[For the next few months, I've invited some new writers to try their hand at the Feature Friday slot that used to be Lee Sharpe's. Peter Cooper is our first of this new crop. He's a fine judge that I've worked with at several high-level events and readers who've been missing Lee's rules-heavy approach to the column will find some good stuff in here, as Peter takes a simple rule of thumb and applies it to situations that range from trivial to torturous. Enjoy! -Seamus]

It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over
Hello! I'm Peter Cooper, an area-level judge from central Massachusetts, and I'd like to thank Star City Games for giving me this opportunity to write about something near and dear to my heart: the rules of Magic. About 6 years ago, I started playing Magic some with my then-girlfriend and now-wife, but I wasn't really excited about the game until I looked online and read the Comprehensive Rules. As you may have guessed from that sentence, I'm a Melvin who just marvels at the complexity of a game that tries to deal with a completely new set of playing pieces coming out every few months. As I was thinking about some of the Magic rules questions I'd been asked that tend to confuse many people, I realized that many of the answers had a simple principle in common that gives the correct answer. I figured I'd show fellow judges and players this principle and how to apply it in situations ranging from simple to complicated. The principle?

Changing what a card looks like doesn't stop any effects that are applying to it.

You see, at its core, the rules of Magic don't really distinguish between a creature card or a copy of an instant spell. They're just all objects, and coincidentally, some rules specify that objects that happen to be creatures can be declared as attackers, and objects that happen to be Auras can be attached to other objects. When an object changes zones, with certain rare exceptions, it's treated as a completely new object. But when an object stays in the same zone, it's the same object, even if there are a bunch of effects applying to it. Let's take a look at some examples:

Example 1: Morph and Giant Growth
Suppose you attack with a face-down Krosan Cloudscraper; play Giant Growth on it; and then turn the Cloudscraper face up. Just because the creature is now face-up doesn't mean that the Giant Growth's effect has ended, so your Cloudscraper will be a hefty 16/16. It's still the same creature, and the same object; it just looks a little different when it's face-up.

Example 2: Morph and Serendib Sorcerer
Most people intuitively understand that last example. This next one trips some people up, however. Take that same face-down Krosan Cloudscraper, and then play the ability of Serendib Sorcerer on it to make it an 0/2. Then turn the Cloudscraper face-up. What do you get? Well, in the same way as the last example, the effect of the Sorcerer hasn't ended yet, and is still applying to the Cloudscraper, so it's still a lowly 0/2. Until end of turn, that is. It's still the same object, and so the effect still applies until it wears off.

Example 3: Morph and Cytoshape
This time, take that face-down Krosan Cloudscraper and play Cytoshape on it to turn it into a copy of, say, Eager Cadet. You've now got a face-down Eager Cadet, so it's a 2/2 (since it is face-down), but you can't turn it face-up: when you try to reveal its Morph cost to pay it, it doesn't have one. When your opponent plays Break Open to turn it face up, you see the rather normal Eager Cadet underneath (until end of turn, of course). Rule 504.7 describes that you apply "face-down-ness" after you apply copy effects.

Example 4: Cytoshape and Woodwraith Corrupter
Now things get a little trickier. Play Woodwraith Corrupter's ability on a Forest, to make it into a 4/4 black and green Land Creature — Forest Elemental Horror. Then play Cytoshape on the animated Forest to change it into a copy of a Grizzly Bears. What do you have now? Copy effects like Cytoshape apply in the lowest layer, below effects like the one from Woodwraith Corrupter. That means you start with the Cytoshape effect first, and then apply the effect from the Corrupter. That means that you start with a 2/2 green Creature — Bear named "Grizzly Bears" and change it into a 4/4 black and green Creature — Bear Elemental Horror named "Grizzly Bears" (even though the actual card you see in front of you says Forest on it). One tricky part that people can miss here is that the "It's still a land" clause on the Corrupter is defined in rule 212.1c to actually mean "It keeps all prior types and subtypes," so it's still a Bear and just gains the Elemental and Horror subtypes.

While this may seem a bit weirder, it's really the same principle that we used in the prior examples. All the effects applying to that object still apply for their complete duration, even once the object looks drastically different. While it is key to apply the effects in the right order, as long as the object is still in play, the effects still apply.

Example 5: (Melvins Only) Vesuvan Doppelganger, Licids, and Animated Equipment
Only read this section if you're a rules guru, or want to be. Sometimes the rules of Magic get very, very strange. You have been warned.

Suppose I have in play March of the Machines, a Bonesplitter (animated by the March of the Machines), a Grizzly Bears, and a Vesuvan Doppelganger copying a Transmogrifying Licid. At the start of my next upkeep, I stack the Doppelganger's ability targeting the (animated) Bonesplitter, and, in response, activate its ability from the Licid, targeting the Grizzly Bears [Lost yet? I am. -S]. The Doppelganger-Licid starts enchanting the Bears, and then the Doppelganger's ability resolves, and it starts copying the Bonesplitter while still attached to the Bears and still having the Licid effect apply. That means that what's currently enchanting the Grizzly Bears looks like this:

Bonesplitter {1}
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant Creature
Equipped creature gets +2/+0.
Equip {1}
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may have this creature become a copy of target creature except for its color. If you do, this creature gains this ability.

Magic only cares that the Doppelganger-Bonesplitter is attached to the Grizzly Bears; the noun phrase "equipped creature" actually means "object that this is attached to" (Rules 212.2j, 212.4h, 412.2, and 501.2 imply this), which means that the Bears get +2/+0 even though the Bonesplitter is an Aura instead of an Equipment. Since the definition of Equip uses the word "attach", which applies just fine to Auras, you can play the Equip ability to move the Aura onto another creature. Also, you can Disenchant the March of the Machines and pay {1} to end to the Licid effect, and the Bonesplitter reverts to being just a normal Equipment, still attached to the Bears.

At this point, some of you are saying "Wow, that's weird!", some of you are saying "Huh?", and most of you probably never even got to reading down this far. And yes, this example is completely contrived and will (probably) [(... hopefully) -S] never actually happen in a game of Magic. But the real point is that even with the wackiness of an effect like the ones on Licids, you just keep on applying each effect for the length of its duration, even if the object that you're applying it to looks completely different from how it did when the effect started.