Building upon our scenarios from last month, this week we will examine a field situation and determine what actions a player can legally take. Part of dueling against the unknown is understanding what effects you can and cannot use, so that you are better able to determine what course of action you can follow.

Macro Cosmos Vs. Costs

Our first situation involves Macro Cosmos. Our turn player has cards she can play, but Macro Cosmos won’t allow all of them to go through unhindered.

Scenario: Out in Space

Jessica has Macro Cosmos and Gravekeeper’s Servant face up on her side of the field. She also has a Cyber Dragon in face-up attack position. Jessica is down to 3800 life points.

Angel has Electric Virus, Kaiser Glider, Advanced Ritual Art, and Demise, King of Armageddon in her hand. She has Exiled Force and Frostosaurus in face-up attack position, with a Wave-Motion Cannon that has been active on her spell and trap card zone for four of her standby phases. She also has Eliminating the League face down in her spell and trap card zone.

It is Angel’s turn. What actions can she legally take in this situation? She certainly has a few options at her disposal, but which of them are even possible? Answering this question will help her to plot out the course of her turn. Let’s begin with combat.

Angel currently has Frostosaurus, which is capable of destroying Jessica’s Cyber Dragon in battle. While it would be nice to just follow this course of action, Jessica has Gravekeeper’s Servant out, which is going to cause Angel a great deal of trouble. Gravekeeper’s Servant applies a cost every time Angel wants to attack with one of her monsters, and Angel must be able to pay it if she wants to declare an attack. Usually this just means having some cards left in her deck to expend, but in this situation, Angel is up against Macro Cosmos, which changes the rules.

Macro Cosmos removes from play any card that tries to go to the graveyard. The impact this has on card effects is dependant upon what the effect does and what it costs to make the effect happen. As a general rule, if fulfilling a card’s cost requires that a card reaches the graveyard, the effect cannot be activated while Macro Cosmos is face up on the field. In our scenario, Angel has cards with a variety of costs, so determining which costs she can fulfill will determine what actions she can take.

Thanks to Macro Cosmos, that Gravekeeper’s Servant—normally just a nuisance—is now completely halting Angel’s attacks. Angel can’t send a card from the top of her deck to her graveyard because if she does, it will be removed from play instead. Since Angel can’t fulfill the cost applied by Gravekeeper’s Servant, she can’t attack—forcing her to look into her other remaining options.

Angel has Electric Virus and Kaiser Glider in her hand. Under ordinary circumstances she could use Electric Virus to take hold of Jessica’s Cyber Dragon and then tribute it for Kaiser Glider. Angel would only need to discard Electric Virus from her hand to the graveyard to begin this sequence, but in this scenario she has run into a snag. Electric Virus, as stated in its text, must be discarded from the hand to the graveyard. Angel can discard it easily enough, but Macro Cosmos won’t allow it to reach the graveyard. Angel is unable to fulfill the cost, so she cannot activate the effect.

How about that Wave-Motion Cannon Angel has charging up on her side of the field? If she can fire it off, she’ll inflict 4000 points of damage and win the duel. But in order to do so, she must pay the cost of sending it to the graveyard. At the moment it isn’t possible for her to do this, because any attempt to send it to the graveyard wouldn’t work out as planned. Wave-Motion Cannon will need to hang out for a while and wait for a better opportunity.

Successful Activations

Eliminating the League also has a cost requiring a discard, but in this case it isn’t important if the card actually reaches the graveyard. While Electric Virus was very specific about where it needed to go, Eliminating the League isn’t quite so strict. You can still conduct the act of discarding one spell card. The spell card you discard will simply be removed from play instead of being placed into the graveyard.

Angel has the Ritual spell card Advanced Ritual Art and Demise, King of Armageddon. With Demise, Angel could remove the Macro Cosmos and Gravekeeper’s Servant combo from the field and get to attack Jessica directly, but can she even use the Advanced Ritual Art? Advanced Ritual Art will require her to send Normal monsters from her deck to the graveyard, and Macro Cosmos isn’t exactly kind to this action. These questions came about when Demise decks were all the rage and players were looking for anything that would help to stop them.

Looking to Macro Cosmos to help you beat out the Demise decks was only partly effective. When you activate Advanced Ritual Art, you don’t actually do anything. You don’t tell your opponent what monster you will Ritual Summon and you don’t ditch any cards to the graveyard. Every action taken by Advanced Ritual Art occurs when it resolves. With no cost to worry about, you can activate it despite the presence of Macro Cosmos. When you resolve the effect of Advanced Ritual Art, the Normal monsters you take from your deck will be removed from play instead of being placed into the graveyard.

Angel has one more option available: Exiled Force. Angel can use it to destroy Jessica’s Cyber Dragon, and all she needs to do is tribute it. Tributing a card as a cost isn’t like sending it to the graveyard as a cost. When you tribute a card, you will place the card onto the graveyard, or when a card like Macro Cosmos is around you, just remove it from play. It may not be entirely necessary to use Exiled Force’s effect in this situation, but at least Angel knows the option is available.

Next week, we will take a look at cards from Tactical Evolution. Until then, send all comments and questions to Curtis@metagame.com.