Don't be discouraged! The reason these questions made it to the RU-vid channel is that they are more involved and more interesting than normal questions. There are even highly experienced judges who would struggle with the ones I've graded four stars like this one.
@Magnivore519 why the hate? Does it influence your life in any way that someone on the other side of the globe that you have never met and will probably never meet likes to play modern/pioneer/standard/whatever? I have my preferred formats too, but why would I prevent someone from having fun?
Fun different card game fact. Yugioh does not have a CR only a basic rules book and all complex interactions are handled by case law. This means that in different regions where rulings have been different can cause cards to function differently in gameplay relevant ways. The current most relevant outlier is that in Europe if a card has a triggered effect when it is sent to the graveyard but is banished (exiled) it will still trigger even though it never had a window to trigger while it was in the graveyard.
I love that since there is one ultimate origin for Yugioh cards & game roles as intellectual property - unlike different people in different places coming up with government laws in different ways - the different rulings didn't HAVE to be separated by region, yet it still works that way anyway which lets people indulge in their regional distinctiveness agendas :)
This is probably my favorite MtG channel. Extremely interesting topics explained well, but nuanced by an expert. Thank you Judge Dave! And also, I did not do well here as expected XD
8:51 "But it does seem like we're giving this creature a new instance of this ability again, right?" I personally feel this way about Nadu and Tyvar, and intuitively I would 've expect the Dress Down scenario to reset the twice-per-turn limit. But yeah, these are all definitely really weird scenarios
Defining exactly what counts as a "new" ability is clearly important here and I like your rationalisation of "the same objects without any copy effects". My instinct was that it should be a "new" ability is based on the perspective of the modified object. Dress down isn't removing the ability from the grizzly bears, it's removing the ability granting ability from Nadu. From the perspective of Grizzly Bears it had an ability, then it wasn't being given the ability, then it had a "new" ability". The only way it makes sense is if the "engine" specifically pays attention to which object is granting the ability. I suppose each ability has a serial number from the object it's attached to, and abilities granted to other objects have that same serial number. When that ability looks back in time for how many times an event has happened, it's essentially looking for "how many times has the ability with serial number XYZ123 happened this turn?". How about this hypothetical. Bob controls Conspiracy naming "Shapeshifter", a Shapesharer, Grizzly Bears, Memnite. Amy Controls Nadu and Grizzly Bears. Bob targets Grizzly with Shapesharer, making it a copy of Nadu. He triggers the ability twice on Memnite with Greaves and puts greaves on Shapesharer. Bob's Shapesharer targets Nadu-Grizzly making it a copy of Amy's Grizzly, then repeats the cycle. Are Nadu-Grizzly's Nadu abilities "new"? Their parent object has the same serial number, but are these copied attributes "new" abilities? My instinct says they would be new, and therefore it's a "new" ability granting the ability to Memnite and the cycle can continue. I'd love for someone to do this on MTGO and tell me what happens. Again the answer there really depends on what is actually happening in the engine when you make something a copy of something else. Do abilities occupy "slots" on objects? If you put the same ability in the same slot is it the "same" ability?
I like the serial number idea, although I think that might lean against this ruling? By previous examples we know that the base Nadu ability has the same serial number, sure. But if that ability's job is "hand out serial numbers to other creatures", and then it stops doing its job for awhile (because the base ability is gone), would it automatically use the same serial numbers as before? My first intuition said "yeah sure why wouldn't it remember", then I thought "well if I was doing that job, wouldn't I restart my work with a new batch of numbers if I got interrupted?" and now I'm back to seeing it both ways again haha.
I'm totally on the "No" team on this one since Nadu's ability is never actually gone! Nadu's ability is a flashlight, shining its ability on all your creatures. Dress Down doesn't turn off the flashlight, it just puts a tape over it so the light doesn't reach anything. At least this is how I'm picturing the layer system.
Love this metaphor. But there's something tricky about this though right. It is true if Nadu gave an ability then another card took it away, it would be like "blocking the flashlight" from reaching the object. But Dress Down removes the flashlight itself for a little while! (If the ability IS a flashlight, and Dress Down removes all abilities, this must be so.) So I think that's why people object. However, I still agree with the conclusion - when the flashlight DOES come back, it IS the same flashlight as before, and the light hitting the other objects is just as much "the same light" as it was before, thus they get the same abilities they had before.
(And to address the obvious objections, of course the photons hitting the objects are not the same ones as hit them before the ability was removed - but that would also be true if the ability was never removed at all! The photons hitting in the upkeep are not the same as the ones hitting in main, yet it is still the same ability. So when we say "the same light" we mean "the overall body and character of photons being emitted by this flashlight" is the same at one point vs another, thus the overall body of abilities "emitted" by Nadu is the same before and after the removal.)
Huh, I quite like the analogy! I do agree with Jerodast that this is more akin to removing the flashlight though, and IMO that means the answer should be "yes". Let's say Nadu is affecting your Storm Crow, and Dress Down is played. From Storm Crow's perspective, it lost Flying because of the Dress Down, but it didn't just lose its "Whenever ~ becomes the target of..." ability because of the Dress Down - it also lost this ability because the source of that ability disappeared! Storm Crow's Flying is only greyed out, but the targeting ability is actually just gone. Then, when the Dress Down is sacrificed, the effect dampening Storm Crow's Flying goes away and it stops being greyed out. It also sees that it has the targeting ability again, but unlike Flying getting greyed out and then bolded again, the targeting ability straight up disappeared before reappearing. I instictually feel like this should be enough to make it a "new instance" of that ability, but this is definitely iffy reasoning.
@@Gamebuster Anyone who brings up "but what about phasing?" in a complex rules discussion will always be my hero 🤣 I think phasing's "treat it as if it doesn't exist, but it does exist again later" rule feels similar to "it doesn't have the ability for awhile, but it has the same ability again later". In particular, phasing in objects don't get new timestamps, and while this doesn't cover EVERYTHING - mainly because attached objects have a special exception to the normal intuition about timestamps - they are still a good guide. So, I say if you phase out and in in the same turn, you don't get the reset on the ability.
The referenced tweet says "As I suspected, causing Nadu to lose its abilities and then removing removing that effect does NOT reset the count for each ability it grants. If such an ability triggered twice before Dress Down, it’s still done for the turn, even after DD goes away."
Yeah after re-watching the video the first question presented is "Does Nadu trigger after just down leaves the battlefield?" And the answer to that would be no so I think that's what the question in the description was originally supposed to be.
To be fair, Bound By Moonlight isn't granting or taking away abilities from a creature as much as it is modifying the rules to prevent you from doing certain things with that creature, and arguably the aura is in a different category than the current discussion
The big thing for that is that Auras and Equipment get a new timestamp every time they move. Therefore, the activated ability that it itself has would be refreshed if changing timestamps refreshed them.
@@seandun7083 The fact is the Aura/Equipment timestamp thing is kind of a kludge, because the abilities applied to the attached permanent want to have a new timestamp when it gets attached, but "general abilities" like Moonlight's are intended to just work the same way as everything else, and they didn't want to make some abilities on a card get new timestamps and others not. If they really want to resolve all this they might need to classify abilities granted by attached objects to the objects they're attached to, and say that the attachment timestamp rule applies to those granted abilities, but a "secondary timestamp" that doesn't follow the attachment rule applies to all their other abilities, like Moonlight's.
But yeah technically, right now, a "global" continuous effect stuck to an equipment gets the benefit of the new timestamp if you reattach it (allowing it to keep "updating itself" to supersede other effects on the same layer) by just re-equipping it to something, even if it has nothing to do with the equipped creature! Which is weird in a way completely separate from the Nadu/"limited abilities" questions. They just don't tend to print these effects much so they don't "need to fix it".
So that means that the Nadu flicker or new etb ruling is identical to my Pantlaza limitation being reset. Pantalaza can be frustrating to play against, but Nadu was so much worse since it affected each creature and TWICE.
Another interesting interaction is with the "roaming throne." It triggers the abilities an additional time, but they canonot resolve properly. Pantalaza's ability still only works once wach turn,even if it is triggered additional times. Thats why having "flicker" or "cloudshift" or "emiel the blessed" are so helpful
@@DGlattiatorroaming throne is interesting in that you want to run it in your pantlaza deck, but it doesn't do anything for the man himself, instead helping dinos with triggered abilities like gishath and etali. This is the opposite of how roaming throne normally finds itself in decks, i.e. doubling a commander's incredible triggered ability even when no other creatures in the deck run it (Prosper runs throne and doesn't have other tieflings)
I find this to be a rather disappointing outcome. Nothing in the existing rules indicates that the game can "remember" that a newly granted ability is the same as an ability that was previously granted, but lost. Honestly, the idea that the ability trigger count is retained when the ability is lost via Threaten just makes me hate this even more. Imagine an equipment that grants an activated ability like Thornbite Staff. If we add to that ability "Activate only once each turn". Surely we would expect that re-equipping would reset the counter because the ability is lost and an identical instance of the ability is granted.
Your equipment example is like the Aura example Dave brought up. My answer is no, I don't think it should :) It's the same equipment giving the same ability to the same creature. It's the same ability. But that's just my intuition, essentially an opinion. It wasn't defined one way or the other, so now that someone has defined it (without any citations...) some will feel like it fits, some will not. So it goes.
@@jerodast "It's the same ability." Suppose my Equipment is a Javelin. If I equip it I can throw it once. I can throw it again if I re-equip it or wait a turn. Typically you would have to tap to use this ability and have extra uses if you untap. In my scenario, you get additional uses if I re-equip. Are you telling me the game tracks that I tossed that javelin already and can't throw it again even though I re-equipped it? Ultimately it boils down to this: The game has never been able to track that an abstract concept (like a triggered ability granted by a static ability) that gets removed is the same as any other identical instance. It's completely alien nonsense.
Counterpoint: in a sense, the Nadu never stopped having the ability that "when X becomes a target yada yada yada". The ability was there, it was just being overwritten by Dress Down. When that Dress Down leaves, it can work again, but it is still the same ability, and this ruling is in line with the one regarding Homicide Investigator only triggering once per turn.
@@jinxed7915 "The ability was there" Nadu literally has no ability at this point "it was just being overwritten by Dress Down" If this was a text-changing effect it would be much easier to reconcile.
As I said, they need to add a rule that two abilities granted to a permanent are considered the same ability if they are granted by the same source, to the same permanent, and have the same wording, unless the source is specifically granting multiple copies of that ability.
I feel like dress down saying “lose” all abilities would suggest that they then regain those abilities which I would think would trigger a second ability. If Dress Down said “creatures have no abilities” I would think that to suggest that the ability doesnt “go away and come back”
The thing is that Dress Down is a continuous effect. Even though the way it's worded makes it sound like creatures lost their abilities when it enters, in fact it's continously making them lose their abilities, which is why if a creature enters while it's on the battlefield it'll have no abilities and why creatures regain their abilities if I destroy Dress Down. So the abilities do go away and come back.
Mmm... kinda brainstorming here on how a general comprehensive rule might be made to catch all these 'granting an ability that keeps track of a thing' issues. We can contrive some other interesting situations where this ould be useful. For example, if I have a Hazel's Brewmaster in play, with Garth One-Eye exiled (thus granting all Food tokens Garth's activated ability, which can only chose 'a card name that hasn't been chosen' from among the options when you activate it, and I have a Ygra, Eater of All in play. Now all my non-Ygra creatures are Food, and thus have Garth's ability. If I have a Grizzly Bears, which is a Food at this point, tap it to make a Black Lotus, then flicker Ygra, so that Grizzly Bears stops being a Food (thus stops having the Garth ability) but then becomes a Food again when Ygra comes back, will Grizzly Bears 'remember' that the ability it didn't have picked Black Lotus before? What if we use a delayed-flicker so it waits until end of turn to return Ygra, instead of immediately, so there is a lengthy period of time when Grizzly Bears doesn't have the ability? In my mind, I feel like one of the most straight forward ways to keep all situations of 'interruptably granted abilities' consistent is to tweak the way in which continuous effects that grant abilities do so - in this case, perhaps, we should 'tag' any ability granted by a continuous effect to an object with the 'source' of that object, with the specific mention that 'source' includes all information that distinguishes that source as a discrete object. So when we put a Nadu in play, it is "Nadu A", for example. The triggered ability it grants is now "Nadu A's Granted "(ability text)"". If something makes Nadu A unable to grant that ability, but the game still recognizes Nadu A as the same object, then later when Nadu A regains the ability to grant its ability it is still granting "Nadu A's Granted "(ability text)"", which is the same ability. So if my Grizzly Bear has Nadu A's Granted Ability, and I use it twice, then Dress Down happens, and then leaves at end of turn, I still have used both uses of Grizzly Bear's Nadu A's Granted Ability. Flickering Nadu A makes it a new object, Nadu B, which allows the behaviour to work as it currently does, as Grizzly Bear's Nadu B's Granted Ability hasn't done anything yet. Gaining or losing control of a thing doesn't change the object it is, so it won't change the source-tracking. Nadu A becoming a copy of another creature and then ceasing to be a copy of that creature would not change that it is the same object still, so that, too, maintains the identity/source of the granted ability. Essentially, only something that causes the source of, or the receiver of, the ability to become a new object under the rules will 'reset' the ability. For the Brewmaster/Garth/Ygra example, this solve it handily, as Grizzly's ability is being granted by the same Brewmaster the whole time, and neither Brewmaster nor Grizzly become a new object, so flickering Ygra should not reset Garth Ability Tracker; but flickering the Grizzly Bear *would* reset its tracker.
I posted a very similar scheme in one of Judge Dave's previous videos, except I think I called it the "origin" of the ability instead of "source" since that word is already used in other important ways :) I agree! As you said, becoming a new object obviously changes the source, and a new instance of becoming a copy seems like it should change the source (even if it's a copy of the same card, like Nadu becoming a copy of Nadu).
There's still the question of how to resolve the "if I move an enchantment which grants an ability off a creature, then move it back", which is more likely with equipment as someone else here pointed out. I think it COULD keep Moonsilver functioning correctly to say that the "ability granting identity" of an attached object DOES change when the timestamp changes as it becomes differently attached, while the "ability having identity" remains the same - Bound by Moonsilver ITSELF has the "use once per turn" ability, and that doesn't have to count as being a new ability when it becomes reattached, even though an enchantment GRANTING an ability could count THAT ability as being "new". However, I also wouldn't hate if an equipment granting an ability moved away and came back, if we just said yes that IS the same ability as before, and if it's a "use once per turn" ability, it can't be reused. However, reading some other comments here, some people WOULD hate that haha.
Putting the answer in the description is neat. I like watching, but that's a nice touch for people coming from google later on. I wonder how often your videos have been consulted/cited in actual rulings for judge calls.
I can tell you that I've done it personally. It's always fun to have a player question a ruling and then be able to tell them, "well I found a judge on the internet who agrees with what I just said..."
They should make the nadu ability into a counter for real, make cards that say "put a nadu counter on one of your creatures" and shit, the era of nadu is upon us.
Based on these rulings, it sounds like the rule they need to add is "Two abilities granted by a permanent to another permanent are considered to be the same ability if they are granted by the same permanent, to the same permanent, and have identical text."
Yeah gotta check the multiple instances. Also gotta cover copies, and what if a third card is involved too (I'm not sure this is possible with current cards but it's sure THEORETICALLY possible)
What happens to all these 'official' rulings if a certain twitter *ahem* personality, loses their mind and deletes the company/database? Do we rely on screenshots?
The funny thing is I was thinking the other direction, that Twitter is a little more stable as a content container than the MTG website, which has changed the way their URLs work several times making it hard to find things with old links, and not too far back had a huge purge of a lot of old articles, much to the chagrin of those of us who like looking at Magic's history and evolution :(
Question: I've activated ability of Osteomancer Adept, then cast a creature from a graveyard, exiling some other creatures. How many times will Insidious Roots trigger?
9:07 is moonsilver not an ability on the aura itself? Well rested grants the ability to the creature. I would imagine that every instance of the ability would be different per creature, but would have to look at similair cases to determine if the same creature would have a new instance of the ability. And then if no similair instances existed I'd go bug Mr. Tabak :) As far as the copy and copy expiration idea, I think that logically it would be a different set of abilities because you had an original object, and then it had it's copyable attributes modified by a copy effect in layer 1a, and that effect ended so it's original attributes come back. The fact that those are the same isn't really important, because you want to treat it the same way as any other instance where this would happen, and those attributes would be brand new in that instance. I could be thinking about it from a different perspective though who knows.
When an attached permanent is attached to something, its timestamp and therefore the timestamp of all its abilities are resent. Usually this has no unintended consequences because the only abilities these permanents have are related to the object they’re attached to, however in some cases attached permanents have additional static abilities, which also get their timestamps reset
Another issue with the ruling is that what if it's the same ability but slightly different? Suppose I control Nadu and a Spark Doubled copy of Nadu. I trigger them both 4 times each. Then I cast Exchange of Words to switch their text boxes. Both Nadus now have same ability as before, but text box the ability originates from is different. This should intuitively reset the twice per turn count but with the case law from the Twitter ruling this is now ambiguous
In that case it isn't actually the same ability. It removes the text of both and gives them identical text to what the other had. Ruling: "Exchanging two creatures’ text boxes means that each one loses its rules text and replaces it with the rules text the other one had. In Un- games, this also means the text boxes themselves are exchanged, including the flavor text and watermarks in those text boxes. In both cases, this is a text-changing effect."
@@seandun7083 I didn't word my comment correctly. What happens if you remove the Exchange of Words? Does it remember the original number from the original texts?
@@bryantan4228If you Trigger them twice, then cast exchange of words, you can trigger them twice again. If you then remove exchange of words, it will be the same as the Nadu + Dress Down example just with text changing rather than ability removing so the ability would remember that it was used twice before Exchange of Words. I believe that will be the case for Dress Down, Exchange of Words, Song of the Dryads, or Metamorphic Alteration. Despite being on different layers, in each case the ability once they go away should be the same one as before it was "removed". I am curious what would happen if you cast Ixidron and then an opponent cast Break Open though...
@@seandun7083 The problem with these scenarios is that case law is super sketchy here. The twitter ruling addresses layer 4 modifications to Nadu via ability remova Exchange of Words is layer 3 Lose and regain control is layer 2 Copy and uncopy is layer 1 Facedown faceup changes the text of the physical card, if you read the rules it’s like layer 0. 613.1. The values of an object’s characteristics are determined by starting with the actual object. 613.1a Layer 1: Rules and effects that modify copiable values are applied. Generally its not a good idea to assume that things happening on higher layers behave exactly like things happening on lower layers
Similar, except that Humility will make itself a 1/1 if played after Opalescence but be a 4/4 if played first while Dress Down will always be a 2/2 since it doesn't set p/t.
I find the fact that you're using the phrase "case law" amusing, since it could be considered (further) evidence that MtG is/was developed by lawyers. :P
What's the difference between rules and laws? There's a reason folks who make rulings are called judges. It would be weird if you didn't use the same principles to figure things out sometimes. The biggest difference between MTG and government rules are MTG rules are more comprehensive and well-defined :) Real life has more possible game states...
As far as I know, "case law" isn't really an official term in the Magic judge world. I just started using it to refer to that phenomenon when I learned about the "real" meaning of that term as it pertained to the legal world and thought it was a fitting candidate for a crossover. I'm pretty sure the rules were actually developed by computer scientist, as evidenced by the large number of CS terms that have analogous meanings in Magic contexts (object, stack, type, etc.)
He did one a few weeks ago where he mentioned the rules didn't currently cover it. This one is the updated version now that a rules manager has commented on it.
Humility can't stop any ability that includes a type change because those happen on an earlier layer. Whichever of the two entered the battlefield more recently gets the last word on whether your animated permanents are 1/1 with no abilities or 4/4 with trample, haste, and "When this hits someone draw a card" (but in both cases they lose all the abilities they originally had).
Is nadu's effect considered a text changing ability? It breaks my brain to try and actually do this but I have a feeling the correct answer could be figured out systematically, if so
Text-changing abilities are very rare. They almost always reference the fact that they "change the text" of something. Nadu has an ability-changing effect [CR 113.10].
@JudgingFtW ahhh! Thanks so much for clarifying! i haven't played mtg in years, but i still enjoy searching scryfall and figuring out all the fun puzzles/combos the game naturally provides. For that, your channel is a gold mine !
@JudgingFtW My uninformed understanding of this would be: the "granted" ability on grizzly bear is dependent on Nadu and Nadu's "granting" ability is dependent on dress down. Dress down's ability is therefore strictly affecting Nadu, not grizzly bear's (and of course grizzly bear simply does not have the ability anymore)... therefore based on 113.10b "Effects that remove an ability remove all instances of it." And so once dress down's effect ends, the grizzly bear is getting a new instance of the ability granted by nadu. It is very likely I'm over simplifying or missing an interaction, but it does have nice logic
I disagree with the official ruling. Considering "layers" of effect, nadu says 'creatures you control have "X"', which means that nadu itself doesn't have the ability at first, just the granting ability. THEN it gives the X ability. So when dress down leaves, nadu regains the X-granting ability before they all get X
That's the thing though: even in your example, you acknowledge that the game still sees Nadu *trying* to hand out abilities in the relevant layer, it's just that the ability in question is overwritten by Dress Down. The same ability is there before and after, the only difference is whether or not it does anything I think of it as similar to examples with Opalescence and Humility: at the end, when you look at the board state, neither of them have abilities. And yet, those abilities still apply deep in the relevant layers, do they not?
I'm confused by the ruling. Matt says he has "research" to do, and in the ruling says "as I suspected", implying he was using some official source and not just giving the ruling ad hoc. What's his justification? Not that he needs one, but it's worded as if one exists.
I was EXTREMELY curious about this as well, and my research, consisting of reading a couple replies to that tweet, revealed that he replied to a replier that he asked a few people to try it in Arena and see what happened. To be fair, his tweet didn't say that was the ONLY research he did, but it does sort of create the impression that "how the Arena devs happened to implement it" is the current supreme ruler of ambiguous CR decisions.
Matt actually replied to my question about this despite me being slightly sarcastic - kudos to him! And does sound like Arena is definitely used as a point of reference, but also he was carefully looking at CR, looking for related rulings, and checking in with others at WotC to see what the feeling was about what the ruling SHOULD be. I assume he didn't find any clear CR or past rulings much like Dave. I wonder if the people at WotC are as divided on this as this comment section is haha.
The big reason people like Matt Tabak can make [O]fficial rulings and people like me can't is that working for/with WotC gives you access to ask people how they were thinking a specific card would work so that they can base the rulings around that in cases where the CR is not clear. It's also very likely that in the course of doing this research, this issue came onto the rules team's radar and they are probably working on a more robust solution to be included in a future CR update.
