Cumulative Upkeep, Varchild's War-riders, Jotun Grun

[tivadar]

I have an issue with these two cards. The rulings on these cards seem to be in direct conflict. And I'm wondering why that is, seeing as either Cum Upkeep should have either a single target, or multiple targets, not one or the other based on the individual card. Any insight on this one? I have a feeling these are literally just conflicting rulings as I don't think anything about Cum Upkeep has been changed.

Jotun Grunt
When paying Jötun Grunt's cumulative upkeep, you may choose a different graveyard for each age counter. For example, if it has three age counters on it, you may put four cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library and two cards from your opponent's graveyard on the bottom of his or her library. However, you can't put five cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library and one card from your opponent's graveyard on the bottom of his or her library.

Q: I have a question that deals with Varchild's War-Riders. Is cumulative upkeep 1 event of "pay the cost X times" or X events of "pay the cost 1 time"? In other words, when my cumulative upkeep is up to 3, do I give three 1/1 tokens all at once or do I give one 1/1 token three times? I've built a deck based on that combo, and I'm wondering if I can split up the 1/1 tokens between multiple opponents in a team or melee game.

A: Cumulative upkeep is a single triggered ability. You will carry out all actions of this triggered ability at one time, when this single ability resolves. Because of this, when the War-Riders ability resolves, you will give the lone chosen opponent 1/1 tokens equal to the number of age counters on the War-Riders. You will not be able to divide up these tokens amongst your opponents.

[DeathwingZERO]

You're confusing "single triggered ability" just a little bit. All that means is that upon the trigger, you choose what needs to be done, and carry out ALL instances of it, or you sacrifice the card. Here's the big difference between the two:

Jotun Grunt: Each age counter is 2 cards. Meaning that the single instance of an age counter cannot be split (example, your 5 and 1 option). But multiple age counters can, due to it's "From any player's graveyard" wording. That means that upon it's trigger, you choose a graveyard for each counter, and take 2 cards for each counter all at once. If you can't, he's gone.

War-Riders difference: it actually did target an opponent. The reason they probably errata'd that to say just "an opponent" now was so things that make the player untargetable don't automatically kill this creature, you actually have the option now to keep it on the board (smoother game play as well, ability cannot be redirected, etc...). But the same instance here happens, you have to choose a single opponent upon trigger, then it resolves the X counters for that choice. Otherwise, it would have said "any number of opponents", just like Grunt does.

Hope that helps. I tried to go as in depth as possible so you understand the subtle differences between the wordings.

[tivadar]

Ahh ok, that does make sense. I always thought grunt had said "two cards in target graveyard" not "two cards in a single graveyard". You're right that there's a difference between these two wordings I believe. I just seems odd that these are handled in different ways in general. Anyways, thanks for the explanation here, this was one thing that was always bothering me.

[parallax]

Where are you getting old-as-dirt card rulings from? A simple search in Gatherer yielded the following:


10/4/2004: In a multiplayer game, you can choose a different opponent each time you deal with the cumulative upkeep.


Cumulative upkeep-Put a 1/1 red Survivor creature token into play under an opponent's control.
Trample, rampage 1 (Whenever this creature becomes blocked, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each creature blocking it beyond the first.)

Note that the wording has been updated.


Cumulative upkeep-Put two cards in a single graveyard on the bottom of their owner's library.

Also note that Jotun Grunt says nothing about "any number of opponents".

[cdr]

DeathwingZERO's post was incomprehensible.


Jötun Grunt
1W
Creature - Giant Soldier
Cumulative upkeep-Put two cards in a single graveyard on the bottom of their owner's library.

Varchild's War Riders
1R
Creature - War-Rider
Cumulative upkeep-Put a 1/1 red Survivor creature token into play under an opponent's control.
Trample, rampage 1

The Q/A tividar quoted is waaay outdated.

Grunt and War Riders work identically - you can choose something different for each age counter.

[DeathwingZERO]

It actually looks like the ruling I was given was wrong. The wording on a lot of the cards in Gatherer (re: any from sets previous Coldsnap) were updated for Age Counters errata, but none had any rulings updates specifically.

I ended up going to Sheltering Ancient and found the following:

* 7/15/2006 You may choose a different creature to put each counter on, but you can also choose the same creature multiple times. The creatures don't have to be controlled by the same opponent.


So it looks like not only does Star City have an inadequate update, so did a judge I asked about it myself once Coldsnap was legal. Kinda odd too, cause the explaination I was given made perfect sense.

[parallax]

The ruling in Gatherer I quoted is from 2004.

You should be careful when looking up rulings in StarCity's Ask the Judge. Many of them are outdated.

The ruling you were given did make sense, and it was in fact the correct ruling back in 1997.

[tivadar]

The ruling in Gatherer I quoted is from 2004.

You should be careful when looking up rulings in StarCity's Ask the Judge. Many of them are outdated.

The ruling you were given did make sense, and it was in fact the correct ruling back in 1997.

Yes, the ruling you quoted is from 2004, it says that you can choose a different opponent each time you deal with cumulative upkeep. Just one issue, you're dealing with cumulative upkeep only once, as it's a single cost. You pay the cost once, you can't pay half the costs and not pay the other half...

I'm actually not sure what you're trying to say the ruling is? Are you arguing that warchild only allows you to put tokens under 1 players control? By this ruling, you should not be able to split grunt graveyards either.


From the official Coldsnap Prerelease FAQ:

Jotun Grunt
When paying Jötun Grunt's cumulative upkeep, you may choose a different graveyard for each age counter. For example, if it has three age counters on it, you may put four cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library and two cards from your opponent's graveyard on the bottom of his or her library. However, you can't put five cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library and one card from your opponent's graveyard on the bottom of his or her library.

This flat out says that you can choose different graveyards, which by the current rulings you shouldn't be able to do with varchild's (unless I'm wrong here...).

[parallax]

I'm sorry. I interpreted the ruling the way I already had assumed it worked. The actual ruling is not very clear and probably didn't mean what I had interpreted it as.

You may choose to split the tokens among any number of opponents every time you pay Varchild's War-Riders' cumulative upkeep. It should work exactly like Jötun Grunt, as the wordings are similar.

[tivadar]

Yes that ruling is outdated due to a change in how cumulative upkeep works. The following line of text was inserted in the rules on cumulative upkeep when Cold Snap was released:

"If [cost] has choices associated with it, each choice is made separately for each age counter, then either the entire set of costs is paid, or none of them is paid."

Before you had to pay all costs at once and could not choose to have these tokens go to different players.


So yes, the rulings on this have changed, what parallax quoted was actually just talking about each time the cumulative upkeep is paid (once a turn), that has been changed apparently to allow different costs to be payed from different places.