conner-judges-ingenuity
Welcome back, Magic players! Conner Morrison here, with this week’s edition of Judge’s Ingenuity. Judge’s Ingenuity is a column designed mostly for players who know the basics of how to play, but aren’t super familiar with the rules. Here, I’ll be taking some of the deeper rules of magic and giving a rundown on them so that you all can play a tighter game!

Our topic for this week is the beginning of your turn. I’ve noticed this is something that a lot of players rush through, and don’t give enough time to really think out their actions. Like last week, I’ll be walking you through the beginning of the turn step by step, then I’ll be adding some useful hints and tips at the end of the article.

The beginning phase of the turn consists of 3 steps. Untap, Upkeep, and Draw. Most of these steps are self-explanatory, but I’m going to go into them in a bit more detail in a moment.

At the beginning of your turn, the first thing that happens is the Untap step. At the beginning of this step, all of your permanents, unless noted otherwise, will untap. This is a turn based action, and so it doesn’t use the stack – you can’t respond to untapping at all. In fact, neither player can cast spells or do anything during the untap step. Some more ruthless players might try to tell you that if you fail to untap something at this point, it doesn’t untap. These players are tricking you! Untapping your permanents simply happens, there’s nothing either player can do about it.

After your Untap Step is your Upkeep Step. Normally, nothing happens during this step. It’s similar to the beginning of combat step that I mentioned in my last article. Nothing super special happens here, but it is an opportunity for players to cast instants or activate abilities, as well as being the time when effects that happen “At the beginning of your upkeep” happen. If neither player wants to do anything, go ahead and move on to the next step.

The last step of the Beginning Phase of the turn is the Draw Step. At the beginning of this step, the active player – the one whose turn it currently is – will draw a card. Like untapping, this is a turn based action, and doesn’t use the stack. Technically, you cannot respond to this draw for turn. However, after your draw, both players will get a chance to use instants and abilities. While it’s technically not responding to your draw (the draw has already happened), many players will say “respond to your draw” to just mean that they will be casting something at the end of this step.

Those are the steps of the Beginning Phase of your turn. Pretty simple, right? Remember, though, not to rush through things! You’ll find that ever so often, your opponent might want to cast something on your upkeep before you’ve drawn for turn, or perhaps right after your draw but before your main phase. If you’ve ever played against me, you’ll find that I always begin my turn by saying “Untap, Upkeep, Draw.” This is a habit I got into to help me both remember upkeep triggers and always keep the game in order.

Now that we’ve been over that, let me give you some tricks!

Remember that your upkeep is before your draw. This is a good time to use any abilities you have that might effect your draw! Let’s take an example from Theros Block. Say that at the end of your turn, you chose to use your Sigiled Starfish to scry 1 and look at the top card of your deck. Perhaps it was something you didn’t want or need, and sent it to the bottom of your deck. On your turn, you’ll untap, and then on your upkeep you can use that Starfish to look at the next card before you draw it. That minor timing difference could be the line between drawing a land or drawing the removal spell you need!

You can use this to mess with your opponent as well. Say you’ve got a Griptide in hand and Prophet of Kruphix on the board. You can spend your turn playing a creature, then on their turn, untap your things and on their upkeep, use griptide on their creature. Not only have you effectively returned the creature to their hand, but you’ve also stopped them from drawing the card beneath it for a turn. You never know what could save you a game!

There are tons of other tips and tricks to use during your upkeep, but I won’t go into them now. I’m too busy getting ready for the Magic 2015 drafts that we’ll be putting on tonight at 7! I hope you all can swing by. It’s a great set and I can’t wait to play!

Note on Judge’s Ingenuity:

Judge’s Ingenuity is a weekly column wherein our local Magic judge, Conner Morrison, talks about Magic Rules, tricks, and tips. This week: Start of Turn! Judge’s Ingenuity and all content are TM & Copyright Bel Air Games and Conner Morrison.