That is correct! Weird, huh?

Can you Sleight of Mind a Severed Legion to make it unblockable except by artifact creatures and/or red creatures? My gut is no, because "black" isn't actually written in Severed Legion's rules text. I want to be sure though.

You cannot. As far as the rules are concerned, Severed Legion's text box contains one word: "Fear".

So I've heard several times in YMtC-related things that "Costs can't target!"

Why is that? I know that there aren't any cards that have costs that target, but "costs don't target" is different from "costs can't target".

Targets are defined as something that spells and abilities on the stack can have. They exist to bridge the gap between choosing what to hit with Lightning Bolt and actually dealing the damage. Since costs are payed immediately, there's no such gap, so targets don't exist there. For the same reason, mana abilities can't have targets.

I can see why some people want to be able to have targets in costs, but the mandatory nature of targeting allows you to just move that "cost" to the effect part of the ability and usually get the same result.

Morph questions:
do face down morph creatures have a name? If you cast bile blight, do they all die (unless they flip)? Do you get more than a colorless grey ogre if you copy or clone them? Their Cmc is [mc]3[/c], right.

A face-down creature has no name, no mana cost, no color, no creature types, and no abilities.

Bile Blight will only kill one morph creature, because you can't have the same name if you don't have a name at all. (I can see why you would think otherwise, but this is just how the rules work.)

A face-down creature's converted mana cost is 0, since it has no mana cost.

Arguing with someone about a YMtC design.

Flux Servant
Creature -- Elemental

, sacrifice ~: Add to your mana pool. If this mana is spent to cast sorcery spells, you may cast those spells as if they had flash.

1/2


I say it doesn't work because paying costs comes late in the process of casting a spell, and you can't even begin to cast it unless timing restrictions allow you to do so.
He says it does work, because you can start to cast it at any time; if you're not allowed to, you've performed an illegal action and everything gets rolled back. So you can start to cast a sorcery, pay the costs, and suddenly you're allowed to cast it because you used this guy's mana.

I think this argument makes no sense, but I'm afraid to think about it too much because that way lies discussion of Selvala/Garruk's Horde, and that brings only madness.

You are correct. If you begin casting a sorcery spell during a time when you can't legally cast a sorcery spell, you've taken an illegal action. There's no way to retroactively make that action legal. Everything after the illegal action must be rewinded.

This person's argument suggests that you could play Zur the Enchanter, attack with it, put Fervor onto the battlefield with his ability, and say your attack was legal because Zur now has haste. The rules don't care that Zur has haste now. They care that it didn't have haste when it attacked.

He could make it legal by making it;

", sacrifice CARDNAME: You may cast a sorcery spell from your hand. If you do, it costs less to cast."

dictate of the twin gods and deflecting palm. ... Quadruple damage, right?

I'm no guru, but I would say yes to that one.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: When applying replacement effects and prevention effects, the order in which they are applied is chosen by the player affected or the controller of the permanent affected by those effects. In this case, Dictate of the Twin Gods and Deflecting Palm are both applying effects to change damage being dealt to you, so you choose what order they apply in, presumably choosing the Dictate first so that Deflecting Palm prevents twice as much damage. Then, when Deflecting Palm deals damage, Dictate of the Twin Gods again doubles it.

I've heard a rumor that if you target Spellskite with one half of Flesh//Blood then Spellskite wont be able to redirect the other (possibly valid) target. I'm fairly sure this is wrong but it felt worth checking up on.

It's wrong. Whoever told you that is probably thinking of Electrolyze (or something similar), where you can choose Spellskite as a target to stop the 'skite from protecting whatever else you targeted.

The key difference between those two cases is this rule:

This basically means that you can't say you're choosing two targets for your Rolling Thunder (because you want to get around Misdirection, let's say), but both of them happen to be the same creature. Doesn't fly. The word "target" is only used once, so it's not legal to have the same thing as that target multiple times.

While this rule may make you less happy when facing Misdirection, it will make you more happy when facing Spellskite, because if you Rolling Thunder, targeting some other things and Spellskite, Spellskite can't change the other target(s), because it's not legal for that single use of the word "target" to refer to the same thing multiple times.


Flesh//Blood doesn't get to share in the fun because it uses the word "target" a bunch of times rather than just once, so it's perfectly legal for every single one of those targets to refer to Spellskite. (Except the graveyard one, and the you-control one if it's not your own Spellskite.)

Excellent, just as I thought. Of note, (some) Jeskai Ascendency decks play Fiery Justice in the board as a Glittering Wish target, and that card can play games with Spellskite, but Flesh//Blood cannot.

My status of apartment rules guru is preserved!

Just the apartment? You lack ambition, my friend.

Well, I am roommates with literally the only judge in town...

I really need to take the rules adviser test some time.

Excuses.

if I cast rally the horde with no lands left in my library does the game end in a draw