Welcome to this month's Personal Tutor, where we'll discuss how to maximize our opportunities for player education. Our goal is to transcend the basic answer to create an informative answer that the players will really remember and teaches them something about policy, rather than just resolving this ruling. You may even find this process helps you improve your own understanding of the subject.

Here's this week's scenario:

Allegory and Nuance are playing a game at a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier. They come to a tricky rules interaction, which they need you to resolve. After you issue your ruling, both players are still confused. Could you provide some metaphor to help them understand?

For this month's scenario, we're deviating a little bit from our normal formula, to ask you to share your best metaphors, similes and analogies for how to understand an interaction, rule or even policy. We've all heard variations of one of the most common metaphors, “Even though you killed his Prodigal Sorcerer, the ability still resolves. It's just like when a person throws a ball/grenade/toaster and is tackled/shot/toastless, that doesn't mean that their projectile isn't still in the air!” Try to go beyond that rule, and find some other interactions in Magic that could be better explained using a real-life example.

For this month's scenario, we're going to waive the usual “L2+ wait a few days…” rule, since there's no risk of “giving away” the answer. As usual, however, please provide your answer as you would give it to a player.

“So it's like you have 2 vending machines,
both of them requires a coin in order for you to get a drink from them.
if you only put in a coin into one of the machine,
the other machine won't just give you a drink for free.
You need to put a coin each in order to get two drinks from the machines.”


(in regard, to sacrificing a creature to pay for 2 different abilities)

Edited Maykel . (March 6, 2015 06:38:24 PM)

(This only works if the players know poker, obviously, but I've used this to good effect occasionally.)

“A round of priority is like a round of betting in a poker game. In turn order, everybody gets a chance to bet or raise. You can check or call at any time if you don't want to do anything, but if someone else bets or raises you always get another chance to raise, even if you checked earlier in the round. The betting round only ends when everybody in the game has checked or called since the last bet.”

The tried and true “ability on the stack after its source leaves the battlefield is like a grenade” metaphor.

“See, I'm a soldier in war and am under fire so I Pull the pin on my grenade and throw it. As it's still in the air I get shot and die. But the grenade is still there and find its mark. The grenade is the ability and the source is the soldier. even though you killed the source the ability still exists and find its mark.”

I know it is violent but everyone I've told this to really seems to understand how it works afterwards.

My favorite is using “hats” and “blankets” to describe which abilities determine affected cards on resolution vs changing the rules of the game. Any ability that changes the visible characteristics of a permanent is giving out hats. These could be Inspector Gadget style hats that give you new abilities or make you stronger. Once all the hats are given out, showing up later doesn't magically get you a hat.

On the other hand, abilities that don't change the way permanents look just throw a blanket over everyone. If you show up late to that party, there's still room to fit under the blanket, so you're still affected.

Originally posted by Maykel .:

“So it's like you have 2 vending machines,
both of them requires a coin in order for you to get a drink from them.
if you only put in a coin into one of the machine,
the other machine won't just give you a drink for free.
You need to put a coin each in order to get two drinks from the machines.”


(in regard, to sacrificing a creature to pay for 2 different abilities)

I might word it this way:
I have one dollar. I want to buy two different things that each cost me one dollar. I can only use my dollar to get one of the things I want. Once I pay my dollar for the first thing, I no longer have the dollar to pay for the other thing. Sacrificing a permanent works the same way. Once you sacrifice it for one ability, you no longer have it to pay for another ability.

Re: The Stack (after-match explanation)

Think of a pancake kitchen with everyone at the table as cooks. Each spell
or ability is a pancake you can make. We start with the person whose turn
it is and go around the table offering the chance to make pancakes.

While you are in the kitchen, you can make as many pancakes as you want,
one at a time. Once made, each pancake goes on top of any already there.

When you are done, or when you decide not to cook anything, you leave the
kitchen and the next person enters. When we get back to the last person to
make a pancake, or to the person whose turn it is if no one made a pancake,
we don't send them back into the kitchen. Instead, we serve up the top
pancake and start the process over. When there are no more pancakes, and no
one makes any more, we move to the next part of the game.

Note that some pancakes are special and can only be made at certain times.

Regeneration is “Wolverine, not Jesus”

I've always liked using M&Ms or Skittles to explain the mana system. It's great for teaching someone how it works, but not so good so a judge call mid round.

When my creature swings at your head, you can step back and put one of your creatures in the way. Then if your creature is removed, you still take no damage because you're out of the way already.

Unless it had trample, in which case that guy is ticked off and he's running at your swinging, good luck.

Often, when I get a question about how regeneration works, I start with the question, “Have you played Temple Run?”

For the sake of those unfamiliar with that game, I'll go into what I say when I get a “no” response.

“So, Temple Run is a video game for your phone where you play a guy who is running. He's just running. He's running along a path that curves, turns sharply, has drops that you have to jump over, has trees and logs and stuff in the way that you can run into and die if you're not careful… the point of the game is to run as far as you can until you mess up and die.

”Every once in a while, you can run into little icons that give you bonuses. One of the icons is a shield. When you get the shield, you get a bubble around you. While you have that bubble, if you run into a tree, or into fire, or do something else that would kill you, it kills the bubble instead, and you get to keep running. It doesn't protect you if you run off a cliff, but if you just run into a normal obstacle, you're fine.

“Regeneration works like that. When you activate your Kin-Tree Warden (or whatever; I judge a lot of Limited, so I see that guy a lot), he gets the bubble. Until the end of the turn, the bubble will protect him the first time he would die from damage or an effect that tries to specifically destroy him. If the bubble protects him, the bubble will then go away, he'll tap if he isn't already tapped, any damage that was on him will be removed, and he'll be removed from combat.”

It's a bit wordy, but most of the time I get a “yes”, and I can just say, “it works like the shield icon, but it only protects against damage and destroy effects. If the regeneration shield is used, tap your guy, remove all damage from him, and remove him from combat.”

A good analogy I was told was Wily-e-coyote for damage to SBA's.

You do the damage, he runs off of the cliff, THEN he checks if he's falling or not.

This one's been around for a few years.

(for when the attacker's creature is being blocked by multiple creatures)

Think of the attacker. our hero, as being in a narrow hallway facing a single-file line of enemies. He must defeat each one before he can fight the next.

First, as soon as the blocks are announced the active player orders the blockers into a line. This is technically known as the Damage Assignment Order. Later, during the Combat Damage Step, when creatures deal damage, the attacking creature will assign damage using the announced Damage Assignment Order. He must assign lethal damage to the first enemy before he can assign any to the next on, and so on.

Martha, I like your single-file line analogy. You might also say “your attacker is jumped by a band of ninjas. This being a bad movie, though, they will of course attack one at a time”, and go from there.

You can also add, "While this is going on, the original player or
planeswalker the creature was attacking attempts to escape, and succeeds
unless the attacker has trample. In that case, if the attacker can deal
lethal damage to all blockers, it can then deal the rest of the damage to
that player or planeswalker.