well, I'd argue that ambiguity is better than literal gamebreaking. another example: I have three cards in hand and 8 mana. I pay , reveal rumors of danger, and deal 1 damage to something. after that resolves, I pay , reveal rumors of danger, and deal 1 damage to something else. then I declare Belfry Trap for free. am I cheating?

also, why wouldn't it work with Duress? Duress makes you reveal your hand, so something that asks if you've revealed your hand this turn will say yes if you've been the recipient of a Duress this turn. and "reveal your hand" is standard terminology, so I'm not sure why it would behave any differently in my proposed wording than it does in every other card it's used on. revealing the zone is revealing all the cards in it, it just shifts the emphasis to something you can actually track reliably.

We had an NGA Rules Q&A thing but it doesn't really have a lot of activity. Posting in NGA Constructed and Rules probably works since it brings to attention issues in the thread that tracks wording changes.

This thread gets like one or two questions a month on average, so I'm okay with NGA stuff showing up here.

Somewhat lengthy question here. Bear with me

My board:
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled (untapped)
Cemetery Reaper (tapped)
Big Game Hunter (tapped)
Thousand-Year Elixir (untapped)
Endless Ranks of the Dead
Thornbite Staff
and
18 2/2 black zombie tokens, 12 untapped, 6 tapped
8 swamps, all tapped
I have the staff equipped to one of the zombie tokens

My opponent casts Disaster Radius revealing Molten Primordial to do 7 dmg to each creature I control.

Do I have the option of using the zombie with the staff to ping away at his creatures as I lose zombies one by one, or is that damage from Disaster Radius applied simultaneously to all of my creatures. Same issue: can I kill zombies one by one to make Ob grow fat enough to survive, or does he die along with everything else?

Thanks! Gatherer is useless on this one.

The damage is dealt simultaneously. The untap ability from the staff and Ob's ability will trigger a bunch of times, but their sources will be dead before they resolve, so there will be nothing to untap or put counters on.

All the damage is dealt at the same time, so once Disaster Radius has finished resolving all your creatures are going to die at once--there's no way to have each of them die one by one and have triggers resolve in between each death.

Thanks! I figured as much, but wanted to double check.

I am 99% certain I know the answer to this but it's a piece of information I would like to have for my own reference.

I control crazed goblin and forcefield. my opponent controls meglonoth. I attack with Goblin, they block. can I use my forcefield to prevent some of the damage? Meglonoth is not a blocked creature, so logically speaking it is an unblocked creature and thus a valid target for forcefield.

First, the CR glossary for "Unblocked Creature" defines it as
"
Unblocked Creature
An attacking creature once no creature has been declared as a blocker for it, unless an effect has caused it to become blocked. It remains an unblocked creature until it’s removed from combat or the combat phase ends, whichever comes first. See rule 509, “Declare Blockers Step.”
"

So only an attacking creature can be an unblocked creature.


But even if the Forcefield didn't have the 'unblocked creature' requirement, this still wouldn't do what you want it to do. The damage Meglonoth deals with its triggered ability isn't combat damage. Forcefield ("1: The next time an unblocked creature of your choice would deal combat damage to you this turn, prevent all but 1 of that damage.") only prevents combat damage.

yeah it was pretty clear once you read the Oracle text on forcefield.

that was the answer I was actually looking for, I just had to try to construct a scenario where the distinction could matter. looks like I screwed up reading Meglonoth, I glanced at it and misremembered it as a replacement effect, which would as far as I know still count as combat damage. but yeah it's a trigger so doesn't really matter.

Looking for a creature that, as a blocking creature, could deal its combat damage to a player? Well, your own Goblin Psychopath can (to you).

ah, there you go. and, in that case, you can't prevent it with forcefield, yes?

basically I'd like to make the case that "whenever ~ becomes unblocked" is a better trigger event for things like Master of Cruelties and before I got into arguing clarity I wanted to first make sure that it didn't have any rules complications. but it looks like the rules do indeed support my assertion that a creature can only be unblocked if it is a) attacking and b) blockers have been declared.

I believe if you attack with Goblin Psychopath, coinflip decides it's going to be dealing its combat damage to you, and then it is not blocked, you can Forcefield it and keep it from hurting you as much.

If your Goblin Psychopath is being declared as a blocker and you lose the coin flip, it will deal its combat damage to you, but Forcefield isn't usable because it's not an unblocked creature (it is neither a blocked nor unblocked creature - those are states only defined for post-blocker-declaration attacking creatures).

It is still combat damage though. You could Fog it. You could prevent some or all of it with activations of Decorated Griffin.

You can also block an attacking creature with Butcher Orgg and choose to deal the Orgg's combat damage to yourself, and if so you won't be able to prevent the damage with Forcefield. Sounds like a great idea

Oh, yeah, that reminds me--I kind of want to see Butcher Orgg's little loophole closed, but it's so minor I can't really justify trying to get the rules team to waste time on it.

I hope this question hasn't been asked already, but it probably has. I have a question about planeswalkers since I'm new to using them. I know planeswalkers aren't considered creatures, so they can't be destroyed normally, but they seem to be somewhere in between creatures and players if I'm not mistaken. The rules say I can't target a planeswalker with non-combat damage directly, but I can redirect damage that would normally be sent to an opponent as the spell resolves. My question is how would I formally declare the redirection in a tournament setting?

in terms of tournament practice, you can just say something like "bolt your planeswalker" and it'll be unambiguous. technically the damage is redirected as it's being dealt, so until then you don't have to commit to it and your spell is technically targeting the player. if you want to be sneaky, you can say "bolt, targeting you?" but if you do I think you probably should follow it up with a request for responses so they know that once they pass back you have some effects, in this case a non-obvious redirect. this can be useful if you fear counterspells, for instance, to not give them undue information about your intent.

Me: I cast Lightning Bolt targeting you.
Opponent: Ok, it resolves.
Me: As it resolves, I redirect the damage to Jace.

Sounds simple enough, it seemed like a silly question but I just had to be sure. So to sum it up, target the player, and after they accept it but before the damage goes on the stack, declare redirection. That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure if it would cause confusion.