Sorry if this has been asked before, but my friend says that in Arena rules "sacrifice a creature" means you can sacrifice creatures you don't control (like an opponent's) as well as ones you do, unlike the tabletop game, since the wording doesn't specify your creature specifically. I can't find a copy of the Arena rules to verify this and I don't have any cards with sacrifice a creature in Arena yet to check that way so I thought I would ask here cause it seems kinda OP if so?
Are Arena rules different than tabletop? My friend says they are
QuestionI absolutely have to know how this misunderstanding happened
Yeah this one is crazy. I cannot think of a single way for this to get confused when they already know the rules correctly in paper.
My guess is Lilliana of the veil and mis-reading it
Doesn’t Lilliana say “target” players sacrifices creature
OP: *-2 Lilliana and targets their friend
Friend: "Oh, I have to sacrifice a creature? Then I'll choose one of your creatures."
Me and my friends actyally played like this like 15 years ago :D We didn't know all the rules back then and we laughed a lot when we got actual rules and saw our mistakes :D
Same. We played "modern" just with the bulk shit we had laying around from drafts and we were so wrong about everything.
At some point someone played something that let someone else take their turn and we were just like "well, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to throw away their entire hand so I guess there's no rule preventing that. Same with permanents. So I guess I'll just... carefully puts everything not in the library into the graveyard and... pass the turn back to you!"
I remember when first starting to play with my brother, and we hadn't learned about the 1 land per turn rule.
"You may play an additional land this turn" "What do you mean? I played all my lands on turn 1 already!"
In college I had some friends getting into the game with starter decks. After a few days they were all complaining about how overpowered mono green was. I watched them play a game and realized they thought mana dorks tapping meant search your deck for a forest and put it into play. Llanowar elves was single handedly stomping games left and right
Guess I'll grab an extra land from the collection, didn't say I have to play it from my hand.
fun times :)
We called that style 7 card mana puke. Always draw to 7 cards and play all your lands every turn. It was silly
My husband used to think that the "regenerate" keyword brought permanents back from the graveyard to the battlefield. I was a brand-new player and could figure out how to beat his [[Ezuri, Renegade Leader]] EDH deck.
Ezuri, Renegade Leader - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call
Played for 20 years and never really understood the stack, nor priority until playing arena. It's a great way to learn the complexity of the rules.
Reminds me of playing Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid...and playing on prerelease where no one is 100% sure what a card does.
Oh man, biggest dick move to my best friend back in the 90's.
Not understanding LIFO, he'd tap all 5 lands to cast Fire Elemental, I'd respond with my Icy Manipulator by tapping one of his lands.
Last in first out, so I tapped his lands before he got to use it!
And now to add insult to injury he takes 4 mana burn (which was also a thing back then).
Even back then as kids, he grumbled that this couldn't actually be right.
Anyway, Nerf Icy!
right? that would be so dumb
Dude, my friend once cast a dragon with devour, devoured his oponents creatures and put +1/+1 counters on It.
Then, when he tried to do it on a FNM It, let's Just say he went back home sooner lol
It definitely says one of those words, yeah
player, yes
My guess is someone took control of his creature with a Persuasion effect then sac’d it.
Either that or he was forced to sac. Either way he wasn’t reading a card
The closest I can think is maybe [[Incriminate]] with only a single target option available? Would look like they chose what you sac?
I remember playing in 97, around the time the first edict was printed, and every sixth grader I knew was so geeked that you could target yourself and sacrifice your opponent’s Autumn Willow.
Takes me back to the lunchroom Magic days.
commander players ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Odd rules can be developed if you only play kitchen table magic and don't go to a FNM or something like that.
I recall when I was younger that if I were to attack with a creature my friend would "Tap it in response." so that the attack didn't happen. Eventually we learned the rules, but yeah, odd things can happen if you're not going into a competitive format.
Yeah I get that, but this is the complete opposite. They’re playing the rules correctly in paper and saying that Arena gets the rules wrong.
See OP’s other post for context:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgrules/comments/14z3684/can_sacrifice_a_creature_be_used_for_opponents/
The friend is trying to get away with cheating by saying ‘it works that way on Arena!’ (spoiler alert: it doesn’t)
It could also be an honest mistake, I guess, but that seems like a stretch…
Ahh ok yeah. Scumbag. Got it.
EDIT: Was partner last time…
Looks like they were playing with the partner, and the partner’s friend was the one coming up with the creative rules interpretation…
But I like my “they broke up over it” narrative.
When I first started playing my brother and I thought that any flying creature automatically won combat with a non-flying creature. So we built absolutely ghastly decks filled with the most inefficient common vanilla flying creatures
The classic "how can a dinosaur kill a bird? It can't, because the bird flies. The dinosaur doesn't do combat damage when the bird blocks it, duh.
Played dark ritual as a land that taps for 3 🙈
When my friends and I played "modern" with our draft chaff we had no idea how things worked so we thought you could just sacrifice your stuff any time you wanted because "why would anyone want to throw away their creatures/hand?"
This led to some really weird situations when someone got a card (I don't remember what it was) that let someone else take your turn for you. They basically just shoved everything into the graveyard and passed which was hilariously wrong.
Well OP's friend is implying that any free sac outlet allows you to clear your opponent's board
Yes. We were playing as if you didn't need a sac outlet to sacrifice your entire board. It's similar but what makes OP's friend bad is that they know the rules but try to claim arena does it differently when it just doesn't.
1 or 2 mana for a continuous one sided boardwipe sounds just slightly OP 😂
That could come from a variety of places in tabletop and I mentioned this before the last time this was asked but you can find the players who started online because they have a really good understanding of combat steps.
There was an entire ripple through the judge community regarding combat shortcuts in paper magic. It got the shortcut guidelines changed.
Let's suppose that you have two creatures and I have a repeatable tap effect.
If you say I'm going to attack with these two guys. Then I'm going to say, since you didn't give me a chance to take actions before you enter combat we have to back up. I'm going to tap that guy at the beginning of combat step. This could be your friends "tap in response".
If you know your friend has a repeatable tap effect then you need to take a little more effort and make him do it.
"Beginning of combat?" This is his opportunity to tap your creature before it's declared as an attacker.
If he passes priority at that point and you tap your guys he can't back up anymore.
A long long time ago tapped blockers didn't deal combat damage but that hasn't been the case in a long time.
That's just a timing issue, needs to be done as main phase passes to declare attackers but before the card is actually declared an attacker.
I'm paper a lot of people just zip past the beginning of combat phase step and jump right to declare attackers so I see no issue with the way your friend was playing.
Allow me to elaborate further.
My friend would play [[silent arbiter]] which made it so no more than one creature could attack each turn. And what would happen was I declare an attack, he would tap it in response and then because I declared the attacker I couldn't attack with something else.
It was not a timing issue, it was just.... a lot of other things.
Yeah i had a friend recently who ia supposedly into magic quite a bit but he thought he could use a tap creature effect at instant speed to "counter" someone else tapping to pay for an effect.
when I was younger that if I were to attack with a creature my friend would "Tap it in response." so that the attack didn't happen
Yeah I used to do that too, and was kind of co fused when I came back and started playing on arena. Though interrupts were a card tyow when I played back then too!
You don’t mean your friend tapped your creature as if he was the owner. Or do you mean he’d use a spell or ability to tap, but after attackers had been declared?
I'd have to dig out the old rules, but I think this is why they cleared it up and made the "tap" part of the cost of declaring the attack instead of part of the sequence. Since it is a cost, you can't tap an opponent's creature at the time they are declared to be attackers although you CAN tap them AFTER attack phase is declared but BEFORE attackers are declared, so then they can't be used.
I've run into a few people back in the day who would use a tapping ability to tap out a creature that's been declared as the attacker to stop them being used so maybe it was a valid interaction at one time.
It's a misunderstanding of timing based on a shortcut.
If you draw your card, look at your board, grab two guys and turn them sideways and say attacking you haven't given your opponent a chance to pass the phase so they can go "back up and tap that guy first" "in response" hasn't really been meaningful MTG language in a long time.
Pretty sure that was actually a legitimate thing at one point early in the game.
Edit: because apparently I'm being downvoted for something I didn't say...
I'm saying you used to be able to tap creatures to prevent damage, not sacrifice other people's creatures.
Edit2: It was tapped blockers dealt no damage under the old rules
I can’t believe that. If you look on Scryfall, the very earliest cards with ‘sacrifice’ do specify ‘sacrifice one of your…’, but as early as Legends you see cards like [[Land Equilibirium]], [[Mold Demon]], [[Wood Elemental]], which clearly imply that you can only sacrifice your own stuff without spelling it out.
Neat way to try to make Wood Elemental playable in green vs green matches, though…
You are replying to someone replying to someone about tapping a creature in response to declaring attacks, not someone replying to the OP about sacrificing someone else's creatures.
Oh, my bad. But I’ll attribute 15% of the blame to Reddit’s formatting…
I meant that you used to be able to tap creatures to prevent damage
Please note, I'm not saying anything about dealing damage, purely based on weather or not the creature was attacking.
It was effectively used with [[silent arbiter]] and [[icy manipulator]] to make it so I couldn't attack peroid.
i think he should have his friend come and explain himself. do an AMA or something.
Also why? I assumed from the title they were trying to cheat, but they’re just dumb lol
I tried teaching a friend MTG once and he was picking it up well then he played against one of his other buddies who convinced him you can use your opponents lands to cast your spells
Very "My house rules are everyones rules" of him.
I have a feeling this comes from a misunderstanding about that you have effects that can cause your opponent to sac and costs that make you sac.
Only different "rules" are Alchemy which are arena exclusive because it can only be done via computer
701.16a To sacrifice a permanent, its controller moves it from the battlefield directly to its owner’s graveyard. A player can’t sacrifice something that isn’t a permanent, or something that’s a permanent he or she doesn’t control. Sacrificing a permanent doesn’t destroy it, so regeneration or other effects that replace destruction can’t affect this action.
The rules are the rules.
701.16????? Jesus Christ how many rules are there?
At least two
The rules are numbered so that the hundreds digit is a section number. The 500s only run 500-514, for example; they are part of section 5 "Turn Structure".
But there are still a whole lot of them. A single rule spawns multiple subrules. 702 Keyword Abilities span from 702.1 (the general rules about keyword abilities), 702.2 (deathtouch), 702.3 (defender), all the way to 702.165 (backup).
Oh, so you like Magic: The Gathering? Name all 164 keyword abilities.
A lot; The Comprehensive Rulebook is a 281 pages long PDF file.
However, it's not actually the 701st rule in the PDF. It's divided into sections that allow a ruling to be efficiently found within the document. For example, if someone were to ask if the ignored rolls for something like [[Barbarian Class]] count towards [[Vexing Puzzlebox]], I could go straight to 706, which has the rules for rolling dice, in the Rulebook rather than looking through the whole 281 page document.
Also, a lot of the rules are obvious things that need to exist so they're enforceable. For example, 108.2 is literally just "Anything that refers to a card can only mean a Magic card"
(Also, I say 108.2 is obvious, but I have legit had someone at my LGS ask if they can Wish for Exodia, so...🙄)
The facts are the facts
He is incorrect. Arena rules are the same as paper.
There are new digital mechanics in Alchemy/Historic but it doesn't change how sacrifice works.
And you can't prove an infinite loop in arena.
You cant execute an infinite loop in paper either. You just agree with your opponent it's an infinite loop and that you will execute it a million time
It's codified in the rules that an infinite loop that can't end on its own makes the game a tie, an infinite loop that can, is executed an amount of times the controller of the loop chooses. The game is advanced to that conclusion and proceeds. In arena you must click through it. It makes combo decks notably worse.
But what are the alternatives ?
Make the game repeat a set of actions a certain number of times without player input, and preferably with minimal or no animations.
On Arena: clicking through every turn
On paper: OK, so you draw every card in your library and one more.
So much faster lol
In paper there are rules for loops in play arena doesn't have those rules. Ergo there is a bit of disconnect between paper and arena.
That's misleading. You can declare a loop in paper magic. If your opponent disagrees you can call a judge.
That's basically what they said. It just doesn't actually result in "infinite" anything, since you have to declare a finite (if arbitrarily large) number of iterations.
Your friend is completely wrong. Sacrifice means your creatures, whether it be on paper, Arena, or even MTGO.
Mtgo was bugged last month, but was hot fixed and let you select opponents permanents for your sac spell if you did The log said the spell fizzled. I complained and got a refund due to it being confusing trigger of sac x then exile y.
I didn't even know that happened. Huh
Well, your permanents, anyway. "Sacrifice a creature" means one of your creatures. "Sacrifice an artifact or land" probably doesn't mean a creature, though it could do if you had one of the right combination of types.
Your friend is 100% WRONG.
Edit from the future:
Sorry folks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If you came here looking for something, welcome to the Redditpocalypse. Feel free to contact me on kbin.social @GeekFTW, or on Universedon.com @GeekFTW to ask and I may help. Stay fresh, cheesebags.
What is it with these paper-only players and their fantastic misunderstanding of what Arena is? Wasn’t there literally a post yesterday about people who think Arena follows a different ruleset than paper Magic?
Like, nevermind whether that’s actually true, which for the record it’s not. But what in the fuck of all that is mighty is WotC’s motivation for making a seperate ruleset for Arena?
They have held professional tournaments on the Arena client.
These people are just dumb, straight up.
There is no such thing as "the Arena rules."
The closest thing would be deck size and token count limits, which I believe don't exist in paper.
Also alchemy only mechanics.
And limits on the power and toughness of a creature or number of counters. Also there's a limit on the life players can get, but it's far less likely to matter since there are fewer ways to double your life total than to double a creature's power or counters and you'd need to do it 32 times more.
Also hand smoothing.
friend says that in Arena rules "sacrifice a creature" means you can sacrifice creatures you don't control (like an opponent's)
No. You can only sac permanents you control.
Outside of a few bugs, Arena is the purest form of MTG rules.
Your friend is wrong about sacrifice though.
Here's the rule about Sacrifice.
701.17. Sacrifice
701.17a To sacrifice a permanent, its controller moves it from the battlefield directly to its owner’s graveyard. A player can’t sacrifice something that isn’t a permanent, or something that’s a permanent they don’t control. Sacrificing a permanent doesn’t destroy it, so regeneration or other effects that replace destruction can’t affect this action.
For example
[[Carrion Feeder]] has the ability "Sacrifice a creature: put a +1/+1 counter on Carrion Feeder"
since sacrificing is part of the cost, it's up to them to sacrifice the creature.
[[Sheoldred's Edict]] causes your opponents to sacrifice something, but not you, and it says "Each Opponent." for its abilities.
The only thing that arena does do notably different that I can think of is not allowing players to order effects
You can turn off "Auto Order Triggered Abilities" in the settings
There's a toggleable option to enable that
Sacrifice has never worked like that. If you could sacrifice your opponents creatures, that would've just destroyed the game.
Your friend is talking out of their ass and this is easily proven if you literally just go on arena, play a card that says sac creature, the game just wouldn't allow you to target any of your opponents permanents.
I craft cards in arena to learn how they work.
Has he been killing your creatures with seemingly impossibly strong cards?
I’ve seen 2 posts like this of paper players saying arena rules are wrong. Are paper players fucking stupid
I mean, it’s easy to never mess up the rules when Arena literally will not let you. Fact is, Magic is a very complicated game and anyone who got started in paper definitely screwed up or misunderstood the rules at some point.
From personal experience I’ve never run into a paper player who’s said the Arena rules are wrong/different. Sounds like these people are either trying to cheat and/or play with their weird house rules
This is actually extremely common, because there’s nothing enforcing the correct rules for them. Magic is really hard, and if you aren’t taught by someone who knows what they’re doing or if you never go to any competitive events, it’s super easy to misinterpret something and have that stick.
They aren’t “fucking stupid” they’re just misinformed.
I remember blowing a dude up at FNM before the backside CMC rule change - this was during BFZ standard:
Dude has 2 Hangarback Walkers and a flipped baby Nissa. I cast a Displacement Wave for X=0, and he didn't realize that backsides had 0 CMC at the time, so I bounced his entire (very threatining) board for UU.
He was very confused, called the judge, was told I was right, and scooped pretty quickly. He wasn't a dick about it or anything, he just honestly didn't know.
Lots of new players with not much experience coming in with Steam and LotR releases ?
They pay hundreds of dollars for cardboard, what do you think?
ive got loads of card to tho so im stupid to lmao. at least i learned the game before i started telling people how to play it tho
Nah they have just been playing it "thier" way for so long they think everyone else is wrong.
Weird take considering Arena is the best place for “stupid players” since it simply handles all the rules triggers for you, c’mon now
We had this discussion yesterday.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/14yevnu/my_play_group_tells_me_arena_is_not_good_for/
There are slight rules tweaks on Arena, due to limitations of the platform (max 250 cards in deck, max 250 tokens, it can't identify infinite combos so you have to click through them manually, etc), and some options are hidden by default (you should turn off automatic trigger ordering and combat damage assignment, for example), theres hand smoothing in Bo1 (which isn't played in paper anyway), but other than that, it follows all the normal rules.
It looks like damage reduces Toughness on Arena, but that's not how it actually plays out there.
That is very wrong. Others have explained as much, but I still want to know how you're friend got this wrong? Did they misread, for example, [[liliana of the veil]] (−2: Target player sacrifices a creature.)? It targets a player first, and then based on the targeting, the person targeted must follow through with the sacrifice trigger (if you targetted yourself, then you choose your own creature to sacrifice)
Are they new to the game? If not then...
The only difference between arena and physical is that there are some cards that says may on the card which is automatic on arena to save time can't think of an example.
In historic there are cards which have been changed from paper, usually banned cards. Also alchemy is a unique format to arena. If you play standard it's identical.
Your friend is attempting to cheat.
Your friend is high
You're friend has no idea wtf he is talking about.
Imagine this rule with cards like [[Viscera Seer]] or [[Carrion Feeder]].
“I tap my Evolving Wilds and sacrifice… your Evolving Wilds”
“Damn! Wait… in response… I tap my Evolving Wilds, and sacrifice your Evolving Wilds!”
“Ah, I see you are a worthy adversary. Game on, my friend”
I suspend [[Greater Gargadon]] GG, next game
Good God, how has that card not been banned yet? It’s like they don’t even want Magic: The Sacrificing to be a legitimate competitive game!
Makes you wonder why [[Lash of the balrog]] even has two modes :-P
The only way to sacrifice an opponents creature is to take control of said creature and sacrifice it or force your opponent to sacrifice with a card effect. In that case, your opponent picks the creatures to sacrifice, not you.
If you use, say, [[Deadly Dispute]], you are only allowed to sacrifice creatures you control. If you took over an opponents monster with say [[Mind Flayer]], or [[Packs Betrayal]], then you could sacrifice the opponents creature because it's currently under your control.
Your friend is a raging idiot.
Is your friend arguing that a spell that says "As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature," means you can force your opponent to sacrifice a creature to pay that cost? If they are, then they're a dumb-dumb because that's not how it works, not even fucking close.
The game rules are the game rules...sounds like your friend needed an alternate win condition
The word sacrifice is defined as creature you control. They are definitely wrong.
Straight from comp rules (bolding is my emphasis):
701.15a To sacrifice a permanent, its controller moves it from the battlefield directly to its owner’s graveyard. A player can’t sacrifice something that isn’t a permanent, or something that’s a permanent he or she doesn’t control. Sacrificing a permanent doesn’t destroy it, so regeneration or other effects that replace destruction can’t affect this action.
Arena handles this correctly. You can sacrifice a creature that someone else owns if you control it (i.e. with [[Mass Manipulation]]) but not if you don’t control it.
Source: TRUST ME BRO
Your friend is an idiot/cheater.
There are some areas where Arena works slightly differently in a meta sense, most notably the hand smoothing when you are in best-of-one which is obviously something that's impossible on paper. You also have some digital-only cards which rely on an omniscient game runner to fairly generate or track their effects.
However, the rules within the game itself once you're in it are the same. Your friend heard someone say something that they either greatly misinterpreted or that was wrong from the get-go that they never checked. Be wary when this person is reporting news to you secondhand.
Nope, same rules.
Alchemy card updates and mechanics are specific to Arena, but rule wise it all acts the same.
Hahaha your friend is silly!
I play a tergrid historic brawl deck. If I could decide for my opponent what they sacrifice, that would be beyond broken. Arena, as far as I've seen, follows tabletop rules.
Your friends wrong
Reminds me of when I first started playing kitchen table with friends. I thought Llanowar Elves let you tap to get a green mana from your deck and add it to the field. We played for months with broken rules like this. Not relevant to OPs question it just brought back some good memories.
Your friend is a million billion percent wrong about that sacrifice a creature ruling.
Your friend is wrong. You cannot sacrifice a permanent you don’t control
Arena works the same way as the tabletop game.
Most the differences between the two involve technical limitations surrounding loops and very big numbers.
Normally sacrifice refers to your own cards, but if in doubt you can look up rulings on gatherer or ask here or whatever
Your friend doesn't know shit.
You can make your enemy sacrifice their creature, [[Sheoldred's Edict]] but you can't use [[Village Rites]] targetting creatures on their side of the board. But you can use a spell that gains control of enemy's creature, [[Claim The Firstborn]] and then sacc it with your village rites, maybe that's what caused your friend to be confused?
It isn't really a sacrifice if it doesn't harm you in any way, is it?
I really don't get how they could think this, as a digital format would make it easy to demonstrate how false this is-- as soon as you try it and it doesn't work, you know it isn't true.
Any rule differences between arena and tabletop are limited to Alchemy. They're not significant.
Arena is actually my go to for figuring out how a card that confuses me works.
Unless you forgot to mention that he stole the card and then sacked it.
I would like to purchase a box of LTR draft boosters, and I am going to sacrifice your money to buy it
No, the rules aren't different, but sometimes you need to hold full control in order to do things that you might easily telegraph in paper magic. The example that i can think of is Jan Jensen, Chaos Crafter and Wish Talisman. In paper magic is super easy to use the talisman and sav it before your opponent gets it, but in arena if you don't hold full control then the game will resolve the wish talisman without giving you priority again.
It also seems like stacking triggered abilities in a specific order when they're happening at the same time is impossible, but I would love to learn otherwise.
Both of these are... rather niche scenarios, though.
Your friend is either wrong or cheating. The rules are the same
What is your friend on and where can I get some? He is out of his mind. The rules are the same. It doesn’t need to specify “your creature” because thats part of the definition of the “sacrifice” mechanic. Your friend is either high as a kite or an idiot lol. Sorry.
These paper vs arena rules posts remind me of when i played yugioh as a kid as i just shoved a bunch of banned cards in my beck because the kids at school didn't understand that pot of greed was fundamentally broken and that i absolutely shouldn't have 7 of them.
"Sacrifice" means "move a permanent (of the specified type) you control to it's owners graveyard"
Your friend has been cheating.
sorry, but your friend is a dumbass
Your friend is either lying or dumb as hell.
The only rules that are different for Arena than Tabletop are the inclusion of Alchemy cards. Alchemy cards are digital-only and includes mechanics which are highly impractical to do in paper.
One of the biggest things is that there's a number of spells that let you do things with cards in hidden information zones (like the deck) but have strict requirements, like "instant or sorcery" or "creature." When you do the thing, such as take the card from the library and put it into your hand, you have to reveal the card to your opponent. This is done so you can't cheat and say "but I totally got a creature" when you in fact got a game-winning enchantment.
Various Alchemy mechanics let you interact with hidden-information zone cards without revealing them to your opponent (or yourself! Seek doesn't shuffle your deck so you have to seek past cards that don't meet the requirements without actually revealing them to yourself) because Arena itself ensures you aren't cheating. You could do it in paper, but you'd have to call a judge over every time to watch you to ensure you aren't cheating and that's not practical.
Many of the other Alchemy mechanics would be fine in more casual play where you can proxy but a serious pain in tournament play. Like conjuring cards and drafting from a card's spellbook, because you'd have to have so many official cards of the conjured card that it wouldn't really be possible (imagine playing Oracle of the Alpha and having to actually own multiple copies of the power 9 to shuffle into your deck!)
But alchemy is the only rules difference between Paper and Arena.
I'm going to take another interpretation of this. Your bud has decided that arena sucks, and has come up with some odd conspiracy theories to discredit arena because they think playing in paper is better.
Only if and when there is a bug in Arena. Otherwise no.
Sacrifice in ANY format is only creatures you CONTROL. Now, you can sacrifice creatures you don’t OWN as long as you CONTROL them (I.e. [[bloody betrayal]] your [[etali, primal conqueror]], swing at your face for 7, then sac it to my [[ob nixilis, the adversary]] to make a 7 loyalty copy.) your friend seems confused and like he’s the type to never admit when he’s wrong.
Nope he be wrong. Infact you can play arena to get a better understanding of how paper works
This sounds like your friend is that third grader who constantly makes up rules so he can win everything. That’s not how magic works. The rules state you can only sacrifice your own creatures, that’s why they use the word sacrifice.
Your friend is trolling you
Your friend needs to consult dictionary on the meaning of the word 'sacrifice'.
User deleted comment
10mo
Control, not own. If you control a creature owned by your opponent you can definitely sac it.
User deleted comment
10mo
“own” is not a term used in MTG
The only way to sac your oppnent's creature is by talking over control of it it first with cards like [[Act of Treason]]. That way you control a creature you do not own but you're allowed to sac it if you have a sac outlet.
Otherwise you're friend is wrong.
Its not a sacrifice if its not YOUR creature. Per the meaning of what a sacrifice is in the English language
Your friend just doesn’t play by the mechanics
What kind of sacrifice would it be, if you don’t own it?
In theory, yes, in prectice, no.
There are a few minor things that differentiate arena from tabletop, for example token limit, life integer overflow, semi-infinite combos, etc, but 99.9% of your games won't be different then tabletop unless you are specifically trying to break the servers.
There is also the shuffler argument.
The arena rules are the real rules. Its about as cut and dry as you can get.
Its easy to understand how people can play a mutated version of the game when someone teaches it to you or you only play in a small group. I think most groups have some small unconscious rules mutations or misunderstandings. Most of them are pretty minor.
However, what your friend is saying is categorically wrong. It throws off game balance and should be corrected.
Ask your friend if he believes fools have the right to speak.
I am literally going to copy past my comment from a different thread with the same topic and just leave it here. That sounds like the... Arena gets rules wrong? The software developed by the very creator of the card game gets rules wrong? How is that even possible? Arena is a great place to learn how to play, exactly because all rulings and card interactions are correct by default - Wizards themselves have developed the game (well, the programmers they hired anyway) so.. I played paper for years, and there are some things you might never learn unless you play on Arena and see for yourself the correct card interactions.
Your friend is wrong and doesn’t know how to play Magic correctly. This is why you shouldn’t learn in paper with players who mislearned the rules themselves. Learn in Arena which has the correct rules and forces you to play without missed triggers and illegal game states.
There are no special “Arena rules” except for the way the game clock is handled in tournament play.
Your friend has been playing MtG wrong.
Just open a rulebook.
Sounds like when I used to play yugioh with my little brother as a kid but neither of us knew the rules and I just pretended I did and made shit up that benefitted me lol.
Is he also new to mtg or is he trying to be a dick?
Na he’s wrong as hell
Search for new friends imho
that is most certainly not true.
User deleted comment
10mo
[[Grima Wormtongue]] only gives me the option to sacrifice my creatures. Also cards like [[Witch-King of Angmar]] or [[Witch-King, Bringer of Ruin]] both state either “each opponent sacrifices” or “defending player sacrifices”, which tells you WHO is sacrificing WHOSE creature.
Your abilities say “sacrifice creature”? It means one of your creatures. If it says opponent sacrifices a creature, then the opponent has to a sacrifice one of their creatures.
Is this a troll post going off the similar one from yesterday? If not your friend is a total moron.
Idk where your friend learned to play, but the rules are the same. There are some different mechanics in arena that cannot be implemented due to the limitations of paper. EG: Seek is an Arena only mechanic.
Your friend is dumb as hell and you should ask yourself what else he has been pathological lying to you about.
Bro is your friend smoking that Breaking Bad level snow and if so where can I get some??
As someone who adores playing Rakdos Sacrifice decks, you can only sac a permanent you control. It’s impossible to do otherwise. Not to mention most of the Magic cards are 1-1 (emphasis on MOST) the same so I’m pretty sure if he was right it would also apply to tabletop as well.
No, arena uses all the relevant rule sets and also prevents you from cheating. Your friend might not be up on the most recent rulings. 3/10
Mate you posted this on r/mtgrules earlier and I’m guessing showed your friend so his response was obviously “oh well the rules on arena are different.” Your “friend” is literally just lying and gaslighting you to cheat out easy wins
Your friend is an idiot. Arena is easily one of the best ways to learn MTG because it literally doesn't allow you to be wrong. And I say this as someone who plays way more commander than arena.
The only difference I can think of is of technical nature. Some steps get skipped, if you have not full control on. For example the decay tokens die immediately, with full control you have the combat step not ending after damage.
Yeah they're very wrong.
your friend is high as a kite
Can’t “sacrifice” a creature you don’t own. That’d just be killing it.
The only possible point of confusion I can see here is you are able to sacrifice creatures you control but not own. For instance, if you cast [[act of treason]] you can sacrifice the creature that you stole from your opponent by using [[deadly dispute]].
However, this interaction is consistently true across both paper and arena.
Your friend is full of shit.
Yea that's not how that works at all.... Only way that would work would be you cast something that makes him sacrifice, he then plays a instant that would be gain control of target creature and then proceeded to sac that creature
Your friend is 100% wrong
Sorry going to be a bit blunter than everyone else.
What the fuck is your friend talking about?