u/Craig1287

I was watching an episode of MTGGoldfish in which they were discussing some fake group hug cards and the Temp with THING cards came up and specifically [[Tempt with Bunnies]] and Phil mentioned its synergy with [[Marneus Calgar]], they were confused about it a bit, unsure if it really worked the way Phil said. Later in the video around the 22:46 mark they mention how they got an answer from a judge about the interaction and the answer they were given is one that I disagree with. So, I did some digging and found that a lot of people believe the same wrong answer their judge gave them is correct, posts on r/askajudge and rules pages on Facebook have people stating what I believe is the wrong answer. So, I made THIS VIDEO to explain the correct result and provide some extra context and scenarios that look similar but are different. I know videos are not for everyone, so here is the written basis for this and I hope anyone in the future looking for this answer stumbles to this post/video rather than one with an incorrect answer.

PERSPECTIVE

In the Comp Rules, there is this one (CR 700.1) that explains how the same event can be interpreted or treated differently based on slight wording differences. An example I like to give is if you equip your [[Infiltration Lens]] to your [[Anzrag, the Quake-Mole]] and then you attack and the opponent double blocks it with two creatures. There will be a total of 3 triggers, two from the Lens and 1 from the Anzrag, and this is all due to how their trigger is worded.

THE SCENARIO

So the scenario that came about in that Goldfish video and that I have seen a lot of debate over is this, you control Calgar and then you cast the Temp with Bunnies and when it resolves all 3 of your opponents took the tempting offer to draw and make a token. This means that the TwB will by itself net you a total of 4 cards drawn and 4 tokens made, but the question is over how many times this triggers Calgar. Some players believe it’s 2 triggers, once for the token you always create from the TwB effect and then the other 3 are created at the exact same time which falls into the "or more" part of Calgar’s ability and therefore only get one additional trigger from him. Others believe that you get 4 triggers from Calgar, 1 from the token you make and then 3 other individual triggers from each of the tempted opponents that netted you to make 3 additional tokens.

THE CONFUSION

I think that the confusion over this stems from the fact that for a lot of Magic cards and their effects, you can tell how many times an event happens by reading the number of times the action word shows up. If a card like [[Snort]] deals 5 damage to 3 different opponents based on the choices they made, it's not dealing the damage 3 different times because it only says the word "deals" once in the instructions. Compare this to cards like [[Collective Defiance]] and [[Fiery Confluence]] that do have the word "deal" multiple times and now you do have a situation of damage from a single effect being dealt multiple different times.

So, there is another "Tempt" card out there, [[Tempting Contract]] and it looks oh so similar to TwB, one obvious difference is that you don't always make your own token, this one only has the 'get things based one what your opponents chose' part, but there is also something else different about it that is the biggest difference and I think this is the largest reason for confusion.

THE ANSWER

So, if you controlled Calgar and resolved that Tempting Contract with all 3 opponents taking the temptation, Calgar would only trigger a single time. The reason is that there is a single event of you creating 3 Treasure tokens and that hits the "or more" aspect of Calgar's ability, so only one card drawn from Calgar. From this, we can extrapolate that the TwB should be 2 triggers for Calgar, once because the TwB instructs you to "create" a token and then later in the effect it instructs you to again "create" tokens, so that's two mentions of the word "create"... BUT... that isn't what actually happens.

The answer is crazy enough 4 triggers for Calgar. The reason for this is because the TwB also has your opponents and more importantly you draw cards as part of its effect. So we now need to check out CR 121.2 as well as CR 121.2 because they have some rules that make it so that all cards in Magic are drawn only 1 at a time, they can never be drawn in mass simultaneously. To which we then have to seek out CR 608.2f which has a ton of text, so I'll summarize that it basically says we normally do handle instructions like this simultaneously but if we're unable to do that then we break the instructions down into parts we can legally do. Because of the card draw aspect of TwB, we have to break it up into individual parts.

So TwB is telling us to "create N tokens and draw N cards" with N being 3 in this case, but due to the rules it ends up becoming "create 1 token and draw 1 card and do this N times". I made THIS IMAGE to help visualize what is actually happening here, so I hope that helps if this GIANT WALL OF TEXT was a little much. So, if someone is looking for a TL:DR part, I guess that image is it with the context that card draw as part of TwB effect is the reason it unfolds this way.

I was recently in a game against [[The Serpent Society]] and the player did something I've seen so many other players do because they were not aware exactly how Priority worked. Because of this, I made THIS VIDEO about it but I know videos aren't for everyone.

In the game, Player A controlled The Serpent Society and Player B wanted to remove it with their [[Swords to Plowshares]]. This was the first time Player B targeted the Society so A was certain that B was going to pay the Ward and give themself the 5 Poison counters, but A really didn't want to recast it from the Command Zone, so they quickly responded with a [[Tamiyo's Safekeeping]], and then they moved on with the game but I asked if B still planned to pay the Ward.

Then later I asked A why he didn't let B pay the Ward and then respond with the Safekeeping afterwards they said that they didn't think it worked like that. That once they let it resolve that the next thing on the Stack would resolve. I have heard this from a lot of players and many of them didn't know that after an ability resolves Priority again is given to the Active Player (CR 117.3b).

So, this post is to remind you to always let your opponents pay the Ward costs when you have plans anyways to cast something like [[Ephemerate]] to save them. If you have Redirection type spells like [[Deflecting Swat]] and [[Return the Favor]] then you can also still wait for them to pay the Ward and then afterwards redirect their removal spells onto their own creatures, but if you do it too early then they can let the Ward happen and counter it so they don't remove their own creature. A bonus with redirects, if you have multiple creatures with Ward like [[Saruman of Many Colors]], [[Valgavoth, Terror Eater]], [[Maha, Its Feathers Night]], etc... then you can keep redirecting between those creatures and have them be re-targeted multiple times to force your opponent to pay those Ward costs repeatedly.

I like the new addition of the Control Center, I hope it helps players to learn more about the events and such we do, but why in Liberty can we night right-click to close out of this menu? We can right-click to close out of every other menu I can think of in the whole game except for this new one. Is anyone else as bothered by it as I am (I'm not really super bothered by it, I just discovered it last night and it stuck out to me a bit).

We recently got [[Lorehold, the Historian]] from SoS and I have played against multiple decks running it and some don't run [[Library of Leng]] because they were told it doesn't work and the ones who did run it mostly just hoped it worked in the deck and didn't know for sure or why. I hope this post helps, I'll post a TL/DR up front and then a more detailed breakdown. Also, for those who prefer video explanations they can listen to, you can check out THIS VIDEO.

TL/DR

Leng DOES work with Lorehold's discard/draw ability because, while the discard is a Cost of the Triggered Ability and Costs are not considered Effects, the discard is occurring during a Triggered Ability resolving and abilities are Effects, therefore making it count. The relevant CR citation is 118.1, 118.12, & 609.1.

Breakdown Scenario

Let’s start off by reading Lorehold’s Triggered Ability (TA) that says, “At the beginning of each opponent’s upkeep, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.” and now let’s read what Library of Leng says and it has a Replacement Effect (RE) that says, “If an effect causes you to discard a card, discard it, but you may put it on top of your library instead of into your graveyard.” So the clear hope here is that your Lorehold triggers on your opponent’s turn, you discard a powerful card from hand but via the Leng's RE you’re discarding it to your Library in which you will then draw from to cast it for just 2 mana. Seems good, so why does it actually work?

What is a cost and why does it matter

Leng’s RE is looking to replace cards discarded from hand, yes, but specifically when you’re discarding because of an Effect, and many of you are hopefully familiar with my episode covering [[Doubling Season]] and its lack of interaction with upticking a Planeswalker because the Loyalty counters added as a payment made to a Cost and costs are not Effects. So, let’s check the definition of a Cost and we can find that in CR 118.1 that says, “A cost is an action or payment necessary to take another action or to stop another action from taking place. To pay a cost, a player carries out the instructions specified by the spell, ability, or effect that contains that cost.” 

Examples of cards with costs and cards with discarding that might look like a cost

A great example of this is in a card like [[Yawgmoth, Thran Physician]] that has two Activated Abilities (AA) and you can always tell this by the : that is in the card text. So for his second AA that requires you to discard a card in order to Proliferate, that is a cost in order to activate that ability, meaning the Leng would NOT work here, but it is not always so clear with the : on the card like for Yawgy or cards like [[Boseiju, Who Endures]]. Here are two other examples of cards that involve discarding, they are [[Borrowed Knowledge]] and [[Big Score]]. Knowledge is a modal sorcery that its first mode says, “Discard your hand, then draw cards equal to the number of cards in target opponent’s hand.” and then Score is an instant that says, “As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card. Draw two cards and create two Treasure tokens.” In this case, there is no : but we do see the word “cost” on the Score, so you can probably figure out which of these works with Leng and which one does not. You can actually cast the Knowledge with it being your last card in hand and you end up discarding zero cards.

So why is Lorehold's TA a cost

BUT… what happens when neither a : nor the word “cost” shows up? Is the discarding of a card in Lorehold’s case an actual Cost? To find this out we shall dig a little deeper into the CR and head to CR 118.1 that says, “Some spells, activated abilities, and triggered abilities read, "[Do something]. If [a player] [does, doesn't, or can't], [effect]." Or "[A player] may [do something]. If [that player] [does, doesn't, or can't], [effect]." The action [do something] is a cost, paid when the spell or ability resolves. The "If [a player] [does, doesn't, or can't]" clause checks whether the player chose to pay an optional cost or started to pay a mandatory cost, regardless of what events actually occurred.”

What about Gatherer & Scryfall rulings

So from that we can gather that Loreholds TA requiring a discard is indeed a cost, so that means Leng is a bad card in that deck. We can even head over to the Scryfall page for Leng and see in its rulings section that it has this ruling that says, “You can't use the Library of Leng ability to place a discarded card on top of your library when you discard a card as a cost, because costs aren't effects.” and that settles it… right? Well, there’s a reason I make these posts and why I’m 200 episodes into my TR&CI series and that’s because Magic rules are weird. Leng actually does work well in a Lorehold deck and you can still discard the cards to the top of your Library. But how given the CR I've covered here and even the card ruling on Scryfall/Gatherer? 

A cost as part of an ability resolution

So, we will have to dig even a bit deeper into the CR and head way on down to section 609.1 that says, “An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a spell or ability. …” So, yes, the discard is a cost of the TA however because it is a Cost being paid as a result of the TA it counts in Leng’s case because abilities are an Effect. Back to the Borrowed Knowledge and Big Score examples, you can cast the Knowledge with zero cards in hand, same thing with a card like [[Fiery Encore]], however you cannot cast the Big Score with zero cards in hand. Similarly, your Lorehold will trigger on each opponent’s Upkeep no matter if you have no cards in hand or you do, and even if you do have cards and don’t discard one it has still triggered and resolves but just has a different result in its resolution based on your discarding or not discarding. I hope this comparison to these two spells helps to clear up why this plays out the way it does.

If you have any questions about this and want additional clarity, please ask some questions as this stuff can seem very contradictory and confusing. If you want some more weirdness about Leng, I made THIS VIDEO about it a few years ago talking about weird things like using the Leng to discard things that care about what you're discarding, like cards with Connive and cards like [[Bone Miser]] and how it is actually bad with them, even if the top of the Library is revealed.

Last week was Prepared Spells and now it's time for Paradigm. I thought of all the weird scenarios you could end up in with Paradigm and also looked up as much as I could for questions players had with it and have compiled it all into this. For those who prefer a video with timestamps you can watch that HERE. This is a dense write up covering multiple individual things, so I couldn't really think of any TL:DR, sorry about that.

Despite being a wildly new thing for Magic there is just the one rule in the CR defining Paradigm and it can be found in CR 702.192a. that says, "Paradigm represents two spell abilities, one of which creates a delayed triggered ability. Paradigm means "If this is the first time a spell you control with this spell's name has resolved this game, at the beginning of each of your precombat main phases for the rest of the game, create a copy of this object in exile. You may cast the copy without paying its mana cost" and "Exile this spell.""

So let’s start out by pointing out that this Paradigm doesn’t care about the spell with that name being cast for the first time but it specifically cares about it resolving. There are two main ways that spells fail to resolve in Magic, they are either countered with a counterspell or they fizzle and do not resolve. Fizzle isn’t an official term in the CR, but by that we mean that all of the targets of a spell have become illegal targets, for example if you try to cast [[Fists of Flame]] targeting your creature and in response I move it to a new Zone by destroying it, Exiling it, returning it to your hand, etc… or maybe I have Phased it out or maybe I just gave it Protection from red till end of turn, in all these cases the Fists of Flame’s only legal target is now illegal and so not only does it not get the Power buff but the whole spell fails to resolve meaning you don’t even get the card draw part of it. So, in the case of these Paradigm spells, they do have to resolve. This can be an issue for 3 of the Paradigm spells as they do require targets, [[Restoration Seminar]], [[Decorum Dissertation]], and [[Echocasting Symposium]]. One thing to note, Echocasting Symposium does have two targets, so even if they make the target creature an illegal target they still have to make the target player an illegal target to get the whole spell to fizzle and that’s a lot tougher to do. 

Okay, so now as for what is actually happening after you resolve one of these, it sets up a Delayed Triggered Ability (DTA) (CR 603.7) for the rest of the game on your Pre-Combat Main Phase that you’ll get to cast a copy of that Paradigm spell, which we’ll get to in more detail in a bit, but I do want to focus on this being a DTA. With it being a Triggered Ability, that means that you can indeed interact with it in ways like using [[Gogo, Master of Mimicry]] or [[Kirol, Attentive First-Year]] to copy the DTA resulting in you getting more copies to cast each turn. If you’re not in these colors then you can always use the cards like [[Strionic Resonator]], [[Lithoform Engine]], [[Peter Parker's Camera]]. One thing to note, the creation of these DTAs is not a Triggered Ability, so you cannot use these things to increase the number of DTAs are set up.

When you look at that CR for Paradigm, you’ll see that it checks for the spell to resolve, it doesn’t require it to be a Sorcery Card. This means that a copy of a Paradigm spell resolving will work. If you cast your [[Improvisation Capstone]] and your opponent tries to counter it with [[Disdainful Stroke]], you can’t use your [[Reverberate]] to copy their counterspell to target their counterspell, but you can just use it to copy your own Capstone and when that copy of your Capstone resolves it will now set up that DTA to make a copy each turn. To expand on this, you can even copy a Paradigm spell that isn’t yours. If your opponent casts an Improvisation Capstone then you can use your Reverberate and now when your copy of the Capstone resolves you too will have the DTA awaiting you each turn. Similarly, if you had to mill or discard one of these or maybe they got countered and that’s why they’re in your Graveyard, and then you used a card like [[Mizzix's Mastery]], it would still work to set up that DTA. One other expansion upon this, you can use a card like [[Flashback]] to grant the Paradigm card in your GY Flashback and even though part of the ability Flashback is that the spell Exiles itself upon resolution, that will not conflict with the Paradigm ability setting up the DTA.

So now to touch on that a bit more, with the things I covered in that section, you may have caught on that the card doesn’t need to be in Exile, so this means if you happen to resolve one that is an actual card and then Paradigm exiles it, another player cannot stop it from doing the DTA each turn by removing that card from Exile. Cards like [[Riftsweeper]], and [[Cryptic Cruiser]] won’t interrupt this whole thing. The DTAs will still keep triggering each Pre-Combat Main Phase.

Okay, now onto one of my favorite tricks you can do with this. Last year I made a VIDEO about the card [[Return the Favor]] and how it is unique in the game of Magic, that it does something no other card can do (yet) and that is copy a Triggered Ability that you don’t control. All other things that do this like the cards I mentioned earlier only let you copy a TA that you control, but Return the Favor doesn’t have that limitation. So, let’s say you missed the chance you copy your opponent’s Improvisation Capstone when they cast it, but you do now have RtF in hand and the mana for it on their Pre-Combat Main Phase, this means you can copy their DTA and get a DTA of your own that when it resolves will make a copy of the Paradigm card and let you cast it as a spell, meaning when that resolves you’ve now got your own DTA each of your turns. 

Now I would like to cover some things that do not work with Paradigm spells. The card [[Everdream]] lets you Splice onto a sorcery, unlike most Splice cards that only let you Splice onto an Arcane Spell, so yes, if you’re casting your Echocasting Symposium then you can Splice this Everdream to add its effect of drawing a card to it when it resolves, however this doesn’t result in you adding that draw effect to the copies from the DTAs. As I said towards the beginning of this, Paradigm is doing things differently from how things have made copies previously in Magic’s history. This is different than how the Epic spells worked. Similarly, this is why the card [[Twinning Staff]]’s Replacement Effect will not see the copy part of the DTAs from Paradigm. You’re not making a copy of the spell, but you making a copy of the Object in Exile and then from there you’re able to cast that Object and move it to the Stack, but things like Twinning Staff and Magecraft care about when you copy a spell already on the Stack. Side note, Magecraft will indeed still trigger when you do choose to cast that copy, you just won’t get two Magecraft triggers from this.

Okay, and one last thing until moving onto the really crazy thing, as I mentioned in the previous one, you’re making a copy of the Object in Exile and then choosing to cast that copy moving it to the Stack when cast. This means that anything that cares about casting from Exile will indeed care about this. If your DTA resolves for your Capstone then your [[Passionate Archaeologist]] cause your Commander to deal damage. Pay very close attention to the wording on these cards however, some things like [[Prosper, Tome-Bound]] specifically are looking for you to play or cast a CARD from Exile, not just a SPELL from Exile, and so Prosper will not trigger from your Capstone’s DTA.

Okay, finally let’s get to the really, really weird thing. Yes, Stickers can be used to get extra DTAs from these Paradigm cards. To do this is not an easy task. One way is to use a card like [[Scroll of Fate]] to Manifest one of these Paradigm cards out onto the BF as a Permanent so that now you can put a Name Sticker on it, like Hot Dog from this Sticker sheet. Then sac your Manifested Hot Dog creature so that it’s in your GY and because Stickers stay on things when going to Public Zones and the card will now be face up in your GY you’ll have a Improvisation Hot Dog Capstone sorcery in there, so you could use Flashback to cast it from the GY and when it goes to the Stack this is still a Public Zone so the Sticker remains on it during this process and when it resolves to game will check to see if a spell named “Improvisation Hot Dog Capstone” has resolved before and if not then you’ve set up the DTAs for future turns. Then if you manage to cast it ever again with any of the methods I’ve described here, like using Riftsweeper to get it back from Exile. You can even use Return the Favor or another thing to copy the DTA or copy the spell as the Sticker isn’t part of the Copiable Values and will not carry the Sticker name over to the copies. This means the game will now check for the previous resolution of a spell named Improvisation Capstone and it will see nothing by that name, as that’s totally different from Improvisation Hot Dog Capstone. How did we get here?

That's all I've got for Paradigm, if there are any specific card interactions you're still wondering about then please do ask about those here as I'm sure I have left out many tough ones.