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(102092 Mar 26  1994 official.answers.thru.12.3)

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
                      
N O T I C E ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

  This is NOT the FAQ list. This is a compilation of other answers from the 
  Snark (David Howell) and other persons of note, and are more of less official.
  Use at you own risk. 
  
                                         Darrell Budic 
                                         (budic@macc.wisc.edu)
                                         Network Archivist for
                                         Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
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Date: Wed, 15 Sep 93 16:25:36 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@omnigroup.com>

to avalent:

The FAQ makes no mention of the Black Vise in any form. It does
indeed apply to all players except the owner.

>Also, there's my still-unanswered question about, if I have a creature
>(such as frozen shade) which gains toughness for mana that I pump in,
>and that creature is currently tapped, and my opponent does damage to
>the creature in some manner, can I still pump mana into the creature
>so that it can survive the damage, even if it is tapped?

Yes.

Anytime you clear unused mana from your pool, you take a point of
damage.

>I had a good chuckle when this reminded me of something.  I heard of a
>really inventive/unusual technique for defending against the Chaos Orb.
>BLOW it back onto the 'dropper's' cards....which ain't against the rules
>either.

I'm afraid it is. This will be in the next FAQ.

>Does the use of a card that allows you to draw extra cards invalidate
>the conditions on the "Island Sanctuary" card?

Yes.

What follows is the text of a reply of one of our expert playtesters
to phadrus's questions.

==============================================================

>>cast Instill Energy on the resulting artifact creature, and use
>>that extra untap to untap the Time Vault in the middle of each turn,
>>do I really get infinite turns?  [Ouch.]

Yes.  Now they are on to Joel.

>>When a multi-land (Tundra, etc.) is altered by Phantasmal Terrain,
>>Gaea's Liege, etc., is the entire card affected (so it changes from a
>>multi-land into a regular single land), or is only one "aspect" of the
>>card affected (and if so, who determines which aspect)?  [Entire card
>>is affected.]  If the latter, then if both aspects of the card are
>>changed into the same land type (for example, if Gaea's Liege changes a
>>Tundra to forest/forest over the course of two turns), does it count as
>>one or two lands of that type for the purposes of cards whose effect
>>varies with the number of lands of that type in play?  [Counts as one.]

I know that the original intention was to have phantasmal terrain,
etc. turn just one half of the land, but I'm not sure the current
wording on the card does that.  In ICE AGE, we are planning to fix
the wording to make it clear that you could turn a Tropical Island
into a Forest and mountain card, for example.  I think he is right
that a forest/forest card just counts as one forest, just as a
forest/swamp card still just counts as one land in play.

>>If a Rock Hydra is Animated, does it get a new set of counters?  [No 
idea.]
>>(In general, what happens if a variable-cost creature is Animated?)
>>[No idea.]

I believe that if a Rock Hydra is animated, it immediately dies since
it starts off as a 0/0 creature that you pay to put extra counters on
for more toughness and power.  Cards in the graveyard have no memory,
so you don't remember how many counters the Rock Hydra had on it.  In
general, variable cost creatures start off as if the X was 0.

>>For Sacrifice, what happens if you sacrifice a creature with an "X"
>>casting cost?  Do you get back the mana that was actually spent for "X"
>>(and what if no one remembers what "X" is?), or just the base casting
>>cost (1 for a 1X creature)?  [No idea.]

I'm not sure on this one, but I think you need to remember what X was.

>>Are Basilisk's and Cockatrice's stoning abilities considered
>>"damage" for the purposes of Fog?  [No.]

I'm sure the intention was that the Basilisk and Cockatrice would NOT
kill other creatures after Fog, but I'm not sure what the card exactly
reads, so I'm not sure what the wording actually does.  If it doesn't
prevent, I think we'll change it for Ice Age.

>>Do multiple Raging Rivers have any additional effect?  (If you have
>>two Raging Rivers in play, for example, does the defender ave to divide
>>his blockers into three or four groups instead of two?)  [No idea.]

I think the Raging Rivers spell says specifically, "Divide into two" so
multiple Raging Rivers wouldn't have any effect.

>>Does spending one R negate all head losses from damage to Hydra, or
>>does one R have to be spent for each R that would have been lost?
>>[No idea.]

I haven't seen the actual card recently, but I believe it says "R to
regenerate a head" meaning you would have to pay R for each damage.

>>Does using Circle of Protection once against a source in a particular 
turn
>>mandate that you use it again (and thus pay the cost) if the source tries
>>to damage you again, as the "must" in "you must pay 1 mana each time"
>>might imply?  [No.]

I'm not sure about the exact nature of the question, so I'll answer:  1)
If you want to block the second use of the source you DO have to pay
again.  2)  You are NOT REQUIRED to block the second use of the source.

When I first read the question, I thought he was asking about 1) but a
second reading seemed to suggest 2).

>>Does Clockwork Beast have to pay 1 counter for each _creature_ it
>>blocks, or just once for each _time_ it blocks?  (In other words, if
>>Blaze of Glory is used to let a Beast block three creatures, does it
>>lose three counters or one?)  [No idea.]
I believe it is each TIME he blocks.  i.e. if he blocks a band with 100
creatures in it, he still loses 1 counter.  Same with blaze of glory.

>>If Jade Statue is activated for an attack, can it be activated
>>again for a block before the player's next turn, or does the artifact
>>stay "tapped" the way a creature would?  [Can be activated again.]
The artifact is definitely tapped by the attack and unless it is
untapped by some mechanism such as twiddle, it can not defend.  First,
you can't use a tapped artifact, so you can't turn it into a creature.
Second, even if you could turn it into a creature, it would be tapped,
so it couldn't block.

>>Can a player choose in what order to perform tasks during the untap
>>and upkeep phases?  For example, a player entering the upkeep phase with
>>1 life point has a Warped Artifact, which costs 1 life point, and a
>>Living Artifact, from which 1 life point can be retrieved.  Does the
>>player get to retrieve the point from the Living Artifact before paying
>>for the Warped one?  [Player whose turn it is chooses.]

This is a very good question.  Many of the actions are simultaneous
(i.e. all lands untap together), but in confusing questions like this, I
think it should be player chooses, and I think that should be in the
rules explicitly.

>>What is Gaea's Liege's power and toughness when it is neither
>>attacking nor defending~~~ [The number of forests its owner has in play.]

Bleah!  Obviously the Gaea's Liege wording shoudl change to:  Power and
toughness are equal to number of forests opponent has in play when the
Gaea's Liege attacks, and equal to the number of forests you have in
play at all other times.

>>If Creature Bond is played on Gaea's Liege, then an effect is played
>>that destroys Gaea's Liege as well as some forests in play, how does
>>this affect the damage the controller takes from the Creature Bond?
>>(Which number of forests in play is used, the one before or the one
>>after the effect?  [No idea.]  And do non-forests changed into forests
>>by Gaea's Liege count as forests for determining the damage done
>>by the Bond?  [No idea.]  And what if Gaea's Liege has Aspect of Wolf
>>cast on it as well?  [I go out and shoot myself. :) ] )

If it is the same effect (say a magical hacked volcanic eruption), then
the damage done to opponent would reflect the stats of the Gaea's Liege
before anything was destroyed.  Aspect of the Wolf would definitely
increase the stats of Gaea's liege, so would also count towards the
damage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Wed, 15 Sep 93 23:12:53 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>> > Say I use the Llanowood elves to get a green mana early in the round 
(or
>> > I tap Geia's Liege to make a Forest), and my opponent later plays 
Siren Song
>> > which forces all units to attack, or are destroyed
>>
>> > Are both pieces destroyed?  Can the Nettling Imp nettle a creature 
after
>> > it has already been tapped to do something else?  (I know about the 
case
>> > of the Tapping for special after a character is Nettled)

Both would be destroyed by Siren's Call. The Nettling Imp can nettle
a tapped creature. Ick!

>From: Jim Geldmacher <JamesG@asymetrix.com> <jamesg/daemon>
>Once my opponent has declared that they are tapping my Time Vault, 
couldn't
>I say I want to tap it. Tapping an artifact is a fast effect isn't it?
>Therefore as the one declaring later, I can say that I tapped it first. Or
>have I misunderstood the timing rules again?

You've misunderstood the timing rules, but you've found the right
result. You using the Vault, causing it to tap, and your opponent
tapping it, are not contradictory. You both twist the card at the
same time, and you get to use it. There's no paradox, so the timing
rules don't apply.

>On a related note can I use Twiddle to untap the Vault without skipping 
the
>turn?

You bet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Sep 93 07:27:10 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: Peter Sarrett <peter@hebron.connected.com> <peter/daemon>
>
>We'd like an official answer from David for these questions:
>
>1) If two Paralyze spells are cast on the same creature, must 8
>mana be spent to untap that creature?  

Yes.

>2) If I have Pestilence in play and am attacked by, say, a Juggernaut, can
>I tap 4 black mana and cause 4 points of Pestilence damage to everyone,
>killing the Juggernaut before it can do its damage?  

Yes. Ick.

>3) In Team Magic, if my teammate dies, what happens to the creatures which
>I've moved in front of him?  Do they immediately come back to me

Yes.

>4) If I have more than seven cards in my hand and have the Library of Leng
>in play, can I still choose to discard down to seven?  

No.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Wed, 22 Sep 93 20:23:43 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: diplomacy-3@genie.geis.com <diplomacy-3/daemon>
>
>5) Do the Zombie Master, Lord of Atlantis, Goblin King, etc, count as 
their
>type (Zombie, Merman and Goblin respectively) for use of the powers that 
they
>bestow?

Nope. Life is odd.

>From: npfluger@cs.tamu.edu (Nathan J Pfluger) <npfluger/daemon>
>
>[Correctly states banding rules]
>
>On a side note, do the cards that transform lands count as enchantments 
(this
>is for Disenchant, Consecrate Land and Tranquility).  IE if the Tomb turns
>a land into a swamp and later Tranquility is played, is the land reverted
>to its original state?

No. You have to Disenchant or Shatter the artifact.

>From: David.Katleman@Corp.Sun.COM (David Katleman) <david.katleman/daemon>
>
>Question about the tapping ability of the Icy Manipulator:
>
>I understand that if I were to tap one of my opponent's
>lands, he/she will have one point of mana to use and will
>lose a life point if the mana can't be used.

This is not correct. Tapping their land won't give them any mana.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Thu, 30 Sep 93 17:54:22 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>What the #*%&^ does it mean to PHYSICALLY INTEFERE WITH CASTING A
>SPELL??   "No you con't do thot, I will not allow it you small man."

It means you can't blow on the Chaos Orb, or rearrange your cards
after it comes into play. I don't know if you can rearrange them
before, either, but clearly, now, you can't after. There may be other
cards in the future that use this.

>"This restriction only applies when the enchantment is first played on
>the card" ???  What??  What restriction?  What does this mean??

The restriction that you must play an enchant creature on a creature.
This means that the rules specifically state if the creature becomes
an artifact (because Animate Artifact was removed, for example), then
people don't stand around wondering what to do about the enchantment
that appears to now be illegal.

>You need to say WHO is the controller of the enchantment.
>The caster.

Not necessarily. One day we may see "control enchantment."

>"Toughness is how much damage a creature can take before it is removed
>from play."  Why "removed from play"?  Why not just dies, or better
>yet is destroyed.  Remove from play vs. remove from the game.

What about Swords to Plowshares? That's not 'die,' and it's not
'destroyed.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 8 Oct 93 19:24:29 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>Here's the story: A red/black deck player throws a disintigrate at a
>black/white/blue player who simulacrums the 11 points to a Bog Wrath with
>Red Ward on it.
>
>Here's the problem: The r/b player tried to convince us that after 
bouncing
>though the simulactrum, the damage was now colorless. We (the b/w/u player
>& I) were convinced that the damage still retained its red coloration.

The damage was red. The r/b player gets shafted.

>ps: another question: if you use fork to duplicate a spell, do you still
>have to provide mana to power the newly duplicated spell, or is it

IT's amazingly cheap. You don't buy the new spell, you just pay the
fork.

------------------------------
>From: pbm@wdl.loral.com (Paul Melville) <pbm/daemon>
>1)      My spell was met with "power sink" (which says that I cannot 
choose to
>let it "be sunk" and must spend all mana from lands and my mana pool).  
Can I
>hold back mana that is available (but not yet in my mana pool) from an 
artifact
>such as Mana Vault or Sol Ring?

You sure can.

>2)      Creature Bond refers to the toughness of a creature.  The Rules 
seem to
>indicate that this does *NOT* include any enchantments or enhancement.  

No, no. Rules, bad. FAQ, good. Unless specifically told otherwise,
toughness is always *current* toughness.

>Now,
>about Drain Life---it also refers to creatures toughness---but I get the 
feeling
>that I *AM* allowed to drain life of a creature up to the amount of its
>_enhanced_ toughness....Comments?

------------------
>From: "MR. AL M.D." <aamaral@topcat.bsc.mass.edu> <aamaral/daemon>
>
>        When something has a landwalking ability, like forestwalk, if 
their
>land of that color is destroyed yet their opponet still has the land type
>is the creature able to use his landwalking ability? In the rules it 
states
>that your opponet needs the land type not the caster. That is why I 
believe
>that it would be possable. My friend states that if you do not have the
>land type then you do not have a starting place to do this ability from.
>So would the creature be able to use it's landwalking abilities even 
though
>it does not have the land needed to do it from yet the opponed does. I 
think
>so since the rules state it's ok , but please help explain this to him.

You don't need a land to start from.

---------------------------
From: geoff@omg.org (Geoffrey Speare) <geoff/daemon>
2nd ed rules question...

No, you should not be using 2nd ed. rules to play. First of all,
they're in fifth draft, where things like "Yes, you can regenerate a
tapped creature." are spelled out, and 2nd, because they're dependent
on things like the new def. of destroy and the tap symbol. 1st ed.
and FAQ are the way to go for now. 
----------------------
Intuitive rules from Tim.

Yes, the idea was if you imagined two wizards on mountains with
creatures between them, that should usually work. However, some of
the ways the rules interact will specifically contradict this image.
You have been warned. :)

=================================

Jeremy York:

>So generalizations of this question would be, could I interrupt a
>Tim in the middle of his poke, with a red elemental blast, and
>destroy him before the poke goes off?  Could I cast a blue elemental
>blast on a Firebreathing enchantment during the fast effects phase,
>interrupting the powering-up of the enchantment by my opponent,
>eliminating the card *and* resulting in the creature *not* being
>pumped up?

Yes. That's an interrupt.

>More elemental question -- is tapping a creature to use a special
>ability an interrupt (like tapping land)?

Nononono. The special ability is an instant unless other wise stated.
Drawing mana from land is like an interrupt. After these unrelated
actions, in both cases you tap the card to indicate you've used the
card's ability. You don't tap to use the ability, you use the ability
and tap to show it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Oct 93 08:57:21 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

Power sink only requires you tap land. I think I said this already,
but I'll say it again.

This business of what people do is fascinating. Around here, we also
do the "tap" and tap card when we use mana, and "untap untap untap
untap" during that phase, sometimes. Also, "Poke" when we do a single
point of damage, and "ow" to acknowledge damage. I'm in the habit of
counting off damage that way, "ow ow ow" is three points.

By the way, the "text" of a card is indeed *only* the part enclosed
in the box on the lower half.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 22:54:15 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>Question for the WOTC people:  Does using the NI or the blue spell "Siren 
Call"
>force a player to do an attack that turn, or may the player just let the
>affected creatures die without attacking? (I believe that you are forced 
to
>attack if any of the affect creature is able to.)

You have to attack unless you can prevent the ensorceled creatures
from attacking, like perhaps tapping or killing them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 22:38:35 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>A friend of mine has noticed that some of the new cards have (gasp!) new
>casting costs.  Does that mean that the earlier versions of the cards 
(which
>had lower costs) are now more useful to have in your deck?  :-)  Or are 
they
>supposed to be treated as having the same casting cost as the new ones?
>Some examples are:
>        Orcish Oriflamme
>        was:  1R, now 3R
>and
>        Orcish Artillery
>        was:  1R, now 1RR
>
>I also heard the new Elvish Archers are 2/1 instead of 1/2, but I haven't
>actually seen a new one yet.

Oh, dear. We did that? I didn't know we changed the Artillery. Well,
in a perfect world, you'd play the old cards as they were new, but I
can't see any possible way to enforce that. For now, play cards as
written. We may Officially Change Our Minds, but do that for now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 22:47:32 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>Ok, on one side you have someone with a Nettling Imp, and on the other,
>you have someone with a Prodigal Sorcerer. The guy with the PS begins his
>turn, and when he untaps the PS, the guy with the NI uses the NI to tap
>the PS and do damage to the owner. 

Excuse me? The Imp forces a creature to attack. Sometime during the
turn, the Sorcerer must march over at attack, with 1/1, the opponent.
Attack is specifically defined, and does not involve the use of
special abilities.

>Ok. Right after the NI guy says that,
>the PS guy says he'll use the PS to attack the NI before the NI guy can
>use it to do damage to him.
>
>What happens.

If the Imp zaps Tim, Tim can either respond by poking the Imp or it's
owner, which taps him, which prevents him from attacking this turn,
so he dies at the end of the turn, or he doesn't, so he has to march
into battle before the end of the turn, hopefully accompanied by
friends or wearing good armor.

It's not a paradox/timing issue.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 23:01:48 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

It's an Infrequently Asked Question!

>When you summon a Clone, it takes on all the characteristics of the
>creature you're copying, minus all enchantments.  So, if you have a
>Sera Angel, and I weakness it and then clone it, you've got a 2/3 Sera
>Angel and I've got a 4/4 one.  This all seems clear and makes sense.
>
>Let's say I'm fighting a black opponant and they've got "Animate
>Dead".  This is an "Enchant Dead Creature" spell.  If you cast it on a
>dead Sera Angel, you get a 3/4 creature that's the animated corpse of
>a Sera Angel.  What happens if I try to clone this?  Do I get a 3/4
>Angel?  A 4/4 Angel?  A dead Clone?

A dead Clone. If you dispell the Enchantment, the creature dies.

>Now let's say you've got a nice Artifact that I like.  Then you
>Animate it.  The resulting creature is only a creature as long as it's
>got an enchantment on it.  But the Clone can only copy the attributes
>of a creature without the enchantments.  What happens if I try to
>Clone your artifact, or shift my Doppleganger over to match it?

Officially, you can't. For a while the designer was letting clones
turn into artifacts, but it's just too hard to explain on the card.

>Now let's say my Clone was killed.  My foe Animates it, bringing it
>out of my graveyard.  What characteristics are had by the animated
>corpse of a Clone?  Is it still a copy of the creature originally
>copied, 

Cards back from the graveyard NEVER have any knowledge of their past
lives.

>or does he get to re-declare it?  This bears some similarity
>to Unsummoning a Clone.

Re-declare.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 00:57:34 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: CARL OR KAREN CRAVENS <DAFUZZ@delphi.com> <dafuzz/daemon>
>
>probably more powerful.  Some of these rare cards aren't really worth
>rare status, in my opinion.

You misunderstand. Cards were under stringent requirements to qualify
as COMMON cards. Well-balanced, not devastating in quantity, yet not
a waste of space. Cards that could not meet these criteria were
relegated to the ghettos of rarity. Rare cards may be too powerful,
or too stupid, or just not as good as some other card. Rarity is not
an honor, it's a punishment.

>From: Robert DeLoura <DELOURA@PMEL.NOAA.GOV> <deloura/daemon>
>Subject: Q: Trample vs Banding?
>
>Situation:  One 7/7 Flying Trample monster (gee I wonder what that is :) )
>is attacking.  Defender blocks with 2 1/1 Banding Flying creatures and a
>3/3 Flying creature.
>
>Defender says 'Since I'm banded, I allocate all 7 points to this creature
>(one of the 1/1 creatures)', and removes it from play.
>
>Attacker (me) growls and says Trample doesn't work that way, even if you
>*are* a banded group.
>
>Who's right?  I assumed that since he allocated all 7 points of Trample
>damage to the same 1/1 creature, that the other 6 points would overrun and
>hurt *him*.
>

You're right. The 1/1 creature is trampled for 7, which means 1 to it
and 6 to its controller.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 02:30:47 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: bethmo@microsoft.com <bethmo/daemon>
>
>* "When the Kormus Bell is in play, can a swamp be tapped for mana the
>  same turn that it is played?"
>
>If the swamps are really creatures, then they can't be tapped the turn
>that they are played.  If they're land/creatures, similar to animated
>artifacts being artifact/creatures, then they could be.

They're land creatures, not much like artifact creatures.

>* "Player A is playing a Summon spell.  He taps the lands for it, and
> tthen before he can lay down the creature player B plays Mana Short to
>  drain all his mana and abort the spell.  Does this work?"
>
>I ruled that it didn't, since Mana Short is an Instant, not an Interrupt.
>
>Some players lay down the creature and then tap, others tap and then lay
>down the creature.  Player B thought that as long as the creature hadn't
>hit the table yet, the spell wasn't being interrupted.  My judgement was
>that the spell was in the process of being cast, rggardless, and so it
>would have required an Interrupt to stop him.  Otherwise this becomes a
>who-yells-first situation.

Theoretically, they could be interrupted. Practically speaking, since
a player *could* have dropped the spell card, then tapped, I always
play as if they *did*, even if they actually play in the other order,
since to insist that they tap after playing is just being anal.

>And here's one that came up before the tournament, and I forgot to ask
>the list.  How does Trample interact with a Veteran Bodyguard?  I had
>originally thought that when damage was passed from a player to the
>Or does trample not count in this case since the Bodyguard isn't actually
>blocking?

The bodyguard intercepts all the damage coming to you. He gets
trampled in your place.

>And another that didn't actually come up in the tournament but we've been
>wondering about:
>
>"Does a creature with Red Ward still get the +1 from Orcish Oriflamme?
>Does it matter whether the Oriflamme was cast before the Ward or not?"

No. The Oriflamme doesn't target any specific creature, so Red Ward
doesn't stop its effects. 2nd Ed. rules.

>P.S.  We also wondered how much mana it takes to summon an Ace of Spades. 
:-)

Lots. Lots and lots.

>===============================
>
>> Given that, however, I'm still fuzzy on what should happen if you
>> lightning bolt a regenerating grizzly before dammage dealing phase.
>
>Hopefully this helps, since you are most emphatically *not* "given that".
>
>Dave?  Would you be so kind as to help us all out with this one?

Yes. If a creature regenerates, it is unavailable for further action
during an attack. It's recuperating, if you will. Any creatures
blocked by it do not attack the wizard, they just stand around bored
for that attack.

>From: CARL OR KAREN CRAVENS <DAFUZZ@delphi.com> <dafuzz/daemon>
>
>We nail that 1/1 creature with 7 (non-g for now) damage.
>
>1) How much damage did that creature take, 1 or 7? After the damage
>dealing phase, can I heal the creature for 1 point of damage to save
>him, or must I heal the creature for 7? (We're talking after-the-fact
>healing here, not preventing damage, which must come before the damage
>dealing phase.)

I believe we don't have any spells which heal after the fact. They
all "prevent." You'd have to prevent 7 to save the creature.

>3) Now what if that 7 damage is Trampling?  In this case, it's obvious
>that 6 of the 7 isn't applied to the creature, but to the player.  If
>the answer to #1 is "heal for 7" what is the answer in this case?

Any less than 7 and the creature still dies, and excess is applied to
you.

>It says "in play." I assume the graveyard doesn't mean "in play,"
>right?  This means that although Swamps are treated as creatures, I
>can't use Raise Dead or Animate Dead on one in my graveyard, right?

Exactamundo.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 93 06:57:30 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: CARL OR KAREN CRAVENS <DAFUZZ@delphi.com> <dafuzz/daemon>
>
>The descriptions of Instant and Interrupt both state that these spells
>can be cast "at any time." Reading this literally, this means that I
>can cast spells during the Untap, Upkeep, and Draw phases, correct?

That's correct.

>Another point of semantics and "timing" so to speak...  It is my
>opponent's turn.  If I Twiddle one of his creatures _before_ he
>declares that he is attacking, he can't use that creature to attack,
>correct?

Right.

>From: bethmo@microsoft.com <bethmo/daemon>
>
>Now, what happens if you Clone or Doppelgang a non-creature artifact that
>had an Animate Artifact on it?  The clone/doppel doesn't inherit any
>enchantments.  I would have ruled that it becomes an inanimate copy of
>the artifact, behaving like a Copy Artifact spell.  But I believe that
>Snark ruled in a past message that all you get is a dead Clone.  This
>seems illogical, but if it's the official ruling then it takes precedence.

Well, the designer originally thought that you could indeed clone an
animated artifact, and get an artifact of your own. I don't think
that's any more or less illogical than not, since how can a clone
turn into an inanimate object? Anyway, when we tried to clarify this
on the cards, it wasn't possible to say so clearly in the room we've
got. We did have room to say "you can't," so that's what we went
with. It's not as if it comes up very often anyway...

>From: magic@sneffels.its.bldrdoc.gov (Bill Ingram) <magic/daemon>
>
>1. The Library says "If a card forces you to discard, you may choose
>to discard to the top of your library."
>
>2. The rule booklet says killed creatures "are destroyed and placed in the
>graveyard."
>
>3. The rule booklet says, "If an enchanted card is put out of play, the
>enchantments cast upon it are discarded."
>
>4. The Disenchant spell says, "Target enchantment or Artifact must be
>discarded."
>
>We can conclude from these written rules that,

...the Library of Leng is very poorly worded. The intent is only to
allow cards discarded from the player's hand to be returned to the
top of the library. Note: not the Library, but the library, the stack
that you draw from.

>From: robertw@calvin.usc.edu (Robert Watkins) <robertw/daemon>
>
>If I have a Black Lotus out and someone uses either a twiddle or
>Icy Manipulator to tap it, does the Black Lotus remain in play
>since it wasn't tapped for mana and merely changed orientation?

If you read the card, it's the adding of 3 mana to your pool that
causes the card to be discarded. 

>From: Scott Nicholson <grundy/daemon>
>
>What are the rules covering placement of cards?  Can you place
>cards as far apart as you wish, or what????

Officially, now, yes, you can arrange your cards in any pattern,
until the Chaos Orb is put into play. At that time, moving cards
farther apart would be interfering with the Orb, and is illegal.

Practically speaking, I had a Sphere of Annihilation in my
gamma-edition playtest deck (the Orb's former name), and one player,
after he heard the card existed and even before he knew I had it,
started putting cards all over the table and on nearby surfaces. I
promptly quit playing him, since I wasn't about to chase all over the
room just to find out what he had in play.

>From: cheshere@aol.com <cheshere/daemon>
>
>Can you fork someone else's spell? The card easily implies this, but my 
group
>would feel better with a ruling.

Yes you can, and you have full control over the copy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 24 Oct 93 22:34:06 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: p.timm@genie.geis.com <p.timm/daemon>
>
>A) Can you play "Cyclopean Tomb" against an opponents land?

Sure.

>B) When using Zombie Master, can you regenerate ALL zombies in play for
>just one black mana, or does it require one mana EACH?

Each.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 08:06:03 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>     Someone is spreading the rumor around the game store where we
>  get our Magic stuff that WotC are giving away new, previously unreleased
>  cards at conferences or tournaments which will not be available 
elsewhere.
>  This sounds totally contrary to everything I know so far.

As someone has pointed out, we now have poker decks with Magic backs
for promotional purposes. No, you can't order them. :) Now, we DO
intend eventually to have cards that are only available from us at
conventions, perhaps included in the program packet or something like
that, but we haven't done it yet.

>    Okay!  That's a new phrase, "Lace cards affect the target 
permanently, and
>are discarded after use."  Does this mean that, (1) Lace cannot be
>disenchanted, tranquilitied, or (in a later turn) spell blasted, and that 
(2)
>you could bring it back into your hand later with a spell that lets you 
take
>a card from your discard?

Ya, sure, you betcha'

>   Some other questions...  Two Raging Rivers...  Must the opponent divide
>into three or four?  (We've suggested that when the player puts down a
>second raging river, he has to decide which side the river is on, thus 
it's
>three with a middle channel.  It being 'magic' however, it could be played
>as four.  Any official comment?

Officially, two Raging Rivers make one extra long river. No three- or
four-sided rivers.

>    Mana Flare:  If I have multilands (which I tend to have a bunch of) 
and
>a Mana Flare comes out, what kind of Mana can I tap for?  I have been
>playing, admittedly to my disadvantage, that if I pick a mana type to tap
>it for, I get two of those.  It seems the most straightforward, but if the
>official ruling is to pick, I certainly won't mind!  *grin*

Two of whatver you choose.

[ Darrell's note: I think he means "Two of WHICHever you chose", ie, two of ]
[ one, or two of the other, not one of each. My reading, YMMV...            ]

>   Winter Orb:  (I think...) You are only allowed to untap one land per
>turn.  Creatures are not affected...  What if Living Lands is in play, and
>my forests are 1/1 critters.  Can I untap them, or not?  The living lands
>sounds like it makes Llanowar Elves out of all the land, basically.  We
>treated them as critters initially, and untapped all forests as normal, 
but
>only one non-forest.

That's what I think, but we're discussing an official ruling now...

>    Living lands:  How does it affect multi-lands?  The obvious choice is 
that
>I would have, for example, a Taiga that I can either use as a 1/1 critter,
>tap for green mana, or tap for red mana...

I agree.

>    Can you sacrifice the Lord of the Pit to himself, to keep him from 
doing
>you damage?

No, he's just not that stupid. :)

>    Does anybody else have the problem of playing Magic for many many 
hours,
>then reaching for a soda and calling back over your shoulder, "Okay, who
>wants to tap some White Mana (Diet Coke) and who wants Red Mana?"  Some 
folks
>are now calling Mountain Dew as Green Mana, Coffee is Black Mana, and this
>disgusting local brand of grape soda is Blue Mana.  (Most people play with
>only one color of liquid mana around here...)

You people are really strange. ;)

>    Must you untap EVERYTHING which can be untapped (not taking into 
account
>things like paralyze, etc.), and must you draw a card every turn?  (The
>primary focus of these two questions are the Hordes and the Vise.)

Yes.

>    Could you be more explicit about 'Until End Of Turn', or should I 
REALLY
>just wait for the second edition of the rules?  (For example, my Scryb 
Sprites
>have +3/+3 from Giant Growth until end of turn.  I attack with them.  My
>turn completes, it becomes his turn.  Do 'Until End Of Turn' enchantments
>get discarded then?

Yes, that's when.

>    If someone has two Personal Incarnations out at once, and Wrath of God
>is played (I think that's the one), is that an instant kill?  (*shiver!*)
>I would unfortunately guess that it is, since the damage from both is
>applied at once...

yes.

>[regeneration]

If a creature regenerates, it may not continue to participate in an
attack.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 10:31:14 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

[ can Lan'o'war elves use their manna to power a Regenerate on themselves?]

Regenerating elves can indeed tap themselves to save their own bacon.
For now.

[ Lightning Bolt. Fork Lightning Bolt. If the Lightning Bolt is Countered, 
does]
[ the fork 
fail?                                                               ]

Fork only works on a spell that has been cast. If the spell is not
cast, which is by definition "successfully cast," then Fork will
fail. Counterspell the original, and Fork won't work.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 10:40:31 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

[ My opponent plays Animate Dead on a creature in my graveyard, I Unsummon 
]
[ the creature. Does he go to my hand (unsummon) or my graveyard (animate  
]
[ dead)?                                                                   
]

If you Unsummon a creature your opponent has Animate Dead'ed, it
goes into your hand. The text on Animate Dead is simply stating the
obvious of what happens if you disenchant, and wasn't meant to
override Unsummon. Oops.

[ Can a regenerated creature do damage again after it was rengenerates? ]

Any time a creature is regenerated, it may no longer participate in a
battle from which it has been removed.

And, yes, my secret is out, I'm not perfect. :o

"Enchant Non-Creature Artifact" indeed. Bleh.

>Sleight of Mind states that you can replace one color word with 
another.   
>Can you replace the word "colorless"?  Make a Sol Ring provide 2 blue 
mana?

No. Colorless is not a color. :)

>Swords to Plowshares states that creature controller gains life equal to
>creatures power.  Can I boost 12 red mana into my Dragon Whelp and then
>StP him and get 14 lives? The whelp dies if more than 3 mana is put into 
him,
>which takes effect first? 

The card says "at end of turn." can you StP it before then? Sure.

>How about a goblin with firebreath kicked way up?

Yes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 19:43:48 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

New rules, since the old ones are broken. Sigh.

Untap: no fast effects or spells of any kind until the untap phase
is finished.

Paralyze: A typo. Untapping a paralyzed creature occurs during
upkeep.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 00:43:34 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>>The text of Animate Artifact reads:
>>"Target artifact is now a creature with both power and toughness equal
>>to its casting cost; target retains all its original abilities as well.
>>This will destroy artifacts with 0 casting cost."
>>
>>Therefore, unless you have a way of changing the casting cost of the Mox 
(
>>do not believe it exists) animate artifact will -always- destroy the Mox.
>>Giant Growth doesn't keep it alive.
>
>Hrm.  I was thinking that since Giant Growth is an instant it would save
>the mox before it was destroyed.  So, are there any cards that will make
>an artifact into a 1/1 (or better) creature?

Sigh. The card is simply pointing out what might not be obvious. If
"will destroy artifacts w/0 casting cost" weren't on there, then
we'd have a "What happens when..." question in the FAQ. I think using
the instant Giant Growth to prevent the death until a permanent
enchantment can hit the poor creature is brilliant. Just as Weakness
kills skeletons, the Holy Strength would save the Mox Monster.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 21:25:40 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>bethmo says:
>
>I don't think so, unless Paralyze is another that changed wording when
>I wasn't looking.  :-)  Mine says
>
>        Target creature is not untapped as normal during untap phase
>        unless 4 mana are spent. Tap target creature when Paralyze is
>        cast.
>
>And Meekstone:
>
>        Any creature with power greater than 2 may not be untapped as
>        normal during the untap phase.
>
>Paralyze doesn't say "spend 4 mana to untap" -- if it did, you could
>untap any time, not just during untap phase.  Spending 4 mana gives
>it the potential to untap, but doesn't actually untap it.  Meekstone
>then steps in there and says "Whoa, no big creatures allowed!"
>
>At least, that's how I would read the combination.
>
>But if the Omnipotent and Omnibenevolent Snark rules otherwise, I will
>grovel at his feet and marvel at the greatness of his wisdom.  :-)

Oops. Darn. It was so cool to have Paralyze, under certain esoteric
conditions, be a card you'd play on yourself. Actually, since one of
the conditions was to move Paralyze to Upkeep, it's not untapping as
normal anyway, anymore. Oh, dear, how complicated.

>--------------
>From: Scott Nicholson <daemon>
>
>    I purchased two starter decks from a comic shop in
>  Oklahoma.  The two decks had the exact same composition.
>  Since these were the last two decks left in the area, I
>  was understandibly angered.

This is an odd artifact of the manufacturing process. You don't get
random cards, you get a sequence of cards, and where the cards start
in the sequence is random. You had three pairs start in identical
places. What a drag.

>-------------------
>From: "Jeremy C. York" <jeremy@stat.cmu.edu> <jeremy/daemon>
>
>Also, this "fix" of untapping a paralyzed creature during upkeep
>doesn't seem right to me -- if I a Meekstone is in play and my
>Craw Wurm has a Paralyze on it, it seems ridiculous to me that
>the Wurm should be able to untap *because* of the paralyze.
>*I* don't think this is "Cool!"
>
>How about "No fast effects that require casting a spell or
>tapping a permanent (other than land) during upkeep"
>
>So you can tap land in order to feed Paralyze, you can tap land
>to power a CoP...and not much else!

Complicated.

I know, this Un-Double-Poke fix causes other problems, but they're
all smaller than the original flaw. With a game this complicated,
there will always be problems, and we're working to clear as many as
possible for the 2nd ed. In the meantime, we all just get to glare at
each other a lot. Sigh.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 22:15:11 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: John Charles Fiala <jf2z+@andrew.cmu.edu> <jf2z+/daemon>
>
>The Blue Elemental Blast says, 'Cast to counter a red spell being cast
>or to destroy any red spell in play."
>
>Now, If I cast a blue elemental blast on a troll *in play*, I think the
>troll should die.  My erstwile opponent doesn't.  My argument, is that
>the card is destroyed, and the intent was that regenerating creatures
>would be killed.  His argument is that the card only says 'destoryed'
>and not 'destroyed w/o possiblity of regeneration', that the troll stays
>around, assuming you've got the R to regenerate it with.

Ick. Well, I think the troll should die too, but that's not what the
card actually says. :( Destroyed=killed=can regenerate. Bleh.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 22:52:34 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

Oh, by the way, re: fork.

"Any [spell] just cast is ...]

Just cast. As in, just sucessfully cast. You have to stop the
Lightning Bold BEFORE the fork is cast. Until the Bolt is past tense,
you can't use Fork.

There. <dusts hands>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 93 10:35:33 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

A note on somebody's question.

The Rock Hydra does have an X/X power/toughness, based on the mana
used to cast it. This happens to make Raise Dead completely useless
on this creature. Since it has no memory of its former life, it
can't use the X it had before, and X always defaults to 0 for
purposes of cost unless the spell was cast during the present turn.
Ergo, it's a -1/0 creature when raised. Oops.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 21 Nov 93 09:07:41 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>> 3a)  Tapping land happens at the speed of an interrupt.  If a variable 
cost
>> spell (eg. Fireball) is Spell Blasted, can more land be tapped and the 
mana
>> thrown into the spell to stop the Fire Ball from being countered?
>>
>
>Yes

No. Unlike fast effects, you must set the cost of an X in the casting
cost when you first take the card from your hand.

>> 5a)  A 4/4 Nightmare is hit with a Lightning Bolt, then one of his
>> supporting swamps is destroyed.  Is he then a 3/3 Nightmare with 3 
Points
>> of damage (dead) or a 3/3 Nightmare with 2 Points of damage (alive)?  In
>> other words, can the owner choose to remove one of the damaged points of
>> toughness or not?
>
>Nightmare is dead, it has taken three damage, and then its 3/3 wich means
>its dead.  You can't dispose of the missing life points its just damage
>accumulation vs. current toughness.

A 4/4 Nightmare becomes a 4/1 nightmare. The loss of a swamp means it
becomes a 3/1 Nightmare. The creature's toughness is reset at the
end. The issue of accounting for damage as total damage done vs.
toughness left is very subtle, and is not explained anywhere in the
rules.

>Okay.  If you think this wording is ambiguous, you're not thinking it
>through.  If by dies, you mean the whole go-to-the-graveyard process,
>then *NO* card that dies can be regenerated, as regenerate can only
>ever be played at the moment of death.  If that's what was meant, then
>disintigrate just has a silly tautology on it.

I'm afraid Disintegrate has a silly tautology on it.

>So, does the Kormus Bell make them into creatures *instead* of land,
>or creatures *in addition to* land?

In addition to.

>> I think that the intent of Consecrate Land was simply that no
>> enchantments except Consecrate Land could affect that land.  Why is
>> that so hard?

Because you don't get to play a card based on the intent, but only on
the words printed. We wish this weren't necessarily true, but it's
the only vaguely fair way to play.

>That may have been the intent, but then why would Snark have said 
otherwise
>at OryCon? An update or clarification may change this, but currently, by 
the
>rules in the book, the FAQ, and the "official" postings I've seen so far, 
a
>Concecrated Land can be affected by Living Lands.

Exactly.

>I play the black spell "Word of Command" on my opponent.
>He has a Disintegrate spell in his hand, which I want him
>to use on one of HIS creatures (this is a legal target for
>the Disintegrate spell).  My opponent claims that HE, NOT I,
>decides the amount of additional mana pumped into the
>Disintegrate (the "X" of the casting cost), as it is legal to cast
>it with a strength of zero.  His claim is based on the phrase
>"legal spell" on the WoC card (don't have the full text handy,

Casting with 0 is legal, as is casting with any other value up to the
amount of non-spell mana available. Clearly a decision must be made,
and Word of Command says you get to make it.

><Stuff about vampire w/ lance and 11 1/1 creatures deleted>
>
>>Bzzt. Vamp w/ Lance kills four and does not suffer any damage from
>them because
>>of the Lance which allows him to kill them before they can touch him. 
Lance
>>gives a creature First Strike.
>
>The interesting thing about this question is that the vampire gets the
>counters when the creature dies.  The creatures don't technically die
>until they hit the graveyard, because they could be regenerated after
>the damage phase.  All damage is simultanious.  So the vampire kills 4
>of the creatures, but takes another 7 points of damage BEFORE it gets
>the counters.  I think the vampire would die.

This is really interesting. According to our revised, expanded
sequence of play, dead=goes to graveyard, and creatures go at the end
of battle. The vampire wouldn't get the points until then, after the
non-first strike creatures can do damage back. Vampire dies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 14:10:27 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

Ladies and Gentlemen, I regret having wasted people's time on the
Fork/Counterspell issue. What happens is the interaction between the
Fork spell being an Interrupt, the fact that the card says "just
cast," (past tense), and the definition of casting, which actually
was codified after the game was released. I have been basing my
rulings on the phrase "just cast," but the message below is clear and
concise enough to bring out the utter paradox between this and the
Interrupt rules. Fork cannot both be an interrupt and affect spells
"just cast." Ergo, "just" is a typo. Please replace it with the word
"being," it affects spells "being cast."


>What I'm interested in is if we have consensus on my CONCLUSIONS below.
>Only a fraction of this is a re-hash of what's already gone by.  For
>reference, this is the text of Fork:
>
>  "Any sorcery or instant spell just cast is doubled.  Treat Fork as an 
exact
>  copy of the target spell except that Fork remains red.  Copy and 
original
>  may have different targets."
>
>HYPOTHESIS 1
>------------
>The phrase "just cast" is equivalent to "successfully cast."  At the 
moment
>Lightning Bolt becomes "just cast" the opponent takes 3 damage.

True. 

>COROLLARY 1.1
>-------------
>In order to successfully Fork my Lightning Bolt, I must wait until it
>becomes "just cast."

No longer true. You *must* interrupt the Lightning Bolt before it's
done being cast.

>COROLLARY 1.2
>-------------
>If I interrupt my Lightning Bolt with my Fork, then my Fork will not be
>able to use the Lightning Bolt as the target, because the Lightning Bolt 
is
>not the "just cast" spell.

Also no longer true.

>CONCLUSION 1.1
>--------------
>If my opponent takes the damage from the Lightning Bolt, and then I Fork
>the Lightning Bolt, he can no longer Counterspell the Lightning Bolt--only
>the Fork.  IS THIS CORRECT?

No. He can counterspell either. The counterspell will take effect
first, since it was cast later, leaving no spell for the Fork to
fork.

>CONCLUSION 1.2
>--------------
>To run a series of Forks off one Lightning Bolt, you must successfully 
cast
>the Lightning Bolt, then successfully cast a Fork (which will become a
>Lightning Bolt, do 3 damage, and become "just cast" all at the same time),
>then successfully cast a 2nd Fork on the 1st Fork (which is now a 
Lightning
>Bolt), etc.  There is no interrupting taking place here.  IS THIS CORRECT?

No.

>CONCLUSION 1.3
>--------------
>(Already answered by Snark, but restated here.)  I cast Lightning Bolt, my
>opponent interrupts with Counterspell, and I interrupt with Fork.  What
>happens?  Nothing.  No Lightning Bolt (it is Counterspelled), and my Fork
>could succeed IF I point it at the spell "just cast" which is the last
>spell successfully cast BEFORE the Lightning Bolt.  IS THIS CORRECT?

You can get the effect you want by forking the Counterspell, and
counterspelling it back, leaving the lightning bolt to succeed on its
own. Your Fork will create a copy of the spell in progress, the
counterspell, and finish its effects before the counterspell
realizes it's failed. Your interrupt takes effect first.
Strange but true.

>CONCLUSION 1.4
>--------------
>Assume I have two Forks and a Lightning Bolt.  I cast the Lightning Bolt,
>and assume my opponent lets it succesfully complete.  Then I cast Fork, 
but
>my opponent Counterspells the Fork.  I let the Counterspell successfully
>complete.  Oops!  I no longer have access to my original Lightning Bolt,
>because the spell "just cast" is the Counterspell.  IS THIS CORRECT?

No. However you can counter the counterspell as seen above.

>CONCLUSION 1.5
>--------------
>Assume I have two Forks and a Lightning Bolt.  I cast the Lightning Bolt,
>and assume my opponent lets it succesfully complete.  Then I cast Fork #1.
>My opponent interrupts with Counterspell.  I interrupt with Fork #2.  
(Fork
|JM


2uKW-HK$]4e original Lightning Bolt, as that is the spell "just
>cast.")  For the resolution, we flip to page 30 of the rulebook:
>
>  "If the same spell [ Fork #1 ] has more than one interrupt [ 
Counterspell,
>  Fork #2 ] done during its casting, the caster [ me ] of that spell [ 
Fork
>  #1 ] does his or her interrupts first [ Fork #2 ], regardless of 
whether it
>  was announced first."
>
>(Side note: There is an error in this sentence, where the singular "it" 
has
>a plural antecedent, "interrupts."  Presumably, "it was" should be "they
>were.")  So the sequence is: Fork #1 is interrupted by Fork #2 is
>interrupted by Counterspell.  The resolution is Counterspell counters Fork
>#1 (which was the target of the Counterspell, never mind the fact that 
Fork
>#2 has technically fired off in between!) and Fork #2 successfully
>completes, becoming a Lightning Bolt and doing 3 damage to the opponent.
>IS THIS CORRECT?

The results are correct.

>CONCLUSION 1.6
>--------------
>Assume I have two Forks and a Lightning Bolt.  I cast the Lightning Bolt,
>and assume my opponent lets it succesfully complete.  Then I cast Fork #1.
>My opponent interrupts with Counterspell.  I interrupt with Fork #2.  My
>opponent interrupts with Counterspell #2.  (I am not making this up.)  For
>the resolution, use the same rule as in CONCLUSION 1.5 above.  The 
sequence
>is: Fork #1 is interrupted by Fork #2 is interrupted by Counterspell #1 is
>interrupted by Counterspell #2.  Counterspell #2 counters Fork #2,
>Counterspell #1 counters Fork #1, and nothing happens.  But wait!  Now
>apply the same rule to Counterspell #1:
>
>  "If the same spell [ Counterspell #1 ] has more than one interrupt [ 
Fork
>  #2, Counterspell #2 ] done during its casting, the caster [ my opponent 
] of
>  that spell [ Counterspell #1 ] does his or her interrupts first
>  [ Counterspell #2 ], regardless of whether it was announced first."
>
>So the sequence is: Fork #1 is interrupted by Counterspell #1 is
>interrupted by Counterspell #2 is interrupted by Fork #2.  The resolution
>is Fork #2 successfully completes, becoming a Lightning Bolt and doing 3
>damage to the opponent, Counterspell #2 fizzles because its target is 
gone,
>Counterspell #1 counters Fork #1.  IS THIS CORRECT?

<blink> The solution is to cast Counterspell #2 during Fork #2, since you
cannot play both forks w/o allowing the other player to respond. You play
F1, you opponent plays C1 during F1, you play F2 during C1, and your
opponent plays C2 during F2. Only C2 is extant during F2, so F2 dies. C1 is
during F1, so it dies. The rule quoted above is ambiguous. Choice of frames
is everything here.

>TOTAL CONFUSION 1.7
>-------------------
>How does the next sentence in the rulebook, on page 31, apply?  It reads:
>
>  "Interrupts take effect immediately, unless they themselves are 
interrupted,
>  in which case you resolve their interruptions first."

That's intended to de-ambiguize the above ruling. :)

>So what's the deal?  Do we resolve the interrupts 1 by 1 (in which case, 
we
>have clear pairs of Fork vs. Counterspell) or do we start moving 
interrupts
>around according to whose perspective and which spell?

The former.

Where's my ibuprofin?

>1)  Volcanic Eruption
>
>The situation is that I have two mountains, my opponent has three.  He
>also has an Ironwood Tree out.  I cast Volcanic Eruption.
>
>Can I spend 5 mana do destroy the Ironwood tree even though my opponent
>has only two mountains?

Yes.

>If I do spend 5 mana, do my mountains have to be destroyed as well?

Yes.

>2)  Power Surge
>
>When Power Surge is cast, does it go into effect immediately?  If so, it
>is one HECK of an ambush spell...just wait till your opponent has 15 mana,
>but doesn't use any of it, and whamo!

When played it applies to the next person to have an untap phase.

>3)  Mana Barb
>
>If you have a Circle of Protection:  Red, does this protect against Mana
>Barb, which is a red spell?  Even though in order to get the protection, 
you
>must tap mana, which does a point of damage, and to avoid that, you need
>to tap another, to avoid more...etc etc.

Exactly. The only way to make a CoP:red work against manabarbs is to have
some non-land mana available.

>4)  Upkeep
>
>If a card is out that does damage during upkeep (Copper Tablet, Feedback),
>does it do damage if you have no cards that require upkeep?

Oh, yes. You still have an upkeep phase every turn, even if you don't do
anything during it.

>1. The difference between the special ability of regeneration and
>   the enchant creature 'Regeneration' is that the later can be
>   disenchanted, affected by tranquility etc, i.e. can be removed from
>   play separately.                                ===

True.

>2. An attacking creature cannot regenerate, neither by abilty nor by
>   enchant creature cast before, because it is tapped. (page 24, 27)

False.

>3. An attacking creature can regenerate by death ward.

True.

>4. A regenerating attacking creature deals damage. (page 26)

False.

>5. A by death ward regenerating creature (attacking or defending) deals
>   damage.

False.

>6. The enchant creature 'Firebreathing' lasts until end of turn. (each
>   use of mana to boost the power.) (in analogy to page 29)

True.

>7. An in my last turn freshly summoned creature can defend in my opponents
>   following turn, unless it somehow becomes tapped.

True.

>PS: Comes the unlimited printrun with new rules or are they due for the 
revised
>    edition?

Revised.

>        1) The rules don't specifically say that you can use the banding
>ability during blocking.  Does that mean you can't band 5 creatures
>together to block, and decide which one dies?

You can do exactly that. You don't see this from p. 28?

>        2) I have a green creature/w green ward on it.  Does it mean
>tranquality (green spell) can still get rid of the enchantment?

Yes.

>        3) My Personal Incarnation gets swords to plowshare.
>Technically, PI isn't destroyed.  Do I still lose half life?

No.

>   What is the exact ruling on this seemingly nasty creature, in terms
>of 'each time the fungusaur is damaged'?  Does this mean that you can
>use three Prodigal Sorcerers on it in your turn (now a 5/5 creature) then
>two more in your opponents turn (now 7/7). 

If you've got 5 Tims, yes.

 What about in attack phases?
>When attacking, does it receive +1/+1 for each creature blocking (and 
doing
>damage), or +1/+1 once for the whole bunch?

1 for the bunch, since they're simultaneous.

>   Taking a look at the Sengir vampire which seems like the Fungusaur's
>opposite (but definitely not its equal), it looks like the Fungusaur 
should
>have read 'Each turn the Fungusaur is damaged...'

It should have, but didn't. Our mistake.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 93 04:14:01 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>From: mathiesen@brhep1.physics.brown.edu <mathiesen/daemon>
>
>    Actually, the text of island sanctuary says: "cannot be attacked by
>creatures other than flying and islandwalking creatures", not "can't be
>damaged."  So the imp nettles, creature can't attack anything, and is
>destroyed.

Actually, it says both. This is a card that changed between the alpha
and beta parts of the first print run. :)

>From: Jeff Alexander <jwa@zap.iipo.gtegsc.com> <jwa/daemon>
>
>     Personally, I believe playing with decks that have been modified
>by trading and card omission to be fair, since A) the rulebook implies
>that these things can and should be done, and I'm willing to give the
>game designers the benefit of the doubt; B) trading can be fun; C)
>playing with the same deck all the time can be boring -- furthermore,
>playing with the same, weak deck that puts your chance of winning more
>in the hands of luck than skill is frustrating (and I DON'T like the
>alternative of buying a whole new Starter Deck because I got a "bad"
>one); and D) some cards are *just* *plain* ANNOYING (Copper Tablet,
>anyone?).

Your best clue is that we advertise it as a "Trading Card Game." You
are supposed to win and trade for new cards, and we certainly expect
you to put those cards in your deck if you choose.

>From: kimbo@netcom.com (Kimbo Beattie) <kimbo/daemon>
>
>I have two Frozen Shades in play.  I tap five Swamps.  The text for
>the Frozen Shade says "B:/+1/+1 until the end of turn.
>What happens?  Do I have two 5/6 Frozen Shades?  Does mana spent to

It costs one black mana to pump a shade. If you use 5 black mana to
power one special effect, the other shade will get nothing.

>From: ulbrikg0@seraph1.sewanee.edu (Karl G. Ulbrich) <ulbrikg0/daemon>
>
>1. Suppose Kudzu is cast on a land.  Each time that land is tapped, and
>   thus destroyed, the Kudzu is replaced on another land card.  Suppose
>   however that someone uses Sinkhole or Stone Rain on the Kudzued land.
>   The land is destroyed, but it hasn't been tapped.  Is the Kudzu
>   discarded, or is it moved to another land as it would be if the
>   land was destroyed as a result of the Kudzu?

Discarded.

>2. If the Cockatrice blocks or is blocked by a creature that can 
regenerate,
>   can the creature regenerate?  The cockatrice card says the critter is
>   "destroyed", but I don't know if that means it's dead, and can thus
>   regenerate, or dead without possibility of regeneration.  (I say it's
>   destroyed and can't regenerate, but there's dissention in the ranks...)

"Destroyed" = "Killed" = "may regenerate"

In this edition, we always say "without possibility of regeneration."
Somttime (maybe Feb. or Mar.), we'll have new cards that use "buried"
to mean "dead without possibility of regen."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 93 11:43:54 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>From: kimbo@netcom.com (Kimbo Beattie) <kimbo/daemon>
>
>Example:  Conversion (all Mountains treated as Plains) is in play.  I
>draw and play a Consecrate Land on one of my enchanted (via the 
Conversion)
>Mountains.  Does the enchanted Mountain revert back to a "true" Mountain?

Afraid not. It is not being enchanted itself, although it is being
influenced by an enchantment, a dreadfully subtle point, I admit.

>From: ullfig@fnrobo.fnal.gov (Roberto Ullfig) <ullfig/daemon>
>
>Q. Does a Disenchant cancel the -effects- of the Island
>Sanctuary or does the controller of the Island Sanctuary
>continue to get the benefits of it until his next turn,
>even though it may not be in play anymore?

The benefits of Island Sanctuary would cease immediately.

>From: ullfig@fnrobo.fnal.gov (Roberto Ullfig) <ullfig/daemon>
>
>Tap the Tome, draw a card and use that card to prevent the
>damage from the Wandelust. In this instance the card that was
>drawn was a Swords to Ploughshares which I could play on my
>Goblins, destroying them, taking 1 point from Wanderlust and
>gaining 1 point from Swords to Ploughshars leaving me with
>1 life point and no Goblins or Wanderlust.

That would work.

>From: ullfig@fnrobo.fnal.gov (Roberto Ullfig) <ullfig/daemon>
>
>Q. Are Forests which are -living- because of Living Lands treated
>as Land-Creatures and effected by spells affecting both Lands and
>Creatures or are they treated as Creatures which can be tapped for
>1 mana like Llanowar Elves?

They are Land-Creatures, still susceptible to sinkhole and the like.

>From: Kai Chang <enkadu@eden.rutgers.edu> <enkadu/daemon>
>
>        The text of the Jade Statue says spend 2 mana to turn into a
>creature.  Does that mean after it's a creature I can do instants like 
Jump
>on it?

That's correct.

>        2)      My opponent attacks with a War Mammoth.  I defend with 2
>creatures, not banded.  He claims that he could assigned enough damage to
>kill one creature and then to me.  I say he can get to me only if he gets
>pass all the toughness of all the defending creatures.  He says the 
trample
>ability (as stated in the rules book) only mentioned 1 defending creature.
>Who is right?

He is. If a trampler puts all its power on a weak spot and gets
through, damage is done to the other player, even if other creatures
used in defense are unharmed.

>        3)      If my opponent casts a Control Magic on my creature, and 
then
>I cast a Control Magic, who now controls the creature?

You do. If your Control Magic is dispelled, then it snaps back to
her, unless her CM is dispelled, allowing the creature to return
home.

>        4)      If I have a Firebreathing on a creature, and my opponent
>casts control magic, who is the controller of the firebreathing?

You are still.

>        5)      If there is a creature with flight and earthbind on it, 
and
>the flight is taken off, will the earthbind be taken off also (I argue yes
>because the card specifically targets flying creatures).

Nope. You must *cast* it on a flying creature, but if an enchantment
becomes illegal after it is cast, it just sits around hoping it will
become legal again later.

>        6)      I have a living wall.  My opponent casts a shatter 
artifact
>on it.  Can I regenerate?  Can I regenerate from a Disenchantment?  
(There is
>a text difference between the two.)

You can regenerate from shatter. You cannot from disenchant.

>From: "Kohler, Steve*" <kohler#m#_steve*@msgate.corp.apple.com> 
<kohler#m#_steve
>
>Unlimited Edition:
>How compatible will these cardbacks be with the other runs?  If they are 
then
>no problem.  If not then since this will be the most common cardback 
around
>(due to the lack of limit on printing quantity) any extra cards players 
have
>from the limited print runs will have less value as playing cards.

Identical within our manufacturing ability.

>From: ullfig@fnrobo.fnal.gov (Roberto Ullfig) <ullfig/daemon>
>
>If you clone a 20-headed Rock Hydra do you then have 2 20-headed Rock 
Hydras,
>one of which only costs 4 mana to summon instead of the normal 22?

Yes.

>just remembering things like Animate Dead and such. I myself
>would think it would be neat in the future to have spells
>(maybee "Permanent Sorcery") that would have a permanent effect
>on a duel.

We have such things. They're called "enchantments." :)

>So did you set mail to ack so you could get messages instead
>of digests? I did and it seems to work. Doesn't make sense
>with what the guy from WotC said. Was he lying?

That just means we didn't lock the change down. If enough people
change over, we'll get tossed off our mail link.

>>  Hi, I ran in to a couple of problems tonight while playing.  The first
>>involved a clone.  Someone tried to red elemental blast a clone that was
>>cloneing a serra angel.  What I figured was that the clone became a white
>>card, and could not be blasted, the other guy thoght that the CREATURE 
was
>>white, but the card was blue.

The creature is the card. It was all white, there was no blue left
after the cloning process.

>>  Second, can the basalt monolith [the new card, not the 1st printing 
one]
>>be untapped during someone else's turn, i.e. not during upkeep.  Again, I
>>thought no, the other guy thought yes.  The wording on both cards is a 
little
>>vague...

You can untap it at any time.

>From: Mike Evans <AXMEV@asuvm.inre.asu.edu> <axmev/daemon>
>
>>Earthbind states that it does 2 damage to the target creature who also 
loses
>>the flying ability.  Does the 2 points of damage occur EACH turn or is 
it only
>>when the enchantment is cast?
>
>It's an Enchantment..so That creature now is two points less on Toughness
>until enchantment is gone, also can't fly. If it kills creature, Creature
>is dead.

Ah, but it doesn't say "0/-2" it says Damage. It takes two points of
damage when the card is first played, then never causes that damage
again.

>From: Brian Markenson <brianm@soda.berkeley.edu> <brianm/daemon>
>
>A question of my own regarding this:  My opponent casts power surge.  I
>did nothing on the previous turn, so I have 17 untapped mana.  Do I have
>the opportunity to do things AT THE BEGINNING OF MY TURN?  Instants and
>such.  For example, can I somehow make use of my guardian angel?  Tap my
>white mana, and then tap all the rest of it?  Or something like
>that...Obviously, this is happening BEFORE the untap phase, I guess...how
>does this play with the rule that I heard of last week--no instants or
>spells, during the untap phase...I'd really like an answer to this one.

You will take the damage. During upkeep, you have the opportunity to
respond to events that occured at the start of the turn, like this
damage, if you live that long. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 01:46:10 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>Q1: I know this has been asked before and I know it is explicitly
>stated in the FAQ, I would just like OFFICIAL confirmation that
>the FAQ is accurate.  According to the FAQ, only 1 defender has to have
>banding ability for all the defenders to band and block a critter.
>(Ie, my 4 Unicorns and 1 Benalish hero are considered a band
>if they all block the same attacking creature)..  Is this correct?

The FAQ is officially official. Really. Just like it says. The
section this part refers to is simply a repetition of what the
rulebook says.

>Q3: Again, this sacrifice thing.  Is Swords to Plowshares a spell that 
causes
>a creature to be sacrificed or does sacrifice ONLY refer to spells
>which SAY sacrifice?

It's not a sacrifice.

>Q4: Strange scenario(perhaps invalid depending on the answer to my above
>2 questions).  I cast Howl From Beyond on, say, a Grizzly and pump him
>up to a 10 Power.  I then cast Berserk on him, pumping him up to a 20
>Power with trample.  From the card, it says, "If it(the creature) attacks,
>target creature i destroyed at end of turn."  I attack my opponent.
>After combat is over the grizzly is still alive but I know
>at the end of the turn it will die, so I cast Swords to Plowshares on it.
>(as far as I know, this is legal).  My opponent beleives that this is a
>sacrifice situation and plays Deathward on the Grizzly which keeps

Your opponent may not play deathward to stop StP.

>Can i Twiddle the mana for a spell while it is cast, therefore causing the
>spell to fizzle?

Not unless your opponent is very foolish, since tapping for mana is
an interrupt, and Twiddle is an Instant. They can always tap for mana
faster than you can twiddle.

>>Q2: This has to do with regeneration and sacrifices.  There have been
>>2 conflicting rulings on this.  One interpretation says that
>>creatures which are sacrificed cannot be regenerated.  The other says 
that
>>if the creature being sacrificed is regenerated, the sacrifice is 
invalid.
>>Which is correct?
>
>Both, because there are two forms of sacrifice and each ruling applies to

The regeneration stopping a sacrifice rule has ONLY been posted in
the preliminary draft of the new rules, and has never been official
for any version of magic, nor will it be, since we've changed that
since that draft was released.

>    Is the creation of an artifact a spell? I. e. can I spellblast my
>opponents Icy Manipulator or black vise or whatever?  I realize that once
>it is created the various counterspells are useless...

Yes.

>Does the Chaos Orb destroy only those cards it is in contact with when it
>stops moving, or all cards that it touches while moving?

Stops moving.

>Is the Jade Statue tapped to attack while it is a creature? It is a poly
>artifact, and it states that it is only a creature for the duration of the
>"exchange". However, attacking creatures are tapped, and when attacking, 
the
>Jade Statue is a creature. When it ceases to be a creature, does it untap?
>I tend to believe not.

You're correct. It taps when it attacks, and it stays tapped until
untap phase.

>Can the Jade Statue hold creature enchantments? It is described as an 
artifact
>creature, which normally can, but it also states that it is only a 
creature
>for the duration of an attack or defense, which indicates not. I'm not 
sure
>on this one.

Normally, there's no way to cast a creature enchantment on the Jade
Statue.

>Can a tapped creature regenerate?
>
>Can Death Ward be used on a tapped creature?

Same question. Yes to both.

>Can excess mana in your mana pool (caused by, say, Mana Flare or 
whatever) be
>used to power Circles of Protection or other such spells/artifacts when 
there
>is no use for them? Can the mana be used to regenerate creatures which 
have
>not died? I tend to say no to both of these.

Generally, no.

>Can excess mana in your mana pool be used to increase the stats on a Holy
>Armor, Firebreathing, or similar enchantment? Can it be used to raise the
>stats on a Frozen Shade, Granite Gargoyle, or similar creature? On these, 
I
>tend to say yes.

Correct again.

>When a Lich enchantment is dispelled (Disenchant or Tranquility), does the
>player who had the enchantment die, or is he returned to his original life
>point level?

As the card will tell you, the player dies.

>When a Time Vault is untapped, is the player untapping it required to pay
>any upkeep costs? Such as Lord of the Pit, Force of Nature, or similar
>card? (We found an effective use for this in team play; use Lord of the 
Pit,
>slaughter an opponent or two, and when you run out of creatures, untap the
>Time Vault and let your partner Unsummon the Lord of the Pit...)

Clever, and legal.

>If a Twiddle or Icy Manipulator is used to tap a land, does the owner of 
the
>land gain mana into his or her mana pool? If said land has a Wild Growth
>on it, does that enchantment place mana into the mana pool?

No, and yes. See the FAQ.

>Can a Twiddle be used to untap a land so that it may be tapped again for 
mana?

Sure.

>Can a Twiddle or the Icy Manipulator be used to tap a Circle of 
Protection,
>thus making it useless until that player's next untap phase? (A reason to
>cast multiple CoP's.)

See the cards. They cannot be used to tap enchantments. As a matter
of fact, enchantments >never< tap, although they may be on a card
that taps.

>Can a Circle of Protection: Green be used to prevent damage caused by not
>paying upkeep for the Force of Nature? Can a Circle of Protection: Black 
be
>used to prevent damage caused by not paying upkeep for a Lord of the Pit?

Yes.

>An Icy Manipulator may be used to tap a creature. Can the Royal Assassin
>then be used an instant later to kill that creature?

Yes.

>The Royal Assassin is tapped to destroy one of my creatures, which is a 
fast
>effect. I play a Twiddle in an attempt to tap the Royal Assassin. Do both
>effects happen simultaneously, or does the Twiddle happen first because it
>was the most recently played fast effect? i.e., is the target creature 
dead?

They're instants, and not contradictory. Both happen. See the FAQ.

>The Prodigal Sorcerer is used to do a point of damage to my Royal 
Assassin.
>I play a Red Elemental Blast, an Interrupt, to destroy the Prodigal 
Sorcerer
>(a blue card in play). Does Tim get to poke my Royal Assassin, or does the
>Red Elemental Blast destroy it first? (I'm not sure on the timing of a 
fast
>effect vs. an Interrupt.)

Interrupt wins. Nasty.

>I have a Circle of Protection: Blue. My opponent places a Power Drain on 
my
>Circle of Protection. I must tap two lands to feed the Power Drain to 
prevent
>taking damage. May I tap one land, feed the mana into the Circle of 
Protection,
>and avoid damage that way?

Yes.

>I have the Venduran Enchantress in play. I cast a Weakness upon it, 
killing
>her. Am I allowed to draw another card to replace the Weakness? (Actually 
came
>up; I was rather desperate for a life saving card, and ended up drawing a
>Howl from Beyond that saved by life; I eventually lost anyways, but much 
later,
>after much combat.

Yes, they're both instants.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 9 Dec 93 23:36:28 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>There is some overlap with the FAQ (BTW, someone really should post that 
again
>sometime soon for the new people... it has been 6 weeks since the last 
one).

New subscribers are automatically sent the FAQ.

>The caster of an enchantement is forever considered its controller. But
>if the enchantment is placed on another card, only the controller of the
>other card can spend mana to drive enchantments.  (?)

Not true. The controller of an enchantment is the *only* person who
can spend mana on it, unless the card indicates otherwise. There is
presently no "control enchantment" spell.

>Unsure if trample damage works from the defender.  Rulebook hints that it
>does not (?)

Correct.

>Animate Artifact:
>  Artifact is now an Artifact-Creature and abides by creature rules while
>    still being an artifact as well.
>  If cast on an artifact-creature, the previous combat values and rules 
for
>    combat values are overridden by this enchantment. [Snark]

No! No! My error haunts me still! It can't be cast on Artifact
Creatures, according to the card itself.

>Island Sanctuary:
>  Does not prevent creatures from attacking you, it just prevents damage 
from
>    any non-flying or IslandWalk creatures.

This depends on which version of Island Sanctuary you have. One says
they may not attack, the other says they can attack, but can't damage
you.

>Twiddle:
>  Can be used to untap the Time Vault without skipping a turn [Snark]
>  Tapping a continuous artifact deactivates it.
>  The alpha printing card did not limit effect to just creatures, land
>    and artifacts.  It can be used to tap enchantments.

It said no such thing. >:( Enchantments never tap.

>
>"You lose all the mana in your mana pool if you do not use it before a
>phase ends.  The mana pool is also cleared when an attack begins and
>when an attack ends.  You lose a life point for each mana lost in this
>manner."
>
>By normal english grammar, the last sentence affects only the sentence
>before it, not the first.  (It uses the singluar "this," refering to
>only one "manner" while there are two "manners" in which the mana pool
>may be cleared.)

Those silly rules. Any unspent mana, whether at the end of a phase or
before or after the attack subphase, causes mana burn.

>You have a Force of Nature, which you just attacked with, and a Twiddle
>in your hand.  Your opponent has an untapped Royal Assassin in play.
>
>Your opponent taps his Assassin and targets your tapped Force of
>Nature...  an instant.  You pull out your Twiddle and untap your
>Force...  another instant.  Your Force becomes untapped at the same
>instant the Assassin kills it, but being untapped, it is no longer a
>valid target, so the Assassin has no effect.  The Force can't be

But one instant cannot prevent another instant's effects from going
off unless there's a paradox. One card: "creature dies" Other card:
"creature untaps." The effects are not contradictory, so the Force
dies. It dies untapped, but it dies.

>     Okay, here's an interesting question that came up last night...  Is
>the "This will destroy artifacts with 0 casting cost" meant to be a
>mandate, or just a statement of what's usually obvious?
>     Let's say that I have a bunch of Moxes in play for defensive 
purposes,
>and my cruel opponent whips out an Animate Artifact, meaning to send one 
of
>my innocent Moxes to that Great Deck In the Sky.  But, being one of those
>smug white-deck players, I have previously deployed a Castle.  Now,
>normally the animated Mox would be a 0/0 creature, and thus doomed to a
>wretched deck for having a zero or negative toughness.  But in this case,
>it would be a perfectly viable 0/2 creature.  So does the Mox still die, 
or
>does it live to tap another day?

Lives to tap another day.

>The contract from below has the following wording
>"Discard your current hand and draw eight new cards,
>adding the first drawn to your ante.  Remove this card
>from your deck before playing if you are not playing for ante."
>
>The spell is a Sorcery.
>
>Q1: Who is the card instructing to discard and draw a new hand?
>The caster, both players, or the opponent?

"Your" = you, the caster.

>Q2: Just to be officially clear on this, you ADD the first card
>to the ante so now you are anteing 2 cards, its not replace the ante,
>correct?

Right.

>I have a problem with my current understanding of damage,
>regeneration, and going to the graveyard.  The rules seem
>pretty clear, but something in the FAQ seems to confuse the issue.
>I figured I'd bring it up, again, and see what everyone else thinks
>and maybe we can get the FAQ changed (or maybe you can convince me
>to shut up and leave FAQ corrections to more expereinced players)

Generally, you've gotten effects correct. The definition of regeneration 
was
fixed after the game was released, and some of the cards reflect this in 
wording
that doesn't make perfect sense.

>Next to last is Creature Bond:
>"If target creature is destroyed, Creature Bond does an amount of damage
>equal to creature's toughness to creatures controller."
>
>Since this calls for an something to happen when a creature is destroyed
>and not when a creature "goes to the graveyard" regeneration WILL NOT
>stop the controller from taking damage.  

This is not correct. If it doesn't go to the graveyard, then it wasn't 
destroyed.
Regeneration keeps a creature from going to the graveyard. 

>Lastly, the Black sacrifice card.
>This says "Destroy one of your currnet creatures without regenerating it,
>and add to your mana pool a number of black mana equal to creatures 
casting
>cost."
>
>First off, the card does not say the creature cannot be regenerated,
>just that if it is not regenerated you get the benefit of the spell.
>Therefore your opponent can regenerate it before it goes to the graveyard
>and you don't get the mana.  Also, nothing is said about removing the
>card from the game so you are allowed to then cast spells like
>Raise Dead, Animate Dead, etc on the creature.

You're allowed to reanimate it, yes. It is immune from regeneration, 
though. The
card does not make this clear, and could be interpreted either way.

>This interpretation makes Disintegrate a more powerfull spell rather than
>simply a single target version of fireball.  Since the casting costs
>are the same for a single target, I beleive this was the original intent.
>Fireball has the ability to have multi-targets and Disintegrate has the
>ability of stripping regeneration from a creature for a turn.

that's how it's supposed to be.

>Q: If I enchant my opponents creature with the Regeneration enchantment
>I am the controller of that enchantment and can power it to keep the
>creature from dying, correct?

Correct.

>Another problem I had with regeneration is, as I interpret the rules
>damage accumulates and when it equals or exceeds a creatures toughness
>the creature dies.  Damage is not subtracted from the toughness.
>When it exceeds the creatures toughness, the creature dies, than the
>controller regenerates it.  Does the process of regeneration clear all the
>damage done that turn so far?  I would say it does.

Yes, it does.

>1. What happens to a creature with bonuses like Holy Strength which are
>   damaged... and afterwards the bonus is removed (by a Disenchant or
>   such)?
>
>   Snark has hinted that there is more here than meets the eye.  For 
example,
>   a Hill Giant (3/3) with Holy Strength (+1/+2) (a total of 4/5) takes
>   3 damage.  Is it proper to say that it is a 4/5 creature with 3 damage 
or
>   a 4/2 creature at this point?  Does that matter?
>   If the Holy Strength got removed, is it a 3/3 creature with 2 damage or
>   a 3/2 creature (the Holy Strength absorbed 2 points of the damage)?

Snark was jerking your chain, as it turns out. I'd received contradictory
rulings, and picked the wrong system. Damage, as it turns out, works like 
this:

For every point of damage, put a counter on the creature (an imaginary one 
will
do). If at any time the creature's toughness is not greater than the 
number of
counters, the creature has taken lethal damage. Proceed accordingly.

>2. The controller of enchantments has always had me somewhat confused.  As
>   I understand it right now, the caster of an enchantment is always the
>   controller.  There are no cards which change the controller of an
>   enchantment.  But (and here's the question) who can pay costs 
associated
>   with enchantments?

>   The rulebook specifically states that only the controller can pay the
>   costs associated with the enchantment.  So, if I cast a Regenerate on
>   another player's creature, am I the one who can pay to have it 
Regenerate?
>   Or is it my opponent?

You are the one.

>   This gets a bit more complicated when Control Magic is used to steal
>   away a creature.  Who now "controls" the enchantments on the creature?
>   Control Magic does not say that it takes control of the enchantments,
>   so if I Control Magic a creature with Regeneration on it, can I power
>   that enchantment?

Nope.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 9 Dec 93 23:37:40 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>What characteristics are "normal characteristics"?

See page 22 of the rulebook. ;)

>In the latest Ruling Summary, Volcanic Eruption cannot do more damage
>than mountains in play.  This is not signified by a [Snark] symbol.  
However,
>the previous Summary DID have a [Snark] symbol, and did state that VE can 
do
>more damage than mountains?

[low, ominous music] You May Not Use Volcanic Eruption to Do More
Damage Than There Are Mountains In Play. The Great And Powerful Snark
Has Spoken. [flames billow forth]

(Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)

>Black knight has inherent Protection from white.
>Can other wards be placed on the Black knight?
>My impulse is to say no, but I'm not sure.

Use The Impulse, Luke.

>Simularly, Can Howl from beyond or Unholy Strength be put
>on the White Knight, which has Protection from Black?

It may not. What a drag!

>PS Any plans for a solitaire deckmaster game at any time in the future?
>I think that would be cool

Oh, yes, we'll release solitaire rules the very instant that anybody
in the entire world sends us a set that's fun. We have not had much
luck in inventing same.

>I don't think it would be logistically possible for WotC to make all their
>expansions unlimited. They probably have -thousands- of card ideas they 
want
>to print and to have that many different cards in constant circulation is
>probably a very difficult task. However, I think that their supply of 
limited
>edition cards is way too low. Because of such a high demand, cards stay 
in the
>
>     Before we all go griping about not being able to get our hands on 
Limited
>Edition cards, let us remember that WotC wasn't exactly TSR before MtG 
came
>out!  I think they were all a little surprised at the tremendous 
popularity of

Oh, yes, just a wee. A smidge. A hair. A bit.

>MtG and were astounded by how quickly the first printing sold out.  As 
soon as
>they had the capital and the personnel available to handle such a load, 
they
>very graciously went to the Unlimited Edition, thereby making the 
wonderful
>new game available to all of us (and also setting themselves up for quite 
a
>bit of healthy profit from the Christmas buying season).

Boy, howdy. We have to pay for paper and flow pack material before
they'll start a print run, and the lag time is 2 months. We were
originally planning to bring Arabian Nights out sometime early '94.
Production on that game was rushed like crazy (and it shows, sigh),
and we actually got it done months early, just for you.

While future sets will be limited, it is not necessarily true that
they will be AS limited. More on this when I have facts, and am not
talking through my sleeve.

>
>(magical hack, et. al.)

[low ominous music] Magical Hack and Sleight of Mind Affect All
Occurances Of The Relevant Text On The Card. [flames billow forth]

>I remember early on it was determined that the following was a legal play.
>
>A summons Prodical Sorceror.
>B casts Lightning Bolt on Sorceror.
>A casts Holy Armor on Sorceror and spends an extra white mana to stop 
Sorceror
>from dying.
>
>If this is the case then you could cast Animate Artifact and Holy Armor 
on a
>Mox and prevent it from dying. You do not need Fast Effects that increase
>toughness.
>
>You are not limited to react to your opponent's spells with only Fast 
Effects.
>You can react with other spells like Sorceries, Enchantments, etc if you 
are
>the main player. I am pretty sure this is right. I think if you read the
>section on timing it becomes obvious.

Oooo. Did I say that? I don't think I said that. You may only respond
to a spell with fast effects: instants, special abilities,
interrupts, and the like. Enchantments and sorceries occur once the
previous spell is cast. In the above example, Tim dies.

>In a recent game, this came into question.  I was holding a Twiddle, and 
my
>opponent knew it (Urza).  He had two Psychic Venoms on his tapped Swamp.
>During Untap, he claimed he did not have to untap everything, and that it
>doesn't say you have to in the rules.

>I remembered the above ruling, but as it's not in the FAQ (unless I missed
>it somehow), it's not an official ruling.  As this puts a serious damper 
on
>our blue players, I was wondering if this is to be an official change in
>the next edition of the rulebook.

Bad opponent! This is exactly why you MUST untap everything.

Page 11: "1. Untap. Untap *all* your previously tapped lands,
creatures, and artifacts." (emphasis mine)

Page 11, bottom. "Unless an action described above includes the word
*may*, you must perform this action."

Seems pretty clear to me...


>===
>Also, my opponent has the misprinted Cyclopean Tomb.  Zero casting cost.
>Is there any way to thwart this card?

Oh, sure! I had some smart-alec try this on me. "It *says* zero
casting cost."

"No, Moxes have a zero in a gray circle. THAT's a zero casting cost.
What you hold has no casting cost at all. Ergo, you may not cast it.
I'll give you a choice: play it as written, and leave it in your
hand, or play it as the FAQ dictates, and pay four. Either way, I
don't care."

>===
>Last question:  My opponent Shatters my Living Wall.  Can I use it's
>Regenerate ability to save it?

You bet.

>We have an ongoing argument over whether something can be Regenerated if
>it's Destroyed (i.e. Creature Bond problem, etc.), or if Destroyed can not
>be helped. This is a very confusing issue when you've got lots of 
shatters,
>creature bonds, and regenerations running around.

Destroyed = Killed = may regenerate.

Discarded = removed from play = may not regenerate.

>Does Creature Bond then do damage to a creature that is destroyed, but 
then
>regenerated?

The above is a paradox. If it was regenerated, than it wasn't
destroyed.

>Q:  Can a White Knight block a Hurloon Minotaur that has Fear on it?
>I'd say no; The Fear is on the Minotaur and doesn't directly affect the 
Knight.

Correct.

>Q:  Can a White Knight + Blue Ward black a Hurloon Minotaur with 
Invisibility?
>Again, I'd say no for the same reason.

Correct.

>Q:  Can a COP:White be used to stop damage from a Black Knight?
>I'm sure this one has been answered before, but I don't seem to have it 
handy.

You may stop the damage.

The above three questions according to the FAQ, not necessarily the
rules.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 11:10:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Dave Howell <snark@fungusaur.wizards.com>

>my summoning, by the rules the creature is discarded.  Discarded cards 
>"go to the graveyard".  Regeneration prevents creatures from "going to
>the graveyard".  Therefore, I can cast death ward and 'save' my Craw worm.
>This does not seem logical to me(of course, sometimes you have to forget
>logic with this game).  
>
>Therefore, perhaps we should revise the way regeneration is described.
>
>maybe add to the FAQ,
>
>Q: How exactly does this regenration work?
>
>A: Regeneration can be cast on any creature to prevent it from dying or
>otherwise going to the graveyard <this covers dwarven engineers, blue 
>elemental blasts, etc.>.  No affect that is generated by the creatures
>death will occur.  The creature must have been successfully summoned 
before
>it can be regenerated.
>
>How is that, accurate?
 
Yes, it's accurate. I believe somewhere else in the FAQ it points out 
that the Craw Wurm isn't a creature until the spell is over. You can't 
cast Death Ward on another spell, only on a creature, and it's not a 
creature until it's on the table, which it doesn't get to do, because the 
summoning spell was countered.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 11:52:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Dave Howell <snark@fungusaur.wizards.com>

>Player one has a gaea's leige and 10 forests. Player 2 has no forests and
>a meekstone that prevents untapping of any card with a power > 2. Gaea's
>leige has a power of */* where * is the number of forests the controller
>has when defending and the number the enemy has when attacking. If Gaea's
>leige becomes tapped, can it be untapped?... If the power 0/0 or 10/10?
>
>Gaea's leige turns any land card into a forest. Will a tranquility card
>change them back? How about a consecrate land?
>
>Can a guardian angel spell be cast just to spend unwanted mana and avoid
>mana burn?...

Well, if it were 0/0, it'd be dead. As it happens, we've reworded that 
card to say that it's controller's forests at all times except attack, 
which is what we meant. Such dweeb-heads we be sometimes.

What Gaea's Leige does to lands isn't an Enchantment. You can't 
tranquility or Consecrate them back. :(

Guardian Angel, unfortunately, requires damage from which to protect you 
before it can be used, although it's not clear from the card.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 14:04:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Dave Howell <snark@fungusaur.wizards.com>

Somebody said:
>
>FARMSTEAD       [Enchant Land]      (R) {WWW}
>Target land's controller gains 1 life each upkeep if {WW} is spent.  
>Target land still generates mana as usual.
>
>You will note that Farmstead is clearly an enchantment class card.
>
>Now the relevant rules section on Enchantments (p17-18):
>
>                                    ... Some enchantments have a 
>     cost listed before the effect; this is the cost to use. An 
>     enchantment with a cost may only be used and paid
>     for by the controller (usually the caster). If the
>     enchantment has no cost, it is constantly in effect.
>     An enchantment may be used more than once each
>     turn, and is never tapped.

It's a booby trap. "have a cost listed *before*the*effect*." That's
symbol: This is a cool thing. These enchantments, and only these, are 
multiple use. Farmstead is NOT worded that way, and is only once per turn.

Don't you love how we entertain you by hiding answers to rules in 
amazingly subtle and tricky ways, sometimes so tricky that even we don't 
know the right answer? Neat, eh?

:p

As to Channel, well, gosh. I've looked them both over, and it looks to me 
like yet another of those spells that makes Word of Command a "Summon 
Argument" spell. If Richard said players can kill people by playing 
channel, then so be it. I hate Word of Command.

Snark,
Cyberdude

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 18 Dec 93 14:47:34 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

**Snark's comments in stars.

Fast Effects and Instants can be used during any player's turn and are 
allowed
in response to any event, action, or phase ending.

                Are you sure about the "phase ending" part?

**That is correct.

Balance:
  White Warded creatures can avoid this spell's effects, but non-warded
    creatures must be removed first.  You cannot chose warded creatures to
    remove first. [Snark]

                This smells really bad to me.  In Snark's re-write of the
                protection rules (in the FAQ) it says that a white-warded
                creature cannot be *damaged* or *targeted* by white spells.
                Balance neither damages the creature, nor does it 
specifically
                target the creature.  Plain and simple, I think this is
                wrong.  If this *is* to be the "correct" interpretation,
                I would be happier if the FAQ definition of protection
                were re-written so that it doesn't conflict with this.
                Sorry, Snark, I am very grateful for everything you've done
                to clear up these tricky issues, but I think you've painted
                yourself into a corner here.

**I think you're right. Can I deny I said this? Did I? Yuck. I probably 
did. I probably said it before the new rules were finalized. Balance 
works, wards won't help.

Armageddon:
  Consecrated Land can avoid this spell.

                This stinks too.  Armageddon is another spell *like*

**Right. Armageddon will work on warded creatures.

 + The Doppleganger of an artifact creature can be Shattered or 
Disenchanted.
  Whenever it changes creatures, it "resets" and loses any tokens or other
    gains it made as the creature it was originally copying.

                This seems *really* bizarre to me - it's still a blue 
creature.
                So it's a Blue, Artifact Creature?  strange, but I guess 
so.

**Strange but true. Colorlessness and artifactivity are not necessarily 
co-requirements.


                It'd be nice to put a resolution in for the issue of
                "what if my opponent casts Death Ward on the creature 
                 I sacrifice?"  Ummm, what is that resolution, btw?

**Answer: you can't, it's illegal.

Resurrection:
  Resurrected creatures cannot be tapped to attack or use a special effect
    on the turn in which they come into play.

                This doesn't solve the issue of the Serra Angel.  Since
                the resurrection card only refers to "tapping", I would
                say that the Angel *could* attack on the turn she is
                resurrected...

**I would say you're right.

Serra Angel:
  Will be removed from next printing because "it is out of character for 
the
    color". (rumor which many claim is false)

                That's a silly reason.  In my opinion, it's the single
                best creature in the game; if that's a reason to take
                it out, oh well.  Wonder what the next best creature is,
                and whether it will then get dropped too.  They better
                be putting more creatures in to make up for this, otherwise
                we won't have any left!  "out of character for the color"
                Ha!  I don't agree with that!

**Well, it IS out of character. It's big and good at attacking. Being good 
at attacking is out of character for White, especially with the double 
jeopardy non-tap power. However, I refuse to speculate on whether or not 
it will be seen in further
 releases.

Wrath of God:
  White Warded creatures can avoid this spell.

                This stinks; see above comments on Balance/White Ward.

**Agreed. No longer true under Ward rules.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Sat, 18 Dec 93 14:52:34 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>1. Is "desert" a basic land type for purposes of Magical Hack, etc...?

No.

>2. Island of Wak-Wak

(I don't have the datafile handy. Ask me again tomorrow. :)

>3. Aladdin's Lamp
>  Is the casting cost 10?

Yup.

>5. Ali from Cairo
> While in play, does this card really make a player immune to death?

That does indeed appar to be the affect, yes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 93 16:19:06 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>
Subject: Ruhk Egg

The post you've all been waiting for: The Official Policy On The Ruhk Egg.

It's definitely not what it's supposed to be. The intent of the card is to only
make Ruhks if the card goes to the graveyard from play. Discarding it
from your hand isn't supposed to do anything. 

Under most conditions, this difference is rather small. However, using the
wording on the card, a really dull but rather effective "all Ruhk Egg" deck
can be assembled, assuming you can somehow get your hands on that
many Eggs.

If you're playing Arabian cards, please check with your opponent on
how they play Eggs. Again, Wizards of the Coast and Richard Garfield
strongly urge you to play it as if it said "...goes to the graveyard *from
play*..." If your opponent plays it as written, and is not willing to change,
then you might want to decline to play them, if you choose.

If you find out they're playing the card as written after you start, and
especially if they're playing with lots, they are technically within
their rights. I suggest you request to null the game. If you're playing
for ante, the polite thing to do would be to let them keep it, and never
play them again, but we'll understand if you take the card back.

Tournament organizers and league coordinators: Make sure to either
declare how the Egg works or disallow it from play, if you're using 
Arabian Nights.

Yes, we're all very sorry the little thingy got loose, and we'll try not to do
it again. 

Dave "Snark" Howell
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OFF-1994.TXT

(61038 Dec 10 20:59 official.answers.94-present)

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
                      
N O T I C E ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

  This is NOT the FAQ list. This is a compilation of other answers from the 
  Snark (David Howell) and other persons of note, and are more of less official.
  Use at you own risk. 
  
                                         Darrell Budic 
                                         (budic@macc.wisc.edu)
                                         Network Archivist for
                                         Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->


Date: Mon, 24 Jan 94 09:51:15 -0800
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: Rulings you've been waiting for

Remember all those questions that I've given non-answers on, saying that
I'd pass them along to the rules group?  Well, hold onto your hats, we
have concensus on a batch of them.

These are now Official Answers (tm) and supercede any previous answers
or rulings on the topics that you may have heard from various sources.

1) Word of Command gives control only over the initial play
   of the card, not control over all use of the card for the rest of
   the turn.  This means, among others, that
    * you can't have them play a Pestilence and then power it
    * you can't have them play a Nether Shadow and then attack with it
    * you can't have them play Channel and then pump life into it

2) Word of Command: "This spell may not be countered after you have
   looked at opponent's hand."  The "this spell" refers to the Word
   of Command itself, not to the spell you're forcing the opponent
   to cast.  You or your opponent may counterspell the spell that
   is forced.

3) A Clone, Doppelganger, or Copy of an Arabian creature/artifact
   is not an Arabian card.

4) A Clone/Doppleganger of a token creature is a card.  If it is
   unsummoned, it goes back to your hand.  If it is killed, it goes
   to the graveyard.  It is affected by all spells that affect cards.

5) Q: I have two creatures in play.  You hit me with a three-way fireball,
   doing damage to both creatures and to me.  I use the Jade Monolith
   twice to redirect all the damage to myself.  I then use a CoP: Red
   to stop the damage.  Is this one source of damage (since the source
   is the fireball) or three sources (since the fireball was split
   into three)?

   A: It's three sources -- once split, it doesn't recombine.

6) Q: Does the Rock Hydra lose a head INSTEAD of adding a point of damage,
   or IN ADDITION TO it?  I.e. if you don't have any red mana to spend,
   will a Lightning Bolt kill a 6-headed Hydra?

   A: It is "instead of."  When a Hydra takes a point of damage, if it
   has any heads the controller must either spend a point of red mana or
   remove a head.  If it has no heads, add a damage counter.

7) When you cast Copy Artifact, the copy starts in the tapped/untapped
   state as the artifact would start in.  I.e. a copy of Time Vault or
   Nevinyrral's Disk starts tapped, but most artifacts start untapped.

8) A Copy of an artifact is blue.  It is affected by all spells that
   affect enchantments, artifacts, or blue cards.  It may be tapped
   like an artifact; this is an exception to the rule that Enchantments
   are never tapped.

9) Q: You cast Weakness on my Drudge Skeleton; I can regenerate it, it
   dies again, regenerate, it dies again, etc.  Is there any point in this
   cycle where I'm allowed to cast Disenchant on the Weakness and save
   the skeleton?

   A: No.  The skeleton is always on the way to the Graveyard, so I can
   only use damage prevention/redirection and resurrection, not the
   Disenchant.  It could be saved by casting Giant Growth in response to
   the original casting of Weakness, keeping it from being on the way to
   the Graveyard, and then casting the Disenchant.  Once it's on the way
   to the Graveyard, this is no longer allowed.

10) Q: I have 3 Plague Rats.  I cast Berserk on one of them, making it 6/3.
    You cast Lightning Bolt on one of the others, killing it.  Does the
    Berserk rat stay at 6/3 or drop to 4/2?  Berserk reads "Until end
    of turn, target creature's current power doubles..." and some
    players believe that this means even if its base power changes it
    stays at the value that was "current" when Berserk was cast.

    A: This is bogus; the Berserk was misworded.  Berserk applies a x2
    multiplier to the creature's power.  If the base power changes,
    recalculate the power, using all changes in the order that they
    were applied.

11) Simulacrum targets the creature that you're shunting damage
    onto.  You cannot Simulacrum damage onto a creature with Protection
    from Black.

12) Q: I'm being attacked by two creatures.  I block one, and the blocking
    creature takes lethal damage.  Can I Simulacrum the damage I'm
    taking from the other creature onto the one that's dying at the
    same time?

    A: Yes, since the creature hasn't gone to the graveyard yet.

13) Q: A Stone-Throwing Devil is blocked by a 1/1 goblin.  Normally the
    goblin will die and the devil live.  If I use a Samite Healer to
    save the goblin, does it get to kill the devil?

    A: Yes.  This is a change to previous rulings that said there is only
    a single damage-prevention and a single going-to-the-graveyard step.
    Those rulings were part of older attempts to fix damage-dealing, and
    were superceded by the newer rules that disallow Fast Effects other
    than damage-prevention, redirection, and resurrection (and interrupts
    and effects that trigger off those effects).  Creatures killed by
    First Strike actually die (unless prevented) before the rest of
    the damage-dealing phase continues.

    This also means that a Vampire enchanted with Lance who is blocked
    by ten 1/1 creatures will kill four of them, grow to 8/8, take six
    points of damage from the remaining six, and fly happily off into
    the sunset.  Er, moonset.

14) If a creature takes damage from two Trampling creatures, the
    attacker decides which order to apply the damage, unless the
    blocker has the Bands ability.  (This makes a difference if the
    tramplers are different colors and the defender has a CoP for
    one color.)

15) The Sorceress Queen doesn't alter +1 and -1 tokens on a creature
    that she changes to 0/2.  If a creature has two -1 tokens and no
    other tokens or enchantments, it will die.  (Note that this means
    she'll actually make a Hydra tougher.)

16) Fog stops a Desert from doing damage.  Desert does damage "to an
    attacking creature after it deals its damage."  Fog says "creatures
    attack and block as normal, but none deal any damage."  So there's
    no opportunity for the Desert to damage them.

  - Beth Moursund (bethmo@wizards.com)
    GG-L NetRep of WotC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 94 18:04:02 -0800
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: Some more official answers

Here are some more official rulings from the rules group.  Read these
carefully -- they overrule some of the statements that are in the FAQ
(Earthbind) or that have been given by Snark and NetReps in the past
(Discard).  These rulings take precedence over any statements by any
of the NetReps.

=======================================================================
Rulings you've been waiting for 1/29/94

1) "Discard" was used on the cards to mean several different things.
   We realize now this was a mistake, and in the future it will only
   be used in the sense of "discard a card from your hand."  When
   using the current cards, please read any cards that speak of
   "discard" from play as "destroy".  Cards that have effect "when
   X is discarded", read "when X is removed."  Yes, creatures can
   regenerate from being "discarded" from play (NOT from your hand!),
   and Living Wall can regenerate from both Shatter and Disenchant.

2) The Guardian Beast should not prevent artifacts from destroying
   themselves.  Actually, all of the artifacts that say "destroys
   self" should be (and will be) changed to "sacrifice self."  Put
   this ruling in the same category as the Rukh Egg: we goofed, we're
   sorry, we strongly recommend that you play with the correction.

3) "Destroys self" is not a targeted effect.  Casting Purelace and
   White Ward on an artifact that destroys itself when used won't
   save it.  (Again, this should actually be "sacrifice self".)

4) The phrase "except that if it leaves play it is removed from
   the game entirely" is not a Special Ability; it's a rule about
   token creatures.  If I Clone a Wasp/Rukh/Bottledjinn, then my
   Clone is Unsummoned, it goes back to my hand.

5) You cannot cast a Blue Elemental Blast unless it is aimed at a Red
   spell or card.  You cannot change the target once declared, even
   if the spell is interrupted.  The only effect Sleight of Mind can
   have on Blue Elemental Blast is to make the spell fail.

6) The phrase "You lose if this enchantment is destroyed" on Lich
   is an absolute statement.  Casting a Healing Salve or using a
   "lucky charm" after the destruction won't save you.

7) The Vesuvan Doppelganger can only switch forms once per upkeep phase.

8) The old ruling on Earthbind + Flight was incorrect.  You can cast
   Flight on an Earthbound creature to give it the Flying ability again.
   In general, if two Enchantments contradict each other, the most
   recently cast wins.

=======================================================================

  - Beth Moursund (bethmo@wizards.com)
    GG-L NetRep of WotC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Feb 94 18:02:54 -0800
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: Official rulings

=====================================================================
Official rulings 2/7/94.  These rulings supercede any previous
rulings or statements by NetReps on the same topics.

 1) Abilites which affect creatures "blocking" or "blocked by" a
    creature are not targeted, and so are not stopped by Protection.
    For example, Green Ward will not save a creature from being
    destroyed by the Thicket Basilisk.

 2) When a card comes from the graveyard back into play (for example,
    by Animate Dead or Resurrection), any features which are normally
    set at summoning time are set as if it was just summoned.  If the
    creature has an X in the casting cost, X is zero.  So:
    * Clockwork Beast comes out fully wound.
    * Clones and Doppelgangers choose a creature in play to copy; if
      there are no creatures in play, the clone/doppel may not be
      brought out.
    * Hydra has zero heads, and dies again immediately unless an
      interrupt or continual effect (like Castle) raises its toughness.
    
 3) You may not use Zero as the activation cost for Aladdin's Lamp.
    (Because "draw zero cards but choose only one to put in your hand"
    is self-contradictory.)

 4) If a creature has taken damage and then goes out of play, all of
    the damage is removed.  This includes creatures targeted by an
    Oubliette.  (For the Oubliette, only damage is removed; counters,
    enchantments, and the effects of interrupts stay there.)

 5) The no-regeneration effect of Disintegrate always affects the
    target of the Disintegrate, regardless of whether the Disintegrate
    does any damage to that creature.  If damage from a Disintegrate
    is redirected, the target of the Disintegrate may not regenerate
    and the target the damage ends up on may regenerate.

 6) The card-taking effect of a Hypnotic Specter's damage is a property
    of the damage.  If the Specter does zero damage, or if the damage
    is prevented or redirected away from the player, the player does
    not lose a card.  If a creature is damaged by the Specter and the
    player redirects the damage to him/herself, then the player does
    lose a card.  If a player discards a card due to the Specter, and
    then later in the turn retroactively redirects the damage (i.e.
    by a Simulacrum), he/she doesn't get the card back.

 7) Oubliette targets the creature it is taking out of play.  In
    general, any card where you make a choice as to what it affects
    targets that choice.  Do not interpret the lack of the word
    "target" in the text of the cards as meaning that the selection
    is not targeting.

 8) If you have two or more living artifacts in play, you may trade in
    one counter from each of them each turn.

 9) If a Pyramids is used to prevent destruction of a land-creature
    (such as from Living Lands), treat it as a non-tapping regeneration.
    Trample damage above the toughness of the land-creature goes through
    to the controlling player.  All damage remaining on the land-creature
    is removed by the use of the Pyramids.  Treat Consecrate Land in the
    same way, except that the non-tapping-regeneration is automatic.

10) Targets (mountains) for Volcanic Eruption must be chosen as part of
    declaring the spell, just as for spells that have only a single
    target.  Magical Hack will not allow you to change those targets.

=====================================================================

  - Beth Moursund
    GG-L NetRep of WotC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 94 14:30:07 -0800
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: Official rulings 3/17/94

=====================================================================
Official rulings 3/17/94.  These rulings supercede any previous
rulings or statements by NetReps on the same topics.

1) A creature cannot attack, or use a special ability that has tapping
   as part of the cost, unless you have begun your turn with that card
   in play.  This means that cards that start as artifacts or lands
   and become a creature during your turn can attack if and only if
   the card was in play at the beginning of your turn, regardless of
   when it became a creature.  Such cards may use their non-creature
   abilities normally, even on the turn that they become creatures.
   (This changes previous rulings on Animate Artifact, Living Lands,
   Kormus Bell, and Jade Statue.)

2) Destroying the source of a fast effect does not counter the effect.
   For example, if a Prodigal Sorceror taps to do a point of damage,
   a Red Elemental Blast will destroy the Sorceror but will not stop
   the damage.

3) El-Hajjaj earns you lives for the total amount of damage inflicted,
   regardless of the toughness of his target.  For example, if you
   attack with an El-Hajjaj with Unholy Strength, and he is blocked
   by a 1/1 Goblin, you get 3 life.  If a Samite Healer prevents
   one point of damage to the Goblin, you get 2 life.

4) Any flight-giving effect may be used on an Earthbound creature to
   give it flying again.  In all such cases, the last effect rules.

5) The Conservator can be used for zero, one, or two points of prevention.

6) Under First Edition rules, you can technically sacrifice the same
   creature simultaneously using two different cards.  This will not
   be legal in the Revised Edition, and a lot of groups have a house
   rule against it now.

7) Sacrifice to the Lord of the Pit is mandatory if you have any other
   creatures in play.  Paying the Force of Nature is not mandatory.
   No, you can't tell this from the wording of the cards; we're sorry,
   and it will be written more clearly in a future printing.  In
   general, nothing that requires payment of mana is mandatory unless
   it has wording (like Power Sink) telling you exactly which mana
   sources must be tapped.

===================================================================

  - Beth Moursund
    GG-L NetRep of WotC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri Apr 15 13:43:29 1994
From: <bethmo>
Subject: Official rulings, distribute if you want to

=====================================================================
Official rulings 4/15/94.  These rulings supercede any previous
rulings or statements by NetReps on the same topics.  These
rulings are for the Revised Rules.

0) The Pocket Player's Guide FAQ has a misprint.  The Jade Statue
   CANNOT attack on the turn it comes into play.

1) Sleight of Mind and Magical Hack both operate in the same way:
   they change all occurances of a single word within the text
   box of a card.  They have no effect on the names of cards,
   even when the name is in the text box.  (No "Blue Vice" switch.)

2) Mana drains from your pool at the end of a phase all at once.
   The damage it does can be prevented by anything that can
   prevent damage to a player, but only if you tap new mana to pay
   for this damage-prevention (because the mana that was in your
   pool is already gone).

3) Copy-card rulings consolidation.  We've given various rulings on
   these three cards in the past that are inconsistant with one
   another.  All three of them should work the same.  So, please
   apply these rulings to Clone, Doppelganger, and Copy Artifact:
   * They target the thing they are copying, and cannot be brought
     into play if they have no legal target.
   * Clone and Doppelganger can only copy permanents created by a
     "Summon" or "Artifact Creature" spell, or tokens that inherently
     count as creatures.  Copy Artifact can only copy permanents
     created by an "Artifact" or "Artifact Creature" spell, or tokens
     that inherently count as artifacts.
   * They copy only the base creature/artifact, not any enchantments
     or counters on it, regardless of whether the counters are due
     to natural abilities of the creature/artifact or other spells.
   * They cannot copy an Animated Dead creature.
   * They come into play in the same tapped/untapped orientation
     that their target would when cast.
   * They do not copy the "expansion symbol" on a card.
   * They remain cards, even when copying a token.
   * Doppelganger can only change shape once per turn.
   * When the Doppelganger changes shape, all counters due to its
     abilities as the previous creature are treated as if that
     creature had been destroyed.  Counters on it due to the effects
     of other cards remain.
   * Treat the permanent effects of interrupts and Ashnod's
     Transmogrant as counters for this entire set of rulings.

4) Protection from <color> makes its target effectively invisible
   to spells and effects of that color.  This is why the creature
   cannot be targeted by them, but can be destroyed by non-targeted
   effects.  Balance and Drop of Honey are semi-targeted spells.
   For Balance, ignore white-warded creatures both when counting
   the number of creatures possessed by a player and when choosing
   which creatures to destroy.  For Drop of Honey, ignore green-
   warded creatures in choosing which creature it destroys.
   Protected creatures do count as creatures to keep the Drop of
   Honey and Pestilence in play, even though they can't be hurt
   by them.

5) Siren's Call and Nettling Imp, as written, can affect creatures
   unable to attack due to summoning sickness which were not actually
   summoned -- i.e. artifacts, animated dead, controlled creatures,
   etc.  We recommend that you change them to read "creatures which
   entered their controller's territory this turn."

6) The Rocket Launcher (and any future artifacts that do not have
   tapping as part of their activation cost and don't trigger off an
   event) may be powered for more then one charge at once, just like
   an enchantment or creature ability.  You can pump 8 points of mana
   into a Rocket Launcher to do 4 points of damage to a single target,
   all as one activation, or you can pump 2 points of mana 4 times.
   If you put all 8 in at once, a single use of Circle of Protection
   can stop all the damage, and a Haunting Wind will only do one point
   of damage to you.  (Note, though, that you can't aim at two
   different targets with one activation.)  A Power Artifact reduces
   the cost to one mana per point of damage, regardless of whether
   you're using it in small or large blasts.

7) If you cast a spell and your opponent interrupts it, you have the
   option to interrupt it yourself immediately -- in which case, your
   interrupt is resolved before your opponent's interrupt -- or to
   wait until after your opponent's interrupt is resolved and then
   cast your own.

8) The Revised printing of Disintegrate is missing the sentence
   "Target creature cannot be regenerated for the rest of this turn."
   We strongly recommend that you add this sentence to the card.

9) If an artifact is Animated, then its abilities are usable even
   when it is tapped, because creature abilities are usable even
   when the creature is tapped.

10) If your Creature Bonded Personal Incarnation dies, you choose
    whether to lose half your life and then take six damage, or to
    take six damage and then lose half your life.  If two Personal
    Incarnations die at the same time, you lose half your life and
    then half of what's left.  If you Fork a Shahrazad and lose
    both subgames, you lose half your life and then half of what's
    left.

===================================================================

  - Beth Moursund
    GG-L NetRep of WotC

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 17:13:18 -0700
Subject: [O] Rulings
From: Paul Peterson

        Well, we had a rules group meeting yesterday.  We got some of the
questions answered, but not anywhere near all of them.  We will continue 
to work on them.  The main reason it took so long was that we had to make 
some large scale decisions, but you will see those in the answers below.  
I will continue to post the answers as we rule on them.

1. The solution we recommend for the Basalt Monlith and the Mana Vault, 
and the Tournament rule is that a Basalt Monolith or Mana Vault cannot be 
untapped with mana from a Basalt Monolith or a Mana Vault.  Yes, this 
means you cannot untap a BM with a Mana Vault.

2. Clones, Dopplegangers, and Copy artifact can all get counters for 
creatures that get counters from the text on the card, but only when you 
first cast them.  Tetravus and Triskellion both say "get counters when 
cast."  This means that if you copy a Triskelion with a Doppleganger, you 
only get the counters if you are casting the doppleganger, not if you are 
switching it during upkeep.  This ruling really only applies to Tetravus, 
Triskelion, and the two clockworks, unless you can find another card that 
gets counters when cast.

3. Clones, etc. copy the effects of any Sleights, Laces, Magical Hacks, 
etc.  So if you Hack a Nightmare to be based on islands instead of 
swamps, and then clone it, the clone is based on islands.

4. Clockwork Beast and Avian do not lose counters until after the 
attack.  The Beast deals 7 points of damage during damage dealing.

5. Casting cost is a normal characteristic that gets copied by a clone, 
etc.  If you clone a Lord of the Pit and then cast Sacrifice, you will 
get 7 black mana.

6. You check for player death at the end of each phase.  You can 
therefore use a sorcery to bring your life total above 0 during your own 
main phase only.  This should not be necessary very often, unless your 
opponent is silly enough to lightning bolt you during your main phase, in 
which case he deserves for you to cast a sorcery to save yourself.

7. Name should be considered a "normal characteristic" for purposes of 
cloning, etc.  Clones of Plague Rats affect all other Plague rats in play.

8. The Abomination checks th color of it's blocker/blockee at declaration 
of blocking.

9. Concecrate land will prevent a land from being buried, with one 
exception:  It will not prevent a Legendary Land from being buried if it 
is the second one coming into play.


That's it.  I told you we didn't get through very many.  It took a while 
to hash out some of the clone stuff.

Paul Peterson
Rules Guru

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 20 Sep 94 21:02:28 -0700
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: [O] Answers from the rules group

1) I Clone or Doppelgang a Firestorm Phoenix.  When my Clone/Doppel is
killed, does it go to the graveyard and then back to my hand, since
it was a Phoenix, or does it forget about being a Phoenix when it
touches the graveyard and not have enough momentum to make it back
up to my hand?

        The Clone or Doppleganger goes back to your hand.

2) Caverns of Despair is in play, and you have a flying creature with
Lure.  I have several flyers and several nonflyers.  Can I declare
my two non-flying blockers first, preventing myself from being able
to block the creature with Lure?

        You have to choose legal blockers first, if available.

3) A few months back, we gave a ruling that the Icy Manipulator cannot
target an already-tapped creature, even though it doesn't say that
it can't.  I was uncomfortable with the ruling but went along with
the majority.  Now I think we've got a case that shows why this is
a bad precedent, so I'd like to request a change in the ruling.
If Phyrexian Gremlins follow that same ruling, then they become
nearly useless against {T}-to-activate artifacts for anyone who
understands the rules.  If I target your untapped artifact with
the Gremlins, you tap it in response; the target is then invalid
at the time the Gremlin's effect resolves, so they "fizzle" and
they won't prevent it from untapping later.

        You cannot target a tapped card with a tapping effect.

4) Attacking with a banded group: Benalish Hero with Regeneration and a
Grizzly Bear. Blocking with Hurloon Minotaur. During fast effects, I
tap Tim to do 1 point of damage to the Hero. The Hero regenerates. Is
the Hero/Bear group considered banded still? Who gets to determine
damage allocation of the 'taur, attacker or defender?

        The Hero and Bear are still banded, but the Hero is no longer a 
valid target for damage allocation.

5) So what's the latest word on how the "lucky charms" work?  (Crystal Rod,
Iron Star, Urza's Chalice, etc.)  How far can they back up to trigger
off a spell...  to the last non-fast effect?  To beginning of phase?
To beginning of turn?  Can they trigger off their own casting, or not?

        You can use the lucky charms at any time before the end of the 
turn. Yes, this means that you can use a charm to get a life at the end 
of the turn for a spell cast during upkeep.

6)  If a first strike creature is affected by Desert, Thicket Basilisk, etc.,
shouldn't the appropriate effect kick in during first strike damage dealing?
All the rules I've seen on this indicate they suffer their effects after
normal damge dealing, but those may have all been before damage dealing got
split for good into the two steps.

        All of these cards should be treated as doing there effect during 
damage dealing. (not 100% yet)

7) When All Hallow's Eve is used to return creatures from the graveyard
   to play, does each creature get just one chance to return to play
   (and if it can't at that time, it doesn't come out at all) or does
   it get to try again later in the sequence?
   Specific example:  No creatures in play, Clone in my opponent's
   graveyard along with various other creatures.  I control the All
   Hallow's Eve enchantment.  Can I pick the Clone first and have
   it stay dead since it cannot be legally put into play until there's
   a creature for it to copy?
   
        Each creature gets one chance to come back.  If you pick the 
Clone first, it stays dead.

8)  So what's up with False Orders?  Should we really be telling people
to play it by the 1st edition definition of "defending"?  

        In the caseof False Orders, "defending" is all untapped creatures 
on the defending players side.

9)  The ruling that you can't target a Consecrated Land with an enchantment
strikes me as inconsistent with the ruling that you can target such a
land with a destruction effect such as Stone Rain.  The text of CL just
says that the land can't be destroyed or further enchanted...  it doesn't
say it can't be targetted by such effects.  If we allow Stone Rain to
target a Consecrated land, then it seems to me we have to allow enchantments
to target them, even though the enchantments are guaranteed to fizzle.

        You cannot target the Consecrated land with a any effect which 
would destroy it.

10)  Should an Oasis (or Island of Wak-Wak, or something similar) really
be tapped if a Power Sink can't be paid for?  After all, PS just says
"all available mana from lands ... must be paid", and the Oasis doesn't
provide mana, so it seems like it shouldn't be tapped.  On the other hand,
if we say that it isn't, what happens if Wild Growth is placed on the
Oasis?  Now tapping the land would produce mana, so shouldn't it have
to be tapped to pay for the Power Sink?

        Lands that cannot be tapped for mana normally are not tapped by 
Power Sink.  Oh, and putting a revised Wild Gowth on an Oasis would be 
odd, because you could never get the mana, but a non-revised Wild Growth 
will still produce a mana.

11)  About Arboria:  If my Nether Shadow reenters play during upkeep, does
that count as putting the card into play for purposes of Arboria?

        If the Nether Shadow enters play during your upkeep, it will 
invalidate Arboria's protection.

12)  Does a Disintegrated creature go through the graveyard before being 
removed
from play?  By the card text it does (since "to die" means "to enter the
graveyard from play"), but this reverses a bunch of old rulings...

        Disintegrated creatures do not go to the graveyard first.

13)  If a creature with Puppet Master hits the graveyard, how much time 
do I
have to pay the UUU to get the enchantment back?  Seems to me this should
just be ruled as an "death event" like Soul Net, so can only be used during
the damage prevention step in which the creature dies, just to keep
everything tidy.

        You need to pay the cost immediately as a death event.

14)  So how exactly does Fork work?  It seems to me that Fork is basically
another copy card (like Clone), so should parallel the rulings on how
Clone works.  

        The Fork will copy Hacks and Sleights, just as a Clone.

15)  If I Word of Command someone to cast a spell, can people respond
to the new spell with fast effects and such?  Seems to me that they shouldn't
be able to (WoC is creating a very specific exception to the rule that spells
can't be cast while stuff is resolving), but as usual with WoC, it's unclear.
Similar question about when the commanded spell is resolved:  immediately,
or as a separate batch once the current batch is done resolving?

        Treat the commanded spell as the beginning of a new batch of 
spells occuring right after the batch that contains the Word of Command.  
No spells are allowed between the two batches.  The commanded spell may 
be responded to as normal, resolving in the second batch.

16)  The ruling on Conversion vs. the mountain half of a multiland is that
the mountain half becomes a plains and produces white mana.  But the ruling
is that if I Hack the "mountain" to say "plains", it still produces red
mana.  Why is this?  Shouldn't the two cases parallel each other?

        The Hack does not change the mana symbol.  Conversion 
specifically says that it should be treated as a basic plain, which 
produces white mana, just as Evil Presence makes a mountain product black 
mana and be counted as a swamp.  If you Hack the mountain to plains on a 
multiland you can Flashfire it, though.

17)  If I Disintegrate a Firestorm Phoenix, where does the Phoenix go?

        It leaves the game, just like any other creature.

18)  What is the deal with the Akron Legionnaires?  Does each given
Legionnaire prevent any non-artifact creature but himself from attacking
(problematic if you've got multiple Legionnaires out), or should they have
errata to just say "except legionnaries"?

        All Legionnaires can attack.

19)  Does Fastbond allow me to put lands down during my opponent's turn?
It does say just "each turn", not "each of your turns".

        You can only put down extra lands during your main phase, and not 
during your attack.

20)  It tap five lands and a mox to summon a Mahamoti Djinn.  My opponent
says "wait" and Rusts the Mox's effect.  What happens?
 
        This technically works, but if the Mox was tapped first then you 
would back up to the point that the Mox was tapped, untapping all of the 
lands involved, resolve the Rust, and then decide whether to tap any of 
the lands.  If they tap everything at once, assume the Mox was first.  If 
the Mox was obviously the last tapped or tapped seperately, then rusting 
it will stop the casting, leaving a bunch of mana to spend.
        
21) Can an Instill Energy enchantment be used to untap more then once
   per turn if you move it from one creature to another in between
   uses?

        Yes.  Enchantment alteration say to treat it as though it had 
just been cast on the target, so you can use it again.

22) Opponent has Cursed Rack in play.  I have five cards.  In my discard
   phase, I choose to discard Psychic Purge.  Does my opponent lose
   5 life?
  
        Yes.  A permanent under your opponent's control caused  you to 
discard a card and you chose the Purge, so he takes the damage.

23) I have an Animated Dead Drudge Skeleton.  My opponent disenchants
   the Animate Dead, which causes the Skeleton to go to the graveyard.
   Can I regenerate it, bringing it back to life?

        No.  It is a dead creature just like the other creature in the 
graveyard when the Animate Dead is disenchented.  You cannot regenerate a 
creature in the graveyard.

24) Do "brought into play" and "put into play" include a card that
   "returns to play" from a Tawnos Coffin/Oubliette?  Specifically:
   * if a Wood Elemental is coffined, do you need to sacrifice new
     forests to keep it from dying when it comes back?
   * if a Mold Demon is coffined, do you need to sacrifice new
     swamps to keep it from being buried when it comes back?
   * if Hazezon Tamar is coffined, do you get a whole new set of
     Sand Warriors when he comes back?
   * if Stangg is coffined, do you get a new Twin when he comes back?
   * if Rasputin is coffined, do you refresh his counters back up to
     seven when he comes back?

        The answer to all of these is "No."  The creatures in the Coffin, 
etc. are not _really_ "out of play,"  as such.  They are in a sort of 
suspended animation.  You don't need to refresh them, when they leave the 
Coffin, etc.

25) Tawnos Coffin and Oubliette both state that the creature "returns
   to play tapped."  Is the creature was not tapped before being placed
   in the coffin/oubliette, is it tapped while out of play or while in
   play?  This matters if the creature had a Spirit Shackle cast on it.

        It taps when it returns to play, and so the Shackle affects it, 
unless it went into the  Coffin or Oubliette tapped.
 
26) Is removing the counters from a Mana Battery part of the cost of
   using it, like a sacrifice, or is it an effect?  I.e. if I tap a
   Battery for 5 mana, and my opponent casts Rust, are the counters
   still used up?

        Removing counters is part of the cost, so Rusting it will cause 
the counters to be lost.

27) If I use a Sylvan Library to draw two extra cards, may I replace
   just one card, or must I replace either zero or two?

        You can choose to replace only one card and lose four life.

28) If I have two Sylvan Libraries in play, may I draw four cards and
   then decide what to put back, or do I draw two, replace two, draw
   the same two I just replaced and replace two again?

        You resolve each one in turn, so you will be drawing the same 
cards, over and over.

29) Is sacrificing the Triassic Egg to hatch a creature part of the
   "{3}{T}: Put one counter..." effect, or is it a separate cost/effect?

        It is part of the effect, so you can sacrifice the Egg at the 
same time that you place the second counter.

30) If a Doppelganger copies a Kobold, what color is the result?  The
   Doppelganger copies all characteristics except color.  But the card
   text is part of the characteristics, and that says it's red.  If the
   Doppelkobold is still blue, can you still Sleight of Mind it to
   change the color the way you can a normal Kobold?  If the Doppelkobold
   is red, then does it stay red when it copies a different creature,
   since it doesn't copy the color?

        It is blue.  After much consideration, we have decided that the 
text on the Kobold is _so_ explainitory in nature, that you cannot 
Sleight or copy it.  You may lace Kobolds as normal, of course.

31) End phase: I'm debating exactly how this phase was handled.  I was 
thinking it workedmore or less as follows:

1.  Damage heals, fast effects wear off, "at end of turn" effects happen.
2.  Damage prevention for all of the above, if called for.

So suppose a Scavenging Ghoul is thrown by a Stone Giant, and blocked by
a Mesa Pegasus.  In step 1, it would pick up a counter for the Pegasus which
died earlier, and would have that counter available to regenerate in step 2.

        You can chose to do the end of turn effects in any order you 
wish, just as in upkeep.  You can choose to get the counter from the 
Pegasus death and then use it to save the ghoul.

32) Old man of the Sea and Aladdin
Do their effects work like enchantments, i.e., do they wear off if the target
comes invalid?  For example, if Aladdin steals an Assembly Worker, does the
Worker go back to the old controller at end of turn?  I think we decided that
no, they don't wear off, and (for example) you hang onto the Mishra's 
Factory.
Does this sound right?  The basic idea is that fast effects don't wear off
just because their target becomes invalid (Piety doesn't wear off after the
attack phase, Giant Growth doesn't wear off if you put a Green Ward on
something, and so on).

        The Old man of the Sea and Aladdin wear off if their target 
becomes invalid.

33) Is the loss of life associated with Greed part of the cost?  The card 
isn't
phrased as such, but making the loss part of the resolution, rather than
a cost, leaves it open to all kinds of abuses (Lich, Mirror Universe, etc.).
It seems like this should work like Channel, i.e., you can't use Greed if
you don't have the life points to lose.

        The loss of life is not part of the cost.  You can reduce 
yourself to less than 0 life with it.

34) For the past few months we've been saying that only creatures which say
Summon Something on thing are summoned, and that artifact creatures are
merely created, or something.  Yet on page 62, on artifact creature:
"thus they may not attack or use any ability whose cost includes the
\tap symbol on the turn they are _summoned_..."  Is the rulebook incorrectly
attempting to summarive the summoning sickness rules, or do we have 
another case of what happens to be written in the rulebook overriding how 
the game is actually supposed to be played, or what?

        Artifacts creatures are not considered to be summoned, so Remove 
Soul, for instance, will not work on them. 

35) Is the Brine Hag's power an inverse side effect?  For example, if you
redirect a Hypnotic Spectre's damage away from yourself, you don't lose
the card, and vice versa, because that's a side effect.  If a creature's
damage is redirected to the Brine Hag (say, with Simulacrum) does that
creature become 0/2 if she goes to the gravyeard that turn?  I can
see this going either way, really.

        The Brine Hag is effective against redirected damage.  The 
Specter becomes 0/2.

36) Suppose I want to put a land down during Eureka, but Ankh of Mishra is
out.  Do I go through damage prevention during the Eureka, or only after the
Eureka has resolved?  (I am assuming that the damage won't be delayed until
end of batch, just like Dingus Egg damage will kick in immediately when
a Strip Mine resolves, rather than waiting until end of batch.)

        Wait until the end of the batch in this case.  Eureka says no 
effects may be played until after the Eureka resolves.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 Sep 1994 09:56:52 GMT
From: warewolf@dominia.wizards.com (Paul W. Peterson)
Subject: MTG Rulings

1) Suppose my Doppelganger is a Tim, and pokes my opponent.  I then switch
its form to The Fallen; does it now damage my opponent every upkeep, since
it poked him as a Tim?  I suppose the question is:  If a Doppelganger damages
something, is that just recorded on the "form" half, or on the "doppel" half?
That is, does the information carry over from form to form?  Not really sure
how this one should go...

        It is recorded on the "form" and is lost if it switches, just like counters.
 So the Doppelganger must do damage as a Fallen, and remain a Fallen.

2) Can gain-a-life effects such as Soul Net and Crystal Rod be powered up
a whole bunch of times (assuming they have multiple things to trigger
off of), or must they be powered up sequentially?  For example, suppose
6 creatures die, and I have Soul Net out, but my opponent has Powerleech
in play.  Can I power up the Soul Net all-at-once (so my opponent only
gets 1 life from the Powerleech), or must I power it up 6 different times?

        It must be powered up sequentially, as with other artifacts.

3) Drop of Honey doesn't really seem to be an upkeep cost, but rather an
upkeep effect.  Therefore I should be able to respond to it by sacrificing
its
would-be target.  If I can sacrifice the creature, and do so, does the
controller of the Drop have to pick another creature to scrag, or has it
been satisfactorily "dealt with"?

        It is not dealt with until the creature is in the graveyard.

4)  Since Drop of Honey is targetted, I could respond by making the target
invalid, right? For example, if a Dragon Whelp is the lowest power creature
in play, and I respond to the Drop of Honey by pumping up the Whelp (thereby
making it the highest power creature in play), does the Drop have to be
retargetted, or has it been "dealt with"?

        The Drop would have to be retargeted until it is dealt with.

5) Do counters fall off in the Safe Haven?  And would the
"treat as just summoned" mean that creatures like Triskelion will refresh
their counters when they come back in, and that a Rock Hydra will always
come out with 0 head (regardless of what happens to counters in general)?

        All creatures come out of the haven as though they were newly summoned. 
They lose counters when they enter the Haven, but get them when they emerge.

6) Can I -lace a land as it's being played?  If not, why not?

        Yes.  It says that it can be played on any "card" being played.
        
7) Is Cocoon considered to be like Triskelion, i.e., it gets three counters
when cast/resolved?  If yes, then this would mean that if it gets moved
via Enchantment Alteration, it will get three more counters after moving
(since it's treated as having been cast), right?

        This is correct.  It gets more counters when moved.

8) Since Dance of Many is supposed to use all the copy cards ruling for
Clones,
it cannot copy something revived via Animate Dead, even though it says it
copies a "target summon card", right?  Or does a special case need to be
made for Dance of Many vs. Animate Dead?

        Since Dance of Many copies a "target Summon card," and not a creature, it
can copy animated creatures, and won't get the -1.

9) If one forks a Detonate, is it possible to target an artifact with a
casting
cost other than the original X?  Seems to me the tentative answer is that it
couldn't legally target such an artifact, but this doesn't seem to have
a final answer.  If you *can* target an artifact with a casting cost <> X,
then how much damage would be done?  X, or the artifact's casting cost

        You must copy the X and so you must choose an artifact of the same casting
cost.

10) Manabarbs and Wild Growth care whether the land produces mana, but Power
Surge does not...  Is this distinction deliberate?

        Yes.

11) When the Liege goes into the Oubliette, all of the lands it had
converted revert to their old terrain type (card text).  But do they become
forests again when he comes out of the Oubliette?

        No.  The lands do not remember that they were forests.

12) Do these have the same errata as Disintegrate, that is, will a creature
killed via Runesword damage simply leave the game rather than going to the
graveyard?

        Runesword is slightly different.  Due to the wording on the card, the
creature will douch the graveyard, before leaving play.

13) If I use Safe Haven on a creature revived via Animate Dead, the
creature goes into the Safe Haven and the Animate Dead goes to the graveyard
(as would any other enchantments on the creature).  So what happens when it
comes back out; does it stay in play, or does it remember that it was only
in play due to Animate Dead, and thus go right back to the graveyard?  I
think
the former would be true, but...

        It will stay in play.  Treat it as though it was just summoned.

14) What happens if a Lich is Boomeranged, or otherwise removed from play
without being sent to the graveyard?  Does its controller automatically lose?
Given the Cyclopean Tomb answer I suspect the answer to this will be "yes",
but I've been waiting on this one for a long time (like, since Antiquities).

        You will lose if the Lich leaves play for any reason.

15) Does this edit the casting cost, or does it just pay for some of
the casting cost (like Mana Matrix)?  We've/I've been saying that it just
pays for the casting cost, but only like MM, the Calendar's text does
kind of imply that the casting cost is actually edited, thus it would only
cost 1U to Spell Blast something cast via Stone Calendar.

        It just pays for some of the casting cost.

16) Just realized that The Abyss asks the same questions that Drop of Honey
does...  1.  Can I point the Abyss at a creature and then sacrifice it
to Life Chisel or whatever, and if so, will I have to point the Abyss
at another creature?  2.  What happens if the creature I point it at somehow
becomes invalid (say, a Black Ward is Altered onto it)?

        If a legal target is available, then you must place it in the graveyard.

17) The current ruling seems to be that if you can't pay for a Power Sink,
you'd have to tap the Workshop and draw the mana from it even though it
can't be used to pay for the Power Sink.  The more I stare at the card
text, though, the more I wonder about this; it seems to me that since
the Workshop's mana can't be used to pay for the Sink, it shouldn't be
considered "available", and thus one shouldn't be forced to tap it during
the Power Sink.

        You only have to tap the Workshop to pay for Power Sink if you are casting
an artifact.

18) Forking a Fireball.

(Note:  This is a change)  If you Fork a Fireball that is targeted at several
sources, you must target your Fork at the same number of sources.  This comes
from the fact that the Fork copies the extra mana that is used to split the
Fireball, but that mana is not part of X.  There for the mana for the split
cannot be reassigned into damage dealing, and must be used to split the
Fireball.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 12 Oct 1994 15:43:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Peterson <warewolf@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: Magic Rules group rulings


Here are the newest rulings from the rules group. 

1) I have a Tetravus with counters on it. My opponent has an untapped
Coffin. It's my upkeep. If I declare that I'm moving counters off the
Tetravus, can my opponent Coffin the Tetravus before the counters get
off?

        Yes.  You can respond to the removal of tokens by Coffining the 
Tetravus.  Removing each token counts as a fast effect and can be 
responded to.  Note that if you remove one token at a time, they cannot 
get more than one token with the Tetravus when they Coffin it.

2) According to the Ghoul's text, it only regenerates from lethal damage,
not from destroy effects such as Cleanse.  People tend to assume that
we really meant that it could regenerate from destroy effects as well,
but we need a final ruling on whether it really does mean "lethal damage
only", or if it needs errata to cover all methods of destruction.

        The Ghoul can only regenerate from lethal damage.  The card is 
clear as written.

3) So what happens if both players have a tapped Eater of the Dead, and both
want to eat the only available creature card?

        Who's ever turn it is can use the effect first, based on the 
timing rules.

4) All "at end of turn" effects happen before "until end of turn" effects 
wear
off, correct?  So if the Factory had been made an Assembly Worker, the
Pestilence would have to check for creatures before the Worker deanimated,
and would have to stay in play?  

        This is correct.  Until the end of the Turn effects do not wear 
off until after creatures are healed, so that a Giant growth will not 
wear off before healing.  At end of turn effects occur before creatures heal.
        
5) Is adding a counter to an artifact such as the Voodoo Doll an "upkeep 
cost"?  That is, can I use a Voodoo Doll before adding a counter to it, 
thus tapping
it and avoiding the counter?  

        Treat adding a counter to the Voodoo Doll (and the Armageddon 
Clock) as an "upkeep cost."  You cannot use their abilities before 
placing the counter on them.

6) Suppose I choose to discard rather than taking damage for Mind Bomb.  
Can I make use of Library of Leng, and would Psychic Purge be triggered?

        You can use the Library of Leng and Psycic Purge would be 
triggered, as a spell cast by your opponent is causing the discard.

7) Which wins in Runesword versus Firestorm Pheonix?

        We have decided that the Pheonix will go back to your hand.

8) There is a Howling Mine in play.  Field of Dreams is out.  I have
a Millstone.  How fast does my opponent draw the card granted
by the Mine?  If we say that draw effects act as instants, as
upkeep effects do, then I could respond to their use of the Mine
by using the Millstone to get rid of their top card if I decided
I didn't like it.  So...  does the draw act as an instant,
or an interrupt?

        The draw acts as an instant.  You can respond to it with the Millstone.

9) Is it the controller of the land who pays the WW to gain life from 
Farmstead, or the controller of the enchantment?

        The controller of the enchantment pays the WW, but the controller 
of the land gains the life.

10) Is the answer to "can I counter spell with Equinox" locked in when the
spell is announced, or can it change over the course of the casting?
For example, I have Living Lands and Castle in play, and no tapped lands.
My opponent casts a 1-point Earthquake.  This will not kill any of my lands
unless I tap one and bring it out of the Castle.  If I do tap one, does
this now license the use of Equinox, or am I stuck because Equinox was
ineligible at the time the Earthquake was announced?

In this particular case you can use the Equinox because when they cast 
the Earthquake, you can interrupt the casting to tap a land for mana.  
Now there is a legitimate reason to use Equinox and it is still an 
appropriate time to use it, as the spell can still be countered.

11) Do you choose the order that creatures come out of the Safe Haven?

        Yes you do.  If you choose a Clone as the first creature and 
there are no other creatures in play, the Clone will die.

12) Does Guardian Beast protect artifacts from Dust to Dust?

        No.  It will not protect an artifact from removal from the game.

13) Lich has errata to the effect that the cards you get rid of instead
of taking damage are sacrificed, so can't be regenerated or whatnot, right?

        Treat the cards lost as being sacrificed.

14) Can Soul Net be used until the end of the turn?

        No.  Soul Net can only be used during the death effects phase of 
damage resolution.

15) Did we ever decide what happens when the queen/drones get -laced or 
otherwise change color?  Do the drones automatically acquire the color of 
the queen, or do they change color independently?  If a drone's color 
changes and it gets reabsorbed, will it keep that color change if split 
off again?

        The counters are cleared of memory when they split or rejoin the 
"queen."  The are colorless after they split, no matter what the queens 
color is, and they do not affect the queen's color when they rejoin.

16) Suppose my opponent takes control of my Tetravus and splits off some 
drones. I then reestablish control of the queen.  Can I recombine the 
drones my opponent controls, or does a player have to control both the 
queen and a
drone to recombine that drone?

        You can rejoin all counters, even those controlled by your 
opponent.  The card seems fairly clear on this issue.

17) Shouldn't the Tetravus only be able to do a split/recombine once per
upkeep?  An old ruling by Beth says you can keep doing it, but from the
wording, I think you should only be able to do it once (see Doppelganger,
Shapeshifter, etc).  Assuming I can do it only once, could I do both
splitting and recombining during the same upkeep?

        Each counter can be either split off or recombined once per 
upkeep.  You can split off a counter and recombine the other two, if you 
wish.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: aahz@hal.COM (Tom Wylie)
Subject: NEW:  Design Team Rulings for Magic, 11/16/94
Date: 16 Nov 1994

1) Serendib Djinn:  we ruled that just the attempt to destroy a land
satisfied him.  Now that we can sacrifice things other than creatures,
he really should take a sacrifice, not a destroy.

        Still treat it as destroy.  The attempt will satisfy him, so 
Consecrated lands get around his upkeep.

2) Singing Tree:  we ruled that it expires at the end of the attack phase.
Now that we've clarified all fast effects as expiring at the end of
the turn unless otherwise specific, the Singing Tree should probably
be changed to the same ruling as the Island of Wak-Wak:  subtract the
creature's power at the time the Tree resolves from its power for the
remainder of the turn.

        Singing Tree's effect lasts until the end of the turn.

3) On my turn I had a Scathe Zombies and Llanowar Elf that were targeted
by Nettling Imps, couldn't attack for some reason, and were going to be
destroyed at end of turn.  I cast a Reincarnation on the Elves.  At end
of turn, I choose to kill the Elves first; then bring back a Zombie Master
from the grave.  Since the Zombie Master is instantly in play, the Scathe
Zombies can now regenerate from their scheduled destruction.  I'm still
hoping to see this sequence ruled legal.

        Creatures that die at the end of the turn, go to the graveyard at 
the same time.  However, you can resolve this as one of the effects at 
end of turn.

/*
**  Note that this is a reversal of a previous ruling.
*/

4) Assume that I lose all of a land type during the first step of Balance,
and therefore one of my creature's toughness drops to 0 (say, I have a
Nightmare out and lose all my swamps).  Given the current timing rules
does the creature die right then, or would it wait until after creatures
had been counted up and balanced (so I could balance the "dead" creature
out if necessary)?

        You do not check for the creature deaths until the end of the 
resolution, so the Nightmare is a legitimate target for balancing.

5) "Whenever anyone loses a land..." means that the land must be
destroyed, right?  So Flash Flood wouldn't trigger Dingus Egg?

        This is incorrect.  Flash Flood will cause you to "lose a land," 
and activate the Dingus Egg.

6) If I cast Animate Dead on something which is already in play, or alter
an Animate Dead to something which is already Animated, shouldn't that
give control of the creature to the controller of the new/second
Animate Dead?

        You will gain control of the creature.

7) Can I steal an Instilled creature and then attack with it immediately?

        Yes.  Instill Energy effectively removes "summoning sickness" 
with regards to attacking.

8) Suppose a creature is affected by two Siren's Calls, or is Called and
Nettled, or whatever.  Assume that it can't attack that turn.  Does it
have to regenerate multiple times at end of turn, one for each
nettling effect?

        No.  It only has to regenerate once.

9) Can the caster of a spell can let a batch of interrupts resolve, then 
use another interrupt of their own?

        No.  All interrupts of the same spell must be declared before any 
are resolved.

10) Is the addition of a counter due to UM an upkeep effect of the 
enchantment, or one that it adds to the creature?  

        It is an upkeep effect of the enchantment.  The creature can be 
used before the last counter is placed.

11) If an enchantment's upkeep is dealt with, and the enchantment is then
moved to something else during upkeep, the upkeep isn't dealt with
again, correct?

        You will treat it as though it has just been cast and 
it will forget that it's upkeep has been dealt with.  Thus it gets
another counter.

12) If Delif's Cube is used on a creature after it has been declared as 
an attacker, can its effect still happen?

        Yes.

13) Suppose I have some tapped Bottomless Vaults out while Winter Orb is in
play and untapped.  If I choose to untap some other land as the one that
the Winter Orb allows, will the Vaults still gain their counters?

        Yes.  You could have chosen to untap the Bottomless Vault, but 
chose not to so it gets a counter.  If Stasis had been in play, then you 
would not have had a choice and it would not get a counter.

14)  If I have two Old Men, each hanging onto something and Smoke is out, 
can I choose to let both of them go even though only one Old Man can untap?

        No.  Creatures are only released if the Old Man untaps.

15) If a counter from Ashnod's Transmogrant is added to an animated land 
(or whatever) which then stops being a creature, does the counter 
continue to give artifactness to the ex-creature?

        No.  AT adds a counter that turns the creature into an artifact 
creature.  This is not exactly the same as granting artifact nature.

16) Suppose my Doppelganger starts the turn as a revised Fungusaur, takes
damage, and switches to another form.  What happens to the counter it 
will get at the end of the round?

        It will not get the counter.  Fungusaur says, "At the end of any 
turn in which the Fungusaur..."  It will not be a Fungusaur at the end of 
the turn, when it would check.

17) Are the lucky charms legal during damage prevention?

        Yes.  You can use them during damage prevention.

18) Can I Copy Artifact a Clone of an artifact creature?

        Yes.  The Clone of an artifact creature is considered inherently 
an artifact.

19) Suppose a blue/something legend is in play.  I cast a second copy of 
that legend, then interrupt the casting to REB the original.  Can the 
second one come into play safely?

        Yes.  The Legend will only check for the presence of a second one 
when it resolves.

19) Suppose the creature deanimates with a Life Matrix counter on it.  I 
know it will keep the LM counter, but will it be able to take advantage 
of it?

        No.  Life Matrix says that you remove the counter to regenerate 
the "creature."  If it is not a creature, you cannot use the counter to 
regenerate it.


20) Does the Camel prevent itself from being targeted by the desert?

        Yes.  It is considered to be in the band itself, even if it is 
the only creature attacking.

21) Can I use a Ring of Renewal if my hand is empty?

        No.  Discarding a card should be considered a cost of using the
ability.

22) Can Reflecting Mirror be used against Eye for an Eye?

        No.  Eye for an Eye targets the creature or spell, and deals 
damage to the controller.  The controller is not the target.

23)  If a duplicate Legend comes into play and is therefore buried, does 
a damage prevention step start?

        Yes.  It is therefore possible to use interrupt speed effects at 
this time.

24) If I power up the Orcish Captain multiple times, do I flip a coin 
Multiple times, or do I just flip one coin for the entire batch?

        Flip a coin for each time the Captain is activated.

OFF-93.TXT

(26613 Nov  9 07:01 official.comments.and.PR.1993)

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
                      
    This file contains official comments, press releases, and other posts 
    of note from the Snark (David Howell), Mavra (Peter Adkison), and 
    other folk at Wizards of the Coast, from the beginning thru the end of
    1993.
      
<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->


Date: Wed, 15 Sep 93 16:25:36 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@omnigroup.com>

To someone else:

No, there was no massive screwup that left a bunch of Magic lying
around a california dock. I understand where this rumor came from,
but all Magic is accounted for.

By the way, what we've shipped so far is about 2.5 million cards. We
have 7.5 million coming in a couple weeks, and they're all already
pre-sold.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Sep 93 07:27:10 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>Replacing incomplete and damaged goods is part of the cost of doing
>business, if you want to keep your reputation. If you can't afford it,
>you need to cut costs, raise your prices, or decrease your profit
>margin. It's obvious that Magic;the Gathering has been wildly
>successful; How is it that you "can't afford" to do what game
>manufacturers without any games this successful do routinely?  If you
>do business with a manufacturer that doesn't do good quality control,
>that should be your business, not mine.
>
>                                        Andy Latto
>                                        andyl@harlequin.com

Actually, I think we'd be doing our customers a grave disservice by
allowing replacement of missing cards. Damaged ones, we could always
require you send it in. Missing? How do we know what card was
missing? How do we prevent people from claiming that they didn't get
a rare card? With individual cards selling in some places for more
than $10, I'm not about to support anything that would allow people
to get cards for free. Of course, right now the point is moot, since
we have no cards to replace with. Anybody getting a deck shipped mail
order that is damaged, we'll replace. If you have a particular
damaged card, we would, in all likelihood, replace it with a card of
equal or greater worth, replacing it exactly if possible. But with
missing cards, we'd have to require you open them at the store to
have the count verified and contents recorded, or honest customers
will get cheated.

You can't compare Magic to other games so off-handedly, since it
isn't like other games. Almost no games have parts with a
non-negligible value as an independant object.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 8 Oct 93 19:24:29 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>(sides, I'd like to see what he looks
>   like Beth who doesn'thave a camera!)

Hey, just go to your local game store and look in the Wizard's book 
"Chessboards: The Planes of Possibility." Specifically, look at the
picture of the author. Then buy the book, because you've never had an
RPG book that's this fun to read. :)

Shameless plug? Of course!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 00:57:34 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: CARL OR KAREN CRAVENS <DAFUZZ@delphi.com> <dafuzz/daemon>
>
>probably more powerful.  Some of these rare cards aren't really worth
>rare status, in my opinion.

You misunderstand. Cards were under stringent requirements to qualify
as COMMON cards. Well-balanced, not devastating in quantity, yet not
a waste of space. Cards that could not meet these criteria were
relegated to the ghettos of rarity. Rare cards may be too powerful,
or too stupid, or just not as good as some other card. Rarity is not
an honor, it's a punishment.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 12:04:03 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

The Collector's Edition is just that: a set for collectors, people
who are compulsive about having everything. The designer felt, and I
agree, that even making these cards vaguely playable would betray
players who didn't make the outlay for them.

The Collector's Edition has "Collector's Edition" printed in big gold
letters on the back of every card, and the corners aren't rounded,
they're square. List is $49.95

Uncut sheets: Yea, we think this would be cool too, and have
discussed it, but I don't think we could sell more than just the
common cards, since people would want to buy the rare sheet and
carefully cut out the cards to play with, don't you think? I'm not
sure leaving the backs blank would help. Also, they're very large.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 02:30:47 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

First of all, much thanks to Ken, Al, Mark, Beth, Drew, Tim, Thorin,
and all the other people who've been answering questions, mostly will
correct, well-thought out answers. I feel like, though I've been
neglecting you all a bit, the list is still a great place to get
answers.

>From: minnotte@raven.math.usu.edu (Mike Minnotte) <minnotte/daemon>
>
>I got a new Wargames West catalog yesterday. (Incidently, congratulations
>on the first game ever to get the cover by itself!)  Their description
>of Magic: Arabian Nights includes "New cards for each color are included,
>as well as a new land that provides colorless mana!"  The cover also
>talks about a new land, the Desert, and has a picture of a card, "Desert
>Nomads", of which the only clear text is "desertwalk".  So: what is
>the deal with deserts?  Just curious; I'll certainly buy some regardless
>of the answer.

It's a new land card, one of quite a few new kinds of land. Note that
it's not a *basic* land, but more like a multiland: something
special. And BTW, it does more than just provide colorless mana...

>Also, the factory set is described as having "363 cards from the original
>_Magic:_The_Gathering_ game, including all 302 spell cards plus duplicates
>of the lands."  If this is true, it would make the factory set much
>more playable than previously believed, 
>  (And how did you come up with _61_ additional lands?  Determined
>to have a nice round total number, like 363? :) )

It had to do with production and manufacturing. Factor it down to
primes to get a clue of why that number...

>From: Andrew Lange <alange@rahul.net> <alange/daemon>
>
>So, what are the rules, and when can I get my factory set?

Warning: The Collector's Edition is also a limited print run. We're
doing 10,000 for the US, and 5,000 overseas, although there's been
some distributors threatening to purchase them back from the
overseas crew. :/ These sold out with blinding speed, and we're
rather sorry we didn't set the limit higher. Think about reserving
one now if you want one.

>* 60 new cards, 5 million would be printed.

77 to be precise.

>* No current plans to do an unlimited printing following the limited
>  edition, but some of the most popular Arabian Nights cards might
>  later show up in the unlimited-edition MtG packs.

Specifically, we will NOT print more Arabian Cards, unless they
migrate to a later edition of the Gathering.

>* Arabian Nights WILL contain new types of land, but no new color.
>  (This caused a few interested "hmmm!"'s from the audience.)

See "Desert."

>* Arabian Nights cards come in only two rareness categories, not three.
>  Whether you call them "common/uncommon" or "uncommon/rare" is a
>  matter of semantics.  Buying one display box will almost certainly
>  get you all the cards.

Probably. Not guaranteed, though.

>* Unsure whether they would be selling them mail-order.

It's official. We won't. We've already sold every last one to
distributors. I wish they'd wait until we actually had some cards in
house before buying the whole shipment for a change. :)

>I saw a FAX at one of the local game stores that had a list of expansions
>coming out.  I forget everything that was on it, but it talked about a
>subset (like Arabian Nights) that was all artifacts.  Is this true?  What
>is "Mggic: Legends?


Magic: Antiquities is slated for February, hope hope. We set up a
schedule tonight. It's a 70-80 card expansion consisting heavily of
artifacts. Legends, official name TBD, is a larger expansion, perhaps
about 150 cards.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Sat, 23 Oct 93 06:57:30 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: John Schmidt <jschmidt@microsoft.com> <jschmidt/daemon>
>
>I am very curious what the long term plans for magic are.  I mean in
>say five years what will be out on the market, what would people like, 
ect.

AHAHAHAHAHahahahahaha. Five years? That will depend very much on how
the public reacts to this game on a long-term basis.

>>From time to time some cards may be found to not enhance play.  These
>cards should simply be retired (channel is my first candidate for this
>honor, perhaps mox next).  Also some rare cards can be temporarily

At present, this is rather the plan. Once a year or so, we'll roll
out the New Gathering, and replace some of the cards with others,
often ones that appeared in expansion sets and proved to be pretty
robust. I must say, though, that while Channel is a candidate for
replacement, the Moxes are some of the most valuable cards in the
deck. Experienced players hoard them like gold. I'll let somebody
else explain why...

>From: CARL OR KAREN CRAVENS <DAFUZZ@delphi.com> <dafuzz/daemon>
>
>Snark, does WotC have any plans of printing cards with normal backs and
>"blank" fronts?  Blank would probably mean an assortment of cards with
>colored borders (the five primaries, plus beige and brown for artifacts
>and rare lands)...  even nicer would be a set of lables included, which
>would feature lots of little colored and numbered mana symbols.

We don't, and as Production Manager, I'm not for this idea. It would
be expensive, and of limited appeal. If you really want to make your
own cards, paint over a land card. Or paint over the text box of a
color card, and write there, which would give you the colored border
as well. We've been making fake cards of all descriptions for quite a
while for playtesting purposes, and it's just not that hard. Because
of economy of scale, it will always be far cheaper to buy a booster
and mess up those cards than for us to sell blanks.

>doesn't play for ante?  (Has anyone considered that this might be
>considered a form of gambling in some states, and is therefore illegal?

Yes, we did. It's not illegal according to the laws of the State of
Washington. I don't know if they checked laws in other states, but
I'm pretty sure we're clear.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Sun, 24 Oct 93 22:34:06 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>I have heard rumours about starter decks with more RARE and less uncommon 
cards
>in the first 15.  Has anyone else heard about these?

Well, I haven't, and I work here. <snort>

>From: peldor@netcom.com (Mitch Burton) <peldor/daemon>
>
>Wether it is for added playability or not, that's what the effect is.  Why
>bother calling it collectors edition? (Hah. Does WotC really think
>collectors will want a set with different backs?  

Why, yes, actually. The whole production run sold out with blinding speed.
The only reason we made it in the first place was consumer demand.

>Geez I was a bit lengthy there.  My point is it's a bad idea and IMHO if
>WotC had thought about it longer, they wouldn't be doing it.

<roll eyes> Oh, sure, we commit to major product manufacturing w/little
thought on a regular basis. <Sarcasm Alert for the humor impaired>

People have been clamoring for some way to see all the artwork from day 1.
We've had requests for books, for sets, for lists, for posters. This is the
only thing we could get out to meet that voracious demand before February,
and many industry people told us, in effect, that we'd darn well better
release them. There's a reason we limited the print run, and no, it's not
to make us money. We don't get money from a product that's valuable because
it's hard to get, speculators do.

>One final note.  It may, actually probably does, sound like I'm flaming
>WotC here.  Take that any way you like.  I like magic, I don't want to see
>it screwed up by complete sets.

Neither do we. As it happens, we don't think it will be, and we've been
soliticing advice from every reputable source we can find.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 08:06:03 -0700
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>     Someone is spreading the rumor around the game store where we
>  get our Magic stuff that WotC are giving away new, previously unreleased
>  cards at conferences or tournaments which will not be available 
elsewhere.
>  This sounds totally contrary to everything I know so far.

As someone has pointed out, we now have poker decks with Magic backs
for promotional purposes. No, you can't order them. :) Now, we DO
intend eventually to have cards that are only available from us at
conventions, perhaps included in the program packet or something like
that, but we haven't done it yet.

>[somebody got a million rares]

People lucky enough to get the mispacked decks just make me green
with envy. This was apparently part of the breakdown of the sorter
that caused the dreadful delay in getting the cards.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 12:11:41 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

>From: Jeff Harris <caliban@tapir.wizards.com> <caliban/daemon>
>Subject: Re: Q: 2nd ed rules = No 1st ed cards!?!
>
>For those of you who are saying that 1st edition cards can't be used with
>2nd edition cards. I don't know where you heard this but its not true. I
>am sitting next to Peter and Jay as I write this and they can't believe
>this rumor even got started. the game is unchanged. the only difference
>between the two editions is the color of the boarder.
>
>Jeff Harris
>Office Manager
>Wizards of the Coast

Oh, dear. Terms and definitions again.

1. It's completely true.

2. Nobody has ``2nd ed.'' cards.

3. Nobody has changed borders, either.

4. First there was Magic, 1st edition, 1st printing.
   Then we modified some of the cards 25% of the way through
        the first printing, giving us Magic, 1st ed. 1st printing,
        2nd part of the run.
   Next, will be the unlimited printings. Magic, 1st ed., 2nd
           printing, will have a black/white border. This is the only
           change from the last part of the first printing.
        Soon, probably early '94, there will be a new edition, the
                official designation of which hasn't been determined, but 
it may
                be "Revised Edition" or "1994 Edition," and it will use 
the 2nd
                edition rules, and be only somewhat compatible with MtG: 
1st
                ed. cards and rules.
                
So, there's what we have now. There's 2nd printing, and eventually
there will be another edition.

Because people have been erroneously calling the last part of our
first printing a 2nd something, a lot of people have gotten confused.
Some people even think they can tell cards in that printing apart,
which is not always the case. Many rare cards printed in the 2nd part
of the first printing have the large radius corners, leading people
to think they have before-the-change rare cards. They don't, it's
just that the cutter for the rare sheet isn't the same as the cutter
for the others. 1st printing is 1st printing, we do not, can not, and
will not support or provide a way to tell these apart.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 19:43:48 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

Okay, here's the full scoop:

Magic: The Gathering, 1st edition, whatever printing, is

mostly compatible

with the 2nd ed rules/revised edition cards that will be coming up
soon. If you say

compatible

you're wrong. If you say

incompatible

you're wrong. If you have the Pocket Player's Guide, which will be
out before the revised cards are, then you'll have the information
you need to play both kinds of cards against or with each other.
Without the PPG, you'll think you're all right until you get a card
with a tap symbol, or a "Mono Artifact," or something like that.
The rules have not fundamentally changed, we've just clarified them
drastically, but the clarification has put them subtly out of synch. 
That phrase, again, is 

mostly compatible,

unless you have the Pocket Player's Guide. With the Guide, you can
mix the cards: fully compatible.

If anybody forgets to include the "mostly," you'll just be setting up
people to hate the game later when they get confused.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 22:15:11 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark@wizards.com>

For Tolkein fans, I'm pretty sure that our Middle Earth game will NOT
be Magic:Middle Earth. It will be a new and different Deckmaster
game. Stay tuned.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 21 Nov 93 09:07:41 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>Is the Arabian Nights expansion set a limited printing, or will those 
cards be
>included in the unlimited second printing?

It's very possible that some Arabian cards will be seen in the
Revised Gathering. Arabian itself is a limited printing.

>Is there any plans on making a type of Booster pack without land? I've 
got more
>than enough land, but would like to "boost" my decks with a better 
selection of
>non-lands.

Not for the Gathering. It would be expensive, and delay production of
the cards. There are no islands, swamps, plains, or forests in
Arabian Nights.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 93 04:14:01 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>From: Jeff Alexander <jwa@zap.iipo.gtegsc.com> <jwa/daemon>
>
>     Personally, I believe playing with decks that have been modified
>by trading and card omission to be fair, since A) the rulebook implies
>that these things can and should be done, and I'm willing to give the
>game designers the benefit of the doubt; B) trading can be fun; C)
>playing with the same deck all the time can be boring -- furthermore,
>playing with the same, weak deck that puts your chance of winning more
>in the hands of luck than skill is frustrating (and I DON'T like the
>alternative of buying a whole new Starter Deck because I got a "bad"
>one); and D) some cards are *just* *plain* ANNOYING (Copper Tablet,
>anyone?).

Your best clue is that we advertise it as a "Trading Card Game." You
are supposed to win and trade for new cards, and we certainly expect
you to put those cards in your deck if you choose.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 01:46:10 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>Q1: I know this has been asked before and I know it is explicitly
>stated in the FAQ, I would just like OFFICIAL confirmation that
>the FAQ is accurate.  According to the FAQ, only 1 defender has to have
>banding ability for all the defenders to band and block a critter.
>(Ie, my 4 Unicorns and 1 Benalish hero are considered a band
>if they all block the same attacking creature)..  Is this correct?

The FAQ is officially official. Really. Just like it says. The
section this part refers to is simply a repetition of what the
rulebook says.

As always, if you want to read Magic news on UseNet, go to
rec.games.board, where we're much of the traffic. Wizards of the
Coast does not intend to push for a news group: if the public wants
it, the public is encouraged to form such a group. We will support it
if it is created.

I was recently quoted in a little pamphlet about shipping schedules for
products. The schedule was wrong. Also, distributors have been told "WotC
says you're supposed to have X on Tuesday. How come you're telling me you
won't?" WotC never said that, but I posted a hoped-for schedule here. If
we have any more problems like this, I'll have to completely stop
commenting on projected shipping schedules. "Might be out by..." "Should
see them..." "Projecting a June release..." People just love to cut the
disclaimers out of stuff. This is very bad.

When I say "We expect to have the 2nd printing out by Thanksgiving," this
is NOT a promise! As it happens, that's what we were expecting, and it
didn't come true. One of the companies that supplies material to our
manufacturer goofed, and some of our cards (which cards? I'm not telling)
will be delayed by about 2 months. These things happen. You don't get them
until they come and your local store puts them on the shelf. We cannot,
will not, and do not make guarantees about predictions of the future here.

[carefully climb off soapbox]

Nap time!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Date: Thu, 9 Dec 93 23:36:28 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>There is some overlap with the FAQ (BTW, someone really should post that 
again
>sometime soon for the new people... it has been 6 weeks since the last 
one).

New subscribers are automatically sent the FAQ.

>    Is it possible to subscribe to the Duelist, and if so, how can we do
>it?

Send a check for $15 to Duelist's Convocation, Wizards of the Coast, 
P.O.Box 707,
Renton, WA, 98057

>Will Arabian Nights be the last of the limited run sets, or will other
>expansions and products also have limited supplies?

Most expansions will be limited run. If they prove bizarrely popular, 
there's
always the possibility of a 2nd printing, but we'd rather print a new one 
than
reprint an old one.

>(Michael Dudash chastises Sarah@eskimo.com)

All, right, it's time for a net.manners lesson. Roberto Ullfig posted
a warning to us about M. Box, based on his experiences, and why. So
far, so good. While accusing somebody of deception isn't all that
good an idea, Roberto told us the circumstances, allowing us to form
our own opinion.

Then Sarah pointed out that it could well be the mail system.
Normally this should have been email, not posted, but because
somebody's good name was in question, this was warranted. Again,
people are allowed to make their own decision.

Then Mike Dudash rakes Sarah over the coals. While there is some
question (!) as to whether the attack was warranted at all, it should
NEVER have been posted to the list. It can't be construed in any way
except as a message from Mike to Sarah, and filling up 300+ other
mailboxes with what is a private message is very rude. I hope the
rest of you will keep this in mind as well. Thank you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 9 Dec 93 23:37:40 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>

>PS Any plans for a solitaire deckmaster game at any time in the future?
>I think that would be cool

Oh, yes, we'll release solitaire rules the very instant that anybody
in the entire world sends us a set that's fun. We have not had much
luck in inventing same.

>I don't think it would be logistically possible for WotC to make all their
>expansions unlimited. They probably have -thousands- of card ideas they 
want
>to print and to have that many different cards in constant circulation is
>probably a very difficult task. However, I think that their supply of 
limited
>edition cards is way too low. Because of such a high demand, cards stay 
in the
>
>     Before we all go griping about not being able to get our hands on 
Limited
>Edition cards, let us remember that WotC wasn't exactly TSR before MtG 
came
>out!  I think they were all a little surprised at the tremendous 
popularity of

Oh, yes, just a wee. A smidge. A hair. A bit.

>MtG and were astounded by how quickly the first printing sold out.  As 
soon as
>they had the capital and the personnel available to handle such a load, 
they
>very graciously went to the Unlimited Edition, thereby making the 
wonderful
>new game available to all of us (and also setting themselves up for quite 
a
>bit of healthy profit from the Christmas buying season).

Boy, howdy. We have to pay for paper and flow pack material before
they'll start a print run, and the lag time is 2 months. We were
originally planning to bring Arabian Nights out sometime early '94.
Production on that game was rushed like crazy (and it shows, sigh),
and we actually got it done months early, just for you.

While future sets will be limited, it is not necessarily true that
they will be AS limited. More on this when I have facts, and am not
talking through my sleeve.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 18 Dec 93 14:15:12 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>
Subject: collector's edition abroad


the difference between the Collector's Edition and the International 
Collector'sedition is that the U.S. version says "Collector's Edition" on 
the outside
and the international version says "International Collector's Edition."

That's it.

:)

Snark

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 93 15:57:41 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>
Subject: Kaja Foglio

"a friend of the Foglio's said Phil helped [Kaja] out on some of the cards."

Oo. Ick. I'd like to refute, or at least amend, this statement. 
OK, it's no big deal, but her style has always looked sort of like
Phil's, and people have often accused her of not doing her own
work, or learning everything she knows, etc. etc. Pish.

There are some cards where Phil actually suggested the 
subject matter. These cards are in Antiquites, not Arabian
Nights, and Kaja had us list the artist as "Kaja and Phil Foglio."
On the Arabian Nights cards, the only assistance (to my knowledge)
that Phil provided was as kibbitzer and commenter. I commented 
on the cards as well, since I got to see many of them before
they were done. Some of her other friends did. It's still Kaja's
work.

By the way, if you look very carefully at the black background and the
orange globes in the Sorcerous Queen artwork, you should see
spooky eyes. They're clearer on the original artwork.

Snark

P.S. That name is pronounced "K-eye-ah Fo-lee-o"

OFF-94.TXT

(81539 Nov  9 07:02 official.comments.PR.1.94-6.94)

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
                      
    This file contains official comments, press releases, and other posts 
    of note from the Snark (David Howell), Mavra (Peter Adkison), the Cyberspace
    liaison (Kathy Ice) and other folk at Wizards of the Coast for the 
    first half of 1994 (January thru June).
      
<------------------------------------------------------------------------------->


Date: Sun, 2 Jan 94 08:57:40 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>
Subject: Skull Daggers

>     I've also noticed that every single black mana symbol has a hair-
>thin line extending straight down from it more than half an inch long.
>This appears on alpha, beta, and Unlimited cards (I have no Arabians).
>I don't recall seeing anyone else mention it here.  What's the story?

Well, you're mostly right. Any black card that changed between alpha 
and beta print does not have the black mana hairline. It was a flaw in the 
original .eps file of the skull, created when we added the nasal holes. I 
fixed it after the first release of Magic, but all cards that haven't changed 
since the beginning still have it. The line is actually thinner than the dots 
that make up the printing on the card, and often is almost undetectable. 
You're the first "general public" person to mention it that I've seen.
Because it drops of one of the nose holes, I call it "post-mortem drip."

Dave "Snark" Howell
Production Manager
Wizards of the Coast

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 7 Jan 94 03:17:09 -0800
From: Dave Howell <snark>
Subject: Arabian Unlimited

This keeps coming up:

>When are the Arabian Nights unlimited cards going to be available?

Beth may answer this too, but let me throw some extra offical weight
behind it.

At present, there are no plans for "unlimited" expansions. For those
of you who missed Arabian, get in line for Antiquities. People who
first meet the game this summer can buy Revised and the Dark
expansion.

Topps doesn't reprint 1986 baseball cards, and we don't expect that
we'll ever reprint expansions. We'll do new cards instead.

Now, while this isn't etched in stone, at present we have little
evidence that reprinting limited edition expansions is a good idea.
I'm not saying "never," but I am saying "fat chance."

Oh, and apologies if I'm coming down too hard on an innocent
question, but this keeps popping up, and I want everybody who's read
this to be very certain of the answer when somebody asks them!

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Keeper of the Magic FAQ

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 7 Jan 94 19:29:23 -0800
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: News from the Snark

News From The Snark: The Fax about the Scimitar

You may have noticed that scimitar on the right side of your Arabian
Nights cards? Originally, AN cards were going to have a different
color back (that purple back that you see on the booster boxes).
Playtesting has shown that knowing that a card is from an expansion
set before you draw it is no big deal; it doesn't hurt game play
significantly. However, vast hordes of people were protesting this
decision, and for that and some other reasons, we decided to make all
the backs the same.

However, now if somebody played "City in a Bottle," the poor Mahamoti
Djinn from MtG had a good chance of getting swept away as well. How
would people tell an AN card from a Gathering one?

The scimitar, of course, a clever idea created at the last minute.
Well, actually after the last minute. The film was already at the
printers, and making new film would have cost us at least a week in
time, and then we'd surely miss Christmas altogether. The printer
could add the image, but how would we get it there in time, i.e.
right this minute?

We faxed it.

We blew it up so it was as big as a sheet of paper, and faxed it. Fax
machines are 100x200 dpi. A 10-inch scimitar at 100dpi becomes a
2,000 dpi sword when reduced to 1/2 inch. There was some doubt around
the office that this would work, but I think you'll agree, it doesn't
really look faxed.

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Keeper of the Magic FAQ

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>We just received our order form for "Legends."  I was wondering if you have
>more information about the cards so that we can justify how much to order.
>Our store has been told that the set will be limited to the number of orders
>received.  After the first shipment, Legends will never be available again.
>Is this true?

Yes. We print more than the initial order, but the initial order is
presently used as a gauge to determine the print run. This policy is
being examined. Well, all our policies are re-examined on a regular
basis, so that's no surprise.

Expansions are limited editions. We print X, then we toss the plates.

>Will the legends cards have exciting cards like arabian nights did.

Well, we think so. :)

>  Is it a
>balanced game of itself.  What kind of set is it?

It's a complete set, except there's no land, unlike Arabian, which
would be dreadfully dull and unworkable w/o Gathering cards mixed in.

>I am curious, have you ever thought about distributing Promotional cards of
>new products to hobby dealers in advance or with orders.  It would help us
>judge our customers reaction to the cards and order appropriately.

Yikes! Not a bad idea, except that we don't even have the artwork
back from the artists until long after the orders are being accepted.
Logistically, there'd be no way to print cards. Heck, we've got huge
stacks of orders for "The Dark," a set that hasn't even gone into
*playtest* yet!


Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Keeper of the Magic FAQ

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri Jan 28 20:42:08 1994
From: His intimate friends called him ``Candle-ends.'' <snark>
Subject: Complete Card Lists

For public release:

News From The Snark: Copyright Violation

Recently, somebody posted a list of cards to UseNet that included the
information contained in the "text block" of the card. The text block
is that rectangle below the picture that tells you what the card
actually does. Now, quite a few people have actually typed in the
complete text of the cards. Then they asked Wizards of the Coast if
we'd mind if they posted it. Well, yes, we do. As long as you don't
have the text in the text block, you sort of have to buy the game
itself to play. :/ Releasing this list is copyright violation.

I hope that the network community understands why we'd like to keep
at least part of the game out of the public domain, and supports us
in not redistributing the full text of the cards, especially as we'd
hoped to release the rules on the net for people who wanted to print
larger versions of it.

Thank you for your cooperation. Comments and flames should be
directed to me.

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 94 19:07:16 -0800
From: Beth Moursund <bethmo>
Subject: comment from Richard Garfield

Richard Garfield posted this to another mailing list; I asked him if I
could forward it to here and he said sure.

"The intention is to make the Gathering line constantly improving set
of cards.  Not constantly getting more powerful, constantly getting
better as a game. AN was made before the role of the expansion kit was
really clear. But to control the possible unbalancing effects city in the
bottle was added, AND those little scimitars. The little scimitars allow
people to say they don't like that expansion and not play against it (that
is the idea anyway). Later the cards that are good from AN and other
expansions will begin appeearing in the main line without the scimitar. I
have no intention of seeing the pool of cards get more powerful in order to
keep people buying cards. The pool of cards should continually have
interesting and colorful things, and the game should be continually
improving - and that will keep people playing."

  - quote from Richard Garfield, 1/28/94

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 1 Feb 1994 03:43:43 -0800 (PST)
From: Dave Howell <snark@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: The Snark kibbitzes (Hi, Beth!)

>} And if that's what is really meant by the new ruling, then the rules group
>} needs to wake up and realize that if they continue to make silly 
rulings...
>
>Sometimes I think they need a good copy editor or something to go over
>their official releases, yes.

What, we finally get a fast-moving, effective, definitive Rules
Committee together, and now you want the results to be coherent as
well? Such a demanding crowd. :)

>     Here, in paraphrase, is how I personally interpret the intent of
>all the "jetlag" rules:
>
>     "A creature may neither attack, nor use a special ability which
>requires tapping, unless it has been both a creature and in play since
>the beginning of its controller's most recent turn."
>
>     Every ruling I've seen fits this more general summary, as do the
>two phrases in the rulebook (p. 19 and p. 24) concerning attack/tap
>ineligibility.  My point is that nowhere do these activity delays
>specify that the creature needed to be summoned -- they all refer to
>the creature simply coming into play, which includes all the spells
>you're unsure about.  I would say "No" to your immediate use of an
>Animated creature, despite the lack of this prohibition on the card
>itself.

When we first brought the game out, we congradulated ourselves on
having playtested it so very hard before release. And as a matter of
fact, I still think this is true. (After all, it wasn't hard to make
ourselves play "just one more game of Magic.") However, as is pretty
clear, things that we thought were obvious were, as it happens,
rather subtle. The "problem" with the word Discard didn't show up
until 4 months after release! If a problem takes some 1,000 to 3,000
people (on the net) months to find it, then I'm not to ashamed that
we few missed it in playtest.

Exactly how "jet lag" works is one of these. When the rules were
written, the full scope of that effect was still poorly defined.
Everybody "knew" how it worked, so nobody thought much about it.
Clearly, what we were stumbling toward was our present ruling of
"starting in play on your side on your turn," but the old rules don't
come out and say that because we didn't know it was the underlying
principle.

Since I was told that the term "jet lag" (which I coined) was rather
un-fantasy, I came up with an alternative term for the new rules:
"summoning sickness." As has been pointed out to me (too late), this
might lead people to think it's only suffered when a creature is
actually summoned. In fact, it is suffered whenever a creature
comes into play in a player's territory, whether summoned,
controlled, ressurected, or what-have-you. I'm delighted that at
least one person sees this as the intent of our previous hinting, and
hope you'll all bear with us as we continue to refine the mechanics
of the game. We have high hopes that the Revised Edition will be a
far more stable game than the first editions were, without
compromising that zany, addictive quality we're all so, er, addicted
to.

>Yes, I agree that you can say up front no AN cards.  But the problem
>I'm having is saying we are putting in one card which will fix the
>balance problems.  I would beleive it IF they had made this a basic
>set card, and made it a common.  But sorry I don't buy it the way it
>is.  It's a rare, it's in the set of cards your trying to exculde.

Oh, we're not saying that putting one card fixes the problem. The
scimitar fixes the problem, if you indeed feel it is a "problem." The
expansion-set hoser (City in a Bottle in Arabian Nights, the
Golgothian Sylex in Antiquities (oops! don't tell! :) ) is intended
more like Wrath of God or Nevinyrral's Disk: a blanket card-hoser of
limited precision.

>I realize this is a small company which is not geared up for a game
>this size.  But they must look at the history of simlar games car wars
>by steve jackson games comes to mind.  It started out simple, the
>rules and everything fit into one small case, then came the expansion
>sets and preaty soon if you didn't own the newest expansion set you
>where hosed.

Ah. Well, Legends will have a couple of extra rules. They fit on a
4-page booklet. Antiquities and Arabian don't have any new rules, per
se. The rules are a stable set, and we're quite reluctant to add new
ones unless they're really really cool. This makes the analogy to car
wars pretty weak already. Also, the expansion sets are limited.
Unlike Car Wars, your opponent can't expect you to have the "latest
expansion set," since it might already be out of print. Instead of
encouraging people to run right out and get every card we make, we
encourage you to tell people to pull expansions out of their deck.
Sure, drawing from all the expansions you have can be fun, but
telling somebody that you'll play them if they use cards from only
the basic set and two expansions, no more, will also lead to a fun
game.

Also, Arabian Nights isn't a fair example, since we rushed it into
print to keep the desperate drooling hordes from our gates. :)
Antiquities had major playtesting, including outside groups across
the country, and is a far better balanced and interesting expansion
as a result. I'm really excited. And, rather by accident, the artwork
has given it a vaguely steampunk atmosphere that's really fun. I like
it.

>For that matter, what exactly is going to be in the guide? Is this in 
the FAQ
>somewhere?

Ha! No, we haven't listed a definitive list, mostly because we keep
changing our minds about what's going in. I expect we won't be
positive of the contents until we're done typesetting it.

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News From The Snark: Tournament Rules and Editions of Cards

01 Feb 1994

I have been informed of some concern and confusion regarding our
editions and our tournament rules.

First, the variations on Magic cards. First, there was the Limited
Edition of Magic: The Gathering. Brown box, no symbols in the middle
right, black borders around the image. 10.4 million printed.

Unlimited Edition, Magic: The Gathering. Presently (2/1/94) being
sold, identical to the Limited Edition except for white borders.
Anticipated sales, 30-50 million.

Magic: The Gathering, Arabian Nights. Black borders (as we expect all
cards that have a set limit on the print run will have), and a little
scimitar in the middle right to denote an expansion set. 5 million
printed.

Antiquities. Black borders, anvil is the symbol of the expansion.
Print run is approximately 15 million cards.

Revised Edition, Magic: These cards are mostly the same as the
Unlimited Edition, except about 30 cards from the Unlimited Edition
have been replaced with cards from Arabian Nights and Antiquities.
They will have a new version of the rules that hopefully are much
clearer and more definitive, as well as revisions to the card
wordings to make their function much clearer. Still basically the
same game that Magic has been all along. These cards have grey
borders to indicate cards that use the Revised rules. All expansions
after Antiquities will use the Revised rules, but will still have
black borders to denote a limited print run.

Note that when Revised starts, we'll quit printing the Unlimited
cards. The Revised set is also an unlimited print run, but we already
called something that, so we came up with a new name. :)

If you are playing in a tournament, you may use any card from any
expansion set or edition of Magic, unless it is on the published
Prohibited list. In general, if it is a card that was published under
the first edition rules, it will be played that way, with some
exceptions, such as Protection. Whether any particular first edition
card is to be played according to first edition rules, or if it will
be played as if it were a Revised Edition version of itself, is up to
the Convention Coordinator at Wizards of the Coast.

A preliminary copy of the official tounament rules has already been
released. While the rules will always be evolving, particularly the
Restricted and Prohibited card lists, we expect a "set in firm
gelatin" version to be available soon.

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 Feb 94 17:55:53 -0800
Subject: News from the Snark

News From The Snark: What Goes Bump In The Night

03 Feb 1994

As is hopefully no secret, our next Deckmaster game is a vampire one.
What follows is a letter from our company president/janitor.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Greetings,

As many of you know, Richard Garfield is deep into the development of
Jyhad, the upcoming Deckmaster game based on White Wolf's Vampire: The
Masquerade.  And we would like the assistance of any of you who are
willing to take the time to do something for us.

We'd like ideas for cards you think would be really cool.  Don't say
"vampires"; trust me, we got that one.  But things like neat concepts
(e.g., diablerie), items (e.g., assault rifles), abilities (e.g.,
celerity), clans, and so on.  Be creative and immaginative.  For
example, "Fangs," "Tabloid," "Blood dolls," and so on are all game.
Richard's just looking for ideas that will spark his brain and
possibly inspire him with something he hasn't already thought of.

We're not looking for stats on the cards--obviously you don't know
what the game is like so you can't write that.  Just words and
phrases.  And I'm sorry we can't provide more information about what
specific *types* of cards we're looking for or what will be on them or
their function in the game and so on--gotta be all secretive you know.
:-)

Please send your ideas to me, the Wizards of the Coast janitor (I get
stuck with all the dirty jobs), Peter Adkison, at mavra@wizards.com.
Thank you in advance!

                                --Mavra!
                                  Peter D. Adkison
                                  Janitor, Wizards of the Coast
                                  mavra@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue Mar  1 02:23:46 1994
From: His intimate friends called him ``Candle-ends.'' <snark>
Subject: For Immediate Release

News From The Snark: Patrolling the Border

16 Feb 1994

You may or may not have heard rumors about the Revised Edition not
having gray borders. If you haven't, well, pretend you did. As it
happens, it's true. The Revised Edition will have the same borders as
the Unlimited Edition did. (A note: the Revised Edition is also an
unlimited print run, which means we're not going to set a limit on
how many we print.)

The decision to use gray borders was met with much resistance and
unhappiness by customers and distributors, and the original decision
to use gray borders was a difficult one. What tipped the scales was
manufacturing problems. The gray border resulted in the cards running
through the press twice instead of once, and a slight weakening of
the card stock. The reduced quality of the card that resulted,
combined with our customer concerns, have resulted in a decision to
stay with the white borders.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: News from the Snark

News From The Snark: Antiquities Released Asynchronously

01 Mar 1994

"What the hey?" I hear you say, as you see the Antiquities fly.
"Across the sea, but none for me?" as you turn with a gleam in your
eye.

Um, yes, well <gulp> it's like this, see...

Our manufacturing facility is in Belgium, and we don't ship the cards
to the U.S. and back, that would be silly. So, the European
distributors are closer than the American ones to the point of
shipping. Naturally, this would cause the cards to tend to be out a
little earlier there than here.

"But I heard that the American distributors can't release their
Antiquities until the 10th of March!!!"

The wonders of simultaneous release. Every US box is shipped from our
warehouse in Seattle. If we just sent it all out the same day, the
West Coast distributors would get theirs up to a week before the East
Coast distributors. Retailers would naturally place huge orders with
the West Coast ones, and the East Coast distributors would get, well,
it's a naughty word so I won't repeat it. So what we do is send out
the far-away stuff on one day, the slightly closer stuff the next,
and the Seattle distributor material the last day. That way a retail
store has no time-based reason to select one distributor over
another, and Californians don't get their cards before Alabamans.

"Fine, so that's fair. But the United Kingdom already has theirs!"

American stores can't profitably use foreign distributors, so they're
economically isolated. Yes, Europe got theirs early, but most of
Canada and Australia will get the cards weeks after they've been
released in the U.S. To time a global simultaneous release would
require delaying release by a month or so, and cost us big bucks in
warehousing fees.

"But, but, 12+ days early?"

Yes, we agree that almost two weeks delay is pretty agonizing. So few
Arabian Nights cards were ordered by European distributors that it
really wasn't an issue. We are already talking with our manufacturer
about what we can do to cut down that delay.

In the meantime, Wizards of the Coast apologizes, and encourages you
to put down the pointy objects. 

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: mcglk@cpac.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.deckmaster
Subject: Re: antiquities release- screwed us again
Date: 1 Mar 94 23:01:25

izzy4jc@mvs.oac.ucla.edu writes:

| I just heard from the local shop in LA that the cards won't be out until
| March 10th!  Can you believe this!  I am sick of this teasing!  Hey wizards!
| If you don't know when something is coming out just say so!  I don't care if
| you don't have control over customs, blah, blah bla just say it like it is.
| We are shipping it this date, and we have no idea when it is arriving.  Treat
| your customers with some respect and courtesy!

Hello from WotC.  I'm sitting here taking a break from editing the Pocket
Player's Guide draft, and saw your note.

Unfortunately, on issues like this, we just can't win.  If we told our
distributors, "The cards are leaving Belgium on the 22nd, and we have no idea
in Hades when *you'll* get them," they'd be terribly unhappy---in fact, they
push us for a date, and unfortunately, we have to give them a best guess.  We
try to be conservative, but occasionally our beloved Government leaves us in a
lurch, and we have to tell everyone that there's been a short delay.  If you
keep that in mind for Antiquities, and future products like Legends and The
Dark, it might not be so frustrating.  We're trying, really---it's not a lot of
fun telling everyone, "Remember that ship date that we told you two weeks ago?
Welllll . . ."

                                ---Ken McGlothlen
                                   Director, Special Projects
                                   Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 13:15:13 -0800

News From The Snark: Antiquities Eaten By Megastore?

This message was forwarded to me from Jennifer Schlickbernd, our
Compuserve NetRep.

>The rumor going around game dealers on the east coast is that WalMart (yep,
>WalMart) bought $10 million of MTG cards and they are getting 1/3 to 1/2 of
>the total Antq. shipments.
>
>This is the reason for everyone being shorted on their initial orders.  Any
>comments?

I don't feel I can comment on who our customers are. However, IF
WalMart were buying a bunch of Magic cards, we would NOT short other
customers' orders. If they'd gotten their order in by the deadline,
we'd have printed enough to cover it. If they hadn't, we wouldn't
sell them any.

I believe everybody will be getting all the cards they ordered,
they're just coming in two or three waves instead of all at once. We
keep upping orders on poor Carta Mundi, who has pointed out that if
we could just warn them farther ahead of time, they'd be much better
at meeting schedules. We agree, and can only bemoan our fate. :)

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 13:19:56 -0800

News from the Snark: Counterfeiting

Counterfeit cards really burn me up. All that we've seen so far are
handmade one-off counterfeits of rares. They're not hurting our
sales, I'm sure, but I've seen so many, that there must be bunches
running around, and that means there are probably a lot of Magic
players getting taken to the cleaners. What a pain in the

Fortunately, the counterfeits are pretty easy to spot if you know
what you're looking for. There are basically four kinds of
counterfeits so far.

1. Color copy onto cardstock. Color copiers can't reproduce the full
range of printing colors, so usually the artwork looks wrong. OK, so
you may have never seen the artwork before. Turn the card over. The
back will be blotchy. That's the sign of a type 1 counterfeit.

2. Color copy onto paper glued to a Magic card. Since it's a real
Magic back, it looks fine there. Like all of the cards, this one has
had its corners trimmed, and usually it's a bad job. The giveaway is
the edge of the card. If you look carefully, you'll see that the card
is two layers. 

3. This one's lame. People have used black marker on a Collector's
Edition card to cover the gold edge, trimmed the corners, and scraped
the gold "Collector's Edition" off the back. The scarred up back
about one third of the way from the top (right under the Magic logo
on the back) is the key clue here.

4. This one's surreal. People will soak Collector's Edition cards
until they separate, then glue the front half onto a normal Magic
card. Often the front edge of the card is a mess, but again, it's the
double layer look on the edge that is the sure-fire way to spot this
one.

Please, everybody print this message out, and give it to friends,
local stores, or clubs in your area. The only way to stop these petty
forgers is with knowledge. Caveat Emptor.

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 15:54:24 -0800

Subject: News from the Snark: Antiquity Deja Vu

Here's a message from the company prez.

-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----X-----

It has come to our attention that many of you are finding lots of card
duplications in Antiquities.  We apologize for this and we doubt it
will happen again.  We misunderstood a key element of the Carta Mundi
shuffling process and therefore didn't quite lay out the cards
correctly to avoid duplications.  We have since become enlightened
and, as Richard put it during an illustration of the problem, "Our
card layout technology is improving by leaps and bounds."  Anyway, we
thought you should know that this was a screw up on our part that
shouldn't happen again, and that it wasn't some ploy to try and get
people to buy more cards.

                                --Mavra!
                                  Peter D. Adkison
                                  Janitor, Wizards of the Coast
                                  mavra@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 15:41:57 -0800 (PST)
From: Jana Wright <ophelie@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: Antiquities

Press Release
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
March 21, 1994

Most of you know of the card duplication problems with Antiquities 
booster packs; many of the cards were doubled, and sometimes even tripled 
or quadrupled in the same booster pack. This was a little embarrassing. 
We feel very strongly about quality and we simply misunderstood a very 
important aspect of (manufacturer) Carta Mundi's shuffling process. We 
understand it much better now, and don't believe it will happen again. 
However, this doesn't solve the problem of what to do NOW. We don't have 
enough supplies to offer a full recall, as most of Antiquities has 
already been spoken for. But we believe we've come up with a solution 
that offers some consolation.

Beginning today, March 21, 1994, Wizards of the Coast will offer a refund 
policy to anyone returning cards to us at $0.20/card. (This is slightly 
better than what you paid retail for them.) We felt that this was a 
better solution than exchanging booster packs simply because our stock 
was so depleted, and because all the booster packs had the 
card-duplication problem. The refund policy only covers Antiquities 
cards, and is valid through April 30, 1994. There is a 500 card limit on 
your returns. (I don't want some Beavis to take all the rare cards out of 
his display boxes and try to return the rest.That would be incredibly 
lame.) All cards sent to us must be postmarked in March or April; cards 
arriving after that will be politely returned.

In addition, Wizards of the Coast will enclose a stamp covering your 
postage costs. (This only applies to first-class mail and below; don't 
send your stuff by any variety of express mail.) Also, while supplies 
last, we're offering a card exchange policy as well. If you wish, we will 
endeavor to exchange your cards on a one-for-one basis with a random card 
of similar rarity. (Note that there are more than three rarity levels in 
Antiquities.) While you can ask for a specific card, we cannot possibly 
guarantee that we'll have it available, but we will be striving to avoid 
sending anyone duplicates :-)

Mail to:

        Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
        PO Box 707
        Renton WA 98057-0707

        ATTN: Antiquities Refund Program.

That'll make sure it gets to the right person promptly.  Thanks.

Again, this offer closes on April 30, 1994.

                                ---Ken McGlothlen
                                   Director, Special Projects
                                   Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
                                   mcglk@wizards.com
                                   mcglk@c3po.ring.wizards.com (NeXTmail)

Again, this offer closes on April 30, 1994. Thank you for your patience. 
Our address is Wizards of the Coast, PO Box 707, Renton WA 98057. 
Questions, flames, and other responses welcome. Ciao! Signed, Jana Wright-
Internet minion

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 01:46:18 -0800
Press Release
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
1994 March 21

As we previously mentioned, the Antiquities run was complicated by a
misunderstanding about the sorting methodology used by Carta Mundi, resulting
in a large number of booster packs with duplicate cards.

Last week, Wizards of the Coast announced a buy-back program:  if you sent in
your duplicate cards, we're refund you $0.20/card, or try to exchange the card
for a random one of similar rarity.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in some abuse of our good faith.  As a result,
we have had to impose a limit on the number of cards that may be returned.
Since the duplicates occur throughout the distribution, if you bought a full
display box of booster packs, your distribution of cards would be about right,
as opposed to getting two Ornithopters in a booster pack of eight cards, for
example.  Therefore, the maximum number of cards that may be refunded or
replaced is 500 (short of one display box).

Thanks to the people who notified us of some of the messier potential problems
with this.

                                ---Ken McGlothlen
                                   Director, Special Projects
                                   Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
                                   mcglk@wizards.com
                                   mcglk@c3po.ring.wizards.com (NeXTmail)
                                   
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri Mar 25 12:43:41 1994
From: His intimate friends called him ``Candle-ends.'' <snark>

News From The Snark: Mail Order Expires

March 25, 1994

To better support our retailers, distributors and mail order houses,
Wizards of the Coast will no longer be doing mail order for any of our
product lines as of March 31, 1994. Anything received postmarked after
that date will be returned with a letter of explanation, catalog, and a
list of mail order houses that support our products. All orders currently
in-house will be filled AS SUPPLIES LAST. We have had major discussions
and lots of feedback, and this was a necessary step towards improving
access to our product for everybody. The list of mail-order suppliers will
be updated regularly, and only businesses that meet our strict criteria
will be included on our recommendation list. We do apologize for any
inconvenience, but we will do our best to make this as painless a
transition as possible.

In order to assist players who wish to purchase cards via mail, if you
know of a mail order company that sells Magic cards, please send their
name, address, phone number, credit cards accepted, whether they have
blue poodle, and other pertinent information to liaison@wizards.com.
Thank you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News From The Snark: Jyhad

March 29, 1994

Jyhad is a brand-new Deckmaster game produced by Wizards of the Coast and 
White Wolf, based on White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade.  The following 
information is adapted from a recent release to distributors and retailers.

Legal Stuff
Magic: The Gathering and Deckmaster are trademarks of Wizards of the 
Coast, Inc.  Jyhad is a trademark of White Wolf, Inc. and Wizards of the 
Coast, Inc., used under license.  World of Darkness is a trademark of 
White Wolf, Inc., used under license.

Game Design Highlights

-A tradable, collectible card game in the vein of Magic: The Gathering

-Trading Card Format
        -Limited and unlimited edition cards
        -Limited edition expansions

-Atmosphere
        -Gothic punk, aka White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade
        -Vampire combat, control, and manipulation
        -Vampires belong to clans, like the rebellious Brujah or the
         insane Malkavians

-Mechanics
        -One-on-one or multi-player
        -Fight for control of strategic locations like police stations
         and havens
        -Vie for vampire political titles like Prince of Chicago or
         Nospheratu Justicar
        -Arm your Vampires with sawed-off shotguns, Ninja motorcycles,
         or chain saws
        -Slain Vampires go to torpor, where they can be rescued or
         destroyed (diablerized)
        -Watch your blood supply!  Blood is used to heal and to control
         other Vampires
        -Destroy other Vampires to gain new skills and age
        -Use Strike and Combat cards to beef up fighting Vampires
        -Use Action cards to conduct special missions like dawn 
         assaults or arson

-Notes
        -Jyhad is in the final stages of development.  Some aspects of 
         the game may change between now and publication
        -The information above represents the sum total of the game-
         specific information we are willing to release to the public
         at this time.  Please do not press us for more details; if we
         let anything else slip we may be forced to diablerize you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 12:56:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jana Wright <ophelie@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: Antiquities Refund Program

Just thought I'd let you know: Since so many people are abusing this
program, I've received almost all common cards. That means the common cards 
are now more rare than the supposed rare cards because I am recycling the 
cards I get. SHREDDDDDDD! Oooh, instant packing material! :-) Have fun, 
guys, 'cause this program ends April 30th. Ciao!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 17:41:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jana Wright <ophelie@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: What is Antiquities abuse?

Actually, the abuse of the program is someone buying a CASE of product,
removes all the rare cards and sends 4000 cards back to me expecting an
$800 refund even though they know there's a 500 card limit. Or dumping all
the returned cards in a bag, loose, and if I am lucky there's a return
address for the refund check. If I sent the refund in loose dimes, would
that be fair? Well technically yes, but it's immature (which is why I
don't do it). I realize that we set ourselves up for this by recognizing
our mistake and trying to do something about it, but the lack of courtesy
is frustrating. The thing about commons now being more rare than rare was 
me being facetious...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Apr 1994 17:43:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: "WotC \"Cyberspace\" Liason" <liaison@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: Rumors Abounding

Thought I'd poke my nose in and clear up a couple of rampant net rumors.

RUMOR #1 - Antiquities cards are being shredded by the thousands.  Oh, 
the humanity!

Actually, although poor, overworked Jana has been sorely tempted, no 
Antiquities cards (that I know of) have actually hit the shredder.  What 
are we going to do with them?  We haven't decided yet . . . 

RUMOR #2 - Wizards of the Coast will soon be selling exclusively through 
Wal-Mart

Holy Cow, I thought we'd seen the last of that one!  Still not true. 
Wal-Mart is, of course, free to buy from distributors just like any other 
store, but we don't have any special "deal" with them, nor do we plan 
one.  In fact, we don't plan to sell exclusively to *anybody*; we don't 
work that way.

And now back to your regularly scheduled posts . . . .

Kathy Ice
Associate Cyberspace Liaison
Wizards of the Coast
kice@wizards.com
liaison@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 94 16:43:14 -0700
Subject: News from the Snark

News From The Snark: Which Antiquities Cards Are Which?

09 Apr 1994

In the next issue of the Duelist will be a collector's checklist for
Antiquities. In the meantime, I'm sure the Net will continue to try
to compile their own. :) For purposes of consistency, I'm listing the
terms that the Official list will use when referring to lands. Use of
these terms is entirely voluntary, but is recommended for clarity.

 Urza's Mine, clawed sphere 
 Urza's Mine, tower 
 Urza's Mine, pulley
 Urza's Mine, mouth 
 Urza's Tower, forest
 Urza's Tower, mountains 
 Urza's Tower, plains 
 Urza's Tower, shore 
 Urza's Power Plant, bug 
 Urza's Power Plant, copper sphere 
 Urza's Power Plant, columns 
 Urza's Power Plant, rock in pot 
 Strip Mine, small tower in foreground
 Strip Mine, visible horizon, uneven terraces
 Strip Mine, no tower, no visible horizon
 Strip Mine, visible horizon, evenly spaced terraces 
 Mishra's Factory, spring/blue balloon 
 Mishra's Factory, summer 
 Mishra's Factory, autumn 
 Mishra's Factory, winter 

Please keep in mind the way a checklist works. If I hand a total
stranger a single Magic card and a checklist, they should be able to
pick out the card code for that card. Saying "Summer" for either
Mishra's Factory or Urza's Tower doesn't allow that, since you must
have another card to compare it to. This is the principle behind the
above descriptions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun Apr 10 02:29:59 1994
From: His intimate friends called him ``Candle-ends.'' <snark>
Subject: For Immediate Release: New Look in Revised

News From The Snark: The New Look in Revised Cards

09 Apr 1994

                Wherin the Snark expounds upon the nature of printing, and
                why the new cards are lighter than the old ones...

Once upon a time, there was a little company who'd put out some
really neat role-playing books, and were working on a card game. This
card game had many many cards, and they were all full-color. One
person had to sell the cards, one person had to get artwork for the
cards, one person had to edit the cards, one person had to schedule
the making of the cards, and one person had to get the computer files
of the cards actually manufactured. This company had never done
anything this big before, and neither had most companies, big or
small.

That last person was me, and I can still get printing industry
people to look rather stunned when I explain that each print run
usually creates a gigabyte of data for the imagesetters. But while I
knew enough about printing to make the cards in the first place, I
didn't know everything I needed to know. I didn't know about *dot
gain.*

If you ask a computer to give you a 20% gray tint, it will cover a
piece of paper with black dots that, on the average, cover about 20%
of the paper. Laser printers are pretty good about that. The film
that we sent to Carta Mundi (our manufacturer) worked the same way:
the various patterns of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black needed to
create the illusion of full color were exactly what they needed to
be.

However, when you print an image onto paper with ink, each tiny
little dot will spread out. This is dot gain, because each dot will
gain in size, making everything darker. The presses that make Magic
cards in particular have a lot of dot gain, and had Carta Mundi used
our film as we sent it, we would have had a lot of really dark gloomy
cards with dreadfully inaccurate color.

Carta Mundi is pretty smart, and they did some clever stuff when they
made the printing plates that lightened everything up. Correcting for
dot gain this way isn't very accurate for color, and if our art were
photographs, everybody would probably look funny, but it's harder to
tell what the original color of artwork was supposed to be, so it all
worked out fine. This is why some of the beta cards, such as Channel
and Red Elemental Blast, looked so weird and dark. When they replaced
the first version with the second version, they didn't do the dot
gain trick, and the cards came out way too dark.

Starting with Arabian Nights, the film being shipped to Carta Mundi
had all the dots shrunk down, so when the ink spread, it would spread
back to the size we wanted in the first place. This is why the
Mountain card from Arabian Nights is lighter than the one from the
Magic: The Gathering (tm) set; that mountain has had dot gain
compensation. Antiquities also has dot gain compensation. The artwork
on these cards is much truer to the original, and we can now control
the color better.

With the Revised edition of M:tG, we made all new printing plates,
and for the first time, our original images have also had dot gain
compensation applied. In many cases, this has lightened the image.
There are also many cards where you can now see details, especially
in dark spots, that you couldn't see before.

Another, more subtle difference in the cards is the "screen density."
As mentioned earlier, printing works by laying down a pattern of
dots. Laser printers usually can get about 53 variable sized dots per
inch, by building them out of the 300 smaller fixed sized dots that
they are actually capable of. That 53 figure is called the line
screen, and is written 53 lpi. The newer 600dpi laser printers can go
up to 85 lpi. Most black and white printing is done at 133 lpi, and
most color work at 150 lpi. The original Magic cards were 150 lpi,
but we've pushed the screen to 175 lpi on later editions, which is
another way of getting the image to be crisper than before.

We continue to work to find ways to improve the appearance of our
cards. With Legends, the gray lettering has changed to almost white,
which we've found is pretty legible even on white cards. Other
improvements are under development, just as we continue to refine the
wording, the rules, and anything else with which we're not completely
satisfied.

And that's why the new cards look different.

(Rumor control: The paper uses to print the cards has not changed.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 19 Apr 94 23:32:27 -0700

Tidbits for Public Consumption:

It's official: the release of The Duelist issue #2 will be delayed until 
June.  In the meantime, though, we will be putting out a 16-page (or so) 
Duelist Supplement.  This Supplement will be given to distributors and 
retailers free of charge to be handed out to their customers.  
Subscribers will also receive a free copy of this Supplement.

Please note that this Supplement is *not* the same thing as the Duelist 
Companion, which will be sent to Duelist Convocatio members as scheduled.

One of the articles to be featured in the Supplement deals with the 
Revised edition cards.  It includes a card list, and an explanation of 
which cards were taken out and why.  (I know that net rumors have 
abounded; well, this is everyone's chance to find out the "inside story").

A hint for consideration:  Richard Garfield always intended for the set of 
cards to be fluid--it adds to the unpredictibility of the game.  Cards 
will be swapped in and out pretty regularly.  So some of the cards from 
Unlimited were removed for no particular reason--we just wanted to try 
something else.

In addition to the Revised cards list, the Supplement will include card 
lists from Arabian Nights and Antiquities.  Also to be included is a list 
of errata from Revised, Pocket Players' Guide, and Legends. (Yes, we have 
Legends errata already.  Sad, isn't it?)

The Duelist Supplement should be out in mid to late May.  We're working 
on the final details now, and hope to get it to press as soon as possible.

Keep on playing!

Kathy Ice
Wizards of the Coast
kice@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 Apr 94 19:17:07 -0700

News from the Snark: The Name Game

Wizards of the Coast is gearing up to make a splash with yet another form 
of printed material: books. As some people have already heard, there are 
novels and anthologies with stories set in Dominia in the works. We're 
not stopping there. Eventually, the fiction division of Wizards will be 
publishing general SF & F.

The questions is, what to *call* this new publishing arm. On the one 
hand, we can't just stick with "Wizards of the Coast" for the book line, 
because many readers would say "Oh, that game company. I don't play their 
games, so I'm sure the books will just confuse me." On the other hand, 
we'd like to indicate *some* sort of tie with the parent company.

That's where our loyal net following comes in. Until May 1st, we're 
taking suggestions for the name of the book line. Improve upon such 
rejects as "Wizbooks," "Books of the Coast," "Cool Publishing," "Zing," 
"WotC Books," and "Wizards of the Coast Fantasy and Science Fiction Book 
Publishers, a division of Wizards of the Coast, Inc." (which might not 
fit on the spine.

Some present-day examples include "Bantam Spectra" (an imprint of Bantam 
Doubleday Dell), "HarperPrism" (the new SF/F line from HarperCollins), 
"RoC" (a trademark of Penguin Books), "Del Rey" (an imprint of Ballantine 
Books), and so on. Most of the names in the industry are people's last 
names, have you noticed?

The tricky part is that it ought to be sorta catchy and classy, but can't 
already be taken. (!) Once we have a list of names that we like, the list 
gets fed to a law firm to do a name search to make sure we can claim the 
name.

Send your suggestions to liaison@wizards.com. We'll keep track of who 
suggests what, and distribute some interesting thingy to the winningish 
entries. (Perhaps copies of the first book to bear the name, or some 
such.) Winners will also probably get some net publicity to make sure 
everybody knows that they were exceedingly clever and witty, and we like 
them muchly.

Remember: May 1st, and suggestions must go to   liaison@wizards.com

Because we'll be giving an indefinite number of prizes, and there's no 
benefit to being first or anything, this contest is open to employees of 
Wizards, their families and spouses, their cats and goldfish, nearby 
rocks, or random atmospheric phenomena.

Dave "Snark" Howell       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison      liaison@wizards.com
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 3 May 94 16:57:12 -0700

What follows is a post for general distribution.  The first part is
from Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic: The Gathering, and the
second part is from Peter Adkison, the janitor at Wizards of the
Coast.

Richard Garfield writes:

[ In response to complaints about us dropping some of cards from the
  unlimited edition and replacing them with cards from previously
  published expansions. ]

The recent feedback on the revised edition has me feeling like
justifying or apologizing for the changes in the card mix.

First let me write our current philosophy on the card mix. The limited
releases will be all new art. The limited releases will also be almost
entirely new spells, unless otherwise noted. It is conceivable we come
out with a limited release that is pretty much the gathering with new
art and some new cards. This is because we want the art in the game to
circulate in the long run of things, in the future it is a boon to the
player as far as atmosphere is concerned to eventually retire all the
art. This increases the value of what is out there and keeps the card
pool from stagnating. We wouldn't want it to happen too often, at most
once a year probably, but it would be neat if in 5 years, after not
playing a while, you took your cards out went to the local game shop
and took on the newbies with "original" angels, which would have had
new art twice over by then!

The unlimited mix is primarily for new players, as opposed to
collectors and old established players. Not entirely of course, if I
am caught without a deck and a game store is near, I buy one and trade
to a playable thing in a matter of 20 minutes. Also if a league starts
they often want a fresh selection of cards.  But in general I am not
going to buy a 2.50 pack of cards for a single rare which I might
want, I will trade for it. The difference between these scenareos is
that in the former two cases I am >happy< to get a fireball, in the
latter it is no better than a land.

In order to keep players from being forced to buy a lot of duplicate
cards we will never print new art or cards in an unlimited card mix
without first giving them a chance to get them in limited expansions,
where cards can be purchased without gruesome duplication. (We have
screwed this up already but that is our intent).
  
[ We screwed it up on only one card though: Plateau.  Simply because
  the original was returned to the artist and the computer file
  became corrupted. --PDA ]

The unlimited will not have many rules besides that however. We want
it to make the game dynamic. The way I picture it is the limited
release cards are the "rookies", and when the rookies get into the
unlimited mix they have made the big leagues. We will try to be
careful about lining up the rare slots so they are still relatively
rare. Some people may not want to see another sorceress queen but it
will be a short time before there are players who have never seen them
and this gives them an avenue. I don't consider this a slap in the
face to the people who have been with us all along, this is to me the
fairest policy. In particular, every card cut from the major leagues
goes way up in value to the old guard players.

Except for people starting leagues or caught without decks as above it
is assumed that eventually they will tire of getting unlimiteds,
whether we change the mix or not. If we change the mix though it gives
new players an opportunity to see what they have missed, and gives us
a chance to fix the environment, getting some new blood in there while
converting cut cards to treasures. Hard to believe, but one day an
Ironclaw Orc >may< command a price! If you get cards and are
disappointed with the duplicates with any consistency, save your
money for the limited releases. Let the people who are still excited
by uncommon cards buy them and trade. Believe me there will be plenty
of new stuff coming up.

What is good in life?
An Ivory Tower,... a lot of life,... and an Ornithopter on my arm.
WRONG! Conan! What is good in life?
To drive the enemy before you and hear the lamentations for lost ante.

- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Adkison writes:

I just finished reading through a huge ton of replies from the survey
we recently conducted on the net.  I would like to take this
opportunity to thank everyone who took part in the survey.  We are
very serious about putting out the best product possible and we
appreciate the feedback.  I would also like to thank Tom Des Brisay
for putting the survey together and for compiling the results.

A key issue as of late has been the quality of the revised edition
cards.  While most of you are happy the number of you who aren't
is an unacceptably large percentage.  We obviously need to do
something about this.  So, here's our plan: first, we're sending one
of our production people, Sandra Everingham (of Dark Ritual and Drudge
Skeleton fame), to Belgium immediately to work with Carta Mundi on
tweaking the press runs to try and make the color as vivid as possible
without unduly sacrificing the quality of the text.  In other words,
something between the unlimited edition and the revised edition.  Of
course you won't see the results of this for a couple months since
they're currently printing cards for release in June.  But there's
nothing we can do about that.

Second, to truly correct this problem we have to go back and
completely re-do all the pre-press work.  That'll be our long term
solution.  As soon as The Dark and Jyhad are out of our hair we're
going to re-work the cards so that the colors are more vibrant in the
art and less so on the borders that are hard to put legible text onto.

Regarding card stock and lamination, Carta Mundi assures us that they
have changed absolutely nothing in either of these two arenas.  But
they have confirmed that newer cards always feel more flexible than
ones that have stiffened up a bit from play.  This confirms some
in-house tests we done.  We encourage you to use your revised edition
cards for a few weeks and then compare.  I think you'll find that
they'll stiffen up appropriately, and then when you get Legends cards
all of sudden they'll feel more flimsy than those "old" revised
edition cards.  Of course Carta Mundi could have made some sort of
error, so we'll continue to emphasize with them that we need the very
same card stock and lamination process on all cards that we purchase
from them.

I was very disappointed to see that a couple of you think that we're
sacrificing quality on purpose with the opinion that you'll just keep
buying cards anyway.  That is certainly not our position.  We are very
concerned about quality and it is our goal to work toward continually
improving every aspect of our products and processes.  Of course that
all sounds cliche; the only way I can convince you of that is through
action.  So all I can ask is that you have an open mind to the idea
that not all gaming companies are big evil corporations or that just
because we're making lots of money now we don't care any more.  If we
were just interested in money we would have sold the company by now
(yes, we've had offers).  Our interest is in making games.  And we
have several excellent ones planned for the future.

Actually many of you were very supportive in your survey, practically
begging us not to get discouraged from all the negative feedback.
Thank you for your concern, and don't worry--we are undaunted.

                                --Mavra!
                                  Peter D. Adkison
                                  Janitor, Wizards of the Coast
                                  mavra@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 5 May 94 00:30:21 -0700
Subject: [0] From the WotC Liaison: The Name Game

Thanks for all the great suggestions for the new fiction line!  After 
poring over the list, we've narrowed it down to a group of "finalists".  
We've also set some aside as being possible names for an anthology.

And now it's your turn to get in on the act!  You can vote for your 
*most* favorite and your *least* favorite choices (limit to 5 of each, 
please).  Send your votes to liaison@wizards.com.  And please only vote 
once.

Once we have the votes, we will tally them up and make our decition.  Our 
decision may or may not have anything to do with the final voting tally 
(hey, we're editors; we're allowed to be arbitrary).  :-)  We *will* take 
note, though, if there are names that people absolutely can't stand.

To those of you who sent suggestions, thanks for your time and your 
creative energy.  To those of you whose suggestions are "finalists" (and 
you probably know who you are), I won't be contacting people individually 
until we have a final decision.  And yes, campaigning is perfectly 
legal.  ;-)

So here's the list.  Please note that comments in parentheses come from 
the original sender.  Also note that terms like "Press", "Publishing", 
"Books", etc. can in most cases be swapped around and added in at will.

Anthology Suggestions

1001 Wizard tales
Far Horizons
Library of the Arcane
Philosopher's Stone
Portal/Portals
Tomes of the Arcanum

Imprint Name Suggestions

Alchemy
Ars Litera
Aurora
Cantrip Books/Publications
City Sages Publishing
Corona
Edge Publishers
Epoch Books
Equilibrium
Grimoire Books/Publishing
Helios
Iris
Legendary Publishing
Mind's Eye Publishers
Mindscape
Mythic
Mythos Publishing
Onyx Press                   (otherwise known as Black Vise?)
Papyrus Press
Prints Charming [okay, okay...]
Runestone
Sceptre Books
Spell Binders/Spellbind/Spellbinders/Spellbound
Wave Books / Publishing
Wave Publishing
Wavefront Publications/Publishing/Books/Fiction
Zenith Books

As a final note, we'd like to thank Dark Matter for his fabulous anagram 
"Star Witches of Zado".  Although far too weird for an imprint, we have 
suggested it as a name for our internal company newsletter.

Thanks again for your active participation!  Keep on playing!

Kathy Ice
Associate Cyberspace Liaison
Wizards of the Coast
liaison@wizards.com
kice@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 May 94 00:43:31 -0700

A Treatise on Card Randomization, Human Fallibility, and Fatigue among 
Belgian Factory Workers

        or

How You Can Get 47 Rares in a Starter

I found out some interesting information about our packaging process 
recently, and I thought I'd share it.  :-)

Most netters have figured out by now that the common, uncommon, and rare 
cards come out of different hoppers in the packaging process.  The 
hoppers count out the appropriate number of each rarity, and then all the 
cards are put together and sealed into a happy little booster (or 
starter).  This is why cards of certain rarity tend to show up in certain 
set positions in the package.

So how do they get into the hoppers in the first place?

This part of the process is not automated.  There is a machine that cuts 
the cards and sorts the onto racks by rarity.  However, it is a Carta 
Mundi employee that takes the cards off the racks, carries them to the 
other machine, and places them in the appropriate hopper.

Carta Mundi is a very quailty-oriented company, and their employees are 
very consceintous.  They are human, however, and therefore fallible.  
Occasionally, no matter how careful they are, they'll put a load of cards 
into the wrong hopper.  Oops!

Because of the human factor in the process, Wizards of the Coast has 
never guaranteed card rarity.  We guarantee that you will receive the 
number of cards indicated on the package (i.e., 8, 15, or 60), and that 
some of the cards will be land.  And we set up the process so that most 
people should get at least one rare card.  But we can't guarantee that 
they will (we also can't guarantee that they won't get 47 cards in a 
starter).

With the increasing demand for Magic, we have asked Carta Mundi to step 
up their production, and they have responded wonderfully.  The factory 
now cranks out Magic cards 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  This 
means, however, that their employees are working pretty long hours (up to 
16 a day, I believe), which increases the chance for tired mistakes.  
(Hey, after 16 hours in a card factory, I, for one, would be doing good 
to keep my body parts out of the hopper . . .)  :-)

So the seeming increase in the number of rarity goofs probably has two 
reasons:  (1)  There are more cards being sold overall, so it stands to 
reason that we would see more oddballs, and (2)  The increase in the 
production rate may have increased the overall percentage of rarity goofs 
by a small amount.

For the time being, then, WotC cannot guarantee card rarity, and there 
will continue to be the occaisonal oddball package.  WotC and Carta Mundi 
are committed to producing a quality product, however, and continue to 
work on methods to improve the process.

Kathy Ice
Cyberspace Liaison
Wizards of the Coast
liaison@wizards.com
kice@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: [O] From the WotC Liaison: Jyhad and the "PG-13 Rating"

Jyhad and the "PG-13 Rating"
A Clarification

When we first began advertising Jyhad, we included the phrase "intended 
for mature players."  We did this because we wanted to make sure that our 
customers knew what kind of game it was.  Jyhad is not Magic.  Jyhad is 
about vampires; in it, you play a vampire who preys on the other players 
and on lesser vampires, draining their blood to maintain your power.

We began to get questions about what we meant by "mature players."  How 
mature is "mature?"  To clarify, we said that the game was probably not 
suitable for our younger-age Magic players, and that it was probably the 
rough equivalent of a PG-13.  This was intended merely as a frame of 
reference to people asking for more information; it is not an "official" 
rating and was certainly not imposed on us by any third party.

Our ultimate goal is to be sure that when people buy Jyhad, they realize 
what they're buying.  The last thing we want is for a bunch of our 
ten-year-old Magic fans to bring home Jyhad and get their parents angry 
at us.  So we're trying to make sure that the buying public has enough 
information to make an informed choice.

Please direct any questions or comments to me.

Kathy Ice
Cyberspace Liaison
Wizards of the Coast
liaison@wizards.com
kice@wizards.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 22:41:10 -0700
Subject: [O] WotC Customer Support
(forwarded from timothy@wizards.com)

        Customer Service and "Official" Rulings from same
        -------------------------------------------------

Once upon a time, a struggling game company called Wizards of the 
Coast(R), Inc.  was located in the basement of a man called Peter.  They 
had just released a new game called "Magic: The Gathering(tm)" and eager 
gamers, slightly confused by the rules of this unique type of game, 
started calling them, asking for clarifications and other types of questions.

Back then, Customer Service was only two people; Kyle and Steve, who both 
worked in the same room and were able to come to a consensus on all of 
the sticky situations that certain cards created.  However, no one could 
anticipate at the time the phenomenonal success that the Magic: The 
Gathering game would become and soon the phones started ringing all the 
time as new players would be introduced to the game and have questions as 
well.

FAQs were created to answer the more commonly asked questions, and many 
players rejoiced.  Alas, there were some questions not covered by the 
FAQs and as new expansion sets were being introduced, the possible ways 
cards could interact grew at an exponential rate and many gray areas in 
the rules appeared.

Then a decision was made to begin openly advertising the phone number for 
the Customer Service Department, and in anticipation of this great event, 
Wizards of the Coast began hiring more people to work for Product 
Support.  These new reps were familiar with the game and reasonable 
experts at the rules, but sad to say, they were only human and prone to 
make mistakes, especially when confronted with the gray areas.

The Customer Service Reps, the Net Reps, and the Rules Team all try to 
discuss new rules situations when they pop up and try to come to a 
consensus on how card interactions should be handled, but sometimes total 
communication is not always possible and disagreements occur.

Most of the time, when a customer calls the Product Support Line and asks 
a question, there's a good chance that we have heard it before and know 
what the generally agreed-upon answer is, and are able to dispense it to 
the customer with no error.  However, there are those times when we make 
a mistake in dealing with the gray areas.

So please realize that although you call Wizards of the Coast expecting 
an "official" game ruling, some of the answers we give may be dependent 
on personal experience and opinion and may not concur with what has been 
said before.  We realize that this is a problem, and are trying to fix it 
by installing a humongous database that will keep track of all the 
rulings we have made and thereby guarantee consistency in the answers we 
give, but this process takes time and in the meantime, we are still prone 
to human error.

Ultimately, this means that there really is no "official" answers carved 
in stone.  As it says in the rules booklet, if when you are playing, you 
come across a situation that is not covered by the rules, you and your 
opponent will need to agree on a ruling.  These are called "house rules" 
and they are perfectly valid for playing the game.

When you go to a tournament, sanctioned or otherwise, you will be playing 
under the house rules set forth by the tournament director.  Ninety-nine 
times out of a hundred, Wizards of the Coast and their sanctioned 
tournament coordinators will be in agreement on rule interpretations that 
deal in gray areas.  But there will be times we are not, and we are sorry 
when this happens -- however, as long as the rules for a tournament 
remain consistent throughout the tournament, then the tourney will be 
fair for everyone.

And there are some people who will disagree with rulings made by Wizards 
of the Coast and play by their own rules, and that is just fine.  As long 
as you can agree with your opponent on rule interpretations as you play, 
then everything should be okay.  If you come to a conflict that can't be 
resolved through discussion, then just flip a coin over the situation and 
play that way, or just call the game a draw until you get someone else's 
opinion.

Answers you get from the Product Support Department at Wizards of the 
Coast will be the "most official" rulings.  What you are really getting 
is an "informed opinion" -- you are asking us to settle a rule dispute, 
and we will use all the resources at our disposal to come up with a 
ruling that we feel is fair and in the spirit of the game.  In the rare 
cases where this might disagree with what a NetRep might say (in many 
cases, the NetRep is a volunteer and not necessarily an employee of 
Wizards of the Coast), you should consider the ruling by Wizards to be 
the most accurate one.

Hopefully, we will try to be consistent with everyone, but this is not 
always possible.  After all, we may be wizards, but we're still human.

Timothy, the original Prodigal Sorcerer \|/
========================================-*-
<|}:-{)>                         (poke) /|\

Product Support: Deckmaster
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
<timothy@wizards.com>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 15 Jun 1994 15:25:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: WotC account for polling <wotcpoll@fungusaur.wizards.com>
Subject: Customer Service Poll

Notes From Customer Service at WotC (Feel free to pass this on to any 
newsgroups that have to do with WotC or Magic: The Gathering)

1) Yes, we know something wrong happened with Legends. We don't know how, 
but as near as I can tell, it was another stupid randomization error. We 
are working on some way to compensate for it without going to the idiot 
lengths we did with Antiquities. I am still mailing out checks on that 
one... More on this in a paragraph or so.

2) All non-rules related WotC questions and complaints should go to 
custserv@wizards.com.  That's the generic customer service help line. All 
input welcome, but if it's needlessly impolite it will be deleted without 
consideration. I won't act on a problem if I have to plow through 3 pages 
of obscenity. Can't imagine why...

3) There is another new account set up for Customer Input called 
wotcpoll. This account is designed to handle whatever Customer Service 
poll we have going at the time. The current one is this:  We know that 
the randomizer has screwed people out of their rare cards before. We are 
trying to improve the process by which cards are sorted but it's not 
fixed soon enough. However thanks to the vast number of people who are 
deliberately abusing our program (and faith in our customers) by lying to 
get cards, we will not just send out a rare card to anyone who says they 
are missing one. I, too, have seen the posts recommending that people 
write in complaining so that we'll give them a card of their choice. 
However, it's not fair to people who are honestly missing the rare card  
that should have been in there. I am looking for alternative ways to  
compensate someone who did get shorted, but not something so tempting 
(or easy to screw over) for the jerks in the audience. Therefore, all  
suggestions and ideas on alternate compensation should be addressed to  
wotcpoll@wizards.com.

Thank you for your support of us, even through the errors. Any comments 
should go to custserv. Ideas to wotcpoll.
Jana Wright
Customer Service Non-Rules Minion

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: rec.games.deckmaster
Subject: Re: WotC Bites!!!

pmwg1641@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter M. White) writes:
>ST000039@brownvm.brown.edu (Andrew Brecher) writes:
>>The thing is...>why< should orders be cut off so early?  In this case, orders
>>had to be in >five months< before they were released.  It is this lag time

>I hear this over and over, and I think it is wrong.  Someone correct me if 
>I am off here, but I believe 5 months is not a long time in the normal
>retail world.  I have a friend who used to work for, letmethink, Cost

It's on the shortish end. Toy stores are placing most of their Christmas 
orders in February. In book publishing, it's out of the author's hands 
over a year before publication, at the least.

>Plus Imports in purchasing.  She polished off her orders in June and
>July for Christmas items.

>If 5 months is the norm in the retail business for large orders, then
>it is a bit brazen to fault WotC for standard business practices.

Actually, the comics trade has a lot to do with this. At first, we were 
running about a 2-3 month schedule. However, a lot of stores were comics 
stores, and the comics distributors are told of a title, put it in their 
catalog, take orders, then place orders with the manufacturer. By the 
time this long cycle could occur, the limited print run was long closed, 
and about to ship. So we extended our schedule.

>This does leave open the question of what they could have done at the
>last minute to increase supply, and when was the last date they
>could have changed production.  I do not know.  Does anyone out there
>actually *know*, someone knowledgeable in printing or largescale game
>production?  I bet that most people working for WotC can't really
>even answer this one.  

We're airfreighting from Belgium. It's expensive (instead of ship), but 
it only takes a week instead of 3-6 weeks. It takes 4 days to clear 
customs, it takes 10 days to ship to distributors, it takes 1-3 days to 
get from a distributor to a retailer. 2 weeks, counting backwards. It 
will take 2-3 weeks to package 30-60 million cards. All the cards are 
printed before they're packaged: another week. *All* the packaging must 
be printed before the cards!!!! Two more weeks, minimum, to have the 
boxes and flowpack material prepared. About two months, now, assuming 
absolutely no delays. They have to order paper, something else that must 
be taken care of before they can print. In the real world, it's closer to 
three months. That's when we set the print run.

>BTW, what you hear from your retailer who
>has been bitching to distributor is often pretty unreliable stuff;
>let's have some firsthand answers here, if any.

To make things worse, we had a *terrible* time getting Legends ready. I 
mean, it's huge, and we were scrambling to get it out. We didn't have it 
ready to ship quite on time, and in the meantime, we were screaming at 
Carta Mundi to make more Gathering cards. More more more! As a result, we 
orginally where hoping to sell Legends in late April. If we'd released it 
then, there would have been far fewer of you, and the shortage wouldn't 
have seemed nearly so bad.

And no, we can't change the press run on the Dark. They're already being 
printed. The only thing right now that's open (I *think*) is the November 
expansion, and are you prepared to predict what Magic will be like then?

Should your local retailer double? triple? quadruple her order? Will Magic
have faded by then? Will Spellfire and all those other games have cut back
on the popularity of this one? If Fallen Empires (tentative!!!) is as much
bigger than Legends than Legends was over Antiquities (and they were just
a couple months apart), then retailers will have to order 6-8 times as
many cards. Instead of 40 boxes, that'd be 320 boxes. Retail value: 
$30,000. If they overorder, they might have $5,000 -- $10,000 tied up in 
inventory. It's not a high-profit biz: those numbers could easily sink 
your local comic dealer.

At our end, overprinting a mere 20% represents about a million dollars 
that we're being asked to risk. We're often accused of greed. Well, 
overprinting so that we might be able sell even more later, at the risk 
of shooting the corporation in the head; now, that's greed. And we're not 
greedy. We're here to publish cool games so that we and a lot of other 
people can have fun. That means sticking around. If we were greedy, we'd 
have killed the role-playing dept. a long time ago, since that time would 
be more profitably spent making new deckmaster games.

Saaay, there's quite a view from up here! Think I'll get down off this
soapbox before I get a nosebleed. 

Dave "Snark" Howell       snark@wizards.com
Cyberspace Liaison      liaison@wizards.com
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

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Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 19:14:02 -0700
Subject: [O] From the WotC Liaison: Expansion Sampler

The following was sent to our distributors yesterday:

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Our Magic: The Gathering expansions have been a big hit with our 
customers.  But as new players discover the game, we have more and more 
customers who have never had the opportunity to play with cards from 
earlier expansions, except for the ones that made it into the basic 
Revised set.

That's why we at Wizards are planning a "1994 Expansion Sampler."  The 
Sampler (the name is tentative) will feature selected cards from the 
Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark expansion sets in an 
unlimited, white-bordered format.

The current plan is to have the Sampler available in early 1995, and to 
continue to print and sell the cards throughout 1995, in addition to the 
basic Revised cards.  Of course, new black-bordered expansions will also 
be released in 1995, possible to end up in a "1995 Expansion Sampler" in 
1996.

To date, an official title, a packaging format, and a retail price are 
undetermined.

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Questions/comments/flames to:

Kathy Ice
Cyberspace Liaison
Wizards of the Coast
liaison@wizards.com
kice@wizards.com

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Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 19:14:02 -0700
Subject: [O] From the WotC Liaison: Promotional Cards

By now, most people on the net have heard about the special promotional 
Magic: The Gathering cards to be given out at Dragon*Con in Atlanta.  
There are a lot of people, players and collectors, that are upset with us 
because we didn't tell them about it ahead of time.

I think they're justified.

I'll take part of the blame for this myself.  I'm not supposed to release 
information on the net until it's been officially made public.  So what 
I usually do when I hear of a new product or policy is to go to that 
particular department and bug the heck out of them until they give me 
something I can post on the net.  I knew about the Dragon*Con cards, and 
intended to get something out about them, but . . . well, time sort of 
got away from me.

The other thing that happened is that our Marketing department got a new 
director, who hadn't been fully informed of our agreement with the folks 
at Dragon*Con.  So she didn't know to get the information out either.  
Actually she didn't even know to get the cards produced; they won't be 
ready in time for the con.  Dragon*Con attendees will have to mail in a 
coupon to get their card.

My apologies to everybody for not following up on this in time.  :-(  
We're looking into the possibility of making the promotional cards more 
widely available in future; I'll keep you posted.  (Really!)

This morning, I got the following information from Marketing on future 
uses for promotional cards.

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Soon Wizards of the Coast will be inserting special edition promotional 
cards in various gaming, comic, and card collecting consumer magazines.  
The following list briefly describes the current concept behind the 
promotional card project:

1.  Each magazine will contain two special edition promotional cards.
2.  Each magazine will contain two totally different cards.
3.  No two magazines will carry the same two cards.
4.  Each card will be playable with Magic: The Gathering (TM) and its 
    expansions.
5.  The cards will be poly-bagged inside each magazine.
6.  Each card will display unique "never-before-seen" art and text.
7.  These cards are not to be considered part of any collectable set.
8.  Each card will display some sort of small symbol that recognizes them 
    as a special edition promotional card.
9.  The selected magazines will be the very first to offer these special 
    edition promotional cards.
10. At this point it is undetermined which issues of these magazines will 
    contain the promotional cards.

As soon as the final details are worked out, I will be able to let you 
know exactly which magazines will be inserting promotional cards in which 
issues.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Thank you.

[Casey Brebberman/Marketing}

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Casey tells me she could know which 'zines will feature promotional cards 
as early as next week.  I'll try to get that information from her and 
pass it along.

And you won't let me forget, will you?  :-)

Thanks for your continued patience.  Questions/comments/flames to:

Kathy Ice
Cyberspace Liaison
Wizards of the Coast
liaison@wizards.com
kice@wizards.com