Welcome to Personal Tutor, where we learn how to maximize our opportunities for education. Our goal is to transcend the basic answer to create an informative answer that the players will really remember and teaches them something about the rules, rather than just resolving this ruling. You may even find this process helps you come to a better understanding of the rules yourself.

Here's this month's scenario:

Algorithm and Numeral are playing a game of Standard when you are called to the table. Algorithm says, "So, I'm at 3. I just cast this Dragonlord Atarka. Numeral is saying I have to target her Thunderbreak Regent because she doesn't control any other creatures. But I just want to target nothing and not die. ‘Any number of targets’ can be 0, right?"

The short answer here is “You have to target it.” But we don't think that's the best answer for educating players, which is an important task for a judge! So tell us:

How would you answer this question? Please provide an actual quote from yourself in this situation, rather than a general description.

L1s and Judge Candidates, feel free to give your answers immediately. L2s, please wait a day to add your input. L3+, please wait two days.

Well, no L1's have gotten to this, but it has been a full day since posting, so:

"Atarka requires you do divide 5 damage. Just like in all the math you learned in high school, dividing by zero is a big no-no. You are required to choose at least one target."

“Unfortunately, even though Atarka's trigger says ‘any number of targets’, you can't target nothing. Spells and abilities that can divide damage among targets require at least one target. The ‘any number’ is there so that you can divide the damage between multiple targets, but you can't target nothing with it. It's like if you had 5 rocks you must throw and you can't just let them drop; you have to throw them at something.”

Kinda feel-bad (and understandably unintuitive to newer players), but them's how the cookie crumbles. There's also always the chance that Algorithm asks you if he can take it back. At Regular it's a little more subjective based on the tone of the event. It was a misunderstanding of a corner-y case of the rules, but I'm also of the “you live and you learn” mindset. That said, I'm not going to stop them if Numeral wants to let Algorithm take it back at Regular. I'd need a better feel for the situation to give a definitive answer on takesie-backsies. Definitely none at Competitive, though.