Don’t worry, the “at” and colon abilities are effectively the same type of ability in terms of timing.
But, I believe I understand your confusion now. It seems like the end of turn phase was invented after the printing of the rulebook for the sole purpose of distinguishing the timing between abilities that trigger at the end of your turn and effects that last until the end of your turn. But, the similarity of the names makes it more confusing… if the phase had been called cleanup or something like that, it would be clearer IMO. Especially if you think of phases as instantaneous instead of blocks of time.
But, it makes a lot more sense if you think of phases (and, naturally, turns) as blocks of time, with a beginning and an end. And of effects that last “until end of turn” not as lasting until a point in time designated as the end of turn phase, but rather the end of the block of time that is a turn (and all the phases that turn contains). With this model, the upkeep phase would contain your gold income and any abilities that trigger during the upkeep, and “until your next upkeep” effects would expire when the upkeep is first encountered, meaning the beginning of the block of time that is the upkeep phase.
Thanks for the discussion, guys! I think the question of whether effects stopping go on the queue is more relevant here than focusing on the word “until”. Looking at Vandy Anadrose’s maxband, it creates an effect that expires “at” your Upkeep - would you say that this lets the player choose when it resolves, i.e. would it be different from Polymorph?
Vandy’s maxband actually gives the affected units triggered abilities of the form “Upkeep: This unit dies.” (EDIT: Except that the abilities only triggers on the next upkeep, and effectively may as well not exist should the unit somehow survive.) This is indeed in a different category than Polymorph: Squirrel’s “until your next upkeep” expiration.
OK, looks like this came up during the conversation that resulted in this response up above. Context is casting Polymorph on your own Galina, and whether she still gives gold on the next turn.
23/02/2022
Sirlin
I would expect that the squirrel (which lasts “until your next upkeep”) stops being a squirrel, then upkeep triggers trigger, so she is a human and does give gold.
sharpobject
Sounds good.
I agree.
Charnel Mouse
So for upkeep, “until” is happening first, which is currently the opposite of end of turn, because end of turn is supporting two different definitions
sharpobject
Charnel Mouse: Yes. Sorry.
“At the beginning of your upkeep” or “At your upkeep” is the same timing as [“Upkeep: …”].
What I’m getting from all of this is that it comes down to “end of turn” being two separate things, while “upkeep” is one thing. Which, you know, fine. But there’s 0 chance that anyone who’s playing the game and isn’t on this forum would realize this.
I do take @charnel_mouse’s point about the queue, but this could also be solved if we interpret “until X” to be “lose [whatever] at X” (again looking at Vandy’s maxband. The “lose +2/+2” going on the queue could matter if you doomed an indestructible or Soul Stoned unit).
Edit: just saw charnel’s post right above mine. I’m happy that at least I’m not alone in being bothered by this
So, personally I would clean as much of this as possible with “active player decides” regardless of what the absent BDFLs say, with the strong caveat being that if it actually causes issues to use “active player decides” then there’s a justification for the change. My feeling is that a lot of these rulings are situations where Sirlin and sharpobject are being asked to decide things that should have been decided by the active player.
Though I may be too confused at this point to understand the issues that might require these distinctions.
What I would like, though, is a solid description of what happens when. If something happens in a wibbly wobbly time that hasn’t been discussed, put a label on it and treat it like a new phase. I think this will make it clear for everyone to understand, but as someone who may be coding these interactions, it’s necessary to know when things happen and what to call those phases. Weird triggers can happen at any time, after all.
I’m not following how this implies effects stopping to go on the queue, or what that would mean.
It seems clear to me that what “active player decides” would mean is that the active player would decide in which order the events stop during a phase where events stop if there’s a conflict. Any triggers from the events stopping would surely also be considered to have happened “at the same moment” for the active player to decide in which order the triggers would be resolved. How else would you do it?
For the active player to decide the order of something happening “at” a time, and stopping something that lasts “until”, would require the end of an effect to be something that goes on the queue. Otherwise, the effect ending happens instantly, so there’s no choice to be made.
If your architecture assumes everything happens during a phase, and thus, new phases need to be created for effects that would otherwise expire outside of a phase, then I would propose a transition phase that is not part of a turn and occurs between the end of turn phase and the tech phase of the following turn to handle “until end of turn” effect expirations, and a pre-upkeep phase that occurs between the tech phase and the upkeep phase of a player’s turn to handle “until your next upkeep” effects.
Does it never matter which of two “until” effects ends first?
Edit: @charnel_mouse what if you Kidnap a healthy Crash Bomber, Manufactured Truth it into a Centaur, and use it to attack a Lobber? If Manufactured Truth ends before Kidnapping, Crash Bomber dies while under your control, and your enemy’s base takes 1 damage. If Kidnapping ends first, your base ends up taking 1 damage.
so “until end of turn” happens just after the end of turn phase and “until upkeep” happens just before the upkeep phase?
Sounds really confusing, but by “end of turn phase” you’re literally just meaning redraw of hand, correct?
I still think that if they wanted “until upkeep” to mean “until just before upkeep” they should have written it that way. I don’t see why it has to be an exclusive moment in time. “Until upkeep” could also be read to mean “during your upkeep, this will expire.”
End of turn triggers occur after the draw/discard phase.
To clarify, they occur during the end phase which comes after the draw/discard phase and before “until end of turn” effects expire.
For coding, I would suggest you break down a turn into 8 parts like this:
Tech
Ready
Pre-upkeep (“until your next upkeep”)
Upkeep (“Upkeep:”)
Main
Patroller lock in
Discard/Draw
End (“End of turn:”)
After turn (“until end of turn”)
I don’t foresee any practical problem with treating the “after turn” like any other phase during the turn.
No, for example, active player decides which takes priority between Graveyard and Reteller of Truths, which I believe we recently established skip the queue.
I think maybe a confusion here is that you’re thinking of upkeep as an instant, and I’m thinking of upkeep as a phase with a bunch of things that happen, some of which the player has reason to choose the order of.
For example, Starcrossed Starlet and Helpful turtle, the player has reason to choose which effect happens first during upkeep.
Seems reasonable to continue this and choose the order of effects expiring also, if it’s relevant to do so.
Maybe I’m not addressing the specific example you’re mentioning, please remind me if this is the case.
An effect on a card that lasts “until your next upkeep” (Dreamfire originally referred to an “until” effect, but I think “until” always refers to when an effect ends)
An effect on a card that happens “at upkeep”
The question is then whether you can decide the order in which these happen. For the active player to be to able to decide the order, we must have the ends of effects go on the queue, like the “at” effect, in addition to those two timings being the same.
Okay. And to resolve that context I think we’re discussing two options
Effectively adding an additional phase just before upkeep when effects can end.
Having those effects end during the upkeep phase.
I think Dreamfire’s example above of kidnapping + manufactured truth on a Crash Bomber where the timing does matter shows that there is a necessity for the active player to be able to decide the order of effects expiring, and thus put expiration of effects onto the queue.
I dunno. Maybe it solves problems, but it seems like an extraordinary thing to add in an extra phase to a game like this, or to having things happen outside of the phases. But technically the phase where effects expire at the end of turn aren’t mentioned in the official phases either.
If it was the desired behaviour for these “until upkeep” effects to expire before the upkeep, it would be clearer to say “until the ready phase,” which is directly before the upkeep and therefore not confusing at all.
