#canna12

[magicjudge]

Does Merfolk Trickster's ability kill a Tarmogoyf, or merely make it a 0/1 until end of turn? Thanks!

Tarmogoyf will be 0/1 until end of turn.

When Merfolk Trickster’s ability resolves, it makes takes away Tarmogoyf’s abilties. This means that it no longer has anything defining the *’s in its */1+* P/T. Since the * is undefined, 0 is used instead of *, making Tarmogoyf 0/1.

[markrosewater]

Do you know if the slang "bounce" for "return X to its owner's hand" *inspired* or *was inspired by* the card Waterfront Bouncer? It occurred to me that Bouncer is a fairly old card with a name that is now slang for what it does, so now I'm curious.

The term "bounce" predates that card being named.

[magicjudge]

Foul Emissary has a very strange template. If I sacrifice Foul Emissary to pay the cost of a mana ability (e.g. Ashnod's Altar) to pay for a spell with Emerge (but not necessarily paying that spell's Emerge cost), will I still get the 3/2 token? My gut says yes but it's clearly not exactly what was intended on the card.

Yes. This is spelled out in the EMN release notes:

Foul Emissary’s last ability triggers if it’s sacrificed for any reason while you’re casting a spell with emerge, whether or not you’re casting that spell for its emerge cost. For example, if you sacrifice it to activate the ability of Ashnod’s Altar while casting Decimator of the Provinces for 10, its ability will trigger.

[magicjudge]

VSL was talking about Stormbind this week, so I looked it up in Gatherer. There's a 2004 ruling there that says it can't be used with Library of Leng "since the discard is a cost". Is this accurate? It seems to me that it would work fine, since (as far as I can tell) the Library doesn't prevent you from discarding cards, it just changes where the cards go when you discard them (like Obstinate Baloth and friends). Was there a rules change since 2004 to change how this works?

That ruling is grossly outdated.

Stormbind works just fine if you control Library of Leng.

My guess to what’s changed since then is how Library of Leng works. I don’t know how it worked back then, but under current rules, there’s nothing preventing you from activating Stormbind when you control Library of Leng.

[markrosewater]

Was the color wheel printed in WUBRG order for any particular reason? Do you think philosophy or mechanical execution of the guilds/shards/clans would have been different if it were, e.g., GBWRU?

The color wheel goes around the color wheel starting from the top of it as it appears on the back of cards. It could in theory have started with any color, but it needs to follow around the wheel meaning going from ally to ally.