solid understanding of timing is essential to good strategy in Magic. We’ll move on directly from last week’s scenario.I’m going to fast forward these next two turns so You can get to the timing difference between instants and sorceries. I will need both players with all resources unused.
Red plays a creature, Akoum Boulderfoot. Simple ability: when you put this creature down onto the battlefield, you target (aim) at a creature or player. The Boulderfoot will do 1 damage to whatever you targeted, just like that.Red targets his opponent, so the creature does 1 damage to White. He doesn’t attack and passes the turn. White takes his turn, attacks with the flying Griffin (can’t be blocked since Red has no flying creatures) and doesn’t do anything else.
Back to Red.
Okay, timing. This is rather important and might get a bit complicated, but I will need to show what can and can’t be done with instants and sorceries. This section will showcase cards previously unseen in this tutorial series. I’ve picked a handful of simple cards and erased the story text to make reading easier. And of course, I’ll explain in general what they do.
First, how the battlefield looks like now.
Next are the cards in each players’ hands. Because this is a tutorial, I’m showing only the relevant cards. Had this been a real game, the number of cards in Red’s and White’s hands would not be the same as in the image.
To make things clearer the cards will be considered for discussion from left to right and played from left to right.
On his turn now, Red wants to push for as much damage as possible but at the same time he is low on life and needs to defend himself in some way. The first card, Pyroclasm, deals 2 damage to all creatures which easily kills White’s Griffin and Lion while Red’s creatures have high enough toughness to survive.
Red uses two Mountains and plays Pyroclasm. Before any card happens, both players will have the chance to respond to that card with their own cards or abilities. Just like there is a chance for players to use cards before combat damage happens.
White’s first card, Windborne Charge, allows him to target two creatures (or less than two, up to him) to give them +2/+2 and flying bonuses for one turn. Flying is irrelevant here, so ignore it. This card will allow both of White’s creatures to survive Red’s Pyroclasm. Problem is, it’s a sorcery, and as written in the last tutorial sorceries cannot be played outside certain times.
Let me bring up the timing again.
Sorceries:
• Can only be played during your turn.
• Cannot be played during combat.
• Can only be played during your two “main phases”. Your two main phases happen before combat and after combat.
• Cannot be played when you are starting a turn, which is before your first main phase.
• Cannot be played when you are ending a turn, which is after your second main phase.
• Cannot be played when there is another card or ability which has been played, but hasn’t actually happened. (Explanations on the way.)
The timing for instants is:
• Can be played practically anytime.
The three bolded points are why White cannot play Windborne charge in the current scenario. This is Red’s turn, not White’s. And both your “main phases” happen during your turn, not someone else’s turn.
The last one is the case of Red’s Pyroclasm. Red has already paid for the cost of his card, but the card hasn’t happen. Instead the card is waiting for both players to give it the green light.
Red allows it because he wants to take down both of White’s creatures, but White says, “Hold on. I’m going to do something.”
Almost every action in Magic can be responded to provided you have the right cards or abilities.
White decides he’s going to play his second card. Narrow Escape allows him to return any card he has on the battlefield to his hand, and gains 4 life in the process. The word “permanent” basically means any card on the battlefield because when you play these cards, they stay permanently on the ’field until the game ends or they are destroyed. The only cards that are not “permanents” are one-shot cards: instants and sorceries.
So White says he is using Narrow Escape, targeting his Lion to bring it back to his hand, therefore escaping the 2 damage from Pyroclasm. What we get now is a stack of cards waiting to happen.
How this stack of cards works is like a real-life stack. When a player plays a card, it drops down the stack and lands at the bottom. When another card is played in response to the first, it drops down the stack and lands above the first. When both players are not responding anymore and allow them to happen, the top card will happen first. Like a real stack, you will need to handle the top items before you can get to the bottom. (Some may recognise this concept as Last-In, First-Out or equally as First-In, Last-Out. And you would be right because it’s exactly the same concept.)
Narrow Escape will happen first because it’s above Pyroclasm. So White will return his Lion back to his hand and gain 4 life. Only then will Pyroclasm happen and do 2 damage to the three remaining creatures.
But Red can respond to Narrow Escape as well. He has another Pyroclasm. He may be able to stack that above the Escape and thus deal 2 damage to the Lion before the Lion Escapes. Sadly, Pyroclasm is a sorcery, and that last bolded timing restriction comes into play. Right now it is Red’s turn, so the first bolded restriction is passed. It is also Red’s main phase, so the second bolded restriction is passed. All other restrictions are also passed. But the last restriction says that sorceries can’t be played when there are other cards / abilities pending.
Simply put, sorceries can’t be played when the stack is occupied. The stack has to be empty for sorceries. The first Pyroclasm can be played back then because nothing was on the stack. In a way this means sorceries can’t occupy higher slots in the stack, that it has to occupy the bottom slot.
What Red can do is use his single instant, Lightning Bolt. If he does, then the Bolt will drop down the stack to land on top of Narrow Escape, so when both players agree to let the cards on the stack happen the Bolt will happen before the other two.
3 damage from the Bolt would kill the Lion. If Red decides to do this, that means when Narrow Escape tries to happen, it can’t.
Let me borrow another gaming analogue. Say you are a necromancer and you want to drain the life of a monster. You shoot a Drain Life beam at the monster. What happens here is if the beam hits, then you steal the monster’s life. If it misses, then nothing happens but you still have to pay for the cost of your Drain Life beam.
Same rule with Magic cards. Look for cards with the word “target” like Narrow Escape and Lightning Bolt. If a card says you need to target something, then you only get the card’s benefit if it hits your target.
In this case, Narrow Escape would miss because the Lion would already be dead and in the graveyard, killed by the Bolt that took place before. So with no more Lion on the battlefield, Narrow Escape doesn’t target anything. The Escape goes to the graveyard like normal but White doesn’t get any benefit; he doesn’t get to return a permanent nor gain any life.
We’re not done yet. Red says, “Okay, I respond to your Narrow Escape with Lightning Bolt, targeting your Lion.”
White looks at his last card.
Good old Mighty Leap. If he uses it, then it would happen before Lightning Bolt. This means that the Lion would grow from a 2/2 to a 4/4 before the Bolt hits. And if that happened, then the Lion would survive because the Bolt does just 3 damage.
A final look at the 4-tiered Stack:
At this point of the tutorial, no player wants to play anything else. They let the cards on the stack happen so the game can progress.
First, Mister Silvercoat gets big.
Then, the Bolt strikes its target.
The Lion disappears back to where it came from.
And poor Pyro finally gets its turn.
Our revised battlefield looks like this:
His opponent vulnerable, Red attacks for 7 damage with both his Minotaur and Giant. White is lowered to a precarious 7 life.
It’s safe to say that the game is over. Next turn White will be down to 2 life from Red’s other card, the sorcery Lava Axe. He needs two or more creatures to block Red’s onslaught. Bad news is that they have to have more than 2 toughness. Things like the Silvercoat Lion will simply die to Red’s other Pyroclasm.
For Tutorial Week 5 I, Aihiave, will be discussing other card types besides creature, instant, land, and sorcery. Also a simplified look at a representation of a turn and this strange “main phase” thing.
Thanks for reading. Jolly good night.
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