Almost everyone who’s ever been involved in a Barigord Studios adventure has been passionate for gaming! We love board games, table games, video games, roleplaying games, and game shows! This post is best viewed on the home site.
Summer is officially here! While some people love the hot weather, plenty of others would rather stay inside and stay cool. Either way, you can spend that summertime playing games.
Games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Magic the Gathering! Let’s go!
Tears of the Kingdom Endgame
I’m near the end in TOTK. Soon I can start to digest the content of others, and see what kind of wacky contraptions people have built.
I’m on Youtube a lot, and there are plenty of speedruns available. The world record is somewhere around 50 minutes for any %.
With a game like this, or Breath of the Wild before it, it’s tough to compare the speedrun experience with that of the average gamer. Many open world games are like this, where the sheer magnitude of the ground to cover makes speedrunning into a game of glitches, exploits, and even cheats.
Want more info on speedrunning or looking to get involved yourself? Speedrun.com is a really good place to start.
I linked it last week, but I’ll link it here again: watch Bubzia really Link It, in the Blindfolded Breath of the Wild speedrun from SGDQ 2023!
One Ring to Rule Them All
The Magic the Gathering ‘Lord of the Rings’ set continues to make waves. There is controversy in the form of misleading advertising on packs, unreal prices for sealed boosters and boxes, and the frenzy over The One Ring 1 of 1 serialized lottery card.
It’s also possible the LOTR set might be breaking some Canadian law. There’s a wrinkle in Canadian law that only the government can do a certain type of giveaway, and historically that resulted in the ever-popular ‘skill-testing question’ as a way for companies to get around things. Stay tuned, you might have to do some simple math in order to open your boosters!
In any event, it’s tough to get a real sense of what’s actually happening out there, and until The One of One Ring is found and authenticated, there will be kerfuffle.
I want to take a look at the actual card today. More specifically, I want to break down ‘Protection from Everything.’ What does that mean and not mean?
Protection doesn’t mean Indestructible. It’s easy to think that, because Protection is a nebulous list of things, and seems similar enough overall. Plus Indestructible is also on this card, right above the Protection line. It’s good to know what they do.
Indestructible – Permanents with indestructible can’t be destroyed by cards or effects. This includes lethal damage, deathtouch, etc. It does not include sacrifice effects, which are almost always the controller’s choice anyway, and exile effects, like Swords to Plowshares.
Indestructible permanents are best at surviving Sweeper effects, like Fumigate. They also explain why it says ‘for each creature destroyed in this way.’ That means the game understands that ‘destroy all creatures’ will be applied to all creatures, but the indestructible ones will not be destroyed and you won’t gain life for them.
It’s also important to note that damage done to Indestructible permanents is not prevented. It just fails to destroy them.
Protection – Like I said, Protection is a list of several things. Thanks to MTGwiki for this. For this example, we have ‘Protection from Everything’. This also means we have Protection from Anything which makes more sense in the following:
- Damage – Damage from the source is prevented. This means damage to us from Everything (and Anything) is prevented. That’s all the damage. If we had Protection from Red, for contrast, we would take no damage from red sources.
- Enchanted, Equipped or Fortified – We can’t be the target of Anything enchantments or Any of the Equip abilities on equipment artifacts. We also can’t be fortified using Darksteel Garrison, which is the only card with that ability. Sadly, we’re not a land. This all applies more to permanents than players, though curses like Curse of Exhaustion can’t be applied to us. We also can’t be targeted by abilities on enchantments, like that of Theater of Horrors.
- Blocked – We can’t be blocked by Anything. Like above, this normally is defined by colour, but for us it applies to all blocking creatures. However, we are a player, and we don’t attack, so this part of Protection doesn’t really apply.
- Targeted – We can’t be targeted by Anything. That’s a big one, and arguably the most relevant effect here. Any spell or effect that could target us now can’t. Simple as that. This is also not a keyword ability. We do not gain Hexproof or Shroud, and anything that affects those abilities, like Detection Tower, does not apply.
Those are powerful abilities, and thanks to MTG Wiki, can be remembered as DEBT. In the case of The One Ring, I think it’s important to not just know what this ability does, but also what it doesn’t do.
We are part of Everything – This is very important. We are part of Everything, so we cannot target ourselves. This is maybe a bunch of corner cases, but a very real Vintage card that this applies to is Ancestral Recall which definitely targets. For contrast, Brainstorm does not.
I expect as we get into Commander there are plenty of self-targeting effects that would be nullified by this Protection, so watch out for them. MTGOnline will stop things, but just like that player who keeps equipping that creature wearing Lightning Greaves, you’re going to have to watch out for people who either aren’t aware of how this works, or are hoping you don’t.
Symmetrical effects still apply – Stuff that says ‘each player’ or maybe ‘each opponent’ will still apply to us. That includes effects from spell cards like Burning Inquiry and Wheel of Fortune, but also from permanents like Howling Mine or Bottomless Pit. Damage from cards like this will not affect us however. Examples would be Earthquake and Hurricane.
Our stuff does not get Protection from Everything – Very important. It’s just us. Not our permanents.
We can be attacked – This is an easy one to make a mistake over, because Protection addresses blockers. But opponents can still announce attackers against us. Those attackers will not do damage to us, and combat damage triggers will be prevented accordingly, but this matters for attack triggers, attacking Battles and Planeswalkers, and some other combat-related stuff, like forcing blockers with a card like Lure.
Damage is sometimes unpreventable – Sometimes it’s on the specific creature or spell, like Malignus or Banefire, maybe applying to all cards of a type, like Questing Beast. Sometimes it’s a global effect covering the whole turn, like Flaring Pain or Fear, Fire, Foes!. It matters when these spells are played. If they resolve after you’ve resolved Protection from Everything, you can now take damage until their effect ends.
Some stuff just doesn’t target – When in doubt, read the card. Still doubting? Ask a judge or consult Gatherer for the official text.
We can still lose life – This is also very important, because a lot of decks use lifeloss as a wincon. Some also pair that with lifegain, commonly called ‘gaindrain’. Zulaport Cutthroat is a classic example of a gaindrain effect. It is also very heavily played in Commander. It does not care about Protection from Everything. Another heavily played card, Purphoros, God of the Forge, does care about Protection from Everything as a damage dealer. It’s easy to lump cards like this together, but damage vs. lifeloss is a difference that matters.
We can still Lose the Game – Drawing from an empty library is still death. Our opponent playing a Win the Game card, like Approach of the Second Sun will still win the game.
Conclusion
As much as The One Ring is an extremely powerful card, it’s good to know it has plenty of limitations. Aren’t we glad that Sauron’s Protection from Everything somehow didn’t count Isildur’s blade? It sure doesn’t stop Steal Artifact or Dack Fayden or even Aladdin from taking the ring in a game of magic either. Cards that steal artifacts are something to consider these days, because you can never have too many of The One Ring!
Thanks for reading!
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