Warning : may induce a nerd-overdose.

Just imagine : this is January 1995, you’re the lucky beneficiary of a non-turtle-speed internet connection, you have access to a decent printer, a barrel of ink and a sheet-load of sheets (ahem). You’re now the rule guy, twelve steps ahead of everybody and all proud with the real proper complete D’Angelo rules summary and the rulings for cards in your backpack threatening to give you back pain whenever you go to your local gaming shop. Imagine if you can that you’re nerd enough to read an assimilate all that, and devious enough to try and find some loopholes to exploit. Here’s one of the those that you only have two months left to exploit :

Damage resolution occurs at the following times:

-- After resolving an effect which destroys or buries anything

-- After resolving a group of effects in which anything was damaged

-- After resolving a damage dealing step in which anything was damaged

-- Whenever something is sacrificed

The part that won’t stay long is the sacrificing part, by the end of March it will have disappeared, though it hasn’t been short-lived : it’s been there for almost the entire existence of the damage resolution sub-phase. After taking a note of the ridiculousness of having sacrificed stuff generate a Damage Resolution step, you have to look further to try to abuse :

Here are the detailed steps to damage resolution:

1. Damage Prevention & Redirection

Only interrupts, or spells and effects which prevent or redirect damage can be used at this time.

Do whatever you want to prevent damage to that target. This includes

Protection from Color (as given by Wards or by the card itself),

Circles of Protection and damage prevention spells or effects.

Prevention is targeted against the damage.

When preventing damage, damage can be removed in any order.This means you can remove Trample damage first and leave non-Trample damage, or remove damage of one color before damage of another color. [bethmo]

Unprevented damage is applied with non-Trample first and then Trample damage, so that there is the greatest chance of Trample working. [Page 32]

Apply any forms of damage redirection that are in use. Trample damage in excess of a creature's toughness moves on to the defender. Jade Monolith shunts the remaining damage to the defender. Defender can shunt damage using Personal incarnation. Damage to the player from an unblocked creature is transferred to the Veteran Bodyguard. Etc.

2. Send Creatures to Graveyard

Regeneration or destruction preventing spells and effects can be used in this step. Review the unprevented damage. If the creature still has enough damage to be killed and it has the ability to regenerate, it may use that ability at this time. (See Regeneration)

Note that if a creature is "buried", "cannot regenerate" or "removed from game", it may not regenerate. [Page 34]

3. Death Events Generated

Any effect due to the creature going to the graveyard happens at this time. This includes Vampires gathering tokens, use of a Soul Net, Creature Bond, etc.

This is the step in which the Limited edition Fungusaur gains a counter for being damaged if it did not die. (See Fungusaur in the Card Rulings.)



It’s a bit long but here’s the funny part : creatures may be on their way to the graveyard but during the damage resolution (DR) they’re still there, and that’s true even when that can’t be prevented like in the case of a “bury” effect or of a sacrifice cost, just because, you know, important cards like Soul Net seemed to need that.

But now we’d need to know when exactly a DR following a sacrifice happens. The rule says “whenever”, but can it really happen while you’re announcing the spell/ability, in the process of paying its cost ?

A sacrifice is considered a cost in the casting of a spell or powering an effect. It is used up at the same time the mana is. Such costs are not preventable by any means, including regeneration. [Page 22]

So when we sacrifice A to play B, considering that A will be used up by the time the DR is over (see steps 2 & 3), and since the spell doesn’t become a spell until its cost has been paid for, it follows that A is not used up by the time we’re in its DR, that is, it’s still very much in play. As it happens, we can play interrupts during the first step of the DR, and contrary to the steps 2 and 3 where it would seem that taking mana as an interrupt would only be acceptable to play an appropriate effect, there’s no such limitations in step 1. You can play whatever interrupts you feel like playing in that first step. And that is our sandbox for today. Let’s dive in !

So you’ve paid the cost, but the permanent is still there, you can’t regenerate it, can’t prevent the sacrifice, so what can you do ? You can sacrifice it at interrupt speed :

Yes, sacrifice the sacrificed, why not ? One might retort that the cost for one of those sacrifices hasn’t been satisfied in those cases. That’s an argument, but in the spirit of rule abuse, i’ll reproduce the rule :

A sacrifice is considered a cost in the casting of a spell or powering an effect. It is used up at the same time the mana is. Such costs are not preventable by any means, including regeneration. [Page 22]

Those costs can’t be prevented, therefore they have no other choice but to happen.

Could we do more if we had more than one Sacrifice ? It seems we can. I mean interrupts have to resolve inside the DR if we want to be able to cast spells in it (and we’re allowed to), so sacrificing the sacrificed during step 1 of the DR generates another DR nested inside the parenting one. And we’re back to square one, we can sacrifice it again. It’s just too bad you need several Sacrifice to abuse. Or do you ?

+ A spell which will not become a permanent goes the graveyard once it has been declared. It goes there even before interrupts against it have been

declared. [Aahz 12/21/94]



But haven’t we declared already ? If you think saying “I cast/activate X” means that it’s “declared”, you’ve seriously overrated the early-times WotC rule-team. No :

Only the most recently announced non-interrupt spell or effect can be interrupted. The others are considered declared and cannot be stopped from resolving. [Aahz 12/13/94]

To declare a spell isn’t just to say or indicate that you intend to cast it. To be considered declared it has to not only have been announced but be past the interrupt window. No, wait. This contradict the ruling just above that one made by the same person a week later. So when is exactly a spell “declared” ? We’ll expand on that vital question on the next episode of Rule Abuse, in the meantime we have to consider that the later ruling takes precedence over what “declaring” means, and so it should mean that it is when you’re done paying for the cost choosing the targets etc, otherwise the spell would be declared even before costs would have been paid for it, and if Rust would be played to counter your tapping of a Sol Ring for instance you could end up with your spell in the graveyard even if you hadn’t even been able to pay for its cost. This wouldn’t make much sense, but we have more solid reasons to think that something isn’t declared if its cost hasn’t been paid for :

Resolving cards which give benefits or cause problems is considered a

fast effect. For example, the Black Vise and Ivory Tower.

[Duelist Magazine #3, Page 15] It can be responded to or be done in response to actions during upkeep. Note that it is unlikely that another player can stop a beneficial effect, because once it is declared the effect happens even if the card is destroyed. [Aahz 6/6/94]

But an effect you’d have fail to pay the cost for wouldn’t happen, so to be declared an effect has to been paid for. Another proof :

If more than one interrupt to a given spell is cast, all of the current player's interrupts resolve in the order he declared them.

But some interrupt could end up not being played for failure to pay their cost, so it’s obviously not enough to just say that you’ll play an interrupt for it to have a chance to resolve, “declared” is when costs, targets and choices have been successfully dealt with.

So while I’m sacing to pay the cost for a spell, the spell hasn’t been declared yet, and it obviously cannot be on the stack (also they didn’t have a stack zone back then), so where is the Sacrifice card ? Oh yeah. You guessed that right : it’s still in my hand. Where else could it be ?

So infinite mana with one lone Sacrifice and say a Black Knight or any creature with casting cost of two or more (and first turn Dark Ritual into Black Knight into infinite Sacrifice into Drain Life for infinity) ? Better check the errata, this seems too good to be true :

Sacrifice:

Cannot be used on a creature with lethal damage, but can be used before the creature receives the damage. [bethmo]

Well good job, bethmo ! If we can’t sacrifice a creature with lethal damage, then everything will be all right.. considering we can sac it in response to any damage dealing spell, and even a Blue/Red Elemental Blast wouldn’t have the time to be cast before we’re in the DR and I could then answer any number of your Blasts by another round of Sacing -and that’s assuming you ever had the time to cast one, which wouldn’t be the case if done during my turn.

So, do we have it ? Not so fast, Sacrifice has a mana cost and inside those DRs the spells and abilities we’re sacing for aren’t resolved yet, therefore by the time the mana granted by the Sacrifice spell is available, it’s not in our hand anymore, so really you only can do that trick for as much time as you already have black mana available. Still a nice trick, but limited. It would seem we’d need something that costs zero mana to sacrifice.

No trick that I know of to get out of the tap requirement, so we’d have to look into abilities that cost absolutely nothing to activate the sacrifice :

Sheesh ! That was close, the text clearly forbids to sacrifice a creature that’s on its way to the graveyard.. Err.. Right ? Oh, come on, you can’t tell me there’s a way around that ! I’m afraid I can and will. Let’s examine when exactly is a creature on its way to the graveyard :

A creature is "on its way to the graveyard" if it has enough damage on it to kill it. Note that damage is not actually on a creature until damage dealing (during an attack) or each effect damaging it are resolved.

Yep, the same blunder as the bethmo’s one above, damage is considered, and destruction and sacrifice are forgotten. Now probably that doesn’t mean that the card cannot be on its way to the graveyard later on, like in step 2 and 3 of the DR. But as for step 1 the above rule defines how and when a creature is on its way to the graveyard. So..

A bit embarrassing, but if it made Soul Net work on sacrificed creatures, then I guess it was all worth it, WotC !

Here’s the thing : early-magic cards often included worthless if not senseless text. Also the rules evolved regularly, while the cards didn’t. No problem with Ashnod’s Altar text, then, as its last sentence “clearly” fall into that category and therefore the card could generate infinite mana with a single creature, that is if you were to find a judge or an opponent amenable enough to let you do that. Although if you could convince a judge to let you do that, you should probably just reunite Korea after having resolved the Israelo-Palestinian conflict on the way instead of just trying to abuse antiquated MtG rules ! On the other hand, we’ve probably reached the point where rules-fundamentalism and craziness meet, terrorist !

Do you see some other ways to use or abuse the DR ?

Here’s one :

So you will indeed lose the Chirurgeon, but you can regenerate all your creatures -I think. That would happen in step 2, but for the same reason than in step 1, the sacrifice of the surgeon has to nest a DR2 inside the current DR1, and it would seem that we could play an effect regenerating a creature regarding the DR1 from its nested DR2 since we’re not outside of DR1’s step 2 -though at that point we’re way above anything that those rules can manage- and hence sac the Goblin again and again until all your creatures are regenerated.

There are entirely acceptable ways to use the DR’s limitations to your advantage without discussion, including some tricks that would fly after the March update. There is also a way to abuse that rule in Type II, the 1st and obtain something batshit-crazy powerful, which, although being still open to interpretation, is considerably less so than the “infinite combos” above. Find it and you’ll be mentioned in the blog, and as for me I consider that if you come up with it at a Original Type II tournament, it should be accepted, for the tourney, that is. Afterwards..

Ok, ok just one for the road (or the headache) :

Ball Lightning, attack, deal 6. Sacrifice the Ball with Ashnod’s Altar -> DR1. Cast Sacrifice on the Ball inside DR1 ->DR2, do that as many times as I have black mana, then in DRn : pay 2 to put the Ball Lightning inside Safe Haven (which is played at interrupt speed, hence the “safe” part). Then rack up all the mana from the mana-producing effects for profit and get the Ball back on your next turn.