Hah! Amusing. Makes you do a double take. So it's your choice of a Wild Griffin or a Steadfast Guard... which makes me think this'd fit better in white (albeit with a different flavour).

headache Oh yes, of course. I totally failed to see the interaction of the abilities. That's really clever. (Although I think wizards would avoid printing it as is because everyone would get it wrong, though maybe that's just me.)

I think "puzzle" cards are usually best kept out of common, at least.

Um; I thought if it attacked then tapped it wasn't attacking any more? So not Wild Griffin but instead a flying defender?

That's not been the case since... well, at least 1999. So at least 14 years. Being tapped is completely orthogonal to being attacking or blocking.

And this can't actually block flyers (well, without an untap effect or other external help).

I thought you could... Ah; you can untap a creature to remove them from combat?

Nope. That's why Ith, High Arcanist and Maze of Ith specifically say "untap target attacking creature and prevent all combat damage it would deal this turn". Being tapped and being in combat are completely orthogonal. The only connection is that declaring a non-vigilant creature as an attacker causes it to tap. That is literally the only causal indication anywhere in either direction between tappedness and in-combat status.

Many, many years ago, tapped creatures used to not deal their combat damage. That's why Master of Arms's effect made any sense. But that's not been the case since at least the Sixth Edition rules updates in 1999.

Whoo! Vitenka, that is an old piece of trivia in your head. For what it's worth, the old rule that Alex is citing didn't remove the creature from combat, it prevented tapped blockers from dealing combat damage. It was a flavorful rules quirk that would only come up in high level tournaments, since no one knew it. (It also made Master Decoy very deadly in draft. You could completely shut down a player who didn't know that rule.)

The sixth edition rules change caused a lot of backlash... and I know many people were upset this rule was changed. I still use that rules quirk as a counter-argument when someone complains about the game being 'dumbed down' with new rules changes. It always seems like a terrible idea at the time, but considering the value Wizards gets when streamlining the game, it's almost always a good move.

Ah! I'd heard references to this before, but wasn't sure what was misunderstanding and what actually used to be a rule.

FWIW, I've only been through one major rule change, and from that perspective all the previous ones look obviously necessary, and a few years on even the new combat rules seem like they need to be this way. (Seriously, did I ever think "combat damage on the stack" was normal? :))

The one I did think was a mistake was the deathtouch rule, before it was changed to the "count any damage as lethal damage" version.

Oh, and Tribal, but that wasn't a rule change, but a new rule.

@Alex: I don't know if there's anyone here who doesn't understand it, but I was very amused at myself when I realised I was automatically using "orthogonal" to mean "can be one without the other, or the other one without the first one", and that literally made no sense to someone who hadn't been trained at university to see everything in terms of vector spaces :)

Hah! Yeah, I should probably have said "unrelated" for wider comprehensibility there...

I didn't expect there to be much discussion on this card. I think Alex is right, and it does belong at Uncommon, and probably in White, as well.

I began play even more recently than Jack V, and I haven't been through ANY major rules changes. So when I hear about some of the stuff that once was, it often sounds bizarre to me that anyone would want it. Mana burn? Eew! Damage on the stack? Yuck!

Be glad you never played for Ante! In the original rule book, it was more of an official rule than whatever 'Protection from Black' was supposed to mean. Man, this game has come a long way...

Eew. Ante.

I played for ante! But only, like twice. And got some of the god-decks, too.

And yeah, those early rulebooks were bad. I've told the story about being clear on there being a phase order but not being clear there was a turn order, right? I lost (to ante) an Armageddon in that simultaneous-combat game.