How does reverse the sands work? I read the rulings but they make the reminder text make less sense.
When Reverse the Sands resolves, you’ll basically take the life totals of any number of players and then assign one of those life totals to each of those players.
For example, you cast Reverse the Sands in a duel. You have 5 life and your opponent has 20 life. As the spell resolves, you can choose to switch your life total with your opponent so that you’ll have 20 life and your opponent will have 5 life.
What’s happening on a technical level is that any player who goes to a higher life total gains the appropriate amount of life to reach that life total and anyone going to a lower life total loses enough life to reach that life total. In the example above, you’ll gain 15 life to go to 20 and your opponent will lose 15 life to go to 5.
It gets more complicated in multiplayer, but just remember that for each of the individual life totals of players you choose to switch around has to end up on a player. For example, you have 20 life, A has 5 life, and B has 30 life. You can choose to not affect yourself and put A to 30 life and B to 5 life, or you could put yourself to 30 life, A to 20 life, and B to 5 life, or any of the other possible permutations.
I hope that makes more sense now?