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Q: How do Death Cloud and Sacred Ground interact?
A: Your opponent's Death Cloud instructs you to sacrifice lands, so Sacred Ground will trigger and you'll put them back into play.
Q: My opponent has played Domineer on my Leaden Myr and passes the turn. During my turn, I play Neurok Transmuter, and activate the ability to change the Leaden Myr from an artifact creature into a blue creature. Does the Domineer fall off, thereby letting me gain control of my Myr back?
A: Yes. As soon as your creature stops being an Artifact Creature, it's not longer legal for Domineer to enchant. Domineer will fall off as a state-based effect, and you'll get back control of your guy.
Q: Can you use Vedalken Engineer to pay for the cost associated with Crystal Shard? That is, not the activation cost of the Shard, but the cost that the targeted creature's controller has to pay in order to prevent it from returning to its owners hand?
A: No. The payment is neither an artifact spell nor the activated ability of an artifact. It's simply a payment called for by the resolution of an ability.
Q: My opponent blocks my Phyrexian Negator with 2 creatures (a 2/2 and a 1/1). Damage gets dealt and the 2 creatures die and my Negator's triggered ability goes on the stack. If I Stifle this ability, does it prevent all of sacrifice effects (all 3), or does it only prevent the trigger from one of the creatures?
A: All combat damage is dealt at once, so the Negator will only trigger once. Stifle will keep you from having to sacrifice anything.
Q: If I play Ray of Command on my opponent's creature, and that creature is equipped with Empyrial Plate, whose hand does the Empyrial Plate look at to determine the bonus the creature gets?
A: He still controls Empyrial Plate, so it will count his hand."You" always refers to the controller.
Q: Do I have to shuffle Darksteel Colossus back into my library if I don't want to? I want to leave it in the graveyard so I can reanimate it.
A: Yes, Timmy, unless they say"may," abilities on cards aren't optional. You have no choice but to shuffle Darksteel Colossus back into your library.
Q: I know in a draft you are allowed to swap and/or add cards to the deck from your sideboard. Are you required to tell your opponent how many were exchanged/added? When you add basic lands, must you reveal that basic lands were added?
A: No, you never have to tell your opponent how many cards you sided in (even in Constructed) or how many extra lands you got. A smart one can count your deck to see if you added more than you removed, but that's about it.
Q: When I have played a Celestial Dawn and I use my City of Brass for W do I get the damage?
A: No, you won't get damage. Turning City of Brass into a Plains removes all abilities from it.
Q: In play is Quicksilver Elemental, March of the Machines, Arc-Slogger, and Synod Sanctum. The Elemental copies the abilities of both the Slogger and the Sanctum, and then proceeds to use the Slogger's ability 3 or 4 times, removing 30 or 40 cards from the game. Then I use the second of the Sanctum's abilities that has been copied onto the Elemental. Would all those cards jump back into play?
A: This one has been the topic of much discussion amongst rules experts. The current ruling is no. The cards are only brought back if they've been removed by the copied first ability of Synod Sanctum.
Q: I have Volrath's shapeshifter in play. I discard Death-Mask Duplicant to the top of my graveyard. Then I imprint Sol'kanar the Swamp King and Nebuchadnezzar on the Shapeshifter. What would happen if I then discarded a Duplicant? I reckon it'd be a Legend, but what would it's power and toughness be?
A: Strangely enough, and I have to stress that this is the current answer and may change, the Duplicant's power and toughness would each be both 3 and 5. When it deals damage, it will deal a total of 8, but it will be destroyed if it takes 3 damage, because the amount of damage would equal one of its toughnesses. If this changes, I'll let you know.
Thanks to RuneH on EFNet's #mtgjudge for today's Rules Tip of the Day.
