targets, opponents, and breaking point

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules (More info?)

Time to step up the meds; I could have sworn tammy just said...
> in multiplayer with everyone only attacking to the left, are all the
> players considered opponents or just the players directly to your right
> and left? We've been playing with only players directly to the left
> and right being opponents while others are merely "players".

There are no official multiplayer rules. The semiofficial ones from
Battle Royale don't seem to address this point. The draft of the
forthcoming official multiplayer rules that I have says in part

200.3. A player is one of the people in the game. A player's opponents
are the other players.

On the other hand, who knows if that is going to make the final cut.

As I read the intent of the rules, the only time the definition of
"opponent" would change is if you are explicitly playing with teams. It
doesn't actually *say* this, but there are several references that
suggest it was meant to. (Most of these refer you to a "teams method of
winning or losing" in section 601, but the rules aren't there and
section 601 is actually about something completely different.)


> We've also been playing that cards that can't be the target of spells
> or abilities still get affected by global spells because they aren't
> being specifically targeted. Is this correct?

Yes, that's correct. (There's nothing multiplayer-specific about that,
by the way.) The only things that target are
1. Spells and abilities that actually say "target" in their current
Oracle text
2. Local enchantments, as they're being played (but contrary to popular
belief, *not* once they are in play)
3. The Equip ability (most Equipment cards have reminder text to this
effect, but some of the more complex ones, like Scythe of the Wretched,
don't have room for the reminder text).

> Also, if a player uses a breaking point (red spell: player can either
> destroy all creatures or take 6 damage), but a player only has
> creatures that have protection from red in play, does that mean that
> player automatically has to take the 6 damage? Can the player say that
> he's going to use it against his creatures and since they have
> protection from red they stay in the game?

Breaking Point (Judgment rare)
1RR
Sorcery
Destroy all creatures unless a player has Breaking Point deal 6 damage
to him or her. Creatures destroyed this way can't be regenerated.

You seem to have misunderstood the card in at least two ways.

First: Magic is very literal; "All" means "All", not something else as
it does in many other games. The first choice is to destroy EVERY
creature in play, no matter who controls it, not to destroy all of a
particular player's creatures. In the case of Breaking Point (unlike,
say, the otherwise similar Wrath of God), any player can prevent this by
taking 6; that prevents the effect for every creature, NOT just for
their creatures.

Second: Protection has no effect on whether Breaking Point does its
thing. Protection from Foo prevents four things (some people find the
initials DEBT helpful in remembering them):
Damage: prevent all damage from Foo sources
Enchanting/Equipping: Enchantments and equipment with characteristic Foo
"fall off"
Blocking: If the Protected thing is a creature, creatures with
characteristic Foo can't block it
Targeting: The Protected thing can't be the target of Foo spells and
abilities.

Which of the above four things does Breaking Point do? That's right,
none of them! So Breaking Point will happily trash creatures with
Protection from Red right along with everything else.

Now, if Protection DID somehow help here, the answer to your question
would still depend on how the card was worded; I can think of at least
three possibilities ("Yes, you can choose to 'destroy' your creatures";
"No, you can't"; and "Actually, it wouldn't even be legal to announce
that if all your creatures had Pro Red" ) depending on the finer points
of the wording. But it's a moot point since Protection isn't even
relevant here.

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules (More info?)

On 11 May 2005 12:01:48 -0700, tammy <tazban1@yahoo.com> wrote:
>in multiplayer with everyone only attacking to the left, are all the
>players considered opponents or just the players directly to your right
>and left? We've been playing with only players directly to the left
>and right being opponents while others are merely "players".

Multiplayer rules have to have House Rules involved. Note that the 2-player
rules note that you can only attack opponent, so that anyone who's not your
opponent you can't attack; sadly, we can't logically warp that into "anyone
you can't attack isn't your opponent", but it's at least a good touchstone.

>Because of this, we haven't been allowing anything that wasn't global
>to be used on anyone or any card that is 2 or more people away.

That's pretty much the definition of a House Rule, yes, and is a perfectly
consistent one.

>On the last Magic night, one person had a card that said the creature
>gets +1 each time an opponent lays a land. A couple of us argued that
>since only the players directly to his right and left are his opponents
>(with the rest just being players), the creature would only get the +1
>for when the players directly to his right and left lay a land. He
>argued that it was a global ability and the creature would get the +1
>for when anyone laid a land.

This hinges on "global". If you're using that to mean "targets a player",
this obviously doesn't do that; if you're using it to mean "affects players
all around", this also doesn't do that. What this does is get INFORMATION from
other players - whether they have just played a land - and use that to
affect the creature. You'll need to decide whether this counts as a "global"
effect in your definition.

(The definition of 'global' in Magic is that Enchantment cards and Enchant
World cards are 'global' enchantments, while all other enchantments are
'local'; this doesn't help you at all and is in fact rather irrelevant to
what you're trying to do, as it has nothing to do with their abilities'
effects.)

>We've also been playing that cards that can't be the target of spells
>or abilities still get affected by global spells because they aren't
>being specifically targeted. Is this correct?

Again, you're using the word "global" as though it had some special meaning
other than the one it actually HAS in Magic. A spell or ability is targetted
if its Oracle text uses the word "target", or if it's a local enchantment
spell currently being cast. Nothing else is targetted; "can't be the target
of spells or abilities" only stops targetted things, not anything else. In
particular, it doesn't have anything to do with _affecting_ things, in general,
only with _targetting_ things.

>Also, if a player uses a breaking point (red spell: player can either
>destroy all creatures or take 6 damage), but a player only has
>creatures that have protection from red in play, does that mean that
>player automatically has to take the 6 damage?

Nope. First off, Breaking Point DOES NOT DO ANYTHING that protection from Red
helps against: it does not target creatures, damage creatures, block creatures,
or enchant creatures. (It can damage a PLAYER, but players can't have pro-Red.)

Secondly, and more important, the choice on Breaking Point has nothing to
do with whether the creatures CAN be destroyed or not. Using the Glossary,
we see that its wording is the same as "Any player may have Breaking Point
deal 6 damage to him or her. If no player does, destroy all creatures and
they can't be regenerated.". The choice is whether any player has BP deal
the damage to them, NOT "are we choosing to destroy creatures?". See the
difference?

> Can the player say that
>he's going to use it against his creatures and since they have
>protection from red they stay in the game?

He can't say he's going to use it 'against his creatures', since it destroys
ALL creatures. And if nobody decides to take the 6 damage from it, his
pro-Red creatures will get destroyed along with all other creatures, since
they are included in 'all creatures' and since BP isn't doing anything to
them that having proRed will -stop-.

Dave
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