Card of the Day - Torturous End and Swarm Calling

Torturous End does something entirely different using scatter. The other cards essentially said "Each player does BLANK." Torturous End says "BLANK happens once for each person playing." Those two phrases may sound alike, but they have entirely different meanings. Trust me.

The length of scatter's rules text bugs me. It's just long enough to go onto that third line, but not long enough to have much of a presence there, you know? That little "it" sticking out there, all alone. It doesn't look good. Nor does the isolated "turn." I could just shrink the font by adding flavor text, but I can rarely come up with text I like enough to use.




If you thought that last card was crazy... This thing is sick even in two-player. They may get insects, but you'll have twice as many. After all the copies (and the original) have resolved, you will control at least half of the creatures on the board, no matter how many people are playing. And consider multiplayer for a moment. Let's say Timmy, Jhonny, Spike, Melvin, and Vorthos each have one creature. Timmy plays Swarm Calling and it scatters. The Callings resolve from the top down. Vorthos gets 5 insects. Melvin gets 10. Spike gets 20. Jhonny gets 40. Timmy gets a whopping 80 insects. He smiles a Timmy smile, passes the turn to Jhonny, and dies end of turn to Hidetsugu's Second Rite. Don't act so surprised. Melvin always plays this deck and every time he manages to pull off the Rite. It's uncanny.

EDIT: I already used the art for Swarm Calling on another card. You got a problem with that?

Yeah, me too.

Original Art - Torturous End
Original Art - Swarm Calling

Card of the Day - Blessings of the Sun, Scarfire Ritual, Dreamcraft

What scatter basically means is that each player plays the spell. It's slightly more complex than that, but that's mostly nitpicky rules issues that won't matter most of the time. Here's how it goes down:

You play a spell with scatter. The spell goes on the stack.
The scatter ability goes on the stack.
Each other player puts a copy of the spell on the stack. If there are two or more other players, the put the spells on the stack in turn order. Since these spells are copies, the scatter ability does not trigger.
The spells resolve. Because of the way the stack works, they should resolve in reverse turn order. Barring any (as of yet nonexistent) stack-order-manipulation, your spell will resolve last.




Scatter isn't a wuss mechanic like ripple or cascade. There is no "may" in the text. Each other player must play his or her copy. Mana production is my favorite thing to be even-handed with as the same amount of mana can seriously help you and seriously hurt your opponent. Unless, of course, Wizards gets rid of mana burn. That would be tragic.




Hey now! You remember reclaim? There's a whole lot of copying going on here, so let me clarify things:

Both reclaim and scatter are triggered at the same time, so I believe you get to choose how to stack them.
When the scatter ability resolves, each other player copies this spell. Since their versions are copies, their scatter abilities don't trigger. However, the reclaim abilities of these copies still trigger, so your opponents are given the option of reclaiming two lands to copy their Dreamcrafts.
When the reclaim ability resolves, if you reclaim two lands, you can copy your Dreamcraft.

Because of the way it works, scatter will only trigger once (on the original spell). I want reclaim to work so that it only triggers once for each scattered spell and once for the original. Unfortunately, I believe the current wording means that you can use reclaim on each of the copies created by reclaim abilities, which was not my intent. The easiest fix would be adding an "if it's not a copy" clause to reclaim, but that would change the way Dreamcraft functions. Currently (at least in my ideals), it makes each player draw a card and then gives each player the option of bouncing two of their lands to draw another. If I added a "not a copy" clause to reclaim, it would each player draw a card and then give only you the option of another.

Quite a conundrum.

Original Art - Blessings of the Sun
Original Art - Scarfire Ritual
Original Art - Dreamcraft