There’s an old adage among 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering players when faced with a card they’v⛎e never seen before: “re𒊎ading the card explains the card”. Part of Magic’s popularity is that its rules are near-water-tight, and you can usually take every word written on one as being literal. As long as you know how the game works, no card should be a shock to you.
Despite that, there are a few that just don’t work the way people expect them to. Whether it’s beca🐻use there was an oversight in the rules, or just an awkwardly-phrased sentence that throws people off, some cards need a bit more explaining than just reading what’s on it.
Approach Of The Second Sun
Six generic, one white sorcery:
If Approach of the Second Sun was cast from yꦡour hand, and you’ve cast another spell named Approach of the Second Sun this game, you win the game. Otherwise, put Approach of the Second Sun into its owner’s library seventh from the top, and you🤪 gain seven life.
One of the most popular alternate win conditions in Magic is through the Approach of ꧃the Second Sun. All you need to do is cast i💙t from your hand twice, and you’ve won. However, what many people confuse is which of those casts have to actually resolve in order to net you the win.
It’s often assumed that you win the game immediately on casting 🃏Approach of the Second Sun for the second time. In fact, Approach only checks for that first cast when the second cast resolves. This means your opponents could stop you with a counterspell or instant-speed wi🃏n condition of their own.
In other words, people often get Approach of the Secon🌠d Sun backwards. The first cast doesn’t need to resolve, and it doesn’t need to be from your hand. It’s only the second cast tha♉t needs to be from your hand, and that’s the one that you need to be wary of counterspells for if you’re going for that combo win.
Sphinx Of The Second Sun
Six generic, two blue cr🏅eature – Sphinx &ndashౠ; 6/6:
Flying
At the begi♈nning of your postcombat main phas🌊e, you get an additional beginning main phase after this phase.
What is it with “Of The Sec🍷ond Sun” cards and being confusing? Debuting in Commander Legends, this is a powerful creature that gives you access to all your lands, a second draw, and a second round of upkeep triggers each turn. It’s an undeniably excellentღ card, but it isn’t quite as good as people first think.
There is often confusion as to when that additional beginning main phase happens. Lots of players see “at the beginning of your postcombat main phase” and assume that means you untap, upkeep, and draw straight after combat, and go into their second main phase with all their resource✃s on hand. Unfortunately, they often miss the last three🍸 words, “after this phase”.
Sphinx of the Second Sun’s ability triggers at the beginning of the postcombat main phase, but its effects aren’t felt until after it. During a turn with Sphinx out, you’ll go from combat, to your second main. At the start of the second main phase, the Sphinx will trigger, putting a second starting phase after the second main (which stays even if the Sphinx is removed during the second main phase). After that main phase, you’ll go to your second untap, upkeep, and draw steps, and then immediately move to the next end step.
You’ll still have time to cast instants and permanents with flash, as well as activate abilities, but you won’t have time to cast anything at sorcery speed. The Sphinx is a great way of keeping mana up during your opponen🐽t’s turns, bu🔯t not for having splashy second main phases like you may have expected.
Serra Paragon
Two generic, two ✅white creature – Angel – 3/4:
Flying
Once during e♉ach of your turns, you may play a land from your graveyard or cast a permanent spell with mana value three or less from your graveyard. If you do, it gains “whenever this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, exile it and you gain two life”.
One of the newest cards on this list, Serra Paragon was introduced in Dominaria United, and is an interesting example of a common debate in M⛎agic’s rules: should the rules be interpreted as-written, or as-intended?
As-intended, Serra Paragon is a perfectly reasonable permanent reanimation tool. You can pull all kinds of cheap permanents out of the graveyard, making it something of a more fragile Sun Titan. The life♐gain it gives is also nice, even if it does come with the cost of exiling those permanents completely.
However, as-written, Serra Paragon doesn’t work. This is because, in general, permanents and the spells that make them are two distinct things. Only a few things can modify a spell and have it carry over to the resulting permanent: spells, activated abilities, and triggered abilities. Serra Paragon’s effect is none of these things, it’s a static ability. If you go by the rules as they are written, Serra Paragon’s entire clause of exiling permanents doesn&rsquo😼;t apply, and they’ll just go back to the graveyard instead.
Of course, the as-intended use of Serra Paragon is clear for casual p🤡lay, and i♛t would only take a small update to the comprehensive rules to make it work as-written too. But, especially for competitive play where money is on the line, knowing the specifics of why Serra Paragon currently doesn’t work could be vital.
Henzie “Toolbox” Torre
One black, one red, one green legendary creature – Devil📖 Rogue &ndash💧; 3/3:
Each creature spell you cast with mana value four or greater has blitz. The 🙈blitz cost is equal to its mana cost.
Blitz⛎ costs cost one generic less for each time you’ve cast your commander from the command zone this game.
As the face of the Riveteers Rampage preconstructed Commander deck, you’d think Henzie “Toolbox” Torre would be a relatively simply commander to understand. Despite that, he faced a similar problem to Serra Paragon when he was released, in that the comprehensive rules didn’t quite match up to what Henzie doesꦏ.
Like Serra, Henzie’s problem was that blitz has two components that only apply to permanents, not spells. Creatures with blitz have haste, and allow you to draw a card when they die – two things a s💖pell can’t have. As Henzie’s ability originally didn’t transfer from the spell to the permanent, the result🌟 was the resulting creature not actually having blitz, haste, or its death trigger.
Unlike Serra, this hole in the rules was closed. The specific ruling is 400.7a, ironically the same rule that breaks Serra Paragon. Shortly after Henzie’s launch, the rules were updated to specify that “Effects from static abilities that give a permanent spell on the stack an ability that allows it to be cast for an alternative cost 🐈continue to apply to the permanent that spell becomes” – or, more simply, the resulting permanent from the spell has blitz.
Obeka, Brute Chronologist
One generic, 🍷one blue, one black, one r🍰ed legendary creature – Ogre Wizard – 3/4:
Tap: The ཧplayer whose turn it is may end the turn.
For one line of text, you wouldn’t expect this card to be so tough to follow. And yet, for all but the most famili♍ar with every step of a Magic turn, Obeka can cause big problems.
When you tap Obeka, a few things haꦺppen. The stack is cleared, and every spell or ability currently on it is exiled. Combat is ended, and no player received priority again. Finally, the game immediately moves to the clean꧅up step – to last step in the turn.
The crucial thing about Obe🌄ka is that she doesn’t help you circumvent end-of-turn triggers. For example, the effects of a Heroic I𝄹ntervention will cease when you activate Obeka, as the card explicitly says, “until end of turn”.
However, it does help circumvent the end step,♏ which is the part of a turn that happens before cleanup. Obeka’s ability completely skips over this part of the turn, which allows you to avoid the impact of cards like Alchemist’s Gambit or Last Chance, which specify that you lose the game at that turn’s next end step.
Obeka is completely fine in terms of modern card wording. By now, we’ve got the difference between a▨n end step and the end of the turn pretty set in stone. The problem with Obeka comes from old cards interacting with new terminology. “Reading the card explains the card” doesn’t apply when older cards were much looser in their rules texts, and the real, current rulings are only found on an online database.
The confusion comes in for older cards which use one phrase on the card and the other in their official rules text. For example, Soulshriek gives a creature a large buff, but then sacrifices it at the next end step. However, the card – printed in 1996 before “sacrifice” and “end step” – actually reads “bury that creature at end of turn”. Taken literally, Obeka wouldn’t bypass Soulshriek’s sacrifice if played as it reads on the 🅷card, but in the current rules absolutely does.