Fiery Gaze

[parallax]

Fiery Gaze

Sorcery
When Fiery Gaze is revealed from anywhere, you may play Fiery Gaze without paying its mana cost.
Fiery Gaze deals 2 damage to target creature or player and 2 damage to you.

Fiery Gaze

Instant
Whenever Fiery Gaze becomes revealed from anywhere, it deals 1 damage to target creature or player and 1 damage to you.
Fiery Gaze deals 2 damage to target creature or player and 2 damage to you.

[Matt]

I like it! But make it "If you control a mountain, you may play..." so it isn't 100% free.

[Anusien]

Let me check to make sure this works as intended.  I'm worried that you reveal it as part of playing it and the trigger supercedes it and you cast it for free no matter what.

[parallax]

Let me check to make sure this works as intended.  I'm worried that you reveal it as part of playing it and the trigger supercedes it and you cast it for free no matter what.

Playing a spell moves the spell from your hand to the stack. Presumably this would only trigger off effects that use the word "reveal".

I'd like this to trigger even off a turn one Duress. Is there any way to tie the alternate cost to red? I could make you discard or RFG a mountain/red card from your hand and remove the damage yourself part. Or I could make you reveal another red card from your hand (potential chain with multiple Fiery Gazes).

[Anusien]

I was talking to Lee Sharpe, and the problem is that the rules doesn't really work well on reveal.  The game understands the game action "reveal" but it isn't well defined enough to handle triggering on reveal.  Would this trigger on Telepathy?  What about when you have Future Sight in play and it's on top of your library?  And then you activate Feral Deciever?

Also, when a card moves from the hand to the stack, it technically gets revealed, so it's possible that it would trigger then.  Ruleswise this would require an overhaul of the rules to work.

The closest I can get while covering most of the corner cases is something like this:
"Whenever a spell or ability causes <this> to be revealed after being hidden while in your hand or in your library, <do something>."

[parallax]

I don't think a card that moves from the hand to the stack is "revealed" any more than a card that goes from the top of your library to your hand is "drawn". The card is simply moving from a hidden zone to a public zone, therefore everyone gets to see it. "Reveal" is a specific game action.

Gaze triggers off Telepathy either when Telepathy is played or when you draw it. If you have Future Sight in play, it triggers when it goes on top of your library. If you activate Feral Deciever when Gaze is already revealed from Future Sight, it does not trigger.

Gaze triggers whenever it goes from "not revealed" to "revealed". It requires, at most, one line in the comprehesive rules to clarify this, and I doubt even that is necessary.

If the game action of "reveal" isn't well defined, then maybe that's a problem with the rules, but not with this card.

I realized the trigger was a bad idea as the game was likely to lose track of Fiery Gaze before the triggered ability resolved.

[Anusien]

*Shake* I understand how you want the card to work I just don't think it does.  You want to trigger on changing from concealed to non-concealed by a game action, but the game doesn't understand that.  Technically, you can reveal your hand to your opponent when you want.  Similarly, Feral Deciever + Future Sight is still "revealing" a card.  As Lee said, I don't think the rules are in place unless you go back to something like "when a spell or ability reveals this card when it is not revealed..."

All the work it would do to make this card work I don't think justifies the effect.  After all, we can't hack the comprehensive rules to make new cards.

[andrewpate]

Actually, you can do that.  This was done for Mindslaver by adding the rule that you don't manaburn if someone else controls your turn.  It was also done in Kamigawa Block to the "legend rule" in order to allow Isamaru, Hound of Konda and other cards.  In addition, Paul Barclay added the word "copy" to the vocabulary in order to allow Clone to be reprinted in Onslaught, and its rules were carefully revised by Mark Gottlieb and others in order to faciliate Dimir Doppelganger.  These are just the examples I could think of quickly.

The question is whether this card is as worthy of such treatment as something that sets a new paradigm for design, such as Isamaru, or something as splashy and exciting as Mindslaver.  It may be that you see the "reveal" rules as a place in which the Comprehensive Rules could use some real work on clearing things up.  If so, this card could spur such a change in the same way Dimir Doppelganger was designed to force a "copy" cleanup.

[parallax]

Some trigger events use the word “becomes” (for example, “becomes tapped” or “becomes blocked”). These trigger only at the time the named event happens—they don’t trigger if that state already exists or retrigger if it persists. For example, “becomes tapped” triggers only when a permanent’s status changes from untapped to tapped.

I think this clears up the Feral Deciever + Future Sight case pretty well.

I also think it's pretty clear that revealing your hand to your opponent when no effect instructs you to is not an in-game action and won't trigger any abilities.

It would only take about three sentences in the prerelease FAQ to clear these issues up. At worst, it would require a small section of the Comprehensive Rules to be updated. It should be noted that updating the Comprehensive Rules is not some arduous undertaking: Wizards updates them with every set release to accomodate new cards.

If you and I, and anyone who is familiar with how Magic works, can figure out what the card does, then it is not ambiguous, and less of a rules headache than half the cards Wizards already prints.

[Anusien]

My point is a theoretical question.  How much are we as a CCF allowed to change the Comprehensive Rules.  We could easily make this work by defining Reveal in the Comprehensive rules; it wouldn't even be hard.  Is this a change we are or should be allowed to make?

[jro]

Here's the rules definition for Reveal:

Code:

Reveal 
To reveal an object is to show that object to all players. If a one-shot effect reveals a card, the card is 
returned to its former state after all players have seen it. If the cost to play a spell or ability includes 
revealing a card, the card remains revealed from the time the spell or ability is announced until it leaves the 
stack. 

And here's what Panglacial Wurm says:

Code:

While you're searching your library, you may play Panglacial Wurm from your library.

So I think the rules as is could handle this if it said "While Fiery Gaze is revealed, you may play it from anywhere without paying its mana cost."  The only trick would be that the game would have to know if Fiery Gaze was revealed (just like it has to know if you're searching your library for the Wurm).  That might only require a clarification (like with the Wurm) such as "The effect that caused Fiery Gaze to be revealed has to say 'reveal'."

Come to think of it, I don't think this wording would work, because things can stay revealed for a long time.  With my wording, if you revealed this off a Land Grant, would it mean you could play it at absolutely any time while it was revealed (i.e., in the middle of playing another spell, while your opponent has priority, etc.)?  I think it might: since Panglacial Wurm can be played while something else is resolving, why couldn't this?

Still, the current wording seems pretty broken, too.  What happens if you reveal this with Scent of Cinder?  Does it count to the Scent effect or not?

What about "If Fiery Gaze would be revealed from anywhere, reveal it, and you may play it without paying its mana cost."  Does that work?  This is somewhat similar to Library of Leng:

Code:

If an effect causes you to discard a card, discard it, but you may put it on top of your library instead of into your graveyard.

Ignoring the rules issues for a second, I don't really like this card because it seems that its only good uses are to abuse it.  Revealing is unusual enough of an action that it's not going to come up except in constructed.  It probably still gets played in limited because any cheap removal is good in limited, but putting this into a set probably means not putting in some other common/uncommon burn spell.  Since those slots are fairly limited, I don't see when this would ever actually wind up in a set.

[parallax]

I was going for a Guerrilla Tactics sort of effect except off reveal. I was worried that repeated revealing would be too easy, so I made the card be played. Maybe a simpler design would work better.

It's meant to tie in with some common cycle like the Martyrs from Coldsnap. If "reveal" was pushed slightly at common, this could easily be a good uncommon. It also doubles as a decent removal spell, which is always a good pick in limited.

[Norm4eva]

Well, here's a dumb question; if that's the definition of 'reveal', what's the definition of 'show'?  Did I show you Fiery Gaze when I pitched it to my Wild Mongrel?  What if it's been dumped into my yard via some bad card like Morality Shift, and my opponent asks to see my yard?  Can he choose not to find Fiery Gaze, such that it's not really revealed?  What if it's being pitched to Blazing Shoal?
I suspect that this is why Guerilla Tactics has the wording it does.  To reveal a card happens as a side effect of lots of things that don't explicitly say "reveal" on them.

[netherspirit]

How about wording it like this:

Fiery Gaze
 
Instant
Whenever Fiery Gaze becomes revealed from anywhere, it deals 1 damage to target creature or player and 1 damage to you.
Fiery Gaze deals 2 damage to target creature or player and 2 damage to you.

I think that way it's just a one-off, so things like Telepathy aren't a problem. You could also make it so that it triggers off an opponent's spell or ability or something, rather than from any form of reveal.

[andrewpate]

Well, here's a dumb question; if that's the definition of 'reveal', what's the definition of 'show'?  Did I show you Fiery Gaze when I pitched it to my Wild Mongrel?  What if it's been dumped into my yard via some bad card like Morality Shift, and my opponent asks to see my yard?  Can he choose not to find Fiery Gaze, such that it's not really revealed?  What if it's being pitched to Blazing Shoal?
I suspect that this is why Guerilla Tactics has the wording it does.  To reveal a card happens as a side effect of lots of things that don't explicitly say "reveal" on them.

I would think that this would be just like cards that cause you to choose something but do not say "target," namely that it would not count as revealing it.  A thing would only be revealed when the card says "reveal."

[jro]

Well, here's a dumb question; if that's the definition of 'reveal', what's the definition of 'show'?  Did I show you Fiery Gaze when I pitched it to my Wild Mongrel?  What if it's been dumped into my yard via some bad card like Morality Shift, and my opponent asks to see my yard?  Can he choose not to find Fiery Gaze, such that it's not really revealed?  What if it's being pitched to Blazing Shoal?
I suspect that this is why Guerilla Tactics has the wording it does.  To reveal a card happens as a side effect of lots of things that don't explicitly say "reveal" on them.

I think you're confusing the everyday meaning of the word "reveal" with the specific game action of "reveal".  As someone said earlier, you can just randomly show cards from your hand to your opponent, but that doesn't make them "revealed".  If you chump block a fatty with your 1/1, you might say you "sacrificed" him to "prevent damage", but you didn't "sacrifice" him to "prevent damage" under the game rules.

Also, the rules for playing spells say nothing about "revealing" the card from your hand, just that the spell moves from whatever zone (which may be hidden) to the stack (which isn't hidden).

But I think a better definition of "reveal" or "revealed" would probably be necessary however this is worded.  I don't think the current wording works, because it can be read as a state-triggered ability that would just keep triggering so long as the card was revealed.  For instance, you play Land Grant revealing this as a cost.  This ability triggers and resolves.  The card is still revealed (because cards revealed as part of costs stay revealed until the thing being paid for leaves the stack), so it triggers again.  I think the "becomes revealed" wording is better.  There might be confusion about the Future Sight / Deceiver situation, but 1) those kinds of problems seem unlikely to occur all that much in practice 2) the rules already handle that situation.

Also, anything that triggers for free by revealing but isn't removed from the hand infinite combos with Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant.