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Do creatures with Defender ability die?
If Angelic Wall (0/4) blocks a creature with a power of 5, would Angelic Wall die? My brother is playing Magic 2013 on his iPad, and basically when his creatures with Defender (the ability) blocks a stronger creature, the defenders never die.
I keep telling him they do die in the actual card game but every reference I find just says they do not attack but not whether or not they die. His reasoning is that they just absorb damage to lessen the affect of trample, for example.

I edited your post a fair amount, including replacing some of the terminology you used, which could have been causing some confusion. For example, creatures don't attack each other - creatures attack a player (or planeswalker) and that player's creatures block, then the creatures deal damage to each other. Creatures with Defender can't attack - but they do deal damage equal to their power just like everything else.

I also guessed that the iPad game is Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, which was developed by Stainless Games - hopefully that's right! (And I'd be really surprised if that game doesn't use the rules correctly...)

Thank you for the clarification and edits. Yes, he called me the other day basically saying he kept blocking stronger creatures with his wall that had "defender" ability but his creature never died and vice versa with the computers defender enabled creatures. It didn't sound right to me though as I understood only creatures which state they are indestructible can not die.

Well, if you can get a specific example from him, it'd make a reasonable rules question here. Otherwise I guess all we can do is speculate - maybe it was a Fog Bank!

I'd be amazed if your brother wasn't playing with Fog Banks.  Which have a special reason for not dying when blocking a big creature, unrelated to their having Defender.

The short: Yes any creature that suffers leathal damage 'dies' including those with Defender.
A wall as they were previously known, is a creature with defender.
If it takes 5 damage it is destroyed.(Dies)
Rule 119 all parts but this one in particular:

119.5. Damage dealt to a creature or planeswalker doesn't destroy it. Likewise, the source of that damage doesn't destroy it. Rather,
  state-based actions may destroy a creature or planeswalker, or
  otherwise put it into its owner's graveyard, due to the results of the
  damage dealt to that permanent. See rule 704.

And the state based action is what sends the creature to the grave yard:

704.5g If a creature has toughness greater than 0, and the total damage marked on it is greater than or equal to its toughness, that
  creature has been dealt lethal damage and is destroyed. Regeneration
  can replace this event.

And Defender:

702.3. Defender
702.3a Defender is a static ability.
702.3b A creature with defender can't attack.
702.3c Multiple instances of defender on the same creature are redundant.

So a 'Defender' is simply a creature with an ability. Any creature that has damage marked on it that is greater than it's toughness, is destroyed as a state based action.

Awesome thanks! Is 119.5 basically saying that damage does not destroy a creature unless it is more damage than the creature has toughness? That rule is confusing me a bit. Also do you know where I can get these rules from?

the comprehensive rules can be donwloaded in four diffrernt formats form the wizards web site. 119 basically is just drawing the distinction that damage is not what destroys a creature, the state based action which looks for damaged creatures with damage equal to or exceeding their toughness is what destroys the creature. I am not sure why they needed this distinction but they have it.

Thank you for the link. My and my brother are new to the game. Not quite sure what "state based action" is referring to but I will try to figure it out. Thanks again for your comprehensive asnwer :)

well I would not suggest diving into the comprehensive rules yet then. Use them as a means to solve arguments or figure out really sticky situations. For now play as much as you can using 'basic' rules and get a firm understanding. The Comprehensive rules can be ver dense and intimidating especially to new players.

lol, yea sometimes it is taking like 30 minutes between turns to search for the exact meaning of an ability and the proper way to proceed. I've been searching for the answer above for days.

wel lthen yes I would suggest downloading the comp rules. If you get the text version it is very fats to search using a text editor for the ability name. They are all defined in the comp rules with references to other rules where necessary. The game is a bit hard to get into at first but once you start it gets easier.

@Damainman but also welcome to the site and feel free to bring questions here if you get stumped!


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Can I use both abilities of Tainted Field? What's the difference?
When using Tainted Field, can I use both abilities if I have a Swamp? I was told I can only use one ability or the other but not both, but I do not understand the benefit of using one over the other. They both basically seem the same to me.

@Tacroy Your title tweaks are certainly valid edits, but I would encourage you to also edit the rest of the question while you're at it. There's almost always something else you can improve!

They can both be used but only one can be used at a time. This is because to use either ability, you need to tap the card and it can not be tapped twice
The second ability lets you produce colored mana where the first ability only lets you produce colorless mana.
Note also that you must control a swamp in order to use the second ability.
So when you play that land, you can immidiatly tap it for colorless mana if you do not control a swamp. If you do control a swamp, then you can tap it for either a white or a black mana or a colorless mana. If you do not need specifically a white or a black mana, then yes both abilities produce one mana which can be used to pay a colorless cost.
This is of course important because unless you are playing with primarily artifacts, you are going to need mana of a specific color.
This card imparticular allows you to play one land that can produce a single mana of two different colors under specific circumstances. This is very usefull in a deck that has cards of the two colors in it.

Comprehensive rules:
All lands are permanents with no color that have at least one mana ability.
Basic lands have the ability to produce when tapped a single mana of their type.

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

I think I may have been playing wrong. Does that mean that if I had a card which specifically needed a Blue mana to play, then tainted field would not help me summon that card? I was tapping the first ability as any color I needed for certain cards.

yes you have certainly been playing very wrong. One of the fundamental parts of MTG is casting costs and colors. producing a colorless mana does not produce a 'wild' mana it produces a mana with no color. This means if you need a blue mana, it is of no help to you.

check out rule 106 and 107 in the comprehensive rules. theat is where numbers and mana are defined.

Quick verification, if a card asks for colorless mana to summon then I can play any color mana right? I'm downloading the rules now.

yes it is very common for artifacts in particular to have a colorless cost. These costs can be paid with any combination of colored mana since the color does not matter.

the important thing here is that you do not need colorless mana to pay colorless costs, but you do need colored mana to pay colored costs.

@Damainman Please please don't try to learn the game from the comprehensive rules. They're insanely detailed and specific, to make sure there are definite rules for everything. Start with the basic rules, or even a computer version.

Thank you for the link, I have downloaded that now too and will have my brothers and nephews start from there.

We quote the CR so people can verify our answers, and because someone people want to know why the answer to their question is what it is. But yeah, their extent makes them a poor starting point.

Don't confuse triggered abilities (which react to an event) and activated abilities.
If an object has two triggered abilities that trigger on the same event ("Whenever this becomes tapped, ..."), both will trigger.
If an object has two activated abilities ("{T}: ..."), they are can only be activated one at a time, and you need to pay the cost for each ability you want to activate. In fact, you can use an activated ability as often as you can pay the activation cost.
If you use Tainted Field's first ability, the land would normally be tapped, so you wouldn't be able to play the activation cost of either abilities again until your next turn.
Same goes for the second ability.

Thank you for the details. Can you provide an example of " In fact, you can use an activated ability as often as you can pay the activation cost." ?

Dragon Hatchling. But even Tainted Field's abilities could be reused if you managed to untap Tainted Field somehow.

You saying on the Dragon Hatchling, I can play 3 Red mana towards his ability and turn him into a 3/1 ? If so I have also been playing wrong in this regards as I would have only used that ability once with 1 red mana instead of using all my free red mana.

Well, technically, you have to activate the ability three times for one mana, but the end result is indeed making it a 3/1 for 3 mana. (You can even do it after blockers are declared.)

Exception: Basking Rootwalla

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Does a player with a recurring action need to remind other players each time it would take affect?
For example, when using Sulfuric Vortex does its owner need to remind each player at the beginning of their upkeep to take the damage? Or is a case of, if its owner forgets to tell you, then you do nothing?
Similar question for Falkenrath Noble: if I forget to gain a life and forget to target a player to lose a life then does the ability never take effect? When is it too late - the next player's upkeep? The end of my turn?

The word to look for is may.  For example, the rules text for Bred for the Hunt says:

Whenever a creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it deals
  combat damage to a player, you may draw a card.

If a triggered ability says "may", It's up to the owner of the ability to draw a card. If he forgets, that's too bad for him.
The rules text for  Sulfuric Vortex says:

At the beginning of each player's upkeep, Sulfuric Vortex deals 2
  damage to that player.

It says "deals damage" instead of "you may have Sulfiric Vortex deal 2 damage".  Without the "may", it's not optional. The Infraction Procedure Guide says:

You aren't allowed to miss your own triggered abilities, and your
  opponent isn't required to remind you about them.

So not announcing the trigger is a rules infraction.  If you do forget a trigger in a casual game (regular rule enforcement):

If a triggered ability is forgotten (or any other game error is made)
  and the error is discovered later, players should alert the judge. The
  judge will try and fix the error if possible and, if not, the game
  will just continue.

The responsibility for announcing the trigger lies with the player who owns the ability.  While other players are not required to announce the trigger, it's a good idea to do so.  If the owner notices two rounds later, it will be applied retroactively.
Official tournaments are different (competitive and professional rule enforcement):

What the judge will do when you miss your triggers:
  your opponent gets to decide whether he or she wants the trigger to
  happen or not.

That makes for more competitive but less enjoyable games.

Looks like the rules just changed!  "On a brighter note, it is never an infraction to not mention a triggered ability you don't control. This change was made several months ago"... I'm updating the answer. :)

lol thanks for looking into this further! My nephew had Sulfuric Vortex but kept forgetting to remind me about the trigger, so I wasn't sure if I should not apply it or keep reminding him at the start of my turn.

the crux of current rules is basically "you should remember your own abilities, if you forget, and remember later, your opponent gets to choose if it happens". for casual play however you might not want to enforce that, losing due to that can leave a sour taste

It's important to note that all of these are floor rules - they're not part of the rules of the game, but part of the tournament structure around the game.  If these are games you're playing with your nephew, I would encourage you to continually remind him but also to devise some way of making sure that he remembers - for instance, putting a die on top of his library so he can't draw a card without looking around to see if there's anything that would be triggering in his upkeep.

I'm not sure I'd describe regular REL with a judge as "casual play" - to me (and I assume others), casual play means playing at home with friends. Of course, you probably end up playing judge by consensus, and doing something similar, but as Steven suggested, if you're playing at home you can be a bit flexible and sportsmanlike in order to make the game work for the players.

Also note the impetus is always on the controller of the ability.  For example with a Frost Titan.  If the person who casts a spell forgets to pay an extra (1), the spell is not automatically countered.  The Titan's controller has to remind them if they want the trigger to apply.

This is going to cover competitive REL environments.  at regular REL, it is possible for the judge to fix the game-state after triggers have been missed.
The trigger rules have been in a state of flux over the past couple years.

2 years ago, if your opponent missed a mandatory trigger and it was to your advantage and it was determined that you knew about it, purposefully let it go so that it was to your advantage, than YOU would get disqualified for cheating.
If it was determined to not be on purpose than you both would receive a warning

last year, Andomar's answer would be correct, but they changed that some months ago.

this February, they published an article announcing a new change to the trigger rules.
you can read the article for more details, but essentially the trigger is considered to not be missed until the controller of the trigger's source makes a decision where the trigger would have mattered.
one of the major examples of this is Pyreheart Wolf.
Under the previous rules, if you didn't explicitly declare the trigger, than you would have considered to have missed it, but under today's rules, if your opponent tries to block with just 1 creature, you can correct them and remind them of the wolf's trigger.  If you don't remind them it is considered missed

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Which program to chose when designing my own cards?
I am working on a prototype of a board game for which I need to design several cards. The cards will have several features like name, picture, text and some additional symbols. I am not sure which program would be the best for designing them.
First I thought about LaTeX - I have a template for generating the cards. The biggest advantage is, that when I decide to make a change in design, it is instantly applied to all the cards using this template. The disadvantage is, that making a design in TeX is a painful process and some special features are not very easy to manage in it...
Second choice would be Inkscape or similar vector-based editor. Is there some free library or model, which would make it easier to design a card from a scratch? What approach would you suggest?
Thanks for any tips!

If you decide to go with LaTeX, have a look at the Pgf/TikZ package. http://tex.stackexchange.com/ has lots of question about it and some people with impressive proficiency at designing graphics and intricate layout with LaTeX.

I’m voting to close this question because this is asking for software recommendations.

EDIT (April 2017): I released the SVG-based software described in my original answer below for playing card design as a desktop application.  You can learn more here:
http://cardcreatr.shane.guru

Original Answer: I use custom SVG when designing playing cards.  Inkscape uses SVG as its backend format.  Coming from a web development background, I found SVG to be easier to learn than something like LaTeX.  (It's just XML.)
I have a single external CSS file and a Ruby script using the "builder" library to construct the SVGs from a database.  If you don't want to use a script to generate your SVGs, it is also possible to pass parameters to your SVG.
The most difficult aspect of SVG I have found is its compatibility with other formats.  The only SVG rendering enging I've found to do a reliably good job is Apache Batik.  You can use Batik to convert your SVGs to PDF, which of course is a widely accepted format.  "Squiggle" is an SVG viewer that runs on top of Batik so that you don't need to render your SVGs every time you make a change.

I am not knew to TeX and Batik, since I, too, come from IT development background. I used batik + java architecture for generating svg files back in my old job. It just seems to be a bit too complicated to write a program from scratch to generate cards. I was thinking if there are some ready-made solutions already. However, I must admit that using batik did not occur to me when I asked this question :-) Maybe I will give it a try!

I was impressed at the simplicity of building the application.  My current script is only 384 lines of Ruby (much of which is just markup for the XML builder library) and 124 lines of CSS (which has a lot of duplication; a SCSS version would be much shorter).  My cards don't have pictures, but that is only a few lines of SVG if you already have the images.  If you wanted to do more intricate card-by-card design, it's easy enough to fire up Inkscape and copy in the SVG code that it generates. :-)

if you make the svg to size and want to lay them out yourself on a page, Scribus does a descent job of rendering SVG. I have made a nujmber of card based games with inkscape as design and scribus as my renderer. if you do it properly and pay attention to your bleeds, you can make double sided cards failry easily and they look good also.

Wanted to mention that you don't need a custom program to flow cards into SVG. I have been able to accomplish this with some creative XSL.

With a little setup work, Adobe InDesign can be a great tool for iterating on card designs.  My process looks something like this:

Setup an XLS or Numbers file with all the data for my cards.  Different columns for different stats, text, card names, etc.  By having it in a spreadsheet, you can do a lot of analysis on the stats, and it makes it easy to change values.
Export the XLS to a CSV file.
Create a template in InDesign for a single card layout. Create placeholders in the template for dynamic data
Use the DataMerge feature in InDesign to pull in the CSV file.  Drag the appropriate data values into the placeholders on the template.
Now you can push the Create Merged Document button, and the magic happens. It will use the data in your CSV file to create a card for each row in the file, filling in the placeholders with the appropriate data for each card.  It will also lay them out and fit as many on a single page as possible - so it's easy to print and cut decks.

It takes some setup, but once you've got a template set up, you can change the data in the spreadsheet, re-import, and get a new set of cards.  Great for heavy iteration cycles.  You can also use this technique to pull in external image assets (PNG, JPG, AI).  A little google searching should get you going pretty well.

Take a look at Magic Set Editor 2.  It will let you define one or more templates for the structure of you cards.  Each template can include a configurable background, classifications (such as manna color or team association)  You can also define a number of editable text fields on the face of the card for title, descriptions and flavor text.    Then, in application Magic Set Editor, you can create empty instances of a template and "fill in" text and other attributes.  You need to use a custom scripting language to define these editable field and such, but this will let you avoid doing this tedious text editing you image editor.

I have been using GIMP to make all my cards. Since I make mostly print and play games, I have a single template I use with OpenOffice draw to allow the printing of 8 cards per page. After I have designed the card with GIMP, I save it as a JPEG, open the template in Draw, drag each JPEG file to it's place on the template, then save as a PDF.

I use Inkscape with the countersheet extension https://github.com/lifelike/countersheetsextension.
The extension will take a csv file and use some basic pattern matching to allow images and text to be defined per card.
Here's a getting started video http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcf20p_intro-to-inkscape-boardgame-extensi_creation
My only tip would be to scale any raster images to the correct size before importing them to Inkscape, otherwise the svg will consume a lot of memory and be very slow.

I personally use a XML/XSLT/CSS approach:

All my cards are simple xml files with the stat and text
Then i transform them to a html file with the card structure using an XSLT style-sheet
Then i add all the visual design with css
The result is then converted to a png file

I use a python scrip to for this, the lxml library converts the xml to the html and weasyprint produces the png file
I understand that it may be a little complicated to design the html/css but it is the best choice in the long run, i can change the design of all my cards simply modifying some lines in the css file and double clicking the python scrip.
Creating the cards as drawing in GIMP or similar would make managing many cards near impossible.

I got inspired my this answer, here is what I made using Snap.svg as an example to this approach: https://chezsoi.org/lucas/spyfall

I use Strange Eon 3. There are a lot of templates for different cards (most of them for the Boardgame Arkham Horror based on the novels from H.P. Lovecraft).
Here's the link: http://cgjennings.ca/eons/

Can you create your own templates with Strange Eon 3?

@CaptainPhoenix - Strange Eons 3 (it's actually plural) can be extended to support new games by creating new plug-ins. Plug-ins would then contain the templates for the various types of cards, tokens, etc. in the new game. You do need to know a bit of programming, either in Java or JavaScript. However, to make it easier, Strange Eons does include http://basement.cgjennings.ca/The+Plug-in+Authoring+Kit which contains a lot of example scripts, so you could probably copy quite a bit from there.

If you're doing basic prototyping for the game, consider using HTML/CSS.
It's not as glamourous, but it can be a lot faster to move elements around to test things.
You'll need something more 'shop-ish when you get to actual card elements design, but on the plus side you'll already have a template of what you want things to look like!

Illustrator is what I design all my cards in. Its pretty simple and easy and there are TONs of tutorials and books to learn from.
It also plays well with all the other Adobe software if you need to do raster graphics or layout design, etc.
Its also an industry standard in the graphic design community.

Many people like Nandeck (google it).  Nearest comparable would be Magic Set Editor, already mentioned above.

Similarly to InDesign, you can use Adobe Photoshop to generate a file for each different card.

Set up the template the way you prefer, most important being the colour profile (ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) is highly recommended if you're planning to print it professionally or even for services like Printerstudio)
Give names to your layers
Set up the Excel or Google Docs table with card data like names, costs and so on
Download the table in CSV format
Open Image > Variables > Define to set up which layers should get changed
Import the CSV file. If it didn't turn out the way you wanted, then http://www.richmediacs.com/user_manuals/RMCS_PS_Training/Using%20PS%20Variables/UsingVariablesInPS_EXTERNAL.html has a lot of good tips on how to make it work better
Choose File > Export > Data Sets as Files... to generate a new PSD file for each card
(Optional step) It's not well known, but JPEG files can be in CMYK format and in case of Printerstudio, it's recommended to convert your PSD files to JPEG using File > Scripts > Image Processor.... Just make sure that Convert to RGB is unchecked.

If you are looking for a solution that is quick and does not require coding skills, Paperize is a great choice, although it is limited to a set of pre-designed templates.  It's currently in beta, but they usually send out new invites quickly.
If you want more control Squib is a ruby based package specifically tailored for designing cards, and has some very useful built-in functions, including support for stitching cards into print-and-play sheets, and embedding graphics in the flow of text.  It's fairly well documented, and the documentation is (not-entirely-successfully) aimed at novice programmers.

Cocktail (https://cocktail.software/) is an easy to use, layer-based layout editor, that links to google sheets for card data, and has a set editor for creating decks of cards to be exported together.  You can link multiple spreadsheets to multiple layouts based on column value, or set a single layout per spreadsheet. The layout editor is a wysiwyg, click and drag editor. It has a fantastic layout engine that supports opacity masking, alignment, auto-sizing, grouping, and grid and stack layers for laying out child elements automatically.  It supports images, svg drawings, text areas, shapes like ellipse, rectangle, regular polygon, star, and more.  For as powerful as it is, it requires no coding skill to make great layouts easily.  Be sure to check it out.
This is a software that I created.

Hi Dan, and welcome to the site. Although you're welcome to share your software here, you must disclose your affiliation with your work or it may be removed as spam. Please see our self-promotion guidelines, aptly titled How to not be a spammer.

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If Koth of the Hammer's plus one ability ends at end of turn, doesn't it make it useless?
How does Koth of the Hammer's plus one ability work when it ends right after you use it and the Mountain turned into a creature has summoning sickness (part of the rulings on Gatherer)?

I think you've misunderstood the ruling:

If Koth's first ability animates a Mountain that came under your control that turn, it will have "summoning sickness" and be unable to attack. It will also be unable to be tapped to activate an ability with the {T} symbol in its cost, such as the Mountain's mana ability or the ability granted to it by Koth's emblem.

If the mountain has been under your control since before the beginning of this turn, it does not have "summoning sickness". It's only unable to tap and attack if it's a mountain that you played this turn.

Concise and to the point, +1!

Whether it has summoning sickness or not depends on how long you have controlled the mountain. How long it has been a creature doesn't matter whatsoever.
If you have controlled the mountain since the beginning of your most recent turn, it doesn't have summoning sickness. So you're fine if you played the Mountain on a previous turn.
If you haven't controlled the mountain since the beginning of your most recent turn, it has summoning sickness. If it's a creature, it can't attack, and you can't use its activated abilities with the tap symbol ({T}) or the untap symbol ({Q}) in its cost. (This means you wouldn't be able to use its native mana-producing ability.)

302.6. A creature’s activated ability with the tap symbol or the untap symbol in its activation cost can’t be activated unless the creature has been under its controller’s control continuously since his or her most recent turn began. A creature can’t attack unless it has been under its controller’s control continuously since his or her most recent turn began. This rule is informally called the “summoning sickness” rule.

The mountain would NOT have summoning sickness period because it specifically states that it becomes a 4/4 red elemental creature until end of turn. It's still a land. Therefor the mountain can't be a creature before that turn or after that turn. Also seeing as how it is still a land It doesn't have summoning sickness. Lands don't have summoning sickness. So you can still tap it for mana or attack. And if you activated his +1 on an opponents turn you can use it to block or tap to use the mana for an instant.

This is wrong.  Because it's a Creature, regardless of any other types it may have, summoning sickness still applies if you haven't controlled the underlying permanent continuously since the beginning of your current/most recent turn, in which case you would be unable to tap it for mana or attack with it.  See also Dryad Arbor, a Land Creature whose reminder text explicitly states it's still affected by summoning sickness.  Also note that a Planeswalker's loyalty ability can't be activated during an opponent's turn.


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How does Valakut work?
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle has an ability that says:

Whenever a Mountain enters the battlefield under your control, if you control at least five other Mountains, you may have Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle deal 3 damage to target creature or player.

Going by the wording, it appears that Valakut triggers every time a mountain enters the battlefield, and then checks the number of other mountains at resolution.
But then it has to deal 3 damage to a target.
My questions are:

Does Valakut put another ability on the stack when this happens? If so, what kind of ability is it?  Is it a triggered ability that can be copied with Strionic Resonator?
If it's all the same ability, then does the controller of Valakut technically have to choose a target regardless of whether he has 5 other Mountains or not? So does a Valakut and one Mountain kill a Phantasmal Image?

You've partially answered your own question here: there is a single ability, which checks something on resolution. But it in fact checks the condition before triggering and on resolution! The fancy thing going on here is often called an "intervening if clause". Here's the detailed sequence of events:

Valakut sees a Mountain enter the battlefield, and says "maybe I need to trigger!" The game checks to see if you have at least five other mountains, and if you do, the ability triggers and is placed on the stack. You choose the target here.
Maybe other things happen in response?
The ability resolves.

The ability checks again to see if you control at least five other mountains. (Maybe one got destroyed in the meantime?)
Assuming you do, it deals three damage to the chosen target.

Here's the relevant comp rule:

603.4. A triggered ability may read "When/Whenever/At [trigger event], if [condition], [effect]." When the trigger event occurs, the ability checks whether the stated condition is true. The ability triggers only if it is; otherwise it does nothing. If the ability triggers, it checks the stated condition again as it resolves. If the condition isn't true at that time, the ability is removed from the stack and does nothing. Note that this mirrors the check for legal targets. This rule is referred to as the "intervening 'if' clause" rule. (The word "if" has only its normal English meaning anywhere else in the text of a card; this rule only applies to an "if" that immediately follows a trigger condition.)

A side note: Evolve is a prominent recent example of a triggered ability with an intervening if clause. It doesn't target, but in some cases it can be very relevant that the ability checks again on resolution.
So for your specific questions:
No, there's no second ability, just the triggered ability which happens to check for a condition twice. But the ability is a triggered ability, and you can copy the whole thing with Strionic Resonator. The original and the copy will still check the "if" clause when they resolve.
If you don't have enough Mountains, you don't put the ability on the stack, so you don't choose a target, so no, you can't kill a Phantasmal Image with it.

603.4. A triggered ability may read "When/Whenever/At [trigger event], if [condition], [effect]." When the trigger event occurs, the ability checks whether the stated condition is true. The ability triggers only if it is; otherwise it does nothing. If the ability triggers, it checks the stated condition again as it resolves. If the condition isn't true at that time, the ability is removed from the stack and does nothing. Note that this mirrors the check for legal targets. This rule is referred to as the "intervening 'if' clause" rule. (The word "if" has only its normal English meaning anywhere else in the text of a card; this rule only applies to an "if" that immediately follows a trigger condition.)
  Example: Felidar Sovereign reads, "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 40 or more life, you win the game." Its controller's life total is checked as that player's upkeep begins. If that player has 39 or less life, the ability doesn't trigger at all. If that player has 40 or more life, the ability triggers and goes on the stack. As the ability resolves, that player's life total is checked again. If that player has 39 or less life at this time, the ability is removed from the stack and has no effect. If that player has 40 or more life at this time, the ability resolves and that player wins the game.

So to answer your questions:

Does Valakut put another ability on the stack when this happens?

No, only one ability is put on the stack if the "intervening 'if' clause" condition is met.

If so what kind of ability is it? is it a triggered ability that can be copied with Strionic Resonator?

Yes, it is a triggered ability that can be copied.

If it's all the same ability, then does the controller of valakut technically have to choose a target regardless of whether he has 5 other Mountains or not?

Targets are only chosen if the ability actually triggers. (IE. the player has 5 mountains in play.) So, no, one mountain is not enough to kill a phantasmal image.
Note the second part of CR603.4 I highlighted in bold: if when the ability resolves the player no longer has 5 mountains in play, the triggered ability will be removed from the stack and will do nothing. If the ability was duplicated with Strionic Resonator, of course that duplicated ability would also be removed.
Therefore, in the case where 5 mountains were in play and the ability triggers, a targeted phantasmal image would die even if in response their opponent destroyed enough mountains to drop the count and counter the ability. The triggered "this creature dies when targeted" ability would be on the stack at that point and could no longer be stopped if the spell is countered.


text:
Does State Parlor give bonus for dwellings added after the fact?
When the state parlor is built, and a dwelling is later added, does the player get the two food bonus?
One school of thought is that the bonus is applied only once for the parlor itself.  Another school of thought is that the bonus is applied to each dwelling once.
This has implications for the milking and weaving parlor as well.

In the revised English language appendix (page A5), it states (all bold and italics in the original)

When building the State parlor, immediately (and only once) get 2 Food from the general supply for each Dwelling that is (horizontally or vertically) adjacent to the State parlor.

This unambiguously indicates that later dwellings do not provide a further 2 Food bonus. The same language is used for the milking and weaving parlors.


text:
Elder Thing - "This minion is not affected by opponents' cards."
Elder Thing's rule text states that "This minion is not affected by opponents' cards."
If so, what happens if an opponent plays a card (forget it's name. It was in the Minions of Cthulhu faction) that shuffles all minions in the base to the bottom of the deck?
Is it still affected? Or is it going to stay?

I don't actually have the game - is there some reason this question is not completely trivial to answer? Elder Thing "is not affected by opponents' cards" and an opponent plays a card. So... it should not be affected, right? Otherwise, what would be the point of that rules text?

@jefromi I am coming from a Magic: The Gathering background. This card seem to be similar to Protection in MTG and there are ways to circumvent it there. But since this is a different game, I would just like to clarify if the above case is true.

The reason protection can be circumvented in Magic is that it's specifically defined in the rules as preventing a specific set of things (damage, enchant/equip, block, target), so things outside that specific set aren't prevented. But there doesn't appear to be anything like that here. The card doesn't use a term to be defined in the rules, it just flat-out says it's not affected.

@jefromi Ok. That is just what I wanted to clarify. If you want, you can post it is an answer and I will accept it.

I do have the game, and this seems very straightforward to me too.

It's quite explicit: "This minion is not affected by opponents cards." That means any cards, so it doesn't get shuffled to the bottom of the deck. It will stay in play.


text:
When do spells go to the graveyard?
Suppose I have a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy with 3 cards in my graveyard. My opponent casts Lightning Bolt on Jace. Can I attempt to Path to Exile my Jace, and then in response to my own Path, use Jace's ability to loot so I have the 3 cards, Path and the newly discarded card in the graveyard, so that Jace flips, and Bolt and Path are both countered because they lost their target?

No, you can't do that.
Spells don't go to the graveyard until they're done resolving:

608.2k As the final part of an instant or sorcery spell’s resolution, the spell is put into its owner’s graveyard. As the final part of an ability’s resolution, the ability is removed from the stack and ceases to exist.

Of course in your situation, you're hoping for Path to Exile to be in the graveyard before it even starts to resolve. If you do something "in response" to casting Path to Exile, that means Path to Exile is still on the stack. The stack is its own game zone; spells that are there can't be in the graveyard (or any other zone).
So this definitely doesn't work. You'll loot with Jace, have four cards in the graveyard (so he won't transform), then Path to Exile will exile him (now you have 5 cards in your graveyard, but too late), then your opponent's Lightning Bolt will have no target and be countered.

Thank you so much for the answer and for correcting my badly worded question for everyone else


text:
Can I pay kicker on a creature put into play with Kaalia's ability?
I've attacked with Kaalia of the Vast and I decide to use her triggered ability to put Desolation Angel onto the battlefield. Do I get the opportunity to pay for the kicker and destroy my opponents lands? Or does it come into play and blow up my own lands?

Kicker is an additional cost that can be paid as you're casting a spell, which you an see from the reminder text on Desolation Angel:

Kicker {W}{W} (You may pay an additional {W}{W} as you cast this spell.)

You can only pay it when you're casting Desolation Angel. If it's being put directly onto the battlefield, like with Kaalia's ability, it's not being cast, so you can't pay the kicker cost, and it'll destroy only your lands.


text:
What does "play this ability only if you could play a sorcery" mean?
This is a stretch and in no way am I trying to dull the game. However, I recently ran across this potential issue. Many cards have an ability that may read, '...Play this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.' and some that say '...Play this ability only if you could play a sorcery. Now bear with me. Since the second example included the word 'if', would this mean that IF I do not have a sorcery in my hand, I cannot play a sorcery, hence, I would not be able to play the ability. As opposed to the first example which states I can use the ability any time a sorcery could be cast instead of 'if' I can play one, which I cannot if I don't possess one in hand. This is flimsy as I know the intended purpose is for the ability to only be cast during your turn as a sorcery. Any thoughts?

as a side note. this is similar to Flash, where cards meant only to be played during your turn can now be played as instants that can be played anytime. Older cards state that 'if' you could play an instant and not 'anytime' you could play an instant would fall under the same scrutiny.

Note that the phrase "only if you could play a sorcery" doesn't actually appear on the Oracle text for any card, so I'm pretty sure the difference is academic.

I'm an old player from the mid 90's getting back into the game. Not familiar with 'Oracle text'. Please enlighten.

Ah, yes.  Much has changed.  You may wish to ask a question about what has changed.   Here's the gatherer page for Wall of Distortion: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=19583 Gatherer is the official wording for any card.  Many old cards have had wording changes, as you are learning.

@John hm, there isn't already a canonical question about what has changed? If not, it would certainly be useful to have one. Of course the gist of it would be a link to the Returning Player FAQ that was on the Wizards forums before they shut down, assuming there is still a version of that accessible somewhere.

@DavidZ I looked yesterday for one, and couldn't find one.

@John Check out the answers to How can I tell what has changed in a Comprehensive Rules update? and How can I find out when a specific comprehensive rule was introduced? if you want to find out more about what has changed or when a rule was introduced.

There are currently no cards with either the first or the second text.
From the Comprehensive Rules:
The Oracle card reference contains the official wording for all Magic cards.

108.1. Use the Oracle™ card reference when determining a card’s wording. A card’s Oracle text can be found using the Gatherer card database at Gatherer.Wizards.com.

Oracle has an advanced search tab with powerful filter options that allows you to search for cards with an exact wording. The wordings of cards get updates (errata) all the time, for example for cases like yours where a wording might be ambiguous, or when comprehensive rules changes affect a card's wording.
Additionally, many cards have rulings at the bottom of their Oracle page that answer specific questions that might arise from that card. Those rulings are not official rules, but they are derived by official judges by application of the rules.
In your case, the currently correct wording is "Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.".
The term "play" is still used, but no longer for casting spells or activating abilities:

Play

To play a land is to put a land onto the battlefield as a special action. See rule 115, “Special Actions,” and rule 305, “Lands.”

To play a card is to play that card as a land or cast that card as a spell, whichever is appropriate. See rule 601, “Casting Spells.”

(Obsolete) Casting a spell used to be known as playing a spell. Cards with that text have received errata in the Oracle card reference. See Cast.

(Obsolete) Activating an activated ability used to be known as playing an activated ability. Cards with that text have received errata in the Oracle card reference. See Activate.

(Obsolete) The battlefield used to be known as the in-play zone. Cards that were printed with text that contains the phrases “in play,” “from play,” “into play,” or the like are referring to the battlefield and have received errata in the Oracle card reference. See Battlefield.

So basically my card, Wall of Distortion, for which this question is derived, is a 1/3 creature-wall, with, "(2)(B), (T): Target player discards a card from his or her hand. Play this ability only if you could play a sorcery." should now be read as "(2)(b), (T): Target player discards a card from his or her hand. Activate this ability only any time you could play a sorcery." I'm going to check out this Oracle card reference.

I think it would improve the answer to add the actual rules meaning of "Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery", which is specified in rule 307.5.

Re <<The term "play" is still used, but no longer for casting spells>>, That's not true. Chandra, Pyromaster's 0 is an example of it being used. It can instruct you to play Lightning Bolt, which means the same thing as to cast Lightning Bolt. "To play a card is to play that card as a land or cast that card as a spell". "Cast" is preferred, but "play" is sometimes required.

@ikegami I don't see the error. Chandra's 0 ability is covered by the 2nd paragraph, while I referred to the 3rd and 4th, which are obsolete. You play cards, cast spells, activate abilities. You no longer play spells or abilities.

The error is that you say "you no longer play spells" when it's not true. Neither #3 nor #4 says this. (Some) cards have received erratas as #3 says, but only because cast is preferred. That doesn't mean you can't play a spell, and I gave a concrete example that shows that you can play a spell.

-1 This doesn't answer the question at all. I agree with murgatroid99 that you should add the meaning of "activate this ability ...". This answer is basically a lecture about the wrong terminology used by the OP and doesn't help solving his problem

@ikegami I think the idea trying to come across is "you play a (spell) card by casting the spell".  Playing a card is superset action; the subset action is casting the spell. Casting a spell is playing a card, not playing a spell.

@JonTheMon, Careful... Playing is a "superset" of casting, but playing a card is not a "superset" of casting a spell since not all spells are cards. (I prefer "is defined in terms of casting" or "can instruct to cast". It matters for things that trigger on casting or replace casting.)

@ikegami Do you have an example? I know that copying a spell on the stack isn't casting, and something like Isochron Scepter is casting a copied card.

@JonTheMon, I think Isochron Scepter is the only example. (A copy of a card isn't a card.)

@ikegami If you could somehow exile a land, copy it, and were allowed to play it ala Chandra, Pyromaster, it should be playable, right? It would even stick, as per 704.5e

@JonTheMon, Are you asking what would happen if you targetted a land card with "Copy target exiled card. Play the copy without paying its mana cost"? Assuming you haven't yet played a land this turn, it would make it to the battlefield, and yeah, 704.5e would have no effect. You'd have something on the battlefield that's neither card nor a token. And that's why you'll never find such an ability.

With a few exceptions, older cards typically worded this as:

Play this ability as a sorcery.

From Prophecy (June 2000) onward, the text was:

Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.

Magic 2010 (July 2009) replaced "play" with "activate" for activated abilities and "cast" for spells:

Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.

As of Strixhaven: School of Mages (April 2021), which introduced several major changes to simplify rules text, the current text for this is:

Activate only as a sorcery.

All of these mean the same thing. "Any time you could cast a sorcery", or "as a sorcery", means:

when you have priority
during a main phase on your turn
when the stack is empty.

It does not mean that you must have a sorcery card in hand. It only means that the timing must be such that you could cast a sorcery if you had one.
The Oracle text1 will always reflect current text conventions, regardless of what was originally printed on the card.

1"Oracle text" is the current, official text of the card as listed on Gatherer, the official Magic card database. Unlike some other trading card games, in Magic, all older cards, going all the way back to Limited Edition Alpha, are updated as needed. Quite often, this is done to ensure that older cards can be played under the current rules, e.g. the "interrupt" card type no longer exists and all such cards are now instants. Other times, it's to eliminate ambiguities in card text or simply to match current text conventions ("templating").


text:
When should I play my land for my turn?
Does it really matter when I play my land for my turn? Some people get extremely annoyed/agitated when I play a land before spells and I don't actually need the land right away for casting my spells. Does it give away any information of benefit to my opponent, or is it bad for other reasons?
I'm mainly asking about whether to play the land before (as opposed to after), not about whether to play it at all.

You can play a land for the turn during either main phase, before or after casting spells. There's no hard and fast rule about what time is best to play your land. If someone told you there was, they probably don't have a thorough understanding of the game. But if someone told you that in a specific situation you should've played differently, they might've had a point.
To give an idea, here are some of the things that might come up. These aren't meant to be exhaustive lists, just to demonstrate that it's not a black and white issue.
Reasons you might play a land before casting a spell or going through combat:

You need the mana immediately (you're about to spend all you can produce), or you're planning out actions in which you'll eventually want it all available and you want to make sure you count everything correctly.
The land has some effect that you want before playing spells (e.g. the scry from Temple of Silence).
You might need the mana to pay to keep a spell from being countered (if your opponent might have something like Mana Leak).
You have instants you could cast or abilities you could activate, and want to make sure you could do so if something happens in response to the other spells you're playing, or during combat. (Or you want your opponent to think this is the case.)
You want your opponent to think there's a lower chance you have other spells in hand.

Reasons you might wait to play a land until after casting spells or after combat:

You're going to draw cards and the land you'll choose to play depends on what you draw. (In some cases, this could even include choosing not to play a land at all.)
You want to find out what happens when you cast a spell or during combat before you decide what land to play.
You want to cast spells or go through combat with your opponent thinking there's a higher chance you have additional spells in hand, or a lower chance that you have a land (and thus that you have less mana available for spells/abilities).

Sometimes you might even consider not playing a land at all for the turn. Usually you don't want to do that since you might need the mana for a bigger spell or multiple spells later. But if that's not an issue, some of the same ideas as above come into play:

You might want your opponent to think you have more spells or fewer lands left.
You want to wait til later to get a non mana effect from the land.
You might have to discard a card later and would prefer it to be the land.

So, yes, there are definitely reasons it might be much better to play a land at one time than at another time - but it's not "always before" or "always after".

One more reason to wait to play land: you are playing a creature (or other spell) with a Landfall ability first.

In all honesty, I think a lot of arguments revolving around information hiding and headgames are overblown. Being able to efficiently sequence your resources and analyze lines of play is far more important than pulling off an occasional bluff or reading tells. And fiddling with land drop sequencing is a fairly minor part of bluffing.
In terms of fundamentals, there are three main scenarios:

You want more land. This is the default, "90% of the time" case. Feel free to play that land as the first action of your first main phase, right after you've had a little bit of time to look at the card you drew and think about how you're going to develop the turn. Why?

If you consistently play land right after the draw phase, you're unlikely to forget your land drop for the turn. Even for an experienced player, it's one less detail to keep in your head.

You'll have the most mana available for interaction right away: pay off that Spell Pierce, Giant Growth your guy in response to Lightning Bolt, et cetera. (In my experience, the only time I don't want to do this is when I'm actively trying to bait out a Spell Pierce in the first place.)

You need more land, but you're really unsure of how to better develop your board (e.g. you have a Mountain and a Swamp in play and one of each in hand, but you're not sure whether you want to cast your 1BB or 1RR spells after combat). At the beginning of your turn, figure out when that decision point will actually be (e.g. "after the combat phase"), and make a mental note of it.

If you're worried about forgetting to make the land drop, it's okay to use a physical aid to remind you. Make a note on your notepad or set a counter on top of your library.

You don't especially need more land in play (e.g. you're playing a burn deck and you've already got four or five Mountains in front of you). You may be better off not playing a land at all. Reasons to keep excess land in hand include:

Basic bluffing. Only good until your get Duressed or an opponent makes a "Do you have it?" play and it's obvious you don't, but, until then, you are getting some small bit of value out of otherwise useless cards.

Discard protection. Dead cards in hand can be used to protect your "live" cards. This is most applicable in formats with random discard or hard-hitting hand-shredders — cards like Rakdos Return and Hymn to Tourach. Helps protect you from discard-based kill cards like The Rack as well.

Painless discard fodder for special abilities. Olivia, Mobilized for War, Avatar of Discoard, that sort of thing. Very deck-dependent, of course.

Generally in Magic, you want to encourage your opponent to make bad decisions. This can either mean keeping information from them, or revealing information that causes them to misevaluate your plan.
In the early stages of learning the game, I would encourage you to play your land as the first thing in the turn. It reduces the number of things you have to remember by 1 ("have I played a land yet"), and the biggest danger as a new player is information overload. It's very easy to miss a land drop because you're trying to play it as late as possible and forget if you've made one.
From there, as other players, have said, it's about trying to get your opponent to misjudge your intention. For example, you play a land and attack, your opponent assumes you have a specific combat trick and doesn't block, thus sacrificing life for no value. Or you hold the land in your hand with mana available and represent a counterspell or removal spell.

It doesn't really matter when you play a land, and like all things in magic, it is situation dependent. They key is what information are you giving your opponent by playing the land, and of course, what spell you're playing.
Does the land tap for a color that you don't already have? (eg playing an island with two forests in play) Your opponent suddenly knows that you may have counterspells or your deck is not super aggressive, adjusting his/her use of instants accordingly.
Does playing the land leave you with just the spell in your hand? You've just told your opponent that you don't have any other plans for the turn.
So when you play a land that is "unnecessary", ask yourself if you're giving your opponent any information that may affect your next spell.


text:
Can I cast other spells before a miracle?
I'm playing a red storm deck and I topdeck a Reforge the Soul. I only have 2 lands in play but have several rituals (Pyretic Ritual, etc.) in my hand that I might want to cast to increase my storm count, since they will just be discarded anyway. Can I cast the rituals before I cast Reforge the Soul if I were to miracle it or must I pay the miracle cost and thus not be able to pay for the rituals?

While the existing answers cover the rules, note that in your specific case it is not useful, because this would be all done in the draw step, and all the remaining mana would be emptied from your pool when going to main phase, and by then you will have no mana sources left. You could of course still cast an instant spell with storm in the draw step, but not a sorcery.

As an extension to @Mephy's statement, there isn't a red instant with storm for 2 that makes this worth while.

@DrunkCynic They're casting rituals so it could be more than 2, and with Manamorphose it doesn't have to be red. I'm not sure how likely it is to help - a lot of the common cantrips are sorceries - but conceivably it's possible in the OP's deck and it doesn't hurt to cast them and see what you draw, right? (Or I know the OP didn't mention it, but you might want to cast them for Pyromancer Ascension.)

@Jefromi Every additional card expected to be in hand pushes this further into an edge case. For the Cheapest storm Instant, Brain Freeze, that's two Pyretic Rituals in hand with Reforge the Soul on the draw, then Manamorphose and Brain Freeze drawn by the Reforge the Soul Effect. It can happen, but it isn't something a deck should be built around.

@DrunkCynic Again, not saying it's common, just possible, so it's reasonable to ask. Even if all it does is give you a tiny chance of something awesome happening, there doesn't seem to be any downside to casting rituals and ending up with mana floating.

The short answer is yes, you can play an instant (such as pyretic ritual) just before you play  a miracle. Just note that you can only play instants not sorceries (or any permanent without flash) and that also you cannot play a land before you play the miracle or any other instants. So you must be able to have enough mana to cast the spells that you want without playing a land.
The right way to do it would be:

You draw your miracle card
You look at it and you decide to play it
You reveal your miracle card that you are playing, the miracle ability triggers.
With the miracle ability on the stack you respond to it by playing any number of instants. The instants will resolve first
Then when it is time to resolve the ability of the miracle card you pay for it is miracle cost, if you do then the spell resolves, you can also choose not to pay the miracle cost then you keep the card in your hand but you cannot cast it again for its miracle cost (you can cast it with the normal cost though).

You can cast your rituals before casting the miracle, though since it's your draw step, you'll have to spend any leftover floating mana during your draw step, i.e. on instants or activated abilities.
The full definition of Miracle is:

702.93a Miracle is a static ability linked to a triggered ability (see rule 603.10). “Miracle [cost]” means “You may reveal this card from your hand as you draw it if it’s the first card you’ve drawn this turn. When you reveal this card this way, you may cast it by paying [cost] rather than its mana cost.”

The static ability is the reveal-as-you-draw part: you make that decision as you draw the card, before the game progresses any further. If you do choose to reveal it, the rest of the ability triggers and goes on the stack. All that's really happened so far is the reveal.
That triggered ability (the "when..." in the definition) is where everything else happens. You cast the miracle card for its miracle cost when that ability resolves. So before that happens, you can respond to it with whatever you'd like, including your rituals, and you'll still get to cast it at the end. (As long as you're able to, anyway - for example if you discard it, you can't cast it anymore!) Once you're done with your rituals, you let the triggered ability resolve, and only then do you pay the miracle cost and cast it.


text:
What is this hexagonal board game with 10 marbles to a side?
I saw this game at a friend's place but nobody knew what it was called. Google search and reverse image search didn't help.

This is a hexagonal board with:

10 white marbles
10 dark marbles
37 notches to put them in

It looks like a variant on the chinese checkers game but with only 2 sides: http://www.checkerschest.com/chinese-checkers/

possibly a dupe of http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/32688/1926?

On the first glance this reminds me of Abalone, but board size and number of marbles doesn't match.


text:
Zombicide Combat Rule - Multiple Dice
I was playing Black Plague with my friends and we got into a misunderstanding about a very basic and fundamental rule.
For me it was clear that, when a weapon has several dice to be played (like 2), I can kill at most 2 zombies; each successful die kills one zombie in the zone I chose to attack (both melee and ranged).
However, my friend argued that we can only kill at most one zombie; the several dice help with the odds, but even if we get multiple successes, we kill a single zombie in the area.
I was pretty sure I was right, but scanning through the guide I found out it really doesn't make very clear in the Combat Section what is the case. The text is messy and a little hard to understand for me.
Can someone resolve this conundrum?

From the rules for melee combat,

Each die roll equal or higher than the Accuracy value on the
weapon’s card is a successful hit. The player divides his hits as
he wishes among the possible targets in the Zone.

This means that a melee attack landing three hits could target and kill up to three creatures.
Ranged combat works the same way, except there are limitations in the order in which you can target monsters (targeting priority).
Keep in mind that there's no point in assigning more than one hit per creature.

Fatties are killed with a 2 Damage hit (or more). It does not matter how many hits you obtain with a weapon that inflicts 1 Damage.  A Fatty will absorb the hits without flinching.
Abominations are killed with a 3 Damage hit (or more). As no weapon naturally has Damage 3 in Zombicide: Black Plague, you have to destroy the monster with Dragon Fire (see page 35) or with Samson using a Damage 2 Melee weapon in conjunction with his +1 Damage: Melee Skill.

That's even odder than what I thought! AFAIK, I can only kill a Fatty with a weapon that has two damage -- if I redirected two 1 damage attacks to the guy he would 'regen' between each hit, and feel no effect at all.

@Luan Nico, Fixed.

Does that mean each hit inflicts 1, 2 or 3 damage depending on the weapon or bonuses right? A lot of weapons are a bit misleading as they usually have the number of dice and the damage the same so it's easy to assume a dice two damage two weapon would inflict one damage per die

@Desorder, Yes. And a hit's damage can't be split.


text:
Exploring locations in Pathfinder
In PathFinder: Rise of the Runelords, how many times can you explore a location? I can discard a BotG to explore:

Can I explore as many times as I want in my turn? Imagine I start with 3 BotG, a weapon and a Cure spell:

Can I explore, then discard a BotG and explore, then discard and explore, then discard and explore, THEN play the Cure, target myself, shuffle all the blessings into my deck, and end the turn by drawing all cards until I have 5 again?

Yes and No
According to page 8 of the Rise of the Runelords rule book, you start your turn with 1 free 'explore' action (which must be your first explore), and you can discard certain cards from your hand to gain additional explore actions with no limit (other than what's in your hand).
But I think you misunderstand how Cure works:
The cards are moved from the Discard pile back into the Deck (not to your Hand), so without a mechanism to draw additional cards, its nearly impossible to reuse the same blessings in the same turn.

I linked the wrong spell, was going for regular Cure. Fixed

"If, during a single exploration, multiple effects
each give you an additional exploration, it counts as a total of 1 more
exploration, not a series of additional explorations." Why doesn't this stop me from exploring several times with BotG?

@BlueMoon93 Because you would discard a BotG to gain an exploration and resolve that exploration; then separately, you would discard another BotG to gain a different exploration and resolve that exploration as well. The ruling is there because of several cards that can grant you an exploration as a result of encountering them (e.g. "...discard this card and immediately explore again"): if you somehow encountered two of these at the same time, they'd only grant you 1 additional exploration, since they both occurred during the same initial exploration.


text:
Does an Ebonblade Reaper holding a Quietus Spike kill players?
Ebonblade Reaper:

Whenever Ebonblade Reaper attacks, you lose half your life, rounded up.
  Whenever Ebonblade Reaper deals combat damage to a player, that player loses half his or her life, rounded up.

Quietus Spike:

Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, that
  player loses half his or her life, rounded up.

An Ebonblade Reaper hits a player while equipped with a Quietus Spike. Assuming no other effects, does the player lose the game?
My interpretation:

Ebonblade Reaper deals 1 combat damage to a player.
The Reaper and Quietus Spike triggered abilities are put onto the stack.
Each effect causes that player to lose half their life.
That player loses.

You know, even if it doesn't do what you think it does, it still does a devastating amount of damage if unblocked. 20 -> 19 -> 9 -> 5. If you had double strike it would be 20 -> 19 -> 9 -> 5 -> 4 -> 2 -> 1. As a wise unnamed philosopher once said, "That's a pretty ***in' good milkshake. It might not be worth five dollars, but it's pretty ***in' good."

@corsiKa Your math is wrong. 20->19->9->4->3->1->0. Further, the Ebonblade Reaper only does 2 points of damage. The effects cause your opponent to lose a calculated amount of life.

You're right about the math. And technically correct on the damage aspect, although it ignores an aspect of language called colloquialism.

@corsiKa Colloquialism is grand, but words mean specific things when applying the Comprehensive rules and understanding the possible effects that could exist on the battlefield. Ebonblade Reaper may care if it does damage to your opponent equal to half their life total, rounded up.

No, it doesn't work like that. The triggers decide how much damage to do when they resolve, not when they're put onto the stack.
So if your opponent were at 21 (to make things simple) it'd go like this:

Ebonblade Reaper deals 1 damage, putting them at 20. Both triggers go on the stack.
The first of the triggers resolves, making them lose 10 life, putting them at 10.
The second of the triggers resolves, making them lose 5 life, putting them at 5.

You do get to pick what order the triggers go on the stack, but it doesn't really matter, since they're doing the same thing.

Would the opponent die if (one of) these effects were worded "Player loses X life, where X is half of their life total"?

@steenbergh No, It still checks for the opponents life total when the effect resolves.

No
Each ability triggers and is put on the stack, then they resolve one at a time. Rule 608.2g describes one of the steps to follow when resolving a spell or ability:

608.2g If an effect requires information from the game (such as the number of creatures on the battlefield), the answer is determined only once, when the effect is applied.

In this case, both abilities refer to "his or her life". This value is checked when each ability resolves. The first ability will have finished resolving and therefore will have changed the player's life total before the second one begins resolving and checks it.

By expanding the scope of your question, you can achieve the desired result: winning.
If Ebonblade Reaper is given Double Strike, and it deals combat damage to your opponent during both combat damage steps, you will win if the opponent has 20 or less life.
During the first combat damage step (ref: 510.5 and 702.4), Ebonblade Reaper deals 1 damage to the opponent, triggering both effects. AS the controller of both effects, you choose the order in which they enter the stack (inconsequential).
The last in resolves, your opponent has T-1 = X life, and they lose Y life, where Y = ceiling (X/2). X'= X - Y.
The second effect resolves, your opponent has X' life, and they lose Y' life, where Y'= ceiling (X'/2). X'' = X'-Y'
During the second combat damage step, Ebonblade Reaper deals 1 damage to the opponent.
The last in resolves, your opponent has X''-1 = M life, and they lose Y life, where Y = ceiling (X/2). M'= M - Y.
The second effect resolves, your opponent has X' life, and they lose Y' life, where Y'= ceiling (X'/2). M'' = M'-Y'
Now, a table of numbers demonstrating the results, for starting opponent life totals of (0,21).
    T     X     X'    X''  M    M'   M''
    21    20    10    5    4    2    1
    20    19    9     4    3    1    0
    19    18    9     4    3    1    0
    18    17    8     4    3    1    0
    17    16    8     4    3    1    0
    16    15    7     3    2    1    0
    15    14    7     3    2    1    0
    14    13    6     3    2    1    0
    13    12    6     3    2    1    0
    12    11    5     2    1    0    0
    11    10    5     2    1    0    0
    10    9     4     2    1    0    0
    9     8     4     2    1    0    0
    8     7     3     1    0    0    0
    7     6     3     1    0    0    0
    6     5     2     1    0    0    0
    5     4     2     1    0    0    0
    4     3     1     0   -1   -1   -1
    3     2     1     0   -1   -1   -1
    2     1     0     0   -1   -1   -1
    1     0     0     0   -1   -1   -1

Now, you may be wondering about the -1's at the bottom of the table. The applicable rule is 107.1b:

107.1b Most of the time, the Magic game uses only positive numbers and zero. You can’t choose a negative number, deal negative damage, gain negative life, and so on. However, it’s possible for a game value, such as a creature’s power, to be less than zero. If a calculation or comparison needs to use a negative value, it does so. If a calculation that would determine the result of an effect yields a negative number, zero is used instead, unless that effect sets a player’s life total to a specific value, doubles a player’s life total, sets a creature’s power or toughness to a specific value, or otherwise modifies a creature’s power or toughness.

In the event there is an effect that prevents your opponent from losing with due to having 0 or less life, the game continues.
After the Ebonblade Reaper deals damage during the second combat damage step, for starting life totals (1,4) your opponent is at -1 life. Calculating the effect, the ceiling of (-1/2) is 0.
It becomes interesting if the life total before the effect is applied is -2. Since the effect is determining how much life the opponent will lose, rather than setting the life total to a specific value, if it determines a negative value, the result is 0 instead.
For example, with -2 life, the opponent loses half their life, rounded up.
(-2/2) = -1, rounded to -1. Rule 107.1b sees the negative value, and turns it into a 0.

Do the rules deal with the calculatoin of "half your life, rounded up" when your life is already negative? Or is it just treated exactly the same as positive, and rounding up from -.5 goes to 0?

If your life is negative haven't you lost the game?

@Chris Normally, yes, but [mtg:Platinum Angel] lets you be at negative life without losing. There's a few other ways.

Ah, cool. Not much of a magic player so I don't know these things. :)

@GendoIkari I don't have a ready answer for that question. On the Table, The opponent would lose due to state based effects at 0 life. The -1 is there because I didn't amend the equations used for when the opponent loses during the first strike combat damage step.

@GendoIkari Rule 107.1b deals with the "lose half your life, rounded up" equation.


text:
Which Order Cards Resolve from Stack - MTG
A buddy of mine and I had a small debate on the soon mentioned situation and I'm curious if I may have screwed him over on a misunderstanding of how the stack works. Consider the following situation:
I attack with a X/X creature that my opponent can't block. After attackers/blockers have been declared, my opponent casts Silverstrike and then I respond something like Titanic Growth (as an example), and it contains the key phrase "...until end of turn"
Is this a legal response? My line of thought is that my instant will resolve at "end of turn" which will allow his to resolve then killing my creature. Or is it that what I did made no difference and it resolves right away allowing his instant to resolve still killing mine before I can attack?

The old adage... "First in, last out."

This is what happens:

Your opponent casts Silverstrike targeting your creature.
You cast Titanic Growth.
Titanic Growth resolves, giving your creature +4/+4 until end of turn.
Silverstrike resolves and destroys your creature.
Damage happens but there are no creatures to deal damage anymore.

"Until end of turn" just means that the effect of the spell, in this case +4/+4, remains until the end of the turn.

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

In this rule you can see that the next step, combat damage, will only happen after the full stack is resolved, including the Silverstrike.

Perfect. I'll have to break the news that I won under unfair terms...Thanks!


text:
What happens if Always Watching is destroyed mid-combat?
At the start of my turn, my Always Watching is on the battlefield, granting my creatures +1/+1 and vigilance.
I attack with my Shadow Glider (a 2/2) and my Kitesail Scout (a 1/1).
My opponent blocks my Shadow Glider with his Shadow Glider.
At the end of the declare blockers step, when we can cast instants and before damage is dealt, my opponent casts Naturalize to destroy my Always Watching.
My question is this: do I lose the benefits from the Always Watching,
so both Shadow Gliders die, or does his Shadow Glider die and my Glider lives? What happens to vigilance for the Kitesail Scout?

The ongoing effects from Always Watching end as soon as it is destroyed, so your creatures no longer have vigilance and +1/+1 by the time combat damage is dealt, and both Gliders will die.
However, your Kitesail will remain untapped because vigilance is only important at the moment attackers are declared:

702.20a Vigilance is a static ability that modifies the rules for the declare attackers step.
702.20b Attacking doesn’t cause creatures with vigilance to tap.

So your Kitesail remained untapped when it attacked because it had vigilance at that time, and the game does not rewind and tap it just because it lost vigilance later.

It's probably worth mentioning that the only real difference is the amount of damage the Kitesail will do. Even had the naturalize been cast as an instant in the second main phase, the Shadow Glider would then have died as it would have 2 damage still on it, so when it loses the additional toughness, it would then have a toughness of 0 and state based actions would cause it to go to the graveyard at that point.

@RyuAkamatsu Just a small clarification: at no point would Shadow Glider have 0 toughness. Marked damage does not reduce a creature's toughness. Shadow Glider would be a 2/2 with 2 damage marked on it. The state-based action that cares about toughness cannot be replaced by regeneration and does not care about indestructibility, but the state-based action that cares about marked damage can be replaced by regeneration and does care about indestructibility.

@Rainbolt Yes sorry about that. That's what I meant but I didn't explain myself particularly well. I will try and be more clear in the future :)

As soon as the Always Watching is destroyed, your creatures will lose their +1/+1 bonus. Thus, both Shadow Gliders will be 2/2 as damage happens and will both die. Your creatures will lose vigilance at the same time; since tapping is part of declaring attackers, which has already happened, this doesn't cause them to be tapped.


text:
Is it possible to play two cards in the same field on the first step of a turn in Bohnanza ?
Bohnanza Wikipedia is a card game where the goal for the player is to plant the maximum of beans in its two fields.
During the first step of a player's turn, it is possible to play the two first cards of his hand.
Is it possible to plant the two cards in the same field in order to get rid of these two cards without touching the second field ?
(I mean, you plant the first bean in the field that you harvest immediately to be able to plant another type of bean in it.)

Yes,
You may plant both beans in the same field on any turn.
The rules state that during step one you:

Must plant the first bean

If it matches a currently planted bean then plant the new bean there
If you have an empty field plant it there
Otherwise you must harvest and sell all beans in one field before planting the new bean in the newly empty field

You may plant the second bean using the same rules as the first bean.

When planting the second bean, it is legal to harvest and sell the bean you just planted.  It's often a very good move to do so.

It certainly is possible.  The cardinal rule of Bohnanza planting is "you must plant your first card, you may plant your second card".  The only restriction on those two plantings is that they must both be legal.  And you can harvest at any time, even for no profit, even between one planting in the first step and the next.
Initially I misread your question and answered as if you were asking "is it possible to play two cards of the same type in the same field in the first step of the first turn", which of course it is.  Simply because it would be totally bizarre to overplant in the same field.
(Someone will doubtless correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's no possible advantage to keeping the second bean field free in this way in the first turn.  If you plant and then overplant, and then turn up two copies of the bean that is now in the discard pile, or someone (mystifyingly) wants to give you three free copies of the bean in the discard pile, then you have presumably lost out!  The absolute worst case scenario is that you will have to overplant the first bean field later in your first turn, or in your second turn, but that's not actually a very bad scenario at all: you lost nothing by letting the bean hang around in your field for a short time, while you were considering your options.)
Later on, it's possible to rapidly plant and overplant to cycle through your beans.  Just remember that you can never plant over a single bean if you have another field planted with multiple beans!

I think you're right that there's no possible advantage.  However there may be a case where you've already seen all the other 5 garden beans (for example), and so there would be no difference between overplanting from your hand, or overplanting from somewhere else.

@ttppp: No difference except for possibly playing mind games with your opponents (if they don't know that you plan to overplant)!  I agree it can often be a completely irrelevant choice, but as long as it can't actually hurt you...

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
Does preventing damage also prevent poison?

These two cards were played against my poison deck.
His reckoning is that I cannot put -1/-1 counters on the creature as it prevents all combat damage and infect uses damage.
He also says that as the white card prevents damage this would stop him from getting poison counters.
Is he right ? can anyone cite me some official rules to clarify this ?

possible duplicate of In Magic: The Gathering, do poison counters count as damage?

@DaveDuPlantis - While similar, I think the angle of the question is different. In both cases, the question is about assigning damage from an infect creature, but this specifically asks about preventing the poison counters from being placed, while the other is asking about creatures being bounced. The cause is the same in both (and so is the answer), but the questions are still different enough to be useful to others on their own.

Your friend is correct, he can prevent Wither and/or Infect damage just like regular damage.
The reason for that is that damage and damage effects are separate things. That difference is usually not important because in most situations, the steps to get from one to the other are walked over and the correct outcome is intuitively clear.
So, here's how it works in detail in case difficulties arise:
Most importantly, damage is just a number with a source. It knows nothing of life points, loyalty or -1/-1 counters.
At first, prevention and replacement effects happen. The damage number is increased, decreased, or the whole damage effect is replaced entirely.
Only after that step does damage have an actual effect.
When a source without wither or infect deals damage to a creature, the effect of that damage is that the affected creature gets that much damage marked on it; if the damage was dealt to a player, that player loses that much life.
When a creature with Infect and/or Wither deals damage, the effect of the damage is that that many -1/-1 counters are placed on the creature or; in case of Infect only, the player gets that many poison counters, loses life otherwise.
Damage dealt to a planeswalker will always result in that many loyalty counters being removed from it.
In any case, damage prevention effects like you cited above simply reduce the damage before the effect happens, so the effect is reduced accordingly.

119 Damage

[...]

119.3a Damage dealt to a player by a source without infect causes that player to lose that much life.
119.3b Damage dealt to a player by a source with infect causes that player to get that many poison counters.
119.3c Damage dealt to a planeswalker causes that many loyalty counters to be removed from that planeswalker.
119.3d Damage dealt to a creature by a source with wither and/or infect causes that many -1/-1 counters to be put on that creature.
119.3e Damage dealt to a creature by a source with neither wither nor infect causes that much damage to be marked on that creature.

[...]

119.4. Damage is processed in a three-part sequence.
119.4a First, damage is dealt, as modified by replacement and prevention effects that interact with damage. (See rule 614, "Replacement Effects," and rule 615, "Prevention Effects.") Abilities that trigger when damage is dealt trigger now and wait to be put on the stack.
119.4b Next, damage that's been dealt is transformed into its results, as modified by replacement effects that interact with those results (such as life loss or counters).
119.4c Finally, the damage event occurs.

This is correct, however, it's worth pointing out that cards like Swamp Mosquito exist and your opponent would get a poison counter even if your opponent prevented all combat damage.

@Hackworth, Wow if this is true, Intervention Pact is quite an insane card.

That also confirms my suspiction that planeswalkers can't get poison counters. Weird design choice, given that planeswalkers are supposed to be as similar to players as a card can be, but there's probably a reasoning behind that.

Damage prevention effects do indeed prevent all five forms the damage can take: damage marked on a creature, -1/-1 counters on a creature (from sources with wither or infect), life loss of a player, poison counters on a player (from sources with infect), or removal of loyalty counters from a planeswalker.  This is all governed by rule 119 of the comprehensive rules.
However, damage prevention does not prevent all forms of -1/-1 or poison counters.  For example, Caress of Phyrexia and Crypt Cobra give a player poison counters directly, without using damage.  Likewise, many spells and abilities can give a creature -1/-1 counters directly, instead of through damage.  Virulent Wound can do both.
On the other hand, Marsh Viper, though it doesn't have infect, nevertheless only deals poison counters when it deals damage, so damage prevention will prevent poison from it.  The same thing applies to creatures with poisonous.  The key here, however, is that the amount of prevention does not relate to the number of poison counters prevented; instead, all damage from the source must be prevented to avoid the trigger condition for poison counters.


text:
Do Ensnaring Bridge and Tortoise Formation work together?
I would like to use Tortoise Formation to temporarily disable the effect of Ensnaring Bridge.  My question therefore is: does that combo allow my creatures to attack, even if there are no cards in my hand?

You're pretty much going to need to remove Ensnaring Bridge. Try bouncing it with Steel Sabotage or Master Transmuter. Or play it in a Doran deck with a lot of low-power/high-toughness creatures.

No, Tortoise Formation has no interaction with Ensnaring Bridge.
Shroud only prevents a creature from being the target of a spell or ability. That is the only thing shroud does. Only spells or abilities that specifically use the word "target" have targets (with a few pseudo-exceptions, chiefly Auras and Equip abilities, for which the word "target" occurs in the official rules but is not usually printed on the card). If a spell or ability does not use the word "target", then shroud has no effect.
Ensnaring Bridge's ability does not use the word "target", so playing Tortoise Formation will not allow your creatures to get around the Bridge's restriction.

You can always use something like Lux Cannon to blow away your Ensnaring Bridge... but you should only do that when you are ready to attack, and know you'll win (or have a backup Ensnaring Bridge in your hand). I'd suggest you use something like Bottled Cloister instead (this will allow you to have a hand during your turn, but remove your hand during your opponents turns.)


text:
Arsonist vs Hedge Tavern in Rivals for Catan
When using the arsonist against the Hedge Tavern, where does the Hedge Tavern card go?  Does it go to the bottom of an "Era of Turmoil" stack or does it go back to its original starting position face up?

I think they key phrases to consider here are:

Choose 1 of your opponent's buildings adjacent to a settlement/city. He must place it under a draw stack of his choice

--From the instructions on the Arsonist action card.
and

In each Theme Set, there are expansion cards that must be accessible to both players. Separate these cards and place them as a face-up expansion card stack next to the draw stacks. These cards are never part of your hand.

--From page 14 of the rule booklet.
Two of these could point to an exception - the arsonist sends a building to a draw stack - and the face up expansion card stack is next to the draw stacks - implying that this stack is perhaps not defined as a draw stack itself; also most cards explicitly state that a destroyed or discarded card is placed under a matching draw stack, where the Arsonist simply says one of his choice.
If we look at the rules explaining how the Fraternal Feud event card is resolved, we see:

... you either place them both at the bottom of the same stack or at the bottom of 2 different stacks. All your opponent knows is under which draw stack(s) you placed the cards.

--From page 20 of the rule booklet.
There can be a tactical advantage to deciding which draw stack a discarded card goes under, even in the basic version of the game where there are no expansion card or theme set draw stacks to choose: a small stack may allow a player to get that card again soon (or if there's an empty stack, the player who's turn it is may be able to return the card to their hand at the end of their turn) and a large stack will guarantee that the discarded card remains out of play for a longer period of time.
The Arsonist gives the choice of the stack to the victim. This limits the power of the card by not allowing the active player to effectively "steal" a card from her opponent's principality and add it to their hand. Or at least, not without some cooperation, or exceptionally few cards remaining in the stacks.
Of course, the Hedge Tavern is one of the face-up expansion cards, and as such it "must be accessible to both players." This is further ensured by limiting principalities to only having one at a time - so the other would be accessible to the other player.
Also, whenever there are possible implicit inconsistencies in a rule set, the best practice is to rule in favour of the mandated rule, rather than the implied one. Of the phrases highlighted above, only "never part of your hand" is mandated by its wording. If the Hedge Tavern were placed under one of the theme set draw stacks, this would enable it to appear in a player's hand later in the game.
It seems clear that:

The game designers did not intend the Hedge Tavern to end up in a player's hand.
The game designers intended the Hedge Tavern to always be available to both players when playing it's Theme Set - never permanently destroyed as an option, nor held hostage by the other player.

Ergo: There's not a lot of room on that bottom line on the card. Most likely they left out the word "matching" as it wouldn't fit and seemed somewhat redundant by the time you're playing the second theme. If the Arsonist is played, and the Hedge Tavern is destroyed, it returns to the face-up Expansion Card stack.

I would play as per the wording on the Arsonist card.  Just because the Hedge Tavern has an unusual starting placement, in a face-up stack, doesn't mean it should be exempted from subsequent effects.
Given that there is an stack available with the same back as the Hedge Tavern, I see no reason why you shouldn't follow the course of action prescribed by the Arsonist card, and put the Hedge Tavern to the bottom of such a stack of the opponent's choice.

Thank you.  But the rules on page 14 state that the cards must be accessible to both players and that the cards can never be part of your hand.  If I place the cards in a "draw stack" vs. back to its face up expansion stack, then eventually the card will end up in my hand.  If I take the wording on the arsonist card literally, only cards that can be placed in the draw stack (not the expansion stack) can be affected.  Since the Hedge Tavern cannot be placed in the draw stack, does this mean that the Hedge Tavern, Merchant Guild, and University can never be burned?

http://kbp.wikidot.com/kb-rivals-turmoil-strategy-guide is an example of a page that suggests the Arsonist should be used to take out the Hedge Tavern where possible; this person seems to know his stuff so I don't think the Hedge Tavern can be immune.  Trying to get up the Rivals PDF again so I can take a look at P14...

@thesunneversets I agree the Hedge Tavern isn't immune, but I don't think it should go back into a draw stack face down. If it did, the opponent who still has a Hedge Tavern could draw the second one into their hand and simply hold onto it for the rest of the game, locking out the other player from ever building it again, thereby making many of the theme cards utterly useless to them. This would certainly be a winning strategy, but it's not mentioned on the page you linked.