Rules questions

[jetoman22]

I play casual magic with a friend of mine and we were wondering about some things.

1. When using Recycle, If someone causes you to discard your hand, you're kind of boned. My friend put cards in his deck with flashback in order to counter-act that security hole, saying that when you use a card's flash back ability that counts as "playing a card" and therefore triggers Recycle's draw ability. I'm not so sure if that is the case. I think a card has to come from your hand in order to be able to draw it. If the card is countered, I don't think that matters...all that matters is that you put a hard from you hand onto the stack. My question is simply this: is there a way to trigger Recycle's draw ability without playing a card from your hand? Can it be played from any other zone?

2. Vigilance. Creatures without haste cannot tap and therefore can't attack the first turn they come out. Because creatures with vigilance don't need to tap, can they attack on the turn they are played? Or do they still need haste in order to attack first turn, even though it doesn't require them to tap?

3. Provoke. I used to think this was the crappiest ability ever. I'm still a little confused about it. It says you may untap a creature and make it block you. Does this mean the only valid targets for this ability are tapped creatures or can you target creatures that are untapped? What is the point of this ability? I used it a couple times today to force my opponent to block my smaller creature and let my big one through, but I'm not sure if that is the advantage that they had in mind when they designed this ability. Also, can you use provoke on more than one creature at a time? Can you use provoke on ALL of your opponent's creatures?

4. Regenerate. I made a sliver deck that included Crypt Sliver. All slivers have "T: Regenerate target sliver." After I declared blockers, 2 of my slivers were going to die, so I tapped them to regenerate themselves. I know regenerating causes the permanent to tap, so my friend questioned if I could tap it to regenerate itself, or if I had to regenerate with a different sliver. I wasn't sure. I think they can target themselves, but I'm confused about if they can be regenerated if they are already tapped from paying the ability's activation cost.

I'm so confused by the provoke ability. It seems really really horrible. Is there a point? I thought I wanted my creatures to get through and hurt people. Why would I want to untap something that wasn't going to be able to block me in the first place just so that I can deal damage to it? Why not just bludgeon my opponent to death with my big creatures instead of murdering his smaller tapped creatures? Also, if the point is to kill creatures that have annoying abilities, doesn't untapping them just give them a chance to use their ability again?

[mtglord]

1. i dont know
2.yes creature sickness is still in effect. so no you cant attack.
3.ok, you may select a tapped creature. may is a very important word in mtg. how to use it well, give the creature who has provoke death touch its basicly saying i choose one of your creatures to kill. but before you take me word for word please check the text again and post it word for word.
4.no, i dont think they can but you are probobly going to want another opinion on this.because i belive that regeneration requires the target creature to be in the grave yard so a creature in the grave yard is no longer able to tap.you must use another sliver.

also if you are playing a sliver deck all slivers have each others abbilities so you dont have to kill their creature with your must powerfulone. just use a weaker one with death touch and provoke.

[NightLoki]

If I may, I can answer the unanswered questions.

1. Recycle says play a card, and flashback is an alternative cost to play a card from your graveyard, so yes, flashbacking a card will trigger Recycle. It doesn't have to come from your hand, and Countering doesn't matter because the trigger goes on the stack when it's played, not when it resolves (played vs comes into play)

2. mtglord covered this

3. ok, exact text for provoke is as follows: "Whenever this creature attacks, you may choose to have target creature defending player controls block this creature this combat if able. If you do, untap that creature." So yeah, you can target an untapped creature, and it'll still work. yes, the weenie distraction works, unfortunately you can only target one creature per instance of provoke. If it wasn't like that, it'd be Lure on crack.

4. Ah Regenerate, one of the most confusing abilities in magic. right up there with banding, but they're both similar in that they're really easy once you figure 'em out. Ok, here goes, regenerate's exact ability description is that it is a destruction-replacement effect. It means "the next time [the regenerating permanent] would be destroyed this turn, instead remove all damage from it and tap it. If it's an attacking or blocking creature, remove it from combat." It technically has to be active before lethal damage hits, but you can put the regenerate ability on the stack. As for your slivers, your blocks and regenerates were good, it doesn't say your permanent has to be untapped, and they got tapped from paying the ability's activation cost.



Provoke's one of those tricky things they made just to make combat confusing. It adds an element of strategy to the game, but to a lot of people it's just confusing. Well, hope I helped!

[jetoman22]

Thank you very much! So basically there are some words that are sort of left out.
provoke: "regardless of if the defending creature is tapped or untapped, untap it"
and
regenerate: "regardless of if the regenerating creature is tapped or untapped, tap it"

well thanks dude.

[NightLoki]

Yeah, I had to dig in the comprehensive rules to double check that, but it's accurate. And about helping? Anytime. If Gary ever adds space for articles on vault (or I get impatient and start posting articles on the forums), I might do one on some of the really really confusing things about magic. There's a good-sized list.