Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #271 - Un-Rules Manager

Episode Date: October 16, 2015

Mark talks about being the rules manager for silver-bordered Magic.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a job that I don't talk about very often. One of the mini hats I wear is as unrules manager. What does that mean? So I created a set called unglued and later a set called Unhinged that have a silver border. And a silver border means these cards are not playable in normal tournaments. They are fun cards. And because we, one of the guidelines of the unsets, if you will, has always been to don't do things you can do in black border.

the unsets, if you will, has always been to don't do things you can do in Black Border. One of those things are cards that have cool, do cool things, but they don't quite work in the rules. So what happens is, whenever I come up with cards

that I want to make, and I'm not allowed to make in normal magic, if I had an opportunity to make them in Silver Border, I would. So anyway, when Unglued came out, we needed to make an FAQ. Normally, the rules manager makes the FAQ. But the set had all sorts of really crazy FAQ questions,

just because the set was really crazy, just doing very weird things. And so the rules manager at the time, I don't remember who it was. I guess it was Tom Wiley, but I don't remember who it was, said, yeah, I'm not writing that. And I said, well, okay, I'll write the FAQ. Because I wanted an FAQ. There were a lot of questions people would have. If I have the left half of the BFM and the right half,

can I get them both in play this way and that way? All sorts of questions about how the cards work. But because it was a silver border thing, there were a lot of other factors. We'll get to that in a second. But anyway, I said, you know, the rules manager said, look, black-bordered cards are tournament cards. I do the rules for tournaments. I'm not responsible for silver-bordered cards. So I stepped up.

I said, okay. I go, I will be the un-rules manager. And they said, fine, sure. No one else wanted the job, so I officially got the title and the task. So my job is, as Unrules Manager, is to answer questions about Uncards, which I still do to this day. So on my blog or on Twitter or wherever my social media is, if you want to know how an Uncard works, you can write to me, and I will explain.

media is, if you want to know how an M card works, you can write to me and I will explain. Now be aware that there is the, if you ask a rules in black border rules, there's hard and fast rules. If you ask in silver border rules, I mean, I'm trying to be consistent, but the rules don't back me up in the sense that there's things that are done. For example, there's a card called Goblin Bookie in Unglued. What Goblin Bookie is, it lets you re-roll a die or re-flip a coin. The problem is, the way Blackboard of Magic usually works is, if I'm rolling a dice as part of an effect, well, the effect has to happen. I can't stop something mid-effect and change it. to happen. I can't stop something mid-effect and change it.

So, in fact, for those that have read the FAQ for Unglued, the question is something like, wait a minute, according to the rules you can't interrupt. So Goblin Bookie shouldn't actually work, right? And my answer is, it works. Don't look behind the curtain, it works. Because the

answer is, I'm rolling a die and flipping a coin, I redo it. You know what that means. People can play it. The fact that it doesn't quite work and how the rules work, well, it doesn't really matter. One of the things, and Unset faces quite a bit, is there's a difference between rules that people can't understand,

although there's plenty of those, and rules that people can understand, but the rule system can't understand. And the way to think of it is, think of the rule system as being a computer. That is hard and fast rules. If you give it some rule that doesn't match its programming, it goes, oh, you can't do that.

So there are a lot of things, like, for example, the card Staying Power. Staying Power. It was in Unhinged. So the card is a white enchantment that just says, any effect that would end an end of turn, doesn't. It's permanent. So the idea behind the card

is, well, if I giant growth a creature, it is forever plus three, plus three. Black Border couldn't handle until end of turn being permanent. I try to remember why exactly it couldn't. I made the card, I put it in the set, I thought it was an awesome card. I try to remember why exactly it couldn't. I thought it... I made the card. I put it in the set.

I thought it was an awesome card. It is an awesome card, but... And I don't even understand necessarily why Black Border couldn't handle it, but it can't. But I feel like, you know, you know how things end at end of turn? Well, they don't.

They're forever for the rest of the game. Not forever. For the rest of the game. And so it's pretty easy to understand. A giant grows something. Okay, it's now a plus three, plus three. It turns temporary effects into permanent effects. I got it. There's some memory issues. I mean, that's one of the

reasons maybe they were... It wasn't killed for memory issues, although there are memory issues. It was killed for rules issues. Okay. So, I say I'm going to be the unrules manager. So I wrote the FAQ for Unglued. And then I was the head judge for the very first. So what happened with Unglued was they wanted to, it was a weird product. We were putting it out. It wasn't normal. They wanted to do something

that was a little weird. And so we were having a brainstorming meeting. I think I've told this story. We were having a brainstorming meeting of how we could promote the set. And one of the ideas, it's in a brainstorm session, you just throw ideas out. Like, we could do this,

we could do that. So one of the ideas I threw out is, well, what if I judge the, what if we have a pre-release and I judge the pre-release dressed as a giant chicken because there was a chicken theme in the mood. And everyone just stopped and they're like, chicken, because there was a chicken theme in Unglued.

And everyone just stopped, and they're like, yeah, that's what we're doing, in the middle of the brainstorm. Normal brainstorms don't work that way. So anyway, we ended up having a pre-release at Gen Con. It was the only, there was one pre-release, although there were flights, there were a whole bunch of events run on. But anyway, it all filled up. I was the head judge, dressed as a chicken.

And just so you know, the dedication to my job, the suit was really dusty. I ended up getting bronchitis off wearing the suit. But anyway, I did because that's... So I head judge as a chicken. So one of the things that happened was I'm walking by a table, like round one, round one. So not only am I head judge, I'm also the unrules manager. So not only can I just head judge in general, but I'm making all the ruling calls because I'm the head judge.

So I walk by a table and I hear the following. In response to your declaration of attack, I remove my pants. And then I get, judge! And now, this is the kind of thing unmanagers have to do. There's a card called Herloon Wrangler, which has denim walk. So if your opponent has a view of denim, your opponent can, you know, a creature can't be blocked if the defending player's owner, or sorry, controller, controller is wearing denim jeans, basically.

And so the question was, is he allowed to remove his genes? At what speed? At what speed would gene removing? So essentially the idea was, I attack, he's got genes on. Clearly when I attack, he's got genes on. Is he allowed to remove his genes

in time that he could block? That was, I mean, I'd written the FAQ already, so obviously the FAQ, I'd answered a lot, a lot, a lot of questions in the FAQ, but that was my first live rules interaction, is how fast can one remove one's pants? So the answer, for those that care, is

removing your pants is basically, you're doing an effect, they declare you're attackers, you do have time to respond to the person who said it, did it correctly. Okay, you're going to do something. I'm going to do something. So, now, there is a meta rule, which is there's a decency clause, and there are laws and such. So, one of the meta rules,

the unrules have meta rules. One of the meta rules is you can't break laws. That nothing, a silver border card can't tell you something that is not allowable where you are at. So, for example, if you are in a store that has certain rules, the store's rules will overrun what you're allowed to do. For example, if the store has a rule you can't remove your pants, or under only certain circumstances you're allowed to remove your pants,

you are not allowed to remove your pants, even though the card is saying, hey, here's a problem. Or, for example, Astronaut's Coupon. I get a lot of questions about Astronaut's Coupon. It lets you go make Target Player get you a drink. Now, there's a RADA sticker on the card that says that you pay for the drink. So there's a weird interaction when you put R&D's Secret Lab, which takes away errata. But the card has weird

errata because it's not real errata, it's faux errata because it's written on the card as a sticker. But we've ruled that it is errata because it literally says it's errata. Although remember, if someone has the R&D's Secret Lab in play and used the Astronaut's

Coupon on you, you are allowed to concede the game rather than go get a drink and buy it at the cost, you know, go buy the drink. You know, Ashnod's Coupon is very popular. Very popular. I get a lot of questions about it. Oh, also, once again,

you can't make someone go get you a drink that they're legally not able to obtain. So a minor can't go get, in America at least, a minor can't go get you an alcoholic beverage. That's illegal. You can't do that. Okay, so I made the rule call for Herlin Wrangler. And then what happened was it started becoming a thing.

Once I got on social media, it became a thing that, oh, Mark will answer these. So one of the things that is fun is, and let me explain my philosophy of Un, is I'm trying to make sure the cards are fun and that there's the spirit of the card. The thing that I do in Silver Border, the Black Border, Black Border, the rules are the rules are the rules. It doesn't matter. I mean, I guess there's a little bit of the spirit of the card,

but it's more like, what do the rules say? In Silver Border, it's a lot fuzzier. Like, for example, I was writing the FAQ for Unhinged, and one of the questions came up. There's a card called Fat Ass that while you're eating, while you're eating food, it has a bonus. And then when you're not eating food, it doesn't have the bonus. You have to actually be eating the food.

So one of the questions that came up was, is gum food? Now that, see, that's the kind of thing the Blackboard manager does not have to deal with, is philosophical issues. Is gum food? So we had a big whiteboard at the time, we don't, we still have the whiteboard, but there was a period in time where the whiteboard was used to ask existential questions and argue, screw around and answer things. So I put is gum food up on the board. And if you go online, this actually ends up getting transcribed by Natasha, there's a photo online of the is gum food thing.

So there's a lot of discussion. So in the end, I ruled that gum wasn't food. Not because I couldn't rule it either way. There was evidence both directions. There was evidence that it's not food. There was evidence that it was food. What I ended up doing was I ruled in favor of the spirit of the card which the idea is

you're supposed to constantly be eating. If just chewing gum counts it's just easy to chew gum without any real consequence. It's not like food you have to keep eating because you digest the food.

You don't really digest gum. So I'm like nah it kind of gets the spirit. The spirit of the card is if you're going to play fat ass you have to keep nibbling on food that's what fat ass

makes you do. So I ruled that no. For purposes of Silver Bordered, gum is not food in Silver Bordered. But like I said, that's the kind of things that I have to get. Okay, so let me ask a couple questions. What is the card I get the most questions

about? And I will tell you. So there's a card in Unhinged called Yet Another Aether Vortex. So what the card does, I don't remember the casting cost of it. It costs three or four mana. With red. It's a card in Unhinged called Yet Another Aether Vortex. So what the card does, I don't remember the casting cost of it. It costs three or four mana. With red. It's a red card. It's an enchantment. And what it says is, as long as this enchantment's in play,

you take the top card of your library and you put it face up. So it's kind of like Future Sight. The card's Future Sight. And if that card is a permanent, while it is on top of your library, it is also in play. So the idea is, I turn the face up, if it's an instant or a sorcery, something that can't be in play, it's not, it just acts like future,

well, it's not like future, so you can play it off your library. With yet another Aether Vortex, it's just there, you know it's coming, it's just on your library, you know it's coming. But if it's a permanent, this is the interesting thing, it's not only on the battlefield,

it's still on top of your library. So this is one of my favorite cards, by the way, I ever designed for an unset, because it is a really fun card that is really weird and does lots of fun, weird things. So for starters, you can't put it back on top of a library. You can't plow under it, because it is on top of a library.

It's already there, so you can't put it there. You can't use effects to put it on top of a library. So anything that cares about the library, it's still in the library. The other thing is, if you ever have to draw a card, you will draw the card into your hand. Now, the big controversy about Yet Another Vortex is things do not enter the battlefield, so it does not trigger enter-the-battlefield effects. The reason is, as soon as it's turned face-up,

it's just automatically there. It doesn't come from another zone and enter there. It's automatically there. It's also in two zones at once. That's the reason it's in Silver Border, not Black Border. It's in Black Border, you can only be in one zone at a time. So, Mark Gottlieb,

who for a long time was the Black Border rules manager, currently is my the design manager. He and I work together to oversee the design team. He used to be the rules manager. He hates that card. I mean, if you're playing in Silver Border,

he will play it in an un-environment. But a lot of times people will stick that card like in a cube. And if he sees that card, he just quits. It's like, I will not play. I thought we were playing real magic. That card is just over the line for him. Now, the funny thing for me is having ruled so many things,

I have a really good sense of how the card works in the sense of, you know, the idea of being two zones at once, if you just sort of follow through the logic of it, it actually is pretty consistent, and I understand it. It is funny watching all the interesting questions I get on it because it just can do a lot of weird things. Okay, the other card I get lots of questions on is Cheaty Face.

So Cheaty Face is a blue creature that... It's a... What is it? A tutu flyer? It is a creature that... So here's how the rules actually work. It is a little... I admit it is not written as cleanly and as clearly as it can in the rules text.

But here's the intent of the card, which has been explained to the FAQ many times. I admit it is not written as cleanly and as clearly as it can in the rules text, but here's the intent of the card, which has been explained to the FAQ many times. If you draw a cheaty face, legally, it was in your deck, and then you drew it like you'd normally draw a card, it gets to your hand, so legally it gets to your hand, then you have the following game you get to play. You are allowed to sneak it into play, and if your opponent doesn't notice it, and notice it means that you get it there,

I think we've said, like, about 15 to 30 seconds. Did you get it in play, and it's in play? And clearly, for a small amount of time, they didn't notice it was in play. And what that means is, they can't go, hey, you did that. It has to be, how'd that get there? That's the response we're going for.

Oh, that's there. If they catch you putting it you putting in play they see you they go hey you put that in play then they got you but if you put it in play and they didn't notice so they go hey what's that doing there then you got it in play if they didn't notice you put in play and it can sit in play enough time that like they're like oh that card's just in play what's that card doing here then you got it in play correctly but But here's the thing about Cheaty Face. Cheaty Face does not say you may cheat any way you want. You can't just say,

I'm not even going to put it in my deck. I'm just going to put it in my sleeve and then sneak it in. Cheaty Face, I mean, there are house rules. However you want. The one thing I will say is if you and your friends have rules of how you want to play it, whatever,

that's up to you. I'm giving you the official Silver Border rules. But you can't just, Cheaty Face doesn't say on it, cheat with this card however you like. That is not what it says. It allows you to cheat it into play from your hand. You have to legally have the card in your hand, and then you can cheat it into play. The other question I get a lot about is Vile Vile. Vile Vile is a black creature

that whenever you touch it, you lose two life. So there's a lot of people who like chasing people around, touching them with Vilebile. That does not work. Vilebile cannot touch you. You have to touch it. I've also ruled that

there's a big question about card sleeves. And what I've ruled is when a card sleeve is on a card in an un-game, the card sleeve is considered part of the card. So vile bile, if you touch the sleeve, that is touching it. I mean, the idea of vile bile is not that you put it in the sleeve and forget about it. The idea of vile bile is the card itself is dangerous. Whenever you touch it, you have to use your sleeve or use something so you're not physically touching it with your hands. But anyway, if people are chasing around vile bile

and touching it to make you lose life, once again, whatever house rules you want, but an official silver boarder, that is not what vile bile does. Another big question I get. One of the things in general that the kind of question... Let me explain one of the cool things about being the Unrules manager is I like wacky and weird questions.

I love questions like, what happens if this happens? Like one of the things that came up is there's a card called City of Ass. There was a donkey theme in Ass, or donkey theme in Unhinge. And so there's a parody of City of Brass called City of Ass, and it tapped for one and a half mana of any color. There was a theme in Hinge of half, things that were half.

And so one of the questions that comes up all the time is, for example, let's say I have half a red mana and half a green mana. Am I allowed to pay a red-green hybrid, a single red-green hybrid? The answer is yes, yes, you can. a red-green hybrid, a single red-green hybrid? The answer is yes, yes you can. But also people ask about paying Phyrexian mana

and can I pay half a mana in one life as opposed to paying one mana and, or sorry, as opposed to paying no mana in two life, can I pay half a mana

in one life? The answer is no because that cost is one of two things. It doesn't let you do halfway. It's you pay this cost, you pay that cost. It doesn't give you the, can I pay half of it cost. There are a lot of interesting

half questions, especially with the half mana. Oh, another one that happens all the time happens with the little girl. So little girl is also not an image, is a half half creature. So there are a whole bunch an image, is a half-half creature. So there are a whole bunch of games that happen where you sacrifice, or I'm sorry, a whole bunch of cards where you sacrifice a creature and then you care about the power or toughness of that creature.

And the answer is, if you can care about fractions, do. If you're gaining life, well, fine, gain the life. You can gain half a life. If it's a permanent, you have to round up. There's no way to sacrifice half a permanent. And so the answer is you round up.

So half it goes to one. So if you sacrifice little girl and have to sacrifice n permanents of power, it's one permanent because you can't sacrifice half a card. We messed around with that for a little while and just other people ripping their cards and there's no way to do it.

The other thing that comes up a lot has to do with when you're asked to do something so there's a card called Enter the Dungeon. It's the card from Unhinged. So Enter the Dungeon is a black card and it makes you play a sub game underneath the table. So I get a couple questions. So enter the dungeons of black card, and it makes you play a sub game underneath the table. So I get a couple questions. So the question, the most common question I get is what if you aren't playing on a table? For example, what if you're playing on a floor? How do you play

underneath the table? And the answer is, look, spirit of the card. Can you go down a floor? If you can, I'd like you to do that. That way you're underneath it. If not, do the best you can. One of the things about Un is the spirit is important. Obviously you're supposed to be playing in a different location than you're playing. Like Scheherazade is a sub-game. Pseudo, technically Black Border, although it's

banned. And there you just play the sub-game in the same place. You just sort of scoot your cards over. Enter the Dungeon wanting you to play in a different place. Make it a little easier for you. So you have to move into the dungeon. I like you to be under something. For example, let's say you're playing on the floor and there's a table near you. Well, go play under the table

or go down the floor. Once again, the spirit. A lot of the idea of Silver Border is try to capture the spirit. Silver Border cards are designed to be fun and goofy and if you can come up with goofy solutions that are inherent to what's going on, that is awesome.

That is great. In fact, that's what I try to do. When I channel my inner unrules manager, I'm trying to make sure that I keep the card as fun as the card is. My goal is not to be... I more want to make sure the cards live up to the spirit of what they do.

And be aware, the reason that a lot of cards are in the unset... I mean, some of them just do things we don't want to do. But some of them are like, eh, the game can't handle that thing. You can't handle that thing. And, by the way, I like answering unruly questions. If you have unruly questions. People love to give me the ones that are super complex where

I don't even understand what's going on. If you're asking me a question in which the point of conflict is not the uncard, the point of conflict is another card, then you probably can ask Tabak, the black manager, the black border rules manager.

Sometimes I get questions like, oh, well, nothing about this. I mean, there happens to be an uncard in it, but really, it hinges on something else. It hinges on a real rules question, not an unquestion. But I do like answering it. Let's try the other very famous thing. Oh, BFM is another one. So BFM is a creature in Unglued. It costs 15 black mana,

and there's a left and right side. And the way it works is, it's a card that you can cast, but you have to have both sides of it. And it enters the battlefield. You cast it as two cards, but it enters the battlefield as one permanent. And the rule is,

if somehow you're able to destroy part of it, there's a few... Well, there's a few early cards in Magic that destroyed cards and not permanents. I think those are all errated to permanent now. But anyway, if you somehow manage to destroy one half of it, you destroy all of it. It can't exist without both halves. And if you're able to get it in play, in which both pieces are coming in at the exact same moment,

then you can get it in play. For example, I used to use... Oh, what's it called? There's a card in Unglued where you take all the permits in your library and you put them into play. Incoming, it's called. Yes, you can... In fact, I had a deck where I income to BFM.

If you can get them in at the exact same time, but what you can't do... Like, you can't reanimate one, and then there's a separate action, reanimate the other. If you have a spell that reanimates all the creature cards in your graveyard, fine, they'll come in together, and as long as you have a left half and a right half. The other big question about it is,

when you're looking for information in your hand, it cares about the information. They are cards in your hand. They're not a single card in your hand. They They are cards in your hand. They're not a single card in your hand. They're two cards in your hand. So if they're looking for information, it has to look at the card that has that information. Oh, so here's another meta rule

that Silver Border does that Black Border does not. So the way Black Border works is every card that shares the same name in English, you know, every card that says, oh, I'm this card and this is an English name, I'm unique and I'm a card. Every version of that card works the same. Doesn't matter what's going on. And it's the reason

why there's some things we can't care about in Black Border. Because things will change between printings of cards. So if I have Grizzly Bears in one set and Grizzly Bears in another set, they have to be, in Blackboard, be treated as the same thing. So, for example, there are things like the expansion symbol, the artist. We can't really refer to the title other than, is it, a card can look for a specific title, but you can't say

you can't ask about qualities of the title. You can't say, is there a certain letter in it? Because in other languages, there might not be that letter. But that card is unique between every copy of it that's the same in English. So anyway, there's a lot of things that

UN is tapped into. So in order for UN to do that, in order for UN to care about the expansion symbol, care about letters in the name or who the artist is, there's a lot of things that un is tapped into. So in order for un to do that, in order for un to care about the expansion symbol, care about letters in the name or who the artist is, there's a rule in Silver Border that says you care about exactly that card. You care about that card in specific. Which means that if it asks something, like if it asks about the name of the card or the artist of the card, you look at that card, the actual, you know.

For example, if it says, I want an artist, it doesn't matter that another artist might have done the same card. If you have a Grizzly Bears, and I don't know who did Grizzly Bears, but, you know. If you have an artist that did Grizzly Bears, but that's not the artist on the card, well, it doesn't matter. You're looking at the card. In Silver Border, it is the specific card itself that matters. So,

let me, and a quick side note for those who have never played. So, the unsets are designed to be goofy and fun. Yes, they're supposed to be fun, I mean, they're cool to read, and you go look and gather and you can look them up and you can see them. Note, by the way, that they've never had

errata, just because the black border manager uh is instructed not to do that although they they volunteered

a couple times but they're just very busy and they're like look spend time keeping up the black border stuff

uh and I I don't have time to do it nor probably uh well

I don't know for sure during the time I might not have the expertise um meaning to understand all the updates. Because there are a lot of changes. Like, for example, on Unglued,

it's still, as written on the card and there's no Oracle update, Summon. It's like Summon Goblin, which is not true at all. I mean, obviously for Silver Border cards, things in which magic has just changed, that's a creature. I know it says Summon Goblin is a creature goblin. I mean, it is a creature card, but...

Anyway, if you've never played the Silver Border cards, they are fun. They're... While they're old, they're the kind of thing that if you look around, you probably can find them. They are a lot of fun. The spirit of them is different. If you've never had a chance to play a game with Silver Border cards,

I guess it's harder these days, just because the packs are not as easy to get a hold of. But even if it's in a cube or something, I don't know. I really, really enjoy that. The play value of Silver Border is a lot of fun. There's a lot of good things going on. It's a lot different. If you've never had a chance to sort of experience it a little bit,

it is a lot of fun. Okay, I'm not too far from work, so I'm trying to think of any other standing rules questions that are real common unrules questions. People ask, yeah, people ask a lot about stuff, about artists or names or expansion symbol and stuff. Those are always just like look on the card, specifically on the card. There are a couple, oh, there are a couple art questions that care about something in the art. Like there's one card that cares about how many eyes I think are pictured in the art, I think, or people. I'm trying to remember the... You can't remember how many things are in the art. And the questions are, well, what is? For example, there's another card that cares

about the gender of the card in the art. And so one of the things that's tricky is, sometimes looking at art, can I tell how many things are in it? Can I tell the gender of it? And the answer there is, um, use your best judgment. You know, um, there, there are some subjective calls. Um, I've answered a few of them. Sometimes if I, if I can talk to the artists or the creative team, I go, oh, well, this is this character. And I know that I can find out the gender of this character. So, oh, well, you know, um, Ramirez, the Petria, whatever. Oh, he is male. You know, um, I can find out stuff sometimes because there's answers to it. But, um, sometimes you got to use your best judgment. A lot of people

are like, they ask about that. Um, uh, I also get a lot of questions. There is dice rolling that goes on in Unglued. People always want to, so I get a lot of questions that are people trying to game the system. Like, I think it says six-sided dice, but I know people, like I have people who come up to me and said, must I use a six-sided dice in which all six sides are different numbers? Meaning, if I have a six-sided die that's all sixes, can I use that? It just is a six-sided die. That's a six-sided die. And the answer there is, look, spirit of the rules, the answer is not, you know, I'm not going to let you rules manager, not rules manager, I'm rules manager, I'm not going to be a rules lawyer. The idea is the intent of the card

is you're using a traditional six-sided die. It has six different sides on it. The idea is not to use a die in which the outcome is not known, that is not okay, that is cheating, that is not allowed. And so just because it's an unset doesn't mean,

I don't mind you doing weird and wacky things because the cards let you do weird and wacky things. That's fine. What I don't want you to do is try to somehow say, well, because it's silver-bordered, I can just do things that, like, wouldn't ever fly in black-bordered. Like, you can't cheat.

If the question is, can I cheat in this way, and you're clearly cheating, then no, no, you can't cheat. You're not allowed to cheat in silver-borders. And once again, the cheaty phase, you can't cheat unless you're not allowed to cheat in silver borders. And once again, the cheaty face, you can't cheat unless you're doing the thing it allows you to do, which isn't cheating, you're doing what the card allows you to do. But you can't just, like, stack

cheaty faces around the table under coasters without having it first in your hand. You can't do that, that is cheating. Can you, um... Yeah, people ask a lot of questions. Well, okay, I will say lot of questions. Well, okay. I will say the questions fall in a couple of categories.

Number one is just honest. I don't know how it works. Help me. Number two is I've come up with something that I don't think there's an answer for. And so I'm going to give you this really complicated thing to just mess with you. Cause I, there's, there's no real clean answer there. I'll try to answer those where I can. A lot of times it's just sort of like,

here's the Gordian knot, and I don't have necessarily the easiest Gordian knot. I'll try to chop through it if I can. And sometimes there's a question where, there's a shenanigans question to people trying to get away with things. I'm like, no, you know, like, can I interpret as this, you know?

Can I have a breath-holding contest? But, like, you can have a normal breath holding contest or a normal staring contest a normal arm wrestling contest you need to do it normally if your suggestion is in some way in which you're not being fair with your opponent if somehow you're using some means

to make it easier for you to win then no, you can't do that so I get those kind of shenanigan questions and then I get more philosophical questions like as gum food sort of questions where I mean I guess that's kind of the first category but a lot of times it's not even that it matters all that much it's more someone is tickled by

oh wow there's this philosophical question that I can ask the unrules manager oh another thing I guess all the time is because there are other colors, because of Avatar of Me, which is a card in Unhinge, that the color of the creature is equal

to the color of your eyes. Well, all of a sudden, there's hazel and there's pink and there's eye colors that aren't the five colors of magic. And so the question is, well, what happens when that happens? And the answer is, okay, that card allows things to be a different color. That doesn't mean when you have to choose a color in Silver Border, they're still the main colors you choose in magic.

So, I mean, the Unworld, when it says, hey, pick a, uh, basic land, well, there's the five basic lands, it says pick a color, you have to pick one of the basic colors. But that doesn't mean that things in Un can't become other colors, because the cards that make it other colors. Avatar and me can be brown if you have brown eyes, even though there's no brown in Magic. Um, so, I, I, it's, it, anyway, So, anyway, I'm almost to work. So, really what I wanted to point out today is the...

One of the things, like I said, my job has many facets. And so it's been interesting being the un-rules manager. A, I get a little glimpse of what it's like being a rules manager. I get asked questions, and people need to know things. And I try very hard to be consistent, to make sure I'm setting up a set of rules that follow, that if I'm applying one rule to one card, that they're not working completely different than each other. There's a weirdness going on. So I'm not saying I'll never have a little bit of contradiction. The unrules can't be quite as

clean as blackboarded rules. I mean, probably why they're the unrules. And it's also, like I said, it is kind of neat writing an FAQ I've actually written two FAQs and it was a neat experience doing that it was neat sort of going how will people do this and what you know

and it's like I also will get interesting questions sometimes I have to think about it like sometimes the funny thing is I often will talk to Tabak

because I need to understand in Blackboard or how something works so one of my goals is I don't want to be inconsistent with Blackboard rules meaning I don't want to

say well Silverboard do this and like that's not consistent with how Blackboard rules work't want to be inconsistent with Blackboard rules, meaning I don't want to say, well, Silverboard, do this. That's not consistent with how Blackboard rules work. I want to be consistent where I can. So there are a lot of questions where I have to actually ask Tayback to understand the principle behind it before I can apply the unlayered to it. But anyway, one of my minute jobs, one of the things that's cool about my job, like I said, this is my 20th year at Wizards.

One of the things I think that makes it so much fun for me is I have a lot of different things I do being unruled manager. It's very unlike any other job I have. And I don't have to do it very often. Probably if I had to do it constantly. The rules manager is just a lot to do. It's really, really hard being a rules manager. Unruled manager, a little bit easier.

For those, by the way, that either watch or listen to my live Drive to Work, live to work, or not live Drive to Work, my live blog-a-talk, which is my blog, at the end of it, Matt Tabak offered to swap positions with me for some amount of time of my choosing, in which he would be Silver Border Rules Manager and I would be

Black Border Rules Manager, and I turned him down. I turned him down. And I said at a time that I was afraid of what I would do to blackboarded cards. I didn't want to destroy the game. Even though it's my job to kill the game, I want to kill it in a little less cruel way

than me being blackboarded rules manager. But also, I just didn't want him messing with the silverboarded rules. So anyway, guys, I am now at work. I am sitting in my parking lot. So we all know what that means. It means it's another drive to work complete. Uh, I did that slightly different. So instead of making magic, it's time for me, no, instead of

I really, really messed up. We're going to start all over. Here's a weird thing, by the way, you'll notice is I never mess up on pulling out of the driveway. And the answer is, I mess it up all the time, but when I do that, I'm in the driveway, so I stop and I start over. That's why I never mess up that. And I mess up this all the time because I had a good podcast and I'm going to keep it.

Oh, I messed up the end. Well, I have to do it again. So let's try it one more time. I'm in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys soon.