(silver-border) Cyclopean Tomb question

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folding_music
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Post by folding_music » 3 years ago

This is more for fun than anything else; looking for the range of possibilities rather than a correction.

I've got:
Life and Limb
Maskwood Nexus
R&D's Secret Lair
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave
Cyclopean Tomb|LEB (beta edish)
all on board. If I target Skullbriar with Tomb, what are my options?

1) Cyclopean Tomb says "tokens" rather than counters; can I create (any amount of) undefined tokens?
2) If we choose to read the card logically and acknowledge that it means counters, are the counters unnamed or can I choose a name for them?
3) Does the modern ruleset take one look at an unerrata'd "Mono Artifact" sitting in play in 2021 and nope it directly into the graveyard?

thanks!

Accepted Answer

by spacemonaut » 3 years ago
Bearing in mind that R&D's Secret Lair tells us to ignore all errata, but not the contemporary rules for the game:

1) Since you're marking "the changed lands" with "tokens", it's unclear how many each land gets. The conservative interpretation is that each land gets one each, but there's wiggle room that each one gets an arbitrary quantity (since it didn't say how many tokens to mark each land with). We can't tell you 100% which is correct. Note that tokens are inherently treated as permanents, but you won't be creating any particularly useful kind of token: it's a token permanent with no other qualities. That said since it's a token you can represent it with anything. Can I suggest using bat tokens for aesthetic reasons?

2) R&D's Secret Lair says they're tokens; interpreting it otherwise wouldn't be playing the cards as written and the Card Police will be dispatched to your location, giving you about ten minutes to complete your game. That said, even if you did interpret this to mean counters (clearly evaluating the cardboard jail sentence as being worth it, apparently) there's no allowance in the rules or on the card to choose an arbitrary kind of counter, so you're creating a counter which is no kind of counter at all. Proliferate might have trouble with this scenario.

3) Nothing would remove it. "Mono" is now a type with no rules meaning. Enjoy your unlimited tap-less activations!
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user_938036
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Post by user_938036 » 3 years ago

1) What do you mean (any amount of)?
2) In this set up you do get an unnamed (marker) on Skullbriar.
3)That's not how the rules work. Depending on your playgroup's interpretation of R&D's secret lair either the tap cost/restriction doesn't exist because it isn't written out or it still is there because that's what being a mono artifact means. Thinking about it more, the result should be that activating it causes it to become tapped because that's what being a mono artifact means. However, because it isn't a cost and artifacts no longer "turn off" when tapped, you can keep using the ability of the tapped tomb.

4) The most interesting about playing R&D's secret lair with that version of Cyclopean tomb is that it doesn't have two separate abilities. As read, each time you activate it, it creates a delayed trigger that will ask you to remove a token each upkeep.

5) An unfortunate function of R&D's Secret Lair is that Skullbriar won't keep its swampness as it changes zones even if it keeps its "marker" This is because you are simply marking the change with a token as opposed to creating an effect that makes it a swamp as long as it has the "marker" on it

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spacemonaut
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Post by spacemonaut » 3 years ago

Bearing in mind that R&D's Secret Lair tells us to ignore all errata, but not the contemporary rules for the game:

1) Since you're marking "the changed lands" with "tokens", it's unclear how many each land gets. The conservative interpretation is that each land gets one each, but there's wiggle room that each one gets an arbitrary quantity (since it didn't say how many tokens to mark each land with). We can't tell you 100% which is correct. Note that tokens are inherently treated as permanents, but you won't be creating any particularly useful kind of token: it's a token permanent with no other qualities. That said since it's a token you can represent it with anything. Can I suggest using bat tokens for aesthetic reasons?

2) R&D's Secret Lair says they're tokens; interpreting it otherwise wouldn't be playing the cards as written and the Card Police will be dispatched to your location, giving you about ten minutes to complete your game. That said, even if you did interpret this to mean counters (clearly evaluating the cardboard jail sentence as being worth it, apparently) there's no allowance in the rules or on the card to choose an arbitrary kind of counter, so you're creating a counter which is no kind of counter at all. Proliferate might have trouble with this scenario.

3) Nothing would remove it. "Mono" is now a type with no rules meaning. Enjoy your unlimited tap-less activations!
Last edited by spacemonaut 3 years ago, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by void_nothing » 3 years ago

Note that I marked spacemonaut's post as the best answer, not the correct one, since Un-cards are outside the purview of the Comprehensive Rules. The only way to get absolute confirmation of a definitive answer ("""absolute""" and """definitive""" that is) is to bother Mark Rosewater on Twitter.

spacemonaut's answer is the one that follows the same logic as the game rules, however.
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