings of Brighthearth (Strionic Resonator is the only one of these that will work for Geist of Saint Taft, as Geist is not an artifact, and its ability is a triggered ability and not an activated ability).
That said, there are three general mechanics that will let you have multiple copies of a legendary creature on the battlefield at the same time*:

Things that make non-legendary copies of a creature: o:"isn't legendary".  Currently, this is Spark Double, Helm of the Host, and Double Major.

Things that clone a creature with a different name**: o:copy o:"its name".  Currently, this is Sakashima the Impostor, Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, and Lazav, the Multifarious (noting that the later two will require the creature you are copying to go the graveyard and back in the process).

Things that ignore the legend rule: o:"legend rule".  Currently this is Mirror Gallery and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces (and Brothers Yamazaki, which creates an exception only for itself).  I know you said you don't want to use Mirror Gallery, but I'm including it for completeness.

* You can use any old Clone on a legendary creature if you need it to exist quite briefly (such as to get the enter the battlefield trigger on Archangel Avacyn), but you will have to lose all but one of them the next time state based actions are checked.
** This works because the legend rule care about things with the same name:

704.5j If a player controls two or more legendary permanents with the same name, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.”

Since the legend rule is state-based, Rules Lawyer would prevent it from taking effect. Of course, that would run into your "5 mana is too much" concern.

It also has legality concerns since silver bordered.

If Helm of the Host works and you're not too worried about what types of creatures are in your deck, then might I suggest Brass Squire? It's an artifact creature - Myr that can tap to equip target equipment to target creature, utterly removing the 5 mana equip cost. That is if I understand that ability correctly

Helm of the host.
Sorry, it also has a 5 mana cost to equip, but you keep getting them.

The recently released card Double Major copies a creature spell but makes it non-legendary.

Spark Double is now probably the best spell to do this and super cheap and can hit planeswalkers as well as creatures.  If you are specifically looking to duplicate Geist of Saint Traft I suppose you can use Invocation of Saint Traft.  But it seems like the real question was can you copy a triggered ability and yes you can with Strionic Resonator it drops right before Geist of Saint Traft for 2 and can be activated once he can attack.

In addition to what has been mentioned here, Sakashima of a Thousand Faces is a new 4 drop clone that comes with the Mirror Gallery effect on it (giving you both the copy body and the effect, letting normal clone spells work again). It was released in commander legends and meant to be played in commander (it has partner after all) but it is legal to be played in Legacy and Vintage.

what about Sakashima of a Thousand Faces? it does two things, which is both what you want, for four mana, which at least is less than five. ignore that it has "Partner".


text:
Does Illusory Gains make someone else's Commander my own forever?
If I play my Illusory Gains on my opponent's commander, does their commander become mine indefinitely? I have not played this card and I am unsure as to how playing it on a commander works.

Note that if their Commander is a Planeswalker, you can't target it, as Illusory Gains only targets creatures.

Planeswalkers can be creatures. @A.P. meant "Note that if their Commander isn't a creature, you can't target it as Illusory Gains only targets creatures."

You control that player's commander until another creature enters the battlefield under an opponent's control. At that point, Illusory Gains moves to that creature, and the owner regains control of their commander.

That is, it works the same as it would on any creature. It won't let you keep anything indefinitely, not just a commander.

I find this card a little strange... It doesn't specify nor are there any rule specs on the gatherer indicating that the creature goes back to its owners control

The control effect is based on the creature being enchanted by Illusory Gains. Once that is gone, control reverts back to default aka the owner. Think of it as layers of control, with the top layer winning. Once the top layer is gone, the bottom layer wins.

It's actually timestamps of control, not layers of control :) Control changing effects happen in layer 2 [CR 613.1b] in timestamp order [CR 613.6], so the latest timestamp wins.

@ikegami I don't think Jon meant layers in the comp rules sense, just an analogy. You're thinking of the effects in timestamp order, where if the most recent ("the top layer") goes away, the next most recent ("the layer beneath") one takes over.

@Jefromi, I know. Except it's not an analogy. It's really works that way. I just pointed out that the correct word for his "layers" is "timestamps". And you seemed to have done the same thing too.

No. You lose control of the creature when Illusory Gains stops being attached.

Change of control effects are continuous effects, not one-shot effects. The controller is only changed as long as the continuous effect changes it.
Control of a permanent is continually evaluated based on who placed the object on the battlefield and any continuous effects overriding that.
Let's look at a more intuitive continuous effect for a moment. If your opponent has a creature that has a default power/toughness of 3/4, and you create a continuous effect that gives it -2/-2, the creature will revert to being a 3/4 when the continuous effect ends.
Similarly, if your opponent has a creature and you create a continuous effect that changes its controller, the creature will revert to your opponent's control when the continuous effect ends.

The way Illusory Gains works has been answered by others, but I thought I'd tackle the Commander bit.
Commanders become new objects when they change zones just like any other card
The only thing that Commanders "remember" is that they are their owner's commander.

903.3. Each deck has a legendary creature card designated as its commander. This designation is not a characteristic of the object represented by the card; rather, it is an attribute of the card itself. The card retains this designation even when it changes zones.
Example: A commander that’s been turned face down (due to Ixidron’s effect, for example) is still a commander. A commander that’s copying another card (due to Cytoshape’s effect, for example) is still a commander. A permanent that’s copying a commander (such as a Body Double, for example, copying a commander in a player’s graveyard) is not a commander.

Other than that, (and the special rule that allows you to return a Commander to the Command zone if it changes zones), the Commander behaves just like any other creature (or planewalker) in the game.  If it leaves play, it will "forget" any and all effects that were modifying how it behaved.


text:
Lich + Laboratory maniac, replacement effects order
You have Lich and Laboratory Maniac in play, 3 cards in your deck, and you play Solemn Offering or Serene Offering on Lich (either one will heal 4 in this case). Do you win or lose?

Do you mean Serene Offering or Solemn Offering? Divine Offering can't target Lich.

@diego I've replaced the mention of Divine Offering with Serene and Solemn Offering. Conveniently enough, they'll both heal for 4 in this scenario.

You will lose.
As the Offering is resolving you follow the instructions in order, thus first you destroy the Lich, then you gain life. Since Lich is no longer on the battlefield its replacement effect doesn't apply so you will not draw cards instead of gaining life. Then once the Offering is done resolving the Lich's leaves the battlefield trigger will go on the stack and you will lose the game when it resolves.

608.2c The controller of the spell or ability follows its instructions in the order written. However, replacement effects may modify these actions.

Thanks, indeed I forgot the text of divine offering was resolving the liche destruction completely before resolving the heal 4 hp part, hence no more lich replacement effect when the heal happens.


text:
How can I make a creature a Horror?
I was wondering whether there is a card that can make a creature a horror in addition to its other types. The card type does not matter. Is there a card like this?

Yes: Xenograft is an enchantment that adds a creature type of your choice to all your creatures. There are also many cards that add all creature types to one or more creatures, including the creature cards Amoeboid Changeling and Mirror Entity, and the instants Blades of Velis Vel and Shields of Velis Vel.


text:
Can I have priority passed back to me during spell resolution, so that I can do more with my own spell?
So, this is a basic question, but I want to make sure I'm getting this right.
Suppose I have a Lightning Bolt and a Twincast, and I want to bolt my opponent twice.
I know that to do so I can do the following:

Cast lightning bolt.
Hold priority.
Copy it choosing a new target.

Now, what I want to know is if I can cast lightning bolt, pass priority, and then, after checking if my opponent has a response for it, copy it. Like:

Cast lightning bolt
Pass priority.
Oponnent passes priority back without putting anything else on the stack.
Copy lightning bolt.

Is the forth move illegal? My spell resolves right after my opponent passes priority, without I having a second chance to put more stuff on the stack?

What makes you think that you might have an additional priority after your opponent passes priority?

@murgatroid99 tbh I've been uncertain about this too, because I haven't had rule 608.1's full implication spelled out for me like below. it's good to see this asked about.

@murgatroid99 I thought this was a space to ask things I was uncertain about, sorry if I misunderstood the goal of this site.

It wasn't my intention to imply that this question doesn't belong. But in many cases, knowing the reason for asking can inform better answers. That's why I asked. I'm sorry if it came across as criticism or dismissive.

If you wait for your opponent to respond and your opponent has no response, your lightning bolt resolves before you can twincast it.

608.1. Each time all players pass in succession, the spell or ability on top of the stack resolves. (See rule 609, “Effects.”)

You'll only get a chance to copy the bolt if they respond, or if you cast both spells before passing priority the first time.

Each object on the stack, each phase (except Untap), and each step have this exchange of players passing priority. It is commonly referred to as "APNAP" or "Active Player and Non-Active Player." The active player is the player who is currently taking their turn. Whenever a phase or step is entered, any abilities from cards that try to go on the stack will do so, and then the active player will gain priority. The active player will hold priority until that player passes.
If, for some reason, you as the Active Player have 100 mana and 100 1-mana instant spells in your hand, you could cast them, one after another, in response to each of your spells, for example. Then, once you decide to pass priority after the last ability or spell is put on the stack, your opponent would have priority for that very last spell which tries to resolve FIRST. After it resolves or leaves the stack, the next spell would try to resolve and you would gain priority again until passed to your opponent.

APNAP refers to situations when multiple players need to do something st the same time (2 triggered triggering on the same event; etc).

Indeed it does.
More closely, it is only called "APNAP," not "APNAPAP" or "APNAPAPNAPAPNAPAPNAPAP" etc. etc. The active player receives priority once, then the non-active player receives priority once, and then that's it.


text:
A player to skip combat phase in Two-Headed Giant
What happens if a particular player is said to skip his/her combat phase in a Two-Headed Giant game (for instance, if someone had cast Moment of Silence)?
Is the whole team unable to attack, or is only that particular player unable to?

If an effect causes a player to skip a step, phase, or turn, that player’s team does so.
Similarly, if an effect gives a player an extra turn or adds a phase or a step to that player’s turn, that player’s team takes the extra turn, phase, or step.

Thanks for the answer. Were you quoting the rulebook?

Oh, and btw, what if instead of the wording "skip phase", it is said "target player can't attack this turn", would then the outcome be different? (I'm not sure if such card exists though)

805.8. If an effect gives a player an extra turn or adds a phase or step to that player’s turn, that player’s team takes the extra turn, phase, or step. If an effect causes a player to skip a step, phase, or turn, that player’s team does so. If a single effect causes more than one player on the same team to add or skip the same step, phase, or turn, that team adds or skips only that step, phase, or turn. If an effect causes a player to control another player, the controller of that effect controls the affected player’s team.

@Kira I guess the answer to that would depend on the exact wording, but I think it'd be player-specific most of the time. Technically, only creatures attack, players just declare attackers. If the text said "target player can't declare attackers this turn", it would only affect the one targeted player.

I think for an effect like that, the card would say "Creatures target player controls can't attack this turn."

Makes some strange games with the new Emrakul.

The whole team is affected, according to rule 805.8 as of the 28 August 2016 revision of the comprehensive rules:

805.8. If an effect gives a player an extra turn or adds a phase or step to that player’s turn, that player’s team takes the extra turn, phase, or step. If an effect causes a player to skip a step, phase, or turn, that player’s team does so. If a single effect causes more than one player on the same team to add or skip the same step, phase, or turn, that team adds or skips only that step, phase, or turn. If an effect causes a player to control another player, the controller of that effect controls the affected player’s team.

(emphasis added)


text:
How/where can I get comments from strong players on my gameplay?
I'd like to get advice from strong go players - let's say amateur 6D+ or pros. What are my options for getting that advice?
I am not necessarily looking for full game reviews, rather comments on one or two turning points in a game.

So none of the people who put that question on hold is actually interested in go?

The question is definitely not unclear. On SO such a question would be off-topic because it is asking for an off-site resource. I am new to this site, but I couldn't find an indication that such a reason applies here.

GoKibitz is a new website that offers a nice frontend for discussing games. I did not use it myself, but it looks promising.
I have no experience how strong the players are which are commenting regularly, however I saw at least many 1d or 2d comments.
If you are willing to spend money on getting regular full reviews on your games I can highly recommend In-seong's Yunguseng Dojang. It is available for American and European timezone. You are getting lessons and reviews of league matches from high amateur dan players. I participated in the school myself for 1 year.

As I am new to this site I am not sure if such an advertisement is considered good practice here. Please comment if it isn't. I am not completely sure if the question already is a good fit for the site, because there can be very many answers providing different resources. Selecting one of them as the one right answer is probably not possible.

I think what you posted is perfectly fine - and useful - as you are sharing your personal experience as a student. The quality of reviews on the GTL looks muich higher than GoKibitz, but maybe it's just ramping up.

I fully agree on your GTL vs GoKibitz comment. GoKibitz needs some momentum to attract more players if it wants to establish itself in the Go community.

Marking this as answer. As the GTL reviews are gone, GoKibitz seems to be the most promising option.

Join a Go club with strong players. Your club mates will give you comments and hints. Visit Go conventions and go to Go tournaments.
If joining a Go club is not practical for you, consider to take some payed Go lessons by a professional player.

Definitely good options, I am just looking for something "less committed" right now.

Usually there is no "commitment" in joining a Go club. In Germany and probably in other European countries you just go there when you have time. Usually there is no official membership, since the "clubs" are often very small. I would highly recommend to try it!

I talked about commitment because I would have to travel to find a player of that level (6D+). Attending a go convention would be neat, but this question is more about finding quick and specific answers.

The Go Teaching Ladder is a good place to get comments on your games.  Unless you're already a dan player, you won't get comments from 6d+ players, but you also don't need them.  Your game will be reviewed by a player several stones stronger than you, and they will be able too see enough of your mistakes to help you get stronger.

Interesting! How does the GTL validate your rank?

@Christophe: It doesn't need to - your questions will accurately self-identify you at within a stone or two.

I registered, but the site says "Requesting a review is currently disabled."

Unfortunatly this website has just turn off their review system. Others are getting set.

@Kii ok, thanks. Upvoting as this was still good to know.

@Christophe anyway their database will still be available

I just received the GTL newsletter confirming that the active
part of the GTL was shutting down

OGS has a review requests section. I just got a great review there so I'd like to share the link.

Some Go tournaments will feature professional commentators who will also play several "simultaneous" games with players, typically for a small fee, such as $10 or $20 a head. They will remember the salient points of those games and point out the most egregious errors.
These professional commentators also observe and comment on games, but typically only if you are 1-2 dan or higher.


text:
Where can settlements be built near undiscovered hexes?
The note in the rules for explorers and pirates states that "settlements may not be built on intersections adjacent to undiscovered hexes."  I am new to this expansion, does this mean that no undiscovered hex can be within two 'road lengths' of a settlement like the distance rule for settlements in base Catan?

An intersection is formed at the point where three hexes meet. The intersection is hence adjacent to these three hexes. A settlement cannot be built if any of these three hexes is as yet undiscovered. The rule means nothing else, hence a settlement can definitely be built closer to an undiscovered hex than two road lengths away; it just has to be at least one road length away.

" you can build a settlement in two ways: either along a road, just like in base Catan; OR, by landing a setler ship (...). You observe the distance rule in both cases" (p.5).
I assume the distance rule referred to is the base Catan distance rule of two road lengths away, at minimum.

This does not answer the question, which concerns placement relative to undiscovered hexes. Quoting a rule about a general point that does not address the specific point is not helpful.


text:
Can tokens created by planeswalkers do commander damage
I was playing a game with someone and they said they do because planeswalkers can't attack, so the tokens created by them count as commander creatures. Is that true? I can't find any rules that talk about this.

I assume that the planeswalker in question was a commander? Otherwise I'm not sure I see the logic.

If your planeswalker commander had an ability like Gideon's and could turn into a creature or if you use something like Mycosynth Lattice and March of the Machines, then your planeswalker can kill someone with commander damage.

Rule 903.3 says

Each deck has a legendary creature card designated as its commander. This designation is not a characteristic of the object represented by the card; rather, it is an attribute of the card itself. The card retains this designation even when it changes zones.

Only the cards that start the game as commanders count as commanders and can deal commander damage.

Well, technically any card that started as a commander can deal commander damage. :)

Apply my statement over all players and it's the same thing.

@murgatorid99 - but you can gain control of someone else's commander and deal commander damage with it. As written, your sentence may be interpreted to mean that only your commander can deal commander damage (on your behalf).

OK, I changed it. Is that better?

No, the token does not count. Being a commander is a property of the card itself, and is non-transferable.


text:
Can I interact with a creature exiled with Eldrazi Displacer?
So I've been playing an Abzan displacer deck for some time now and the following interaction only just occurred to me:
I have an Eldrazi Displacer and a Wasteland Strangler in play and my opponant has two creatures.
Can I target one of his creatures, and then in response to it entering the battlefield being on top of the stack (whilst it's still in exile) flicker my wasteland strangler and put that creature into the graveyard from exile instead of back on the battlefield and obviously give another creature -3/-3?
I think the crux of the question is: is the creature targeted by eldrazi displacer intractable whilst in exile?

OTOH, Wasteland Strangler's ability could move a card exiled with Otherworldly Journey or Journey to Nowhere into its owner's graveyard. If it did, the card wouldn't return the battlefield.

Specifically, the effect of Displacer, while the ability itself uses the stack, the creature actually blinked is not on the stack.  When the ability resolves, the entirety of the ability happens, before priority is regained.

Specifically for Eldrazi Displacer, no. Its ability's effects all resolve at once, so the creature will be exiled and be put back onto the battlefield immediately. Unlike say, Flickerwisp, there is no delay in returning the creature, so there is no chance for you to target it in exile.


text:
Is "create a token" the same as "put a token onto the battlefield" in Kaladesh?
I'm looking at the new Kaladesh set, and there's the word "create", as in:

Create two 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature tokens. (from Servo Exhibition)

Does that mean the same thing as:

Put two 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature tokens onto the battlefield.

or is there some subtle difference I'm missing?
(The fact that the Oracle Text for Raise the Alarm now uses "create" tells me that it probably means the same thing, but I'm not sure.)

It's identical; it's just a new way of writing it introduced in Kaladesh. The release notes explain it:

“Create” is a new term for an old concept: the act of putting a token onto the battlefield.
[...]

To create a token, put it onto the battlefield under your control.

This new term doesn’t represent any functional change from tokens as you’ve known them. No rules for tokens or putting them onto the battlefield are changing other than the words used to present this game concept. The text of older cards that create tokens will be updated.

They do mean the exact same thing. (Proof)


text:
What are the most expensive cards in Magic: The Gathering?
I've heard of the Black Lotus and Dual Lands. Are there any other really expensive cards in Magic: The Gathering?

What do you mean by "really expensive"? Are you asking for the list of cards over a certain price? A list of the top N most expensive cards? Are we talking about the most expensive printing or the cheapest?

Either way would work. Most expensive printing (I imagine this will probably mean a lot of cards from Alpha and Beta).

Even then, it's not really going to be that simple. Magic cards don't exactly have a set or standardized price. It's just whatever price individual retailers are willing to sell or buy for.

For most cards you could probably say something reasonable based on a large number of recent sales but the most expensive cards are so rare that they don't get sold much so it's even harder to pin down the price.

I don't need prices, I just find it useful to know some of the more expensive ones because they often come up in conversation. I'm not looking to buy or sell.

It would probably be many cards from the very beginning of MTG. It was a special time in MTG. R&D was virtually non existent and there is a lot of cards that would never again see the light of day because of there ridiculous over powered nature. There is also the issue of the reserved list that ensures many of these cards scarcity.
If Star City Games prices are anything to go by here is a rough top ten. For arguments sake I use the Near Mint prices.
10) Alpha Mana Vualt - 800$
9) Alpha Shivan Dragon - 1000$
8) Alpha Birds of Paradise - 1000$
7) Alpha Time Vault - 1500$
6) Alpha Time Twister - 2500$
5) Alpha ANBU Duals between 1500$ for a Plateau and 8000$ for a Underground Sea
4) Alpha Moxes between 3000$ for a Mox Emerald and 6000$ for a Mox Sapphire.
3) Alpha Time Walk - 4000$
2) Alpha Ancestral Recall - 5000$
1) Alpha Black Lotus - 20 000$

"9) Alpha Shivan Dragon - 1000$" - That's adorable!

Just note that these are near mint prices. A near mint Alpha card would be exceptionally rare as no one really took care of there magic cards in 1994.

True, but even so, "one of these things is not like the others", power level Wise.

I guess in the case of the dragon it is for people who remember an era of mtg where a dragon was worth more than duals.

All the others say "This is a necessary card to compete at the highest level of Vintage". Shivan Dragon says "He was my favourite when I was 12."

Casual appeal is actually a much higher driving force in mtg card prices than tournament viability. There is no reason to think Alpha cards are immune to this phenomena.

Really? Because the highs always seem to be tournament staples, especially the manabase.

To be clear, I love that someone loves Shivan Dragon that much.

No one needs Alpha cards to be competitive.  Beta 100% covers Alpha. Alpha just had a small run

Here's one possibility for what you're looking for: a search for all of the cards that TCGPlayer.com sells (directly or as a middleman) for at least $200. At this time, it lists 64 cards in that range.

The most expensive magic cards are:
Richard Garfield special occasions- these cards are special editions the Richard Garfield had printed for special occasions in his life.  They were really only given to friends and family.  They are so rare to even find one for sale is a ridiculous task.
Summer/Edgar magic Dual Lands(or anything summer magic)-  these Duals are insanely rare They can easily fetch $10,000 each for the blue ones.  Summer magic was a second print run of revised that had much better coloring.  however, there were so many print errors in the run that wizards decided not to ship it.  Luckily for us, a few cases got released to the public by mistake.  Blue hurricane is one card that came from this "set".  Basic islands from summer magic have been sold for $500.

Also, Artist proofs of The power 9 are more money than the playable cards.

you may want to edit that into your answer to make it more complete.

The most expensive cards tend to be things that weren't intentionally released. WotC does test printing of cards and many of these have made it outside of the company and can be worth 10s of thousands of dollars.
There was a large test printing of 4th edition done by a different printer, many displays of these were retrieved from a dumpster at WotC and are available on the open market. They are referred to as Summer Magic and are hard to tell apart from the normal printing of the set. ABUgames have a Summer Tropical Island listed for $39,999. This is not a crazy price for these very rare and powerful cards.

Yes but are there really people who are willing to pay such a premium for a card that serves no greater practical purpose as the 250 dollar versions? Has there actually been a sale at such a price?

Yes, it is sort of "this is the price that it's not selling at."

Yes there are people who spend that much, when you see the player with archivist gloves and triple sleeved legacy deck has white bordered duals, you can assume they are Summer Magic ones. (Yes I've seen this)

Snapcaster Mage from Innistrad, It's not nearly as high as some of the other cards mentioned but it does come up frequently in conversation. I think last I checked the foil was over $100.

There are probably 100 foils that are higher priced than Snapcaster Mage

@LovesTha that's why in my post I said "It's not nearly as high as some of the other cards mentioned..." I mainly mentioned it because it does come up in conversation VERY frequently at least it does in my LGS.

This actually came up in a conversation yesterday, so thank you! I will +1 as soon as I get one more reputation.


text:
Where (or to whom) do sold items go?
In Munchkin you can sell items which amount to not less than 1000 gold pieces or multiples, in exchange for levels.
Am I right that selling is a form of discarding, that is you are "selling" to the "discard pile" of the Treasure deck?

Selling is a form of discarding, as emphasized by the World of Munchkin FAQ (part of the "The rules say that cards in play must be traded or discarded. When can I discard them?" question). Sold items would go to the respective discard pile.

For completeness' sake, the rules have the following to say about selling items in general, also mentioning that selling items is discarding them:

Selling Items for Levels:
At  any  point  during  your  turn  except during combat or Running Away, you may discard Items worth a total of at least 1,000 Gold Pieces and immediately go up one level. ("No Value"  cards  are  the  same  as  zero  Gold  Pieces.)  If  you  discard  (for instance) 1,100 Gold Pieces worth, you don't get change. But if you can manage 2,000 worth, you can go up two levels at once, and so on. You may sell Items from your hand as well as those you are carrying. You may not sell Items to go to Level 10.

Thanks, I had searched FAQs for that clarification but I missed it. This seals it.


text:
When do "when you cast this spell" effects resolve?
If I cast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and target my opponent's two Plains on the board, does the exile effect resolve before my opponent has a chance to tap one of the lands to play Path to Exile?
My guess is that the cast effect would go on the stack & resolve prior to Ulamog being on the field and in play as a legal target for Path, but I'd like some confirmation to be certain.

Note that you can not have mana on the battlefield, mana can only exist in your mana pool. You can have lands and other permanents that produce mana on the battlefield, but they aren't the same thing as mana.

Which explains the power level issues with cards like Mox Ruby. Because you get a +1 mana acceleration for free. Makes sense.

Also, as an aside, tapping for mana doesn't use the stack.

I've updated to use the card "Plains"; am I right in thinking this is what you meant?

@deworde Yes, that is correct

You can exile your opponents' Plains before Ulamog resolves, but you can't stop your opponent from getting mana from them. Assuming no one has anything else to do besides the things you mentioned, it'd go like this:

You cast Ulamog.
Ulamog's "when you cast..." ability triggers, and you target your opponents' two Plains.
Your opponent taps both Plains for white mana, leaving it in their mana pool. (They float two white.)
The triggered ability resolves, exiling both Plains.
Ulamog resolves, entering the battlefield.
Your opponent spends one of the white mana to cast Path to Exile.

From your question it sounds like you might be thinking of lands and mana as being the same thing, but as that sequence of events pretty clearly shows, the lands are separate from the mana they produce.

Note that the mana "leaves" the pool at the end of the step, so if you move to combat or to the end of your turn, they've missed their chance.

But you can't force your opponent to move to any step/phase without having an opportunity to act one last time in the current step/phase.

Yeah, I can't imagine they'll have the presence of mind to float the mana then make the mistake of just agreeing to move on to the next step/phase.

@Jefromi You'd think so.

No, you cannot prevent your opponent from tapping their Plains for mana.
Specifically, the play you describe plays out in the following sequence of events:

You cast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. It goes on the stack.
The spell's triggered ability triggers, and goes on the stack on top of Ulamog.
Now you have a chance to respond. From your description, you probably do nothing.
Now your opponent has a chance to respond. They tap their two Plains, and if they're planning to cast Path to Exile, they probably don't do anything else.
The triggered ability resolves, and the Plains are exiled.
If nobody has a response at this time, Ulamog resolves.
Now you have priority, but if you choose to do nothing, or you cast a spell or activate an ability, your opponent has the chance to cast Path to Exile targeting Ulamog.

Got it. I dont have enough rep to upvote unfortunately. I also will accept Jefromi's answer on basis of submission time. I'll upvote you when I can!

@RayGe Do keep in mind there are also minor differences between the two answers, which is why I upvoted Murgatroid's answer over Jefromi's.

@Waterseas is one more technically correct than the other?

@Waterseas You're certainly welcome to vote how you like, but you could also consider commenting if you see an answer and decide it's not good enough to upvote.

@RayGe As far as I can tell, the difference is pretty much just that murgatroid was more explicit about what's on the stack at each step. The sequence of events is the same in both.

@Jefromi The big part was Murgatroid was more explicit about passing of priority, which is a big thing that a lot of newer players don't get, and in my opinion, should be engrained whenever possible.

@Waterseas I see. I tend to omit it in things like this because priority is passed a lot of times, and I don't necessarily think "you could've done something here!" every time really helps answer the question. Good to know, though, thanks.

I do appreciate the extra info regarding priority. Sorry if I've caused a bit of an argument here!

@RayGe Nah, not trying to argue (had already upvoted this too) I just wanted to know what the differences were since it sounded like there was actually something wrong with my answer.


text:
Can something have multiples of the same aura?
Can I have duplicate enchantment auras on the same creature?
Example: I enchanted my Kor Spiritdancer with Ethereal Armor, can I cast another Ethereal Armor on her?
Yes or no, and what's the ruling reference?

Yes you can. The only limit on enchantments is the same limit that all permanents have: the Legendary rule. You can only have 1 permanent in play of a given name if they are legendary.
However, even if you enchant a creature with the same enchantment, subsequent enchantments might not do anything. For example, you can only get lifelink once.
Take your Ethereal Armor example, the power/toughness bonus would stack, and presuming those are your only enchantments on the board, each would provide +2/+2 for a total of +4/+4.  However, granting the First Strike ability on the 2nd enchantment would do nothing, since that ability is already granted by the first enchantment.

There's also the World limit and various deck-construction limits.

You could get around the deck construction limits by using something like Clone.  So, for each clone-like card, you could have 4 more of a creature on the battlefield.

Also because I've seen this question come up more times than it should - no, giving something first strike twice does not give it double strike.

Yes, though providing a rules reference isn't as easy as you think. There isn't a rule that explicitly says you can't enchant a single permanent with multiple copies of the same enchantment. Rather, since it isn't prohibited by the Rules, or specifically made not allowed by a card, you are allowed to do so.

Thanks so much! I couldn't find anything against it either, but it was sort of a house made rule that some of my friends played by.

(re: the answer) Well, technically I'd say the rule that allows you to put enchantments on creatures doesn't give any restrictions. I bring this up because the rules of Magic generally work by starting from nothing and specifying what you can do. So if you want to take some action in the game, there had better be a rule that allows you to do so. In this case, there is; there's a rule that lets you put an enchantment on a creature.

@DavidZ - Rule 303 for enchantments, and the rest of the rules in general, are less about what you can do, and more about how you do it. After a description of how things work, there are a number of circumstances that delineate what can't happen.


text:
Anticipate in response to instant
So I was playing in a standard tournament for fun the other day, I was playing red white black mardu warriors against white blue control.
I played Crackling Doom forcing him to sacrifice his only creature after he assigned his blocker.
He responded to my Crackling Doom by playing an Anticipate. He then proceeded to look at the top three cards, took one (which was a counterspell or something, whatever it was, it countered my Crackling Doom), he said that he could play it on the stack after having drawn it.
I said that he couldn't, but he proceeded to tell me like 3 times it was on the stack, but he didn't believe me. Doesn't the Anticipate have to resolve before he can even look at his top three cards?

If this sort of thing happens in a tournament, you should probably ask a judge.

It's also good to know that since you played Crackling Doom after blockers are assigned it wouldn't make your creature deal damage (if your creature doesn't have trample). Once a creature is blocked it stays blocked even when all it's blockers are removed. You probably should have played Crackling Doom before combat. Of course it would help with saveing your attacker when the blocking creature would kill it

He can do that. And Anticipate does have to resolve before he can look at his top 3 cards. When he played Anticipate in response to your Crackling Doom, it went on top of the stack, with Crackling Doom under it. The stack resolves from top to bottom, so his Anticipate would resolve first. After it resolves, he still has a chance to cast more instants while Crackling Doom is still on the stack.
These are the specific steps that happened:

You have priority; you cast Crackling Doom. You pass priority.
He has priority. He casts Anticipate.
You both pass priority, causing the top spell on the stack to resolve.
After Anticipate resolves, you as the active player get priority again. You could cast an instant here; in this case you pass priority.
He has priority, he casts an instant that he got from Anticipate.
You both pass priority, causing his new instant to resolve.
You both pass priority again. If Crackling Doom is still on the stack (if his spell isn't a counter spell), NOW Crackling Doom resolves.

The specific rules about this:

116.3b The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.
116.3c If a player has priority when he or she casts a spell, activates an ability, or takes a special action, that player receives priority afterward.
116.3d If a player has priority and chooses not to take any actions, that player passes. If any mana is in that player's mana pool, he or she announces what mana is there. Then the next player in turn order receives priority.
116.4. If all players pass in succession (that is, if all players pass without taking any actions in between passing), the spell or ability on top of the stack resolves or, if the stack is empty, the phase or step ends.

Okay thanks for the clarification!
When you put it like this, it makes sense, i had my order on the stack wrong.
At the same time, he was wrong, he was saying something else to me, but now i see that anticipate would resolve before the crackling doom, which means he would have the counter in his hand for the crackling doom, he was telling me that it went on the stack of his anticipate, which is super silly.
Thanks you two guys for responding so soon as well! I like this website


text:
Can I stack ongoing action cards on the same base in Smash Up?
In Smash Up, can I play multiple actions on a base?

multiple different or multiple the same?

Yes, unless an earlier played action card or minion on the base prohibits that.
In the rules there is a section that states that the rules are not perfect. There will be clashes. And there are some tie-breakers.

If rule A prohibits X and rule B grants X, rule A wins.
If all else fails, the player whose turn it is decides.

Yes
You're typically limited to one action per turn but you are allowed to play multiple actions on a single base. If you have the cards you can even play multiple of the same action on a single base. The only thing that would inhibit this is if a minion, base or action prevented actions.


text:
Will Open the Vaults let me return Bestow creatures as Auras?
If I use Open the Vaults and there is a Bestow enchantment creature in my graveyard, can I bring it onto the field as an aura? Or just as a creature?

No, you can't use Bestow when you bring a creature with Bestow onto the battlefield without casting it.
If you bring creatures on to the field without casting it, you can't pay the Bestow cost, and you can't enchant another creature that way.

Bestow [cost]
You may cast this card by paying [cost] rather than its mana cost. If you chose to pay this spell’s bestow cost, it becomes an Aura enchantment and gains enchant creature. These effects last until one of two things happens: this spell has an illegal target as it resolves or the permanent this spell becomes, becomes unattached.

@ikegami Sure it is. "Paying a card’s bestow cost follows the rules for paying alternative costs in rules 601.2b and 601.2e–g."


text:
How does Spellheart Chimera count Fuse or Split cards?
I have a Spellheart Chimera. The creature gains +1/+0 for each sorcery or instant in the owners graveyard.
How does this work with such cards as Far // Away?
I've seen a few opinions on this matter, but cannot find an official ruling from WotC (or whoever hands down official rulings).
Can someone provide references to the official rulings, or the location of these rulings so I can look it up?

If "Far // Away" was the only card in your graveyard, Spellheart Chimera would be 1/3
Split cards always count as a single card:

708.2. Although split cards have two castable halves, each split card is only one card. For example, a player who has drawn or discarded a split card has drawn or discarded one card, not two.

Note that the Chimera asks for instant or sorcery cards, an important difference to just instant/sorcery. The latter only exists on the stack.
It would also count as a single card if the two halves had different types, for example if one half was instant and the other a sorcery.

They don't make half of a fuse card instant and half of a fuse card sorcery, do they? I'm not sure about the old split cards, but I'm pretty sure that all fuse cards are either instant/instant or sorcery/sorcery. That way they both have the same timing limitations. But either way, its still only +1/+0.

AFAIK the 2 halves of split cards always have the same type, true. It was a hypothetical anyway.

Okay, that makes sense.

The Amonkhet aftermath cards and newest Ravnica sets introduced spilt cards of different types

Edit:
My previous answer was wrong, but I will leave it so someone doesn't fall into the same trap I did.  The relevant rule is this:

708.6a Anything that performs a positive comparison (such as asking if a card is red) or a relative comparison (such as asking if a card’s
converted mana cost is 3 or less) involving one or more split cards in
any zone other than the stack or involving one or more fused split
spells gets only one answer. This answer is “yes” if either side of
each split card in the comparison would return a “yes” answer if
compared individually.
Example: Void reads, “Choose a number. Destroy all artifacts and
creatures with converted mana cost equal to that number. Then target
player reveals his or her hand and discards all nonland cards with
converted mana cost equal to the number.” If a player casts Void and
chooses 1, his or her opponent would discard Assault/Battery because
its converted mana costs are 1 and 4. The same is true if the player
chooses 4. If the player chooses 5, however, Assault/Battery would be
unaffected.

Since at least one side is an instant or sorcery it gets back a yes answer and only counts as one.
To quote one of the rulings from the Gatherer page for Far / Away (also rule 702.100b):

In every zone except the stack, split cards have two sets of
characteristics and two converted mana costs. If anything needs
information about a split card not on the stack, it will get two
values.

So when the game goes to count the number of instant and sorceries in your graveyard for Spellheart Chimera power and gets to Far / Away it gets back that is is an instant twice and therefore counts it as two instants.
To give another example from the Wizards FAQ on Dragon Maze rules:

In every zone except the stack, split cards have two sets of
characteristics and two converted mana costs. If anything needs
information about a split card not on the stack, it will get two
values. For example, if a player reveals Down & Dirty due to
Duskmantle Seer's ability ("At the beginning of your upkeep, each
player reveals the top card of his or her library, loses life equal to
that card's converted mana cost, then puts it into his or her hand."),
the game will see its converted mana cost as 4 and 3. This translates
to that player losing a total of 7 life.

Far//Away would return "Instant + Instant" when asked about its card type, but it's still a single card and will count as 1 for Chimera.

@Hackworth Then how come the Duskmantle Seer's ability gets back the two values 4 and 3 for a total of 7 damage and not 7 as a single value?

The card has two halves, each with its own mana costs, and you are correct that the mana costs would be added if something asked for its CMC. Hypothetically, if Far//Away had Instant on one half and Sorcery on the other, the whole card would count as as an "Instant Sorcery" card, adding the characteristics together. BUT it is still a single card, and when something such as the Chimera asks about the number of cards with a certain characteristic, not about the characteristic itself, split cards still only count as 1, even if both halves fulfill the condition.

@Hackworth Thanks for pointing that out.  I found the relevant rule and edited my answer appropriately.


text:
Can I sacrifice the same creature twice with Blood Host?
So for example I am using Blood Host and I sacrifice Reassembling Skeleton, then revive him using his ability. The description says "Sacrifice another creature" to activate the ability. Because I have already sacrificed reassembling skeleton that turn, can I still sacrifice it again after it has been revived.

"Sacrifice another creature" means "sacrifice a creature other than Blood Host"

Yes you can, in this case 'another creature' means a creature other than Blood Host, not a creature that you haven't sacrificed before.
Even if that weren't the case once it move from the battlefield to the graveyard the first time the game no longer sees it as the same creature.

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. There are seven exceptions to this rule: ...

So you are free to keep sacrificing the skeletons and reassembling them as long as you have the mana to do it.

In this case I believe 400.7 to be a red herring; the question stemmed completely from the lack of understanding of what "another" means. Is there a specific rule that defines "another" to be "other than the card this 'another' is printed on"?

@GendoIkari I wasn't able to find such a rule, I am pretty sure the game uses the normal English definition. I just included 400.7 to clarify why 'another' can't mean what they thought it did.

Yes, you can do that.
Your title here is a bit misleading; you're not actually sacrificing the same creature twice:

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. There are seven exceptions to this rule: ...

(none of the exceptions apply here)
So once you reassemble your skeleton, it's just... another creature. It doesn't matter that another one represented by the same card got sacrificed before. It's a creature on the battlefield now, so it can be sacrificed. The only restriction on Blood Host's ability is that it has to be another creature (besides that Blood Host), i.e. Blood Host can't drink its own blood.

I think the Reassembling Skeleton flavor text really nails the fact that it's actually another creature: "Though you may see the same bones, you'll never see the same skeleton twice."


text:
Would Restore the Peace affect a hexproof creature?
Would restore the peace affect creatures with hexproof?
I have Archetype of Endurance (all creatures you control have hexproof, your opponent cannot have hexproof). I attack and then my opponent plays Restore the Peace, would this affect my creatures since they have hexproof?

Yes.
Hexproof means that the creature with Hexproof cannot be the target of spells or abilities an opponent controls. Restore the Peace does not target creatures, it's a global effect, so Hexproof does not offer any protection in this case.

As Hackworth said,
Restore the Peace will effect creatures with hexproof. Hexproof creatures are protected from spells that "target" them, but aren't protected from spells that effect the entire battlefield (even those with conditionals).
A card like Restore the Peace effects each creature that dealt damage, and would therefore effect hexproof creatures because it does not target them.


text:
Does Double Strike mean you count as Attacking twice?
Does Narset, Enlightened Master's ability trigger twice if she has double strike, since she has an ability that says "When (she) attacks"?

All double strike means is the creature deals both first strike and normal combat damage. They only "attack" once, but they "deal damage" twice.

No.
The trigger, "Whenever ~ attacks" means "Whenever ~ is declared as an attacking creature". A creature with double strike will deal damage in the two combat damage steps, but will only be declared as an attacker once per turn. (Normally, unless some other effect is creating additional combat phases.)

No. Declaring a creature to attack only happens once per combat phase, no matter how often it deals combat damage.
There are some cards that grant you additional combat phases.
A creature with Double Strike would only trigger "on dealing (combat) damage" triggers twice.

If, however, Narset also is enchanted by Curiosity (as well as DS), she will count as dealing combat damage to a player twice, so you would draw two cards.

Hi, and welcome to the site. While this may be relevant to the broader issue, this doesn't answer the question of whether double strike counts as attacking twice for the purpose of attack triggers. You may have mistaken this place for behaving like a forum and accepting general discussion on a matter - it doesn't. We're a Q&A site, and answers are expected to directly answer the question. Please see our [tour] to check out how this site works.

As an extra note to doppelgreener's comment, your answer would have made a good comment for additional information if it had been made in response to the top answer.

Actually, it does count as attacking twice. According to the mtg wiki and some other referances, there is a first-strike attack phase and a regular attack phase. Take a look Here at the wiki. So, due to the fact that she is attacking twice, that power would be activated twice when you declare that she is attacking. If you do not believe me, take a look at some of these other questions where people have asked similar things:
Double Strike Creatures and Abilities
Triggering abilities Twice With Double Strike
Hope I helped,
-Nick

Unfortunately this is not correct.  "Attacking" and "dealing combat damage" are two different concepts.  There are two combat damage steps and a creature with double-strike will deal damage in both of them, but there is only one declare attackers step and that is when any "when ~ attacks" abilities will trigger.  The threads you linked to refer to creatures with abilities like "when ~ deals combat damage".

No problem! It's an easy mistake to make.

This answer should not be deleted. It's wrong, but it highlights an easy mistake to make. From the FAQ, "Answers that are wrong or that dispense poor advice should be downvoted, not deleted."


text:
Does "return" from graveyard to Zone X require a card to have been in Zone X?
When an ability says, return X from Zone A to Zone B, can the ability only be used if X was in Zone B previously?
In particular, consider the Reassembling Skeleton's ability text:

{1}{B}: Return Reassembling Skeleton from your graveyard to the battlefield
  tapped.

If I was forced to discard a Reassembling Skeleton from my hand or library, am I prohibited from "returning" it to the battlefield?
If not, can the "return" ability be used at any time? Or only during the turn in which the card entered the graveyard?

When an ability says to "return" a card from one zone to another, the card does not need to have ever been in the zone it is "returning" to. "Return" is just the word they use on Magic cards to describe moving between certain zones (graveyard to battlefield or hand, battlefield to hand). Rule 400.7 says

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

The card in the graveyard doesn't count as the same object as the card in your hand or the permanent on the battlefield, and it doesn't know what zone it used to be in.
The ability itself is just an activated ability that can be activated if the card is in your graveyard. Like any other activated ability, you can activate it any time you have priority.