#beginning of combat

[icarusfrommars]

You: Go to Combat? Me, an intellectual: Move from the end of my main phase to the beginning of my combat phase

[magicjudge]

So, wedge did a vid of a recent mono-red vamps deck for standard. In it he mentioned a ruling about the interaction of furyblade and the youths were you discard youths to fury's beginning of combat trigger then swinging with both. It makes sense to me given that you haven't declared attackers yet, but I wanted to make sure and wanted to know when that ruling happened, since he speaks of it like it was super recent. Thanks x3

There’s nothing special or ruling-worthy about this interaction.

Yes, you can cast Incorrigible Youths if you discard it to Furyblade Vampire’s triggered ability. Yes, Furyblade Vampire still gets the buff. Yes, you can attack with Incorrigible Youths since they have haste and you cast them before you declared attackers.

Also, who’s Wedge?

[magicjudge]

Can you confirm something? Toolcraft Exemplar can crew a vehicle with crew 3 as long as it's used to crew it during the beginning of combat phase, correct? I think it can but the window of opportunity is small (i.e., not in main phase, and not in declare attackers)

Yes, this is correct.

You’ll have priority in the beginning of combat step after Toolcraft Exemplar’s trigger resolves and you can crew a vehicle with it at that time and still be able to attack with that vehicle that combat.

In a tournament setting, you need to be explicit that you want to act in your beginning of combat step this way by saying something like “Go to beginning of combat and use Toolcraft Exemplar to crew Bomat Bazaar Barge after the trigger resolves.”

[magicjudge]

Hey Charlotte! a question that needs to be asked before Kaladesh arrives at Competitive REL events: If my opponent says "Move to combat", and I approve, then they tap a creature to crew a vehicle, how is it to be handled? By their actions they passed their ability to declare attackers since they made an action that is presumably *after* declaring attackers. Can I just say "no, you are at your End of Combat now"? Can they attack? It feels like they can't to me.

If a player wants to do something in their beginning of combat step, they need to say what it is at the time that they propose moving to combat. e.g. “Go to combat and crew this vehicle in the beginning of combat.” 

That said, if a player does attempt to do this, they don’t automatically forfeit their whole combat phase. They just don’t get to crew that vehicle and will still have the ability to attack with their other creatures.

[magicjudge]

I wanted to ask about manland activations. Am I allowed to activate my manland AFTER my mainphase, during my "beginning combat" step and then declare it as an attacker? If yes, how should I go about stating this during game play?

Yes.

The way to do this is just pass priority in your main phase with the stack empty. If you opponent doesn’t have anything else to do, then you’ll move on to the beginning of combat step where you’ll have priority to activate your creature-land.

[magicjudge]

Ezuri, Claw of Progress adds +1/+1 counters at beginning of combat. When is that exactly? Tonight we just played that we could go to combat step, get the counters, then not declare attackers, but I think that´s wrong. Would appreciate clarification. Thank you for all your efforts here.

What you did was absolutely correct.

The beginning of combat step is the first step in the combat phase, which occurs between the main phases. You still get a combat phase even if you don’t intend to attack with any creatures. 

If there are no creatures attacking when your declare attackers step ends, then the declare blockers and combat damage steps are skipped and the game goes straight to the end of combat step, and then into the second main phase.