Never noticed that. Good catch

Right, having everything be respondable makes pay-to-transform very vunerable.

Same idea for Akoum Firebird. It would absolutely suck to pay the six and then have it exiled from graveyard in response.

100% The wording on throwing knife is bad. Ink on paper, sacrificing the equipment clearly comes before targeting a creature to shock. That's how it should work. Otherwise, how can you target a creature to deal 2 dmg to before sacrificing the equipment to put the ability on the stack which lets you target a creature to deal 2 dmg to in the first place? 🤷

You can still interact, it just matters WHO gets the advantage. If you do makes it better for the active player, while the extra trigger makes it easier for the defensive player to counter the effect. It ultimately means the active players cards with the when trigger are worse cards, especially as we get so many instant speed interaction now. Especially for removal abilities its so much more value if they have to sacrifice it and you dont need to do it, so they would need to let it happen and not get a sacrifice effect, which is just extra value for the active player, making the card better.

_"If"_ is still easy to understand, and interacted

@@errrzarrr “if” means you have to select the target before you make a decision. This is not obvious to most players

Me neither. I don't think I'd ever have made that assumption. The word change to "when" doesn't change anything about how I play these cards! Lol

That is how it works. If you can't satisfy the condition as the effect resolves, the "if you do" portion won't take effect. So destroying Promise in response to its trigger, or even at the same time as another creature, will cause the trigger to do nothing when it resolves. Using Promise of Bunrei again, if you have three creatures die at once, Promise will trigger three times. When the first goes to resolve, you sacrifice Promise and then since you sacrificed it you make four 1/1 spirits. When the other two triggers resolve, you will attempt to sacrifice Promise again, but since it is gone already you can't, and you won't get more spirit creatures.

Exactly. If it triggers and goes on the stack and the opponent removes it, then as the trigger resolves you can’t sacrifice it as it’s dead already. It works as you thought. It lets there be a way to interact before it resolves.

Could you explain more, please?

@@TheZahirNT2 Took me a bit as well. When Aura Shards goes onto the stack, the aura shards player selects your enchantment. You then cast Deflecting Swat in order to change the target to one of their enchantments. Unfortunately, because of the wording on Aura Shards, when the trigger resolves with the new target, the controller (i.e. your opponent) can simply decide not to destroy their enchantment, as it is a "may"-ability. If it was worded with the "up to" instead of the "may", then the controller of Aura Shards wouldn't have the option to simply not destroy the target (and they still wouldn't be able to reselect targets either), therefore whatever you chose would indeed be destroyed.

Came here to comment basically this. Kinda funny that this scenario is basically the exact opposite as ygo's Missing the Timing

Yeah, the wording is "weird", English grammar wise, but the meaning is "If you were able to succeed".

💯. Like if it triggers and goes on the stack, the creature is removed, then when resolving the trigger their is no creature to sacrifice so you can’t and you don’t get the rest of the effect. It provides a window for players to interact, by removing the creature (much more common effect than preventing sacrifice)

There is no proof it's the only ring in existence, neither there is proff it's actually real. They should take a picture of the card's back so the print pattern is seen. But they won't. So it's fake.

@@malakimphoros2164 it's from PSA. It is obviously real. PSA confirming it gives far more confidence than an easily faked screenshot of some print pattern. There is also no need to prove it's the only ring in existence. As long as nobody else has any to offer or show on the same or higher confidence level as this one, the situation is effectively identical as if it was the only ring in existence, even if someone kept another in secret without anyone knowing.

@@Luxalpa There was no scandal surrounding graded cards yet. But the same cannot be said for other grading companies people have trusted. >screenshot of a print pattern grammer, also it can be put on video y'know. >no need to prove Until another one is found in a bundle.

If someone removes Grave Peril before its ability resolves, it does nothing. Same if an effect says you can't sacrifice permanents.

Exactly! Same here!

Too true

Is it time to bring the semicolon to magic cards?

I hope we don't need the semicolon, but if that's the only good way to write it...!

You can. That's exactly what this video is about. Any instance of 'when', 'whenever' or 'at' on a Magic card, at the start of a sentence, indicates the start of a triggered ability.

Nope, this isn't an "intervening if". "Intervening if" is for triggers that only triggers if a condition is true, and will check to make sure that the condition is still true when it goes to resolve. For example, Felidar Sovereign has the ability "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 40 or more life, you win the game." The "if you have 40 or more life" is an intervening if. If you start your upkeep, but you only have 39 life, the Sovereign's ability won't trigger, even if you can gain life during your upkeep. Likewise, if you start your upkeep with 40 life (so the ability triggers) and then your opponent Lightning Bolts you down to 37, when the trigger goes to resolve, the condition is no longer true and the trigger does nothing (and you won't win the game).

Intervening if clauses are something else. They are on triggered abilities templated as “when X happens, if Y, [effect]” where the Y is checked both so see if it triggers at all and right before it would resolve, preventing resolution if Y is no longer true. The “if you do” in the video is not that kind of if clause.

Pretty sure they just work according to rule 603.12: '... These reflexive triggered abilities follow the rules for delayed triggered abilities (see rule 603.7), except that they’re checked immediately after being created and trigger based on whether the trigger event or events occurred earlier during the resolution of the spell or ability that created them.'

How does it work in Yu-Gi-Oh?

@@seandun7083 "If" effects will always trigger, whereas "when" effects can have their effects fizzle if they're interrupted, such as by another effect. It's weird and stupid.

@@ProfDragonite ah, so if someone casts doomblade in response to heartpiercer manticore's initial trigger?

@@seandun7083 Maybe? All I know is that it leads to many headaches and obnoxious rules lawyering. One of the many reasons I actively dislike Yu-Gi-Oh.

​@@seandun7083 Yu-Gi-Oh uses a different response system than current Magic (though it is similar to old Magic's batches). They build up their chains and can't necessarily respond when they would like to, and the chain of effects can't be interrupted or added to once they start resolving. For a "simple" example, Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring can negate (counter) an effect that adds a card to someone's hand when that card or effect is activated. But if the opponent gets multiple abilities to go off at once, including one that adds a card, and puts an ability that doesn't add a card as the latest chain link, then Ash Blossom can't do anything to the effect that would add a card, since it wasn't the latest thing to happen. This is often called Chain Blocking, and is used to help get certain otherwise fragile effects through negates. Another "simple" example, but going from the other end, there is a classic trap card called Torrential Tribute that can destroy all creatures when a creature is summoned. If I use an effect to draw a card, and my opponent responds by using an effect to summon a monster, then his summon will happen and then I draw my card. Since the summon wasn't the most recent thing that happened, I can't activate Torrential Tribute to destroy all monsters.

That's exactly what I kept thinking!

Your tapped Grizzly Bears can't block, even if it's a 5/5 due to Giant Growth.

@MrEliakimRAS my bad, I was half listening because I was working. Eh, no other info I would still save the bear to smack back for a little bit of damage.

Does Hypothesizzle trigger Chandra's Phoenix? These are whole new questions confusing the casual players of today.

@@ArchaicEX Pretty sure it does, because Hypothesizzle is the source of the triggered ability, and therefore the source of the damage. But yes, that's definitely confusing for people who don't know that specific rule, which is probably the majority of players. This same logic also means that, yes, you can target both Emrakuls with Calibrated Blast, because you're targeting them with a triggered ability. But it won't deal damage to either.

Okay, I need to correct both you and myself. Calibrated Blast CANNOT target either Emrakul. The rules for protection specifically state that 'A permanent or player with protection can't be targeted by spells with the stated quality and can't be targeted by abilities from a source with the stated quality.' Which just goes to show how confusing this stuff can be.

It's because of the rules of Magic stating that triggered abilities begin with "when", "whenever", or "at". Triggered abilities don't ever start with "if". That's the entire reason on a technical level. The reason behind the rule is mainly so that it's clear to people who understand the rules when something is a triggered ability and when it isn't. Unfortunately, there are tons of players who do not understand the specific meanings of words in Magic-speak and have not done an in-depth study of the rules, and so don't understand the difference when from a non-technical perspective it sounds like exactly the same thing. The change was made in my mind because people tended to play it as though it was "when", but then when they played at a big tournament they had a bad experience when someone effectively "rules lawyered" them.

@@stevenglowacki8576 this was the explanation I was looking for. Thank you!

It is more that his explanation is poor, explaining it while visualizing the stack clears this up. When the equipped creature attacks, throwing knife goes on the stack with a declared target. If the defending player does not put anything on the stack in response, the spell resolves with the conditional clause of sacrificing the artifact to deal 2 damage. The rest of the video is about saying "when" is better as it will always make it so the defending player has the final say over the attacking player.

@@daddieo11The problem is that intuitively the rules shouldn't work as he says they do. The wording you'd want to use (if you want this unintuitive gameplay, which you don't) Is: *Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may choose a target and sacrifice Throwing Knife. If you do, it does 2 damage to that target.* But that's not what you want to have happen. You want there to be two triggered abilities: 1) Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may X. 2) If you X, Y. This is how the card reads, intuitively. However, Gavin says the rules require a target be chosen at attack. I don't think this is the case; if you attack with the equipped creature and there are no legal targets, then you should still be able to sacrifice the knife. Sacrificing the knife acts like a cost for an additional effect, but it's really just a trigger that causes another trigger. In short, it is my contention that the card is worded correctly and the rules interpretation of the wording is both unintuitive and incorrect (it's incorrect because it's unintuitive and because there's a way to word it so it would work like the rules seem to treat it as though it works).

I think you're a little confused about the full ramifications of "if you do", so I'm going to write a different version of the throwing knife text. When equipped creature attacks choose a target. Then You may sacrifice throwing knife and if throwing knife is sacrificed this way, deal 2 damage to that target. The if you do wording only creates one trigger, one that kills the knife and deals damage at the same time. The video is talking about how the attacker with the if wording always can choose to do the best option, where the new wording creates a chance to react to the choice of the attacker to sacrifice the knife or not

@@briant1784 I'm inclined to think, flavorfully, throwing knife should have two triggers - the "if you attack, you may throw" and "if you throw, you hit (if still a legal target)." Attempts to do this in "one trigger" are both flavorfully and functionally problematic for the mentions discussed above and in the video. The problem is that the card READS like it has two triggers, and if it has two triggers and works as read, it works as intended. In short, I think the rules interpretation is a mistake. Changing "if" to "when" doesn't help matters. At the end of the day it's semantics. But semantically it works as written, and somewhere along the line someone trying to clarify the rules made a semantic mistake that caused unintended consequences. Unless, of course, anyone can point to an "if" clause that works better as Gavin says the rules work. Anyone? Bueller?