EDH question...

[Goodguy6666]

I hope this is in the correct section and I know I should post it on commander.net, but as it is down due to fire I thought I would ask here.

If your general have been tucked into your library and you then find him for a hideaway land (in the top 4 cards), what happens?

I assume that one of three things can happen:
1. You can choose to exile him face-down and then cast him when the prerequisites have been meet, just like any other card, without paying the mana cost or extra manacost (in case he has been killed a few times before).
2. You can choose to exile him and as a replacement effect reveal him to all players and put him in the commandzone with one more counter on (costs 2 mana more to cast after this).
3. You can choose to put him on the bottom of your library with 2 other cards and put something else under the land.

But according to commander.net there is two different wordings:

"If a Commander would be put into a graveyard or exile from anywhere, its owner may choose to move it to the command zone instead. " - This is a may ability so I can choose to exile him.

"A commander which is face down in exile must be moved by any player to the command zone, face up." - This is a mandatory action.

In the examples (http://mtgcommander.net/rules.php) meant to help understand the rules, it also says:

"Commander will move to the library or hand as normal; only transitions to Exile or the Graveyard may be replaced.
It is possible for a commander to be moved to exile while face down, such that its owner does not possess the knowledge required to apply the aforementioned replacement effect. All players have an equal responsibility to move the commander to exile as soon as possible; knowingly failing to do so is cheating. "

Which does not clear up the confusion for me, unfortunately. Might be due to English as a second language. My final understanding is that I cant put him under the hideaway land without revealing him and putting him back in the commandzone?

Thanks
Ronnie

[Koby]

"A commander which is face down in exile must be moved by any player to the command zone, face up." - This is a mandatory action.


Sounds like you answered your own question. Furthermore, EDH is a casual format so undoubtedly not everyone will know any or all of how to play Magic, so anything that moves the game forward ought to work here.

[cdr]

Furthermore, EDH is a casual format so undoubtedly not everyone will know any or all of how to play Magic, so anything that moves the game forward ought to work here.

Assuming you're not in a side event playing for prizes (which tend to be pretty serious), yes. Those are a bad idea anyway.

I'd expect most EDH leagues are pretty strict about rules also.

[Koby]

For competitive EDH events, there's no good way to verify face-down Exiles without revealing hidden information. At the point in which you could reveal the card to its effect (hide-away for instance) would be too late to back out the effect that put it there. It would have to be the controlling player's responsibility to reveal the face-down commander and move it to the Command Zone.

[Goodguy6666]

Thanks for the answers.

The same rule would mean that you can not spelljack your own general and recast him for free as this requires you to remove him from the game (therefor removed from the game face up)?

This is very important in a maelstrom wanderer build.

Ronnie

[cdr]

Read the rule you pasted again. The owner can choose to allow their general to be exiled face up.

[Goodguy6666]

alright, thanks.

Just wanted to clear up my own confusion...which is now gone. So thanks for the help

Ronnie