Pattern Recognition #242 - Special Actions

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

9 June 2022

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series as written by myself, berryjon. I am something of an Old Fogey who has been around the block quite a few times where Magic is concerned, as as such, I use this series to talk about the various aspects of this game, be it deck design, card construction, mechanics chat, in-universe characters and history. Or whatever happens to cross my mind this week. Please, feel free to dissent in the comments below the article, add suggestions or just plain correct me! I am a Smart Ass, so I can take it.

And welcome back! Sorry for the lack of an update last week, things were stressful enough as it is in real life and I needed a break from this to focus on other things. But thankfully, from our lovely Discord, there was a chat about rules and whatnot in which arose the discussion about Mana and Special Actions, and how they differ, and how they are the same. So I figured, Why Not? Why not just write it all down for you all in one easy to understand package?

Now, five years ago, I talked about the Stack and why it was important to the structure of the game to allow for interactions to happen in a way that wasn't an utter mess. Because in the bad old days, it was a free for all. Or mostly, as multiplayer was an exceptional exception, not the norm.

Today, I'm going to talk in a little more detail, about everything that ignores all of that. Specifically, Rule 116 - Special Actions. Now, to summarize, a Special Action is an action that does not use the stack, but can have timing limitations and other concerns. A Special Action cannot be responded to, save with another Special Action. It's a simple little thing, but skipping the stack has a huge effect on how the game is played, so much so that effects that can ignore it are extremely rare, and very well protected in other ways as well.

So, what are they? Well, in no particular order;

#1 - Playing a Land

The single most common stack-bypassing action is probably the one taught to everyone within minutes of them picking up and learning the game. Simply put, the action of playing a land on your turn (all other terms and conditions apply, such as Explore, and Crucible of Worlds), in one of your main phases, when you have priority, is a Special Action. No stack is involved. You just do it. Your opponent cannot respond to you doing this as you didn't use the stack, and you never passed priority.

This is something so basic, so fundamental to the game, that it's one of the two actions that are the most protected, and the most well thought out. Seriously, if you ever get the chance, read all the rules associated with basic lands in their full form. A lot of thought and effort went into defining what a land does, what it is, and how it interacts with the battlefield.

#2 - Morph

The other major stack bypasser is the one that most people, at least in my experience, is the one that most people think of when they think of skipping the Stack entirely. That is, flipping over a Face down Morph card.

Now, this is an interesting justification. You see, when you cast a Morph creature face down, be it Zoetic Cavern or Krosan Cloudscraper, you are still casting a creature for an alternate cost. You get the 2/2 and all the fun with it. So what makes the Morph ability itself so special?

Well, the answer to that lies in where the ability is.

Most of you probably just pointed at the card itself, face down on the table, and said "the ability is there". Nice, but wrong. Morph is an ability on the face down side of the card in question. And because it is face down, while it may be on the battlefield, there is no physical location for the ability in question. Confused? Well, with a Morph on the battlefield, one of the things about it, is that it is normally impossible to look at the underside of it in order to preserve hidden information. Sure, there are cards like Lens of Clarity to Peek, but hidden information is hidden.

Because there is no way to determine which Morph has which ability cost, there is no way to know which is which. You can't target the underside of a Morph, you can't know its colour, power and toughness or anything like that. There is no empirical way to determine what is what. There is no source for the ability. The underside of a Morph is, by definition, unknowable, and without that information, you can't activate an ability on it. Much like if a card is Manifested, but still has an activated ability.

So in order to get around this limitation, activating a Morph ability of a face-down card on the battlefield becomes a Special Action. It doesn't have a source, it doesn't go on the stack, and you can't respond to it, save for some triggered abilities, like Aphetto Runecaster, which lets you draw a card, or Mastery of the Unseen, which puts a bunch of lifegain on the stack.

Morph can only work from the position it is in, relative to the battlefield, when it is a Special Action, and because of that, there is a unique interaction that is the cause for quite a few confused questions to Judges.

You an flip over a Willbender in response to a card with Split Second, such as In Too Deep, and retarget the Split Second card. Because while Split Second prevents non-mana and non-triggered abilities, Morph skips all that and goes straight to the resolution. Willbender is a terrifyingly powerful card because of that single interaction.

#3 - Foretell and Suspend

While these two are separate abilities, I am going to put them both here because they do similar things, though with different ways out of them at the end.

Foretell - not to be confused with Forecast, thank you - allows you to pay a cost, and place a card from your hand into Exile. You may then cast that card on a later turn, for its Foretell cost. Similarly, a card with Suspend can be placed into Exile for its suspend cost, and when the last Time counter on it is removed, you cast it for free.

Both of these abilities work by placing the card into Exile. Because it doesn't enter the battlefield or is a spell put onto the stack where it resolves into exile (which would be a nightmare to integrate into the rules), by the rules as is, the ability wouldn't do anything if it used the Stack properly. So instead, these two abilities were termed Special Actions, and that would allow them to bypass the Stack and its restrictions. Of course, these cards have their own restrictions as well, and casting the spell from Exile via either ability absolutely does follow all the regular rules. But actually putting them into exile? That's a special action you can't interrupt.

#4 - Circling Vultures

Wait, Circling Vultures? What is this, you are asking? Well, back in the set it was printed, Weatherlight, wording and timing were awkward and not fully settled on yet. So while this card is actually pretty interesting in being a 3/2 Flyer for that eats creatures from your Graveyard to keep it in play, it's the first ability that is odd and unusual.

You see, you can discard Circling Vultures from your hand whenever you could cast an Instant. That's it.

Now, I'm sure a few of you are already thinking about this could combo into something or another, but that's not the point. The point is, being able to discard this creature from your hand is a self-contained action. It requires no external input to cause it to be discarded, and has no additional effect. You just... toss it.

What's the timing on that? There's no ability in play, there's no target. If anything, it's just moving from one zone to another with no cost. It's like a creature going from the Battlefield to the Graveyard in a way, but more direct and with less opportunities for someone to get something in the way.

Indeed, the official rulings for this card on Gatherer even state:

Circling Vultures's discard ability is a static ability, not an activated ability. Although it acts like an activated ability that says “Discard Circling Vultures: Nothing happens,” it is not one and cards like Pithing Needle or Abeyance won't prevent you from being able to discard it.

And because of this, of its nature of doing a thing without doing anything, that it requires that special definition of being a Special Action.

Magic, everyone!

#5 - Companion

And while we're on the subject, once the Companion Rules got changed from "Cast from the Command Zone/Exile (depending on format), to "Pay : Put this card into your hand", the nature of the action itself changed. Initially, you were simply casting the creature from a non-standard zone, but all the relevant rules and interactions still applied. You pay mana, you cast the spell, your opponents countered it, and it went into the graveyard. Because that's what you do.

But with the change to the mechanic, there were underlying changes as well. To whit, what is the timing of moving the card from one zone to another? Sure, both Keruga, the Macrosage (to represent Companion) and Circling Vultures specify the timing of the action, but with both, all you're doing is changing a zone.

And so, with the same logic that went into a card from Weatherlight, the Companion mechanic became a Special Action to move a card from one zone to another, were it could be treated normally.

#6 - Delayed Actions

Anyone out there aside from me and my decrepit old bones remember Slowtrips? No? Well, let's look at Arcane Denial. Mostly because it was recently printed in a Commander's set, so it might be something that people could have at hand to look at.

A Delayed Action is an action that occurs at a time frame distinct from the source of the action itself. Which is to say, that you are looking at a card that has an effect that happens after the card itself has resolved. And with Arcane Denial, this is where the controller of the spell that has been countered, as well as yourself, each draw (a) card(s) at the beginning of the upkeep on the next turn.

It's that simple. A Delayed Action is a Special Action because when it happens, it's not like there's a source spell or ability that you can see on the stack or on the battlefield to indicate that it is supposed to happen. Much like Morph in that regard.

However, there are still a couple of caveats with regards to Delayed actions. First, is that while you cannot interact with them when they occur, you can interact with them when the source spell or ability is put on the stack. You can absolutely interact with Arcane Denial when it is cast, and if that spell doesn't resolve, then obviously, no one gets to draw cards. You can also preemptively prepare for it, such as protecting your Narset, Parter of Veils to prevent the countered spell's controller from drawing two cards.

But the real issue with this one is one of memory. While Arena can handle remembering the activation of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria's +1, our squishy organic brains might not, and it is up to use to remember. Of course, it is considered polite and proper to remind people of triggers and delayed abilities like that, so everyone should be on the watch for such thing. But if everyone forgets? Well, that can be awkward to deal with.

#7 - Ignoring An Ability

There are a few cards in the game that work as a static ability (with a couple of activated ones), where you can pay to ignore that ability for a time. Things like Damping Engine, or Leonin Arbiter or Lost in Thought. There aren't many of them, but all these cards have similar wording. You may perform an action to ignore some restriction.

The paying of that cost, such as the on Leonin Arbiter is an ability that can be activated with the timing restrictions as written on the card, but because it's not an activated ability, like say, as with Nullhide Ferox, it becomes a Special Action, rather than an Activated Ability.

#8 - Planechase and Conspiracy

If ever you're playing Planechase, and you are told to roll the Planar die, or you pay the cost to roll the die, that action is a Special Action, along with the changing which Plane you are on, or putting the Chaos effect on the stack.

However, the Chaos effect does use the stack and can be interacted with accordingly. It's just Planeswalking and the effort required to do so is a Special Action and ignores the Stack.

In addition, if you ever find yourself playing a Conspiracy Draft, and you have a Hidden Agenda of say... Unexpected Potential, you can flip that card face up at any time as a Special Action, and do what it says, or act with the change in the way something works.

And those are the ten Special Actions in the Game! I hope you have been educated with regards to what is going on here and can see the common threads that run through all of them. Now, for most of you, this rule and its subsets won't be needed, and you can play your game normally without any concerns whatsoever.

But for the times that you do? Well, now you know!

Join me next week when I talk about something else. I'm not sure what yet, but as this article came from discussion on the discord, you all know that I'm open to suggestions.

Until then please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!