RNA Card Text Clarifications

Requests for clarifications go here. I’ll start.


Which player draws a card? The target, or the caster?


There’s extra wording here. I assume it’s just creature with greatest power, but why is the “first creature” bit in there?


If Adapt is a permanent buff (it should be), “while is” should be “when it is” or “when it’s”. If it is for some reason temporary, then it should be “while it is” or “while it’s”.


Which red or black creature is checked, the creature you controlled that died or the opponent’s first creature? Please be the opponent’s first creature!

For consume, @octal9 , my guess is that the first is needed in case there’s a tie, like if he has 3 1/1 creatures.

that … makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

If it can’t what? If a creature can’t lose a reinforcement, or if it can’t put the first creature from your library on the battlefield?

Clear the Mind : whichever player you target shuffles their graveyard into their library. Most likely this will be used against your opponent as there’s currently no detriment to having a full graveyard in the game (for example, you can’t run out of library and lose the game). The caster of the spell will always be the one to draw the card as that statement isn’t dependent on the other to resolve.

Consume: First creature with the greatest power will be relevant in the case of your opponent having, for example, Lyra Dawnbringer in creature slot 1 and Light of the Legion in slot 2. Both have 7 power, so Lyra would be destroyed as opposed to Light of the Legion.

Lyzolda : almost certainly checks the color of your creature not your opponent’s creature considering the card she’s based off of.

Killer Instinct : again going off the card it’s based off of, likely a typo. If you can’t lose a creature reinforcement, it will destroy your first creature instead.

Some strange suggestions in this thread, which appear not to consider existing well-defined behaviour in MTG?

Strange unnecessarily complex wording with embarrassing mistakes everywhere

Given this game’s history of card actions, there’s no guarantee on this. That’s why I’m asking for clarification.

If we went by the cards half of the ones in this game are based off of, they’d be doing drastically different things.



Does Mirror March repeat until there are 8 or fewer red gems, or just once? I have the same question (different number - <=5) for Rakdos, the Showstopper.

My assumption is once due to the initial trigger being ETB

Clear the Mind is literally word-for-word identical to the paper version of the same card. Oktagon didn’t even write those words, they just copied them. I’ll give Oktagon grief anytime they deserve it, but this thread could stand to have a healthy dose of common sense injected into it. And just as a quick reminder to everyone, Oktagon’s neither a native-English-speaking company, nor a large one. Maybe cut 'em a little slack for poor grammar.

I had reached all the exact same conclusions as wereotter, before reading his post, which suggests to me that maybe the intent of the cards is not really all that hard to figure out. Likewise, based on the paper versions of the same cards, I would expect Rakdos and Mirror March to both repeat indefinitely until you run out of red gems to trigger them. The only thing I’d consider substantially unclear based on the peculiarities of MTGPQ is whether or not Rakdos can blow up gems even if there aren’t any valid creatures for him to destroy. (Probably not, is my guess.) But every set we’ve ever gotten has had a few “well guess I’ll have to play with it to find out” cards like that.

Rakdos likely does repeat until there aren’t enough gems, or not appropriate creatures remain. Looking again at his paper card, he flips a coin for every relevant creature and destroys it if the coin comes up correctly for him to do so.

Mirror Match similarly also likely repeats indefinitely until there are no longer enough gems to repeat it.

Destroying gems then counting how many are left seems to be this game’s version of flipping a coin. We saw something similar with Stitch in Time counting the red and blue gems.

This is a fair statement, however with these cards, they’re close enough to their paper counterparts that I feel confident in guessing at their translation into Puzzle Quest.

This should be no secret by now: I don’t play paper. Currently I alone make an external-to-the-company attempt at cataloging these cards based on the words written. And at the sake of repeating myself: there’s no guarantee, but I kinda need to know who draws, otherwise I put misinformation out there. It’s not that I’m giving them a hard time for poor grammar: I’d just like to know so that I save myself the trouble of updating my database unnecessarily. In my particular use case, common sense is not good enough because it makes assumptions.

Whatever. It’s listed as a self-draw, for now.

I once used common sense to predict how a card would function - boy was I wrong doing that. That is why, I think it is fair to ask for clarification.

I quite agree that it is interesting to see what happens if Rakdos and MM meets an energize deck where 6 (or 8) energized gems are red. Will these cards then go infinite?
That lead to a second question, if these cards take 18+ sec to resolve, will I then only get to play one card, before the new timer thing stops my turn!?!

luckily D3/Octagon can easily look up the answer in their test results. Because this has of course been tested during development.

If I’m not mistaken, energized gems can be destroyed by destroy random gem effects. Also Rakdos will only trigger three times at most. If he’s destroyed all your opponent’s creatures, he won’t destroy any further gems.

@wereotter - ok, you may be correct about energised gems, but I recall several instances were energised gems are off limits, but I think you get my point, which is; What happens if 6 or 8 red gems are are not eligible for popping?

About Rakdos - are you sure? Squee, I think will put a wrench into your train of thoughts. Depending upon how the action sequence is coded.

Ah yes. I’d forgotten about Squee since I considered him literally unplayable.

They might need to consider recoding him, reassembling skeleton, and despoiler of souls to come back after combat to avoid this loop. But also it wouldn’t be something you can intentionally create as a loop. One player would need a reanimating creature, and the other would need Rakdos.

And come to think of it. Energy gems can be hit with random gen destroy. Chandra, Torch of Defiance will do that with her first loyalty ability. To that end, I don’t think there’s a way of getting gems unable to be targeted with random destroy. Closest thing I can think of is getting 6 high shield supports on red gems for when he enters.

I might be mis-remembering but I believe energized gems just can’t be converted to another color, or into void gems (I don’t know if that’s still true or if it’s been fixed); I don’t think they’ve ever been unable to be destroyed.

Nope, you’re correct. Energized gems can’t be converted, which makes Energy actually a viable hate strategy to the infamous Waterveil/Ulvenwald Hydra loop decks. You also can’t put supports on energized gems.

But they can definitely be destroyed (which does not count for Overload, btw)