Teferi and Morph

[B M]

If I control Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, can I play Morph creatures
face-down any time I could play an instant?

--
Brent M

[l0ne]

Post by B M
If I control Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, can I play Morph creatures
face-down any time I could play an instant?

This is tricky. I would say yes, since you play it as a creature spell
and since it's a creature card not in play it has flash as you play it
(thanks to Teferi).

But this requires confirmation.

[David DeLaney]

Post by B M
If I control Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, can I play Morph creatures
face-down any time I could play an instant?

Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir 2UUU Legendary Creature - Human Wizard
3/4 Flash (*) Creature cards you own that aren't in play have flash. / Each
opponent can play spells only any time he or she could play a sorcery.

If you play a creature card with morph face-down, it is in fact still a
creature card - just one with very few distinguishing features. The 'face-down-
ness' of "it's a 2/2 blank creature" is applied just above the usual
copy-effects layer (we know this because these values are copiable, but
turning a copy of something face-down temporarily overwrites its usual
copiable values with these face-down ones), so is a few layers below the
layer the flash would get applied in, layer 5. So Teferi gives flash nicely
to the face-down creature card you're playing.
Plus which, you check for 'when can I play this?' _before_ you actually
start the playing process... and at that point the card's not face-down yet.
(Opponent can't usually _see_ it - but Teferi gives it flash in your hand,
or wherever you'll be playing it from, and -you- can see it has flash.)

So yes, this Teferi lets you play creature cards face-down using Flash, if
they have Morph.

Dave

[Daniel W. Johnson]

Post by David DeLaney
Plus which, you check for 'when can I play this?' _before_ you actually
start the playing process... and at that point the card's not face-down yet.

I'm not sure I like this, because it can lead to some really goofy
interactions involving morph, Quick Sliver, and Artificial Evolution.

[David DeLaney]

Post by Daniel W. Johnson

Post by David DeLaney
Plus which, you check for 'when can I play this?' _before_ you actually
start the playing process... and at that point the card's not face-down yet.

I'm not sure I like this, because it can lead to some really goofy
interactions involving morph, Quick Sliver, and Artificial Evolution.

Well, the alternative would be "you don't start checking whether you CAN play
this until after you've started PLAYING it, and then you retroactively undo
the playing part if it turns out you couldn't play it to start with before
you started". Which would be ... "bad". 'Retroactively undo' is about the
very worst thing that's ever been completely rooted out of the Magic rules
and told not to come back ever, and they don't want its nose poking back in.

And sure, how did you think Quick Sliver worked? "Any player may play Sliver
cards as though they had flash." looks at the card in the playing-from zone,
not at the card on the stack, because once it's on the stack it's already
after you've started playing it (even though putting it on the stack is
part of the first thing you do to play it). With Artificial Evolution, that
becomes "Any player may play <creature type> cards as though they had flash".

Granted, _there_ you might actually get some use out of the argument "the
part of morph where it says to turn the card face-down is actually in your
hand, before it goes on the stack" - 502.26b says this, but doesn't specify
the exact timing of 'start to play' and 'turn face-down' - "so it's not
actually a <creature type> card any more just before you start playing it, so
you can't play it as though it had flash". Which doesn't apply to the original
because there's no time in the process when it stops being a -creature card-...
But notice that now if you can't play it right now you have to turn it
face-up again, and it hasn't gotten onto the stack yet, so opponent can't
_verify_ that it was or wasn't a <creature type> card, because he can't see
into your hand and see which card(s) there were face-down... which is _also_
a Bad Paradigm. I think I'd want to avoid that by letting the flash check
or other 'can I play this?' check take place before the start of the morph-it-
as-you-play-it process...

I'd have to boot it up to Zoe, given the slight difference with big difference
in outcome, for the Quick Sliver/AE/Morph question, I guess.

Dave

[l0ne]

Post by David DeLaney
But notice that now if you can't play it right now you have to turn it
face-up again, and it hasn't gotten onto the stack yet, so opponent can't
_verify_ that it was or wasn't a <creature type> card, because he can't
see into your hand and see which card(s) there were face-down... which is
_also_ a Bad Paradigm. I think I'd want to avoid that by letting the flash
check or other 'can I play this?'

(There might be noncreature cards with Morph in Future Sight, which
calls for a clarification on all of this.)

[Daniel W. Johnson]

Post by David DeLaney
Well, the alternative would be "you don't start checking whether you CAN play
this until after you've started PLAYING it, and then you retroactively undo
the playing part if it turns out you couldn't play it to start with before
you started". Which would be ... "bad". 'Retroactively undo' is about the
very worst thing that's ever been completely rooted out of the Magic rules
and told not to come back ever, and they don't want its nose poking back in.

I'm not sure this would be any worse than the consequences of starting
to play Hex while only five creatures are in play (as an example).
Either way, it's not like the problem is going to really be a surprise.

Or perhaps I should say "WILL be any worse". I see the Future SIght
Rules Primer has made this moot, by explicitly minimizing the amount of
information that actually needs to be taken from a face-down card (the
present of morph itself when playing that way, the converted mana cost
and the type "creature" when using with Illusionary Mask).

[Zoe Stephenson]

Post by B M
If I control Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, can I play Morph creatures
face-down any time I could play an instant?

With the rules that are about to come into effect, yes, you can.

502.26b To play a card using its morph ability, turn it face down. It
becomes a 2/2 face-down creature card, with no text, no name, no
subtypes, no expansion symbol, and no mana cost. Any effects or
prohibitions that would apply to playing a card with these
characteristics (and not the face-up card's characteristics) are
applied to playing this card. These values are the copiable values of
that object's characteristics. (See rule 418.5, "Interaction of
Continuous Effects," and rule 503, "Copying Objects.") Put it onto
the stack (as a face-down spell with the same characteristics), and
pay {3} rather than pay its mana cost. This follows the rules for
paying alternative costs. You can use morph to play a card from any
zone from which you could normally play it. When the spell resolves,
it comes into play with the same characteristics the spell had. The
morph effect applies to the face-down object wherever it is, and it
ends when the permanent is turned face up.

That third sentence, "Any effects or prohibitions that would apply to
playing a card with these characteristics (and not the face-up card's
characteristics) are applied to playing this card," is what's new. The
effect of Teferi applies to the card on top of its face-down
characteristics when you check to see whether it's legal to play the
card.