Exact Words / Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering runs on this trope.
  • Indestructible permanents can't be destroyed... but they can still be exiled (a stronger effect that pushes the card into the 'exile zone', outside the normal game^note it used to be called "removed from the game" until that term proved to be both too cumbersome and somewhat inaccurate), bounced back into the player's hand, and (in the case of creatures) weakened with minus effects applied to toughness enough to die on their own. Hexproof creatures can't be targeted by spells or abilities an opponent controls... but their controller may be forced to sacrifice them, or an effect may be untargeted, affecting all creatures on the battlefield indiscrimiately.
  • "Sacrifice" deserves a mention of its own. When a card effect forces a player to sacrifice a monster, it does not count as a destruction effect, allowing it to be used to eliminate indestructible creatures. It's also almost always an effect initiated by the player controlling the monster, even if the card causing the sacrifice was played by an opponent, so effects that protect against an opponent's effects do not apply.
  • Similarly, there are effects that deal damage and those that cause loss of life. An effect protecting from damage won't help against loss of life. There are also effects that reduce a creature's stats, potentially even fatally, but these aren't considered to be damage and so won't activate corresponding effects like deathtouch.
  • Many rules depend on exactly how things are worded, and slight changes will completely ruin the effect of the card. One notorious example is "Substance", an ability whose only reason for existing was to cheat around the significant length of time between "at end of turn" and "until end of turn," and certain cards really needed the second one.^note The problem here was that these cards were creature enchantments that could be played at instant speed, but if you did, they were sacrificed at the end of the turn. The idea was that you could use them to "save" a creature that was about to die, at the cost of the permanent benefit of the enchantment. However, the timing difference was crucial: If the card is sacrificed "at end of turn," the creature hasn't had its damage removed yet, so the effect of saving the creature is rendered moot. The fix was to say, essentially, "This has Substance until end of turn; when it loses Substance, sacrifice this." "Until end of turn" effects resolve at the actual, literal end of the turn, and the creature has had its damage removed by then. This no longer exists; as of the June 2009 rules overhaul, a special "at the beginning of the next cleanup step" trigger is used for these cards, which has (close enough to) the same timing as "until end of turn".
  • Many, many of the creative combos (most of which are tournament-winning level ones) and lockdowns are result of this and lack of creator's foresight. Myr Superion is a card that was meant to be cast with mana generated from normal myrs, as that's what they're best known for. However its only restriction is that the mana used to pay its cost has to come from creatures. If you reduce its cost to zero, you don't need any creatures to play it.
  • In early playtesting, one card had the effect "Opponent loses next turn". While the intention was that the opponent's next turn is skipped, many players instead interpreted it as "Opponent loses the game next turn". As a result, the actual printed card instead reads "Take an extra turn after this one."
    • Perhaps inspired by the above, there's another card with the effect "Take an extra turn after this one. You lose the game at the end of that turn." This needed errata to specifically state that you don't lose if you've already won, to prevent people from interpreting it as causing the caster to lose even if they ended the turn by winning the game.
  • The Unglued (joke set) card "Chaos Confetti" was inspired by an infamous incident at a tournament involving the card "Chaos Orb". You see, Chaos Orb's text declares: "If Chaos Orb is on the battlefield, flip Chaos Orb onto the battlefield from a height of at least one foot. If Chaos Orb turns over completely at least once during the flip, destroy all nontoken permanents it touches. Then destroy Chaos Orb." So the player in question tore up the card, and tossed the now-multiple pieces of it onto the field. The judge ruled it as valid at the time because technically they were indeed touching Chaos Orb... thus inspiring the "Confetti" card, which does almost the exact same thing but requires you to tear it up in the process.
    • And on that note, Chaos Orb itself's Exact Words have proven so problematic that its text got errata'd to refer to only Permanents, it's gotten banned in all tournament formats, and it gained multiple rulings (all of which were garnered on the same date), including:
    • "Cards that are in the game but not on the battlefield, such as those in the Library and Graveyard, can't be affected."
    • "You can arrange your cards any time before the Orb is put onto the battlefield, but not after. "
    • "It must flip 360 degrees (that's what "flip" means). And this flip must be in the air and not in your hand."
    • "This is not a targeted ability."
    • And "If you have sleeves on cards, they count as the cards."
    • To which one player suggested: "So put your Chaos Orb deck in really big sleeves..."
  • Tournament rules are sometimes revised precisely to avoid shenanigans with this. Some time ago in a tournament a player played with a deck that was heavily based on Borborygmos Enraged. His opponent played a Pithing Needle and said "Borborygmos" in order to stop its activated ability from being used. The first player went to consult a judge and then came back and continued playing and at some point played the Borborygmos Enraged and proceeded to use its activated ability. When his opponent protested he said: "You said Borborygmos, not Borborygmos Enraged." Turns out there's a completely different card named Borborygmos (that wasn't used in that deck, or even that entire tournament by anybody), and technically speaking the Pithing Needle was hindering that card, not the Borborygmos Enraged card. Exact words are exact. This was confirmed by the judge. (Because of this incident tournament rules were changed afterwards so that naming a card partially, or even just describing a card, is enough to indicate the intended card if it's clear to both players.)
  • The old Spirit Link enchantment, which existed significantly before the actual lifelink keyword was introduced, is specifically worded as "Whenever enchanted creature deals damage, you gain that much life", and it does not have any limitations on what creatures you can play it on. As a result, if you play it on an opponent's creature, it will be unable to actually hurt you in combat - unless the damage it's dealing would actually kill you, which will take you out before Spirit Link can trigger.
  • The ninjutsu ability allows you to replace an attacking, unblocked creature with (usually) a ninja from your hand. It does not specify that this creature cannot, itself, be a ninja that just entered the battlefield via its own ninjutsu ability. Usually this would be pointless - it'd be more efficient just to replace the creature with the ninja you want to deal damage with - but by repeatedly playing Sakashima's Student copying a creature like Dockside Extortionist that generates a decent amount of fast mana when it enters the field, then using some of that mana to bounce the Student back to your hand with another cheap ninja and replay it, you can produce an arbitrary amount of mana, and that's why Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is a dangerous enemy in Competitive EDH.
• There are several examples from Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • An interesting side-effect of Equip Spell Cards that give Piercing is that you can inflict damage to your opponent by equipping them to your opponent's monster(s). Then, when your opponent attacks one of your Defense Position monsters with an ATK greater than your monster's DEF, he/she will take the difference. After all, even though it's your opponent's monster, it's your Spell Card, and thus it's your opponent — not you — who takes the extra damage, due to the wording on the cards.
  • Some continuous card effects have linkage to another monster card, such as Future Fusion and Call of the Haunted. However, when the monster is removed from the field other than being destroyed, the continuous effect card remains on the field meaninglessly. Those hinder the user more than helping them… but not so with Premature Burial. Its text states that when it is destroyed, destroy the equipped monster^note If you return it to your hand, it isn't destroyed, so the revived monster stays on the field and you can play the card again on your next turn. And the next... and the next... That card is the primary offender, so much so that it's been banned in tournament play.
  • Another card that deserves special mention is Question. The card states that the opposing player must remember the name of the first monster card on the bottom of his/her opponent's graveyard or it gets special summoned to the field. This was fairly jarring if your opponent enforced including prefixes, such as if the monster's card name began with "The" (like many a Six Samurai deck) or enforces his/her own specific pronunciation of the card's name.
  • A common mistake most beginners make is the difference between "destroying" a card and "negating" a card. The former simply means the card no longer exists on the field, the latter means its effects are stopped until the negating effect ends. This means that playing something like Mystical Space Typhoon on an activated spell/trap card with the same or lower spell speed is meaningless, as its effect is already in motion and it would go to the graveyard regardless anyways. Likewise, simply negating the continuous effect of a card without destroying it is moot, as the effect would resume as soon as the negation card is gone.
  • There's a card called "Yu-Jo Friendship". When activated, you offer a handshake to your opponent. The effects of the card are dependent on whether or not the opponent accepts the handshake, but you can reveal a "Unity" card in your hand to your opponent, and then they must "accept the handshake". It doesn't say to apply the one specific effect, just that they must accept the handshake. So one player, after using this card, stuck his hand down his pants, and then showed Unity to force a handshake. His opponent wisely chose to forfeit rather than to shake that hand.
    • Of course, the opponent could have instead called over a judge and gotten the player penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct.
  • Not to mention the card doesn't even say that you have to shake your opponent's hand. It says your opponent must accept the handshake. A player could say "I accept the handshake" without shaking the hand.
  • One of the main reasons Blackship of Corn is popular: its effect doesn't say to "destroy" the target monster, but to "send it to the Graveyard". Cards that are destroyed go to the Graveyard, so what's the difference? Many monsters have effects saying either that they "cannot be destroyed by card effects", or that "when this card is destroyed by a card effect, do X", and many such similar cases. Due to the wording on Blackship's effect, it bypasses all of that since the card isn't technically being "destroyed".
    • Similarly, banishing a card is not destroying it, so cards immune to destruction effects can still be banished by cards like Dimensional Prison.
  • There are a handful of cards that have the card text "Unaffected by other card effects", meaning they essentially cannot be negated, destroyed, shuffled, etc. except via being destroyed by battle. There is a way to get rid of them with a card effect, though: using any card that says "You can make your opponent do [insert action here]", "Your opponent must", or some variation of the sort, such as Evenly Matched. This is because the card specifies that the opponent is performing the action, rather than directly affecting a card, meaning that the card effect is actually affecting your opponent and not the card, so it bypasses any protection your opponent's cards may have.
  • Certain cards have a statement in their effects to the tune of "Target 1 monster in (location)". Certain other monsters "cannot be targeted by card effects". Unless both conditions are true, the latter effect is useless. An effect that says "Destroy 1 monster your opponent controls" may, technically, require you to target a monster (that is, by pointing out the one you want to destroy), but because it doesn't say "target", effects that protect from cards that specify targets will not protect from it. This is also why when Problem Solving Card Text was introduced, the card "Mystical Space Typhoon" had to be errata'd to clarify that it targets the Spell/Trap to be destroyed (the old text simply states to "Destroy 1 Spell or Trap Card on the field").
  • It's surprising how many conditions apply to the basic act of playing a monster face-down. First of all, this is called "Setting", and is not considered a Normal Summon, although it does consume your Normal Summon for the turn (this is why the rule says you have "one Normal Summon or Set"). Unless you are told otherwise, you can still Set a monster even if you can't Normal Summon that turn for whatever reason. Secondly, there's a difference between flipping a monster face-up and a Flip Summon. A Flip Summon only happens when you switch a face-down monster from Defense Position to Attack Position (which flips it because under normal circumstances you cannot have a monster face-down in Attack Position); flipping it can happen any number of ways, usually when it's attacked. If the ability says it activates when the monster is flipped face-up, it happens when it's Flip Summoned, too; however, if the effect specifies that the monster has to be Flip Summoned for the effect to activate, just being flipped face-up means you lose the ability to activate that effect.
• Pokémon: Certain moves like Selfdestruct ^note which, in the mainline video games, has obscenely high power but causes the user to faint don't tell you to remove the card as if it had fainted, but to put as many damage counters on it as it has HP. As seen in the Game Boy version, this means that you can use a Defender card to remove two of those damage counters, allowing the card to remain in play for at least one more turn. This one got foreseen, as some Pokémon with Selfdestruct, Explosion, etc. do damage to themselves greater than their HP, and other self-sacrificial moves skip the self-damage and do outright state that the user is Knocked Out.
• Munchkin has had to do this a few times, since it's a game with a sizable player base of rules lawyers.
  • Errata for the Plutonium Dragon had to say that "You are roasted and eaten" meant that you were dead.
  • A famous instance came from people using "Go Up a Level" cards to make their opponents gain a level, since there was no rule saying you had to use the level-up card on yourself, thereby forcing the other player to fight a monster they could have otherwise escaped from. The developers said that it was "a very Munchkin-y thing to do," and decided to leave it in the game, unpatched.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse:
  • In the lore, Wager Master is vulnerable to this. The Scholar once got shot of him by offering a deal of "take my Philosopher's Stone and go away". WM stuck with this deal even though the Scholar summoned the Stone back two minutes later.
  • There are also plenty of mechanical interactions that qualify, such as the Jack Handle equipment for Mr Fixer turning all damage he deals into barrages of outgoing damage aimed at all the bad guys...including damage he would cause to himself or other heroes.
  • Anything that just says "target" doesn't care about side. This allows Absolute Zero to use some of his attacks on himself to heal up, or allows heroes to trigger Kaargra Warfang's titles or shift their health to trigger a specific Wager Master card by hitting each other.
  • Luminary has a card that lets him blow up devices and ongoings to draw up. This includes villainous devices (most of which, to be fair, he built in the first place).
  • Some villains counterattack anyone who damages them. Including themselves. This makes redirection effects hilarious against, say, the Chairman or Greazer Clutch.
  • Nemesis symbols always boost damage regardless of what side the targets are on: for example, the Ennead share Ra's nemesis icon and so will deal bonus damage to each other. Definitive Edition has made this less effective; the rules for Nemesis symbols now say that damage is only boosted when attacking a card of a different type (the types being Hero, Villain, or Environment), presumably because this made damage reflection too useful.
  • Legacy's Take Down card specifies that it will damage him at the end of his turn, so it becomes harmless to him yet still fully effective if played on someone else's. There are several ways to abuse this. One of them is an infinite combo that can lock a villain deck indefinitely.
  • One that can easily get an unwary player in trouble is the difference between "each" and "up to". If a card lets you do something "up to" a certain number of times, you can stop at any point, even if you haven't done it at all; for example, a card that lets you deal damage to "up to three villain targets" can deal between zero to three targets damage. Cards that say "each" can't be stopped like this, and will hit all targets of the named type. This makes Tempest and his love of the Herd-Hitting Attack a liability in many cases; he can't stop himself from hitting Ambuscade's Sonic Mines if they're on the field (which causes them to go off and cause a significant amount of trouble), his card says "all non-hero targets" which means he can hurt useful environment cards, and against the Dreamer... you do not want to bring him in a game against the Dreamer.
  • Omnitron-X has a number of cards labeled as Components. So does the villain Omnitron (and, for that matter, the environment Omnitron-IV). Omnitron-X has a number of cards that rely on destroying Components. These cards do not state that they have to be Omnitron-X Components. Omnitron-X can destroy Omnitron's Components with these cards. In turn, Omnitron's Cosmic Omnitron variant will flip from its weaker starting form into a far more dangerous "battleship" form if there are no Components in play... but again, the game doesn't specify whose Components it has to be, so if Omnitron-X or Omnitron-IV have any Components out, Cosmic Omnitron won't flip.
  • A number of cards have effects that trigger "when at 0 HP" or "when this card is destroyed". These are not synonymous both ways. An effect that destroys a card does not reduce its HP to 0 if it has any, though reducing a card's HP to 0 does (usually) destroy it. For example, Wager Master has the card "Who Are You Fighting?", which ends the game in a Non-Standard Game Over if his HP is reduced to 0. Tachyon has a card called "Sucker Punch" that can destroy a target if it has 2 HP or less. If you reduce Wager Master to 2 HP, then play "Sucker Punch", Wager Master is destroyed and you win the game without trigger "Who Are You Fighting?". Likewise, the Mobile Defense Platform card "Propulsion Systems" ends the game in a Non-Standard Game Over if its HP is reduced to 0, but blowing it up with, say, Tachyon's "Blinding Speed" merely removes it from the field without the heroes losing the game.
• Illuminati: New World Order has a card simply called "I Lied". Its effect is that if you make an otherwise-binding deal with another player and then play that card, the other player is bound by the deal but you aren't. Nowhere does it say the deal has to specifically be about the cards, though. There's a story about the first official tournament held for the game, where one player in the final game offered their opponent half the prize money in exchange for conceding the game, and then played "I Lied" when their opponent agreed. The judges ruled it was entirely fair and awarded the first player the victory.

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