Magic The Gathering: Arena Dev Tracker

OK, looking at both your client log and the server log for the match, it appears that your opponent did mistakenly play their [[Blacklance Paragon]] too early, while a [[Massacre Girl]] trigger was on the stack.

Here is a game state in your log that shows that the Paragon's trigger is on the stack at the same time as the Massacre Girl's trigger. You can see that the stack has two things in it:

{ "zoneId": 27, "type": "ZoneType_Stack", "visibility": "Visibility_Public", "objectInstanceIds": [ 372, 368 ] }

And that object 372 is an ability instance:

{ "instanceId": 372, "grpId": 136250, "type": "GameObjectType_Ability", "zoneId...

I'll look into this tomorrow. I could imagine how this bug could occur, so let's see if I'm right. #wotc_staff

We need to have Resolution Time Actions Windows like Electrodominance's promote actions because:

A) the default assumption is that no action is legal (except pass)

B) it gives other abilities the opportunity to step in and prune the action (e.g. [[Teferi, Time Raveler]])

and C) Most of these windows specify an alternate cost for you to pay ("without paying its mana cost" for Electrodominance), which also means that we need to prune actions that have a different alternative cost.

#wotc_staff

I like to think about it this way - there isn't a rule that says you can't cast Sorceries or other non-Flash spells at non-sorcery times. Rather, during those times, there simply isn't any rule saying you CAN cast those cards.

That's kind of how the underlying code works, too. The game proposes all the cards in your hand as castable (as well as other cards that abilities give you permission to cast). The default assumption during the Pruning step is that no proposed action can be performed, but certain rules Promote actions past pruning such as Prune_Promote_CastSorcerySpeed say "this is a cast action, the stack is empty, and it's your main phase, so the game says you can do this." And Prune_Promote_CastInstantSpeed says "this is a cast action for an Instant, so the game says you can do this."

Electrodominance itself adds a rule for the cards it proposes saying "this action was proposed by me, so I say you can do this." #wotc_staff

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If you're experiencing problems in game please let us know on our official bugs page! This helps us gather data on an issue and dive deeper into it, because there are so many different factors around performance issues. Things that help us immensely are:

• Gameplay logs
• DxDiag analysis
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Great idea! Charlie#00001

I'll look into this tomorrow! #wotc_staff

It opens at 8am UTC, and lasts 24 hours.

Well, guess I deleted my comment too late :P. Felt redundant with the other discussion.

The mechanics of ELD also just don't suit themselves well to Omniscience Draft. You can't pay adamant costs, and you have to use the mana for the creature half of adventures after casting the spell half (which in some cases mean you couldn't cast them at all).

So I wouldn't expect an ELD Omniscience Draft any time soon. :)

#WotCStaff

Thanks for the report, this has been fixed internally and should go out in a future patch.

It's not a matter of "redefining targets" - there ARE no targets when you cast the spell using Overload. Which has a lot of implications: target verification is gone when validating whether casting the spell this way is legal, it's skipped when we resolve the spell, it no longer is a spell that "could target" anything, and of course when we resolve the spell it no longer consults what targets were selected when applying the effects of the spell. Those are huge differences that can't reasonably be made on the fly; the right way to do this is to separately parse the "target" and "each" version of all the abilities that could be on the card, and somehow have casting the spell using overload use that alternate parse.

As for the Angel of Serenity, my point is that the sentence structure is novel. The behavior isn't new, I'd expect fixing this precise card to take a half-hour at most (probably going up to an hour to include writing tests). But again, this sort of thing adds up, a...

For rules correctness, the work for the sets that were in the Closed Beta is almost nothing. For getting the quality of those sets to match that of those that are in the live game, there's at least a couple weeks of work. But the big hurdle I think is in answering the question "what's the best way for players to get access to these cards", which is a reasonably tough question that happens to be entirely out of my domain. #wotc_staff

No, those sets still work. The level of polish on them is lower than the bar we've had since open beta though. #wotc_staff

I recommend applying if you think you're a good fit. #wotc_staff

Fortunately, we got to do one better for Legion Warboss: all cards that trigger when a certain step or phase occurs will give your opponent priority for the rest of the current step/phase if you put it into a legal zone for that trigger this step/phase. This also means that stuff like Arclight Phoenix entering your graveyard before combat will give your opponent a chance to react.

There is not a list of all the weird things that we do for Arena's default priority. It's already pretty unwieldy to describe and it changes with almost every release. If there's a frequent case that you think we don't handle, feel free to suggest it!

As for your complicated play, my recommendation is to open your Settings. Under Gameplay there should be an option called "Show Phases", which always shows the "phase ladder". You can toggle this setting by hitting the 'L' key in game (for "ladder", I guess?). This will allow you to put a stop at the beginning of combat any time. Alternativel...

Yes, it is. We added the work for Wicked Wolf specifically because of the interacting abilities. I'm still trying to convince our designers that holding for any fight-resulting trigger is a good idea. #wotc_staff

Sure, I'll try to summarize. Most of what I say below could be changed to make Overload work; my point is that that work hasn't been done yet and is pretty nontrivial.

The Games Rules Parser (GRP) reads the exact text on the card. So, for [[Cyclonic Rift]], it sees two abilities, "Return target nonland permanent you don’t control to its owner’s hand." and "Overload 6U". It parses those abilities independently. That is, for [[Mind Rake]], its first ability is literally the same as [[Mind Rot]]'s. They literally use the same code, there's not a Mind Rake version and a Mind Rot version.

Not only that, but there isn't any text on the card that says "Return each nonland permanent you don't control to its owner's hand." So we'd need to recognize that that is a text that we need to create. And then that needs to be an ability that Cyclonic Rift has access to (i.e. is loaded into the game when Rift is), but that it doesn't actually have (until you cast it using Ove...

You could apply here if you'd like! We do have an open position on the Rule team.

As for bringing in old sets, it's really equivalent to bringing in a new set for a lot of them (roughly as many unimplemented sentences and keywords). And RTR is actually one of the worst: Overload is a pretty yucky mechanic for a system that expects cards to do what their text says. #wotc_staff