I'm Mike, from The Mana Pool.

I first learned to play around the release of Ice Age (1995-ish) and was strongly involved with playing casually and at local events until early 2020, when I had to back off for obvious reasons. I got back into playing a little bit in 2022 with a few prereleases and casual meet-ups here and there and I still enjoy keeping up with Magic news and new sets.

As a general rule, my deckbuilding is influenced far more than it should be by what I think would be "interesting/fun/funny" instead of what's probably the better choice of cards. The friend who first taught me how to play had a very strong philosophy of "Not every card is good, but pretty much any card can be made good" and the casual groups I spent the most time playing with over the years were always keen on figuring out how to make effective game plans from odd ideas. It was all immensely fun and it's still a big influence on my approach to the game.

I also tend to design and build strictly from my existing collection. If there's a good card for a deck that I don't have in a list, there's a good chance I don't own any, but please suggest it anyway so that maybe I'll remember to go out and find it.

I was a DCI-certified Rules Advisor under older versions of the Magic Judge program and I still keep up with new mechanics and rules changes. I'm the "rules guy" of my casual play group and I like to hang out in the Rules Q&A area here on Tapped Out. If you notice a mistake in one of my responses, don't be shy about pointing it out because above all else, I want whatever question I'm responding to to be answered correctly!

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That's correct, Amalia will die in that situation. The explore trigger will still resolve after she's put into the graveyard (no +1/+1 counters will be placed if it's a non-land card).

A creature dying from lethal damage is one of the game's "state based actions" (SBAs). The game checks for SBAs right before each time a player would get priority to take another action and it processes those SBAs immediately. In your example, the game checks right before Amalia's explore trigger is put onto the stack.

In the detailed rules for the explore action, if an effect was going to cause an object to explore but that object has left the battlefield, the game will use the last-known information about the object to resolve the explore effect and let it do as much as it can.

January 14, 2025 8:58 a.m.

Said on copy token ruling...

#2

Bobby654: An answer to your question has been up for a while. Since there don't seem to be any follow-ups or corrections that need to be made, I marked it as the "Accepted answer" so this topic can move out of the list of unanswered questions. In the future you can take care of this yourself using the "Mark as Answer" button on the response that you feel is the most helpful answer to your question.

January 13, 2025 8:58 a.m.

Varatrixx: An answer to your question has been up for a while. Since there don't seem to be any follow-ups or corrections that need to be made, I marked it as the "Accepted answer" so this topic can move out of the list of unanswered questions. In the future you can take care of this yourself using the "Mark as Answer" button on the response that you feel is the most helpful answer to your question.

January 3, 2025 10:52 a.m.

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MTG Decks

Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer

Commander / EDH Rhadamanthus

SCORE: 4 | 7 COMMENTS | 1706 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

Fumiko the Lowblood

Commander / EDH Rhadamanthus

SCORE: 64 | 47 COMMENTS | 25311 VIEWS | IN 20 FOLDERS

5-Color

Casual Rhadamanthus

SCORE: 12 | 30 COMMENTS | 40746 VIEWS | IN 6 FOLDERS

Dakkon Blackblade

Commander / EDH Rhadamanthus

SCORE: 9 | 33 COMMENTS | 8659 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS

Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Commander / EDH Rhadamanthus

83 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

Scion of the Ur-Dragon

Commander / EDH Rhadamanthus

SCORE: 72 | 131 COMMENTS | 168452 VIEWS | IN 74 FOLDERS

Finished Decks 106
Prototype Decks 7
Drafts 2
Playing since Ice Age
Points 644
Avg. deck rating 10.63
T/O Rank 24
Helper Rank 51
Cards suggested / good suggestions 58 / 46
Venues Lucky's Card Shop, The Toy Factory
Cards Added/Fixed 9
Joined 14 years