We Have to Go Deeper Ep.3 - Greatness, at Any Cost

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TheRedMage

29 January 2016

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Hello everybody and welcome to a new episode of We Have to Go Deeper, where I say things about weird corner cases and rules interactions that will not be helpful to you in any actual game of magic you might play, but are at least somewhat cool. Or at least, I think they are. Sue me.

For those of you that have not read the previous articles, here is how this works - occasionally, I will find a question that inspires me in the Rules Q&A section of this website. When I do, I will discuss the question a bit more in depth here, expand on the topic, and usually find a way to use what we talked about to get Magic to do something that it shouldn't really be doing.

Basically if the rules of a game are a programming language and each card is a function, we are trying to make our computer glitch out. And, if youtube tells me anything, making stuff glitch out is fun.

Well, enough with that. Let's just start with our jumping-off point!

The Jumping-Off Point

^{Plummet - art by Aaron Miller}

This question was asked on the 11th of January by Kryogenyc. Like the one from last episode, it doesn't look incredibly convoluted, but it made me remember an interesting fact that I learned, if I recall correctly, from the lovely folks over at Judgecast. Here it is:

Does Conduit of Ruin reduce the 2 specific colorless from Kozilek, the Great Distortion or just the two general mana costs?

The first answer, given by Raging_Squiggle is both correct and succinct. Basically:

*** It (Conduit of Ruin) only makes the generic mana cost less, so if you cast Kozilek, the Great Distortion you will have to pay ***

The discussion on the question carries on for a while, mostly because, at the time, the question couldn't really be given a definitive answer. For those that don't know: for every set, Wizards of the Coast posts a document called the Release Notes a few days before the prerelease dates. This document explains how the new mechanics work and have card-by-card notes that explain how the most problematic card interactions work. Around the same time, the Oracle card database and Gatherer rulings are updated to reflect whichever changes the new set generated.

For example, when in Magic Origins the Goblin War Drums ability was keyworded as Menace, a bunch of older cards (including Goblin War Drums) were changed to reflect that. On January 13, a massive Oracle overhaul changed a bunch of artifacts and mana dorks so that all abilities that said “add to your mana pool” now say “add to your mana pool”, and so on. Conduit of Ruin still says “The first creature spell you cast every turn costs less to cast” (as opposed to “costs less to cast”). That means the ruling goes the way that Raging_Squiggle and the other posters said, and a Kozilek, the Great Distortion that is the first creature spell you cast in your turn with a Conduit of Ruin out does indeed cost . However, there was a small chance that Conduit of Ruin was also errata'd, and the answer would have been wrong.

What I am trying to say is that asking rules questions about spoiled cards more than a few days before the prerelease might result in people giving you answers that are uncertain, or that are not correct because the rules changed when the release notes were posted. To those that answer such questions I recommend caution - you might want to provide a disclaimer that the release notes are not out and it may result in a change of how the interaction works. The reason I knew the Day's Undoing - Sphinx's Tutelage interaction we talked about in the first instalment of the series so well is largely because I tried explaining the interaction under the pre-existing rules, only to be foiled by the dastardly Tabak a few days later when he posted a blog entry saying they were going to change the rules so it didn't work that way anymore. Don't let that happen to you!

How to Cast a Spell in 7 Simple Steps

^{Elderscale Wurm - art by George Wright}

How are spells cast?

It's easy, right? You pay the cost, put the thing on the stack, and it kinda happens unless your opponent has a counterspell.

Well, not quite. As usual, the rules of Magic have to accommodate for more than twenty years worth of exceptions, so, in order to make sure that all possible cards interactions are well defined (as you might have surmised, “well defined” does not mean “simple”), the process of casting a spell is broken in seven steps, as detailed in rule 601.

1. First, you announce that you are casting a spell. If the spell is a card in your hand, the library (hello there Panglacial Wurm) or exiled face down (maybe by a Colfenor's Plans) you reveal it. The object leaves the zone it was in and goes on top of the stack.
2. Second, you decide “modes”. This actually means a number of different things: if the spell is a modal spell like Abzan Charm, you pick the mode you are interested in; if it has an alternate casting cost like the evoke cost in Mulldrifter, you announce whether you are using this (note: “without paying its mana cost” is considered an alternate cost); if the spell has possible additional costs like the buyback on Capsize, you announce whether you are paying it (in the case of things like replicate or multikicker, you also announce how many times you are paying the cost); if the spell's cost includes or some other variable, you announce its value; if the cost includes hybrid or phyrexian mana symbols, you announce how you are going to pay for those. Basically during this step you really decide what the spell you are trying to cast does.
3. Third, now that you have figured out how many and which kind of targets your spell requires, you select those targets. Remember that you can select the same object as a target multiple times only if multiple instances of the word “target” appear (i.e. Symbiosis does not allow you to pile all the power/toughness boost onto a single creature, but Seeds of Strength does).
4. Fourth, you distribute the effect among targets. What this means is that, if your spell is doing different things to different targets, you decide which target is receiving which effect. for example, if you are casting Consume Strength, you announce who is getting +2/+2 and who is getting -2/-2; if you are casting Cone of Flame you decide who is getting 1 damage, who is getting 2, and who is getting 3; and so on, and so forth. Now that we have figured out all this stuff, the game checks if you have done everything right, and have not made illegal choices (e.g. selecting as a target a creature with shroud). Assuming everything checks, we can move forward.
5. Fifth, you figure out the cost of the spell. This is the part we care about for the purpose of this article - I am not going too deep because we are going to talk about it later.
6. Sixth, you can activate mana abilities of permanents you control to add to your pool the necessary mana. A couple notes: first, only the person casting the spell can activate mana abilities, so, if you wanted to ask your buddy with a Spectral Searchlight for some mana, you better do so before you start casting the spell; second, yes, the ability on Chromatic Sphere is a mana ability, but, if you do use it and draw a card, you won't get to look at that card or add it to your hand until after you finished casting the spell (if you intend to pitch that card to a Tormenting Voice, better activate Chromatic Sphere before you start casting the spell).
7. Finally, you use the mana in your mana pool and your other resources to pay for the cost. You can pay costs in any order, which is relevant if for example you are trying to sacrifice your Omnath, Locus of Mana to your Momentous Fall. Some costs can be paid in alternate ways (more on that in a second) - if that is the case, this is the step in which that is taken into account. Worth mentioning that activating an ability goes to pretty much the same steps as casting a spell, but there is an important difference in this step: when activating an ability, you don't get to choose the order: you have to go in the same order as the costs are written on the card. At this point, the spell finally becomes cast, and things that trigger upon spells being cast trigger.

Well, those were a lot of words to describe a process that can usually be summarized with “bolt you”.

Worth mentioning - this list is part of the knowledge necessary to pass the level 1 judge exam - back when I was studying, I found it useful to use a mnemonic device to remember it: “All Crazy Teens Did Try Magic Pills” (for Announce, Choose modes, Targets, Distribute, Total cost, Mana abilities, Pay), so, if you are studying for your L1 exam, maybe that could be useful for you.

However, remember that neither I nor this article endorse or condone the assumption of Magic Pills, whether you are a Crazy Teen or not.

But at what cost?

So, what do you do exactly in step 5? There is an order in which cost modification effects are applied.

Basically you take the nominal cost (i.e. the cost printed on the card, or the alternate cost you choose to pay in step 2) and add all additional costs the spell has (like sacrificing a creature for Altar's Reap), or that you chose to pay in step 2 (like an additional to buy back Sprout Swarm). Then, you factor in all effects that cause a cost increase (e.g. Sphere of Resistance) and after that, all the ones that cause a cost reduction (e.g. Dragonlord's Servant). Finally, if an effect is setting the cost to a particular value, you do that - there is only one card that affects the cost of spells in this manner, Trinisphere, and it instructs you to pad the cost with generic mana if necessary; I am uncertain whether that is how the rules instruct you to do it, or if it's specifically how Trinisphere works, and a different card could use different mana types to pad the cost. I guess, since Trinisphere is the only instance of this effect, this is kind of a philosophical question at this time.

'Sphere no Evil

In summer 2014, when Magic 2015 was about to come out, the rules concerning two abilities - Delve and Convoke - were changed to make them more intuitive for the upcoming return of those abilities (Convoke returned in M15 after its first appearance in Ravnica, City of Guilds; Delve would make its first appearance in the following set, Khans of Tarkir, after having been reprinted in Future Sight in 2007 - apparently Delve can only appear if time travel is involved). The rules about Convoke and Delve were changed so that, instead of being a cost reduction mechanism (which would be accounted for in step 5), these abilities represent an alternative way of paying for the mana portion of the cost (and as such come into play in step 7, after the ““Trinisphere step” where the cost is set to three). This means that even with Trinisphere in play, you can still pay no mana for a Gather Courage, if you can tap three creatures at least one of which is green.

Now, when a card has a unique enough effect that some text has to be added to the comprehensive rules uniquely on behalf of that card, like Trinisphere, I always feel excited about whether I can find some weird corner case. Surely by pushing the envelope to make this card, you have stretched it somewhere else, and now this or that old card interacts wonkily with this new effect, right?

Nope. The effect on Trinisphere just works the same in every case. Does your spell have Delve or Convoke? Then we can talk (although no Delve spell that costs less than three mana exists anyway, so it is really more of a Convoke problem). If not, are you paying less than three mana? You are paying three mana. Staggershock while you control Arcane Melee? You pay . Dismember cast paying 2 life? You are paying . Frogmite while you control 74 artifacts? You are paying . Wanna rebound that Staggershock from a while ago? You are paying . Fireblast cast by sacrificing two Mountains? You are still paying .

The list goes on. It's kind of cool they managed to make such a unique effect also so universal in the way that it works.

Ragemongers, Edgewalkers and other Nounverbers

^{Edgewalker - art by Ben Thompson}

There are many cards in magic that affect the cost of other spells. An entire Vintage deck, called Shops (from Mishra's Workshop), is based on the idea that you can play a bunch of artifacts that increase the cost of cards (specifically Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst and Lodestone Golem), together with the aforementioned Trinsphere and with a bunch of ways to shut down the opponen's mana sources (Phyrexian Revoker, Null Rod, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Chalice of the Void). If you can make every spell cost a billion mana, your opponent is going to regret the fact that they accidentally forgot to include lands that tap for in their deck.

While there are approximately a billion cards that reduce the cost of spells or have a built-in cost reduction mechanism (specifically, 98 cards - thanks, Gatherer - and conversely, 54 cards increase costs or have a built-in cost increase mechanism), almost all of them reduce only the generic portion of the cost. There are three exceptions to this rule: Edgewalker, his horned cousin Ragemonger, and Khalni Hydra.

Ragemonger and Edgewalker have an additional clause specifying that their ability “reduces only the amount of colored mana you pay”. That means that if you control Edgewalker and want to cast Custodi Squire (which normally costs ), you are going to pay .

Since Khalni Hydra can only reduce its own cost, and its cost only includes a bunch of (eight, to be exact), that must be why it doesn't have the additional text “This effect reduces only the amount of colored mana you pay”, right?

Well, maybe, but this does have some consequences. Obviously, if no other card is in the picture, the additional line of text would be superfluous. But let's assume your opponent controls a Lodestone Golem, so that, before applying cost reductions, Khalni Hydra costs . How much would you end up paying if you controlled nine green creatures?

Most people I have asked tend to say . But in reality, you end up paying ! That is because that additional line of text that says the ability can only be used to reduce the amount of colored mana you pay is missing, so you can use the ability to reduce the generic portion of the mana, too (since obviously you can use to pay for ). Obviously, if your opponent has a Lodestone Golem and you control an Edgewalker, you are still paying to cast Empty-Shrine Kannushi.

Wake me up, before you go-go (deeper)

And that is going to do it for this column. As usual, we managed to find some interaction that doesn't quite work how you would expect, and explain why that's the case. I hope everyone enjoyed it!

As usual, if you have comments about this article or suggestions for a topic that you think looks interesting, feel free to comment below or tweet @TheR3dMage. This includes any criticism or ways that you think the articles could improve! We are only on the third article, and there are probably a number of things I could do better. Your feedback is always appreciated! Even if you don't comment or tweet, thanks for reading my article. It means a lot to me!

Well, as much as digging is fun, it looks as we have gone deep enough for this time. But next time, we are going even deeper. I'll see you then!