Welcome to Personal Tutor, where we discuss how to maximize our opportunities for player education. Our goal is to transcend the basic answer to create an informative answer that the player will really remember without coaching them. You may even find this process helps you come to a better understanding of the rules yourself.

The Scenario:
Ambition is playing in a Theros sealed GPT. She calls you over to the table. "So, I have this Artisan of Forms. It's copying Colossus of Akros. It's got these three +1/+1 counters on it from when it became Monstrous as a copy of Sealock Monster two turns ago. Can I still pump it as a Colossus so it can attack?”

The Basic Answer:
Uhh… can you rephrase that?

This month Ambition has posed us a question that is impossible to answer as asked because the assumptions that underlie the question itself are incorrect. It is now your job to determine what Ambition doesn't know, what she misunderstands, and how you can give her the answer she needs without coaching her. As always, focus on giving a memorable and comprehensible explanation that will stick with the players and teach them the fundamental rules.

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.

Edited Joshua Feingold (Dec. 6, 2013 08:59:41 AM)

If I heard this question as asked I don't think I would ask back a clarifying question. To me, everything I need is there. Because Ambition specifically asked “can I still pump it…” as part of the question, my answer would be:

“You can activate the ability, but it won't get any +1/+1 counters because it's already monstrous. ‘Monstrous’ is a status - like ‘tapped’ or ‘face-up’ - and it isn't copied or overwritten by copy effects.”

Whether this strays into coaching, I don't know. The way I see it: it's unavoidable that answering the technical question about the situation immediately reveals Ambition's true strategic position, but it's not like I said “so feel free to swing away” or anything like that.

I think I would try an clarify what she's asking, the two possibilities I see clearly are “can I activate this creature's monstrosity ability?” and “is this creature monstrous?”.

To clear this up, I would say “I'm not sure what rule you're asking about, would you mind clarifying?” If she says she wants to know about monstrosity, I'll point out that you can still activate the monstrosity ability of monstrous creatures, and that monstrous is a characteristic that would not change when you copy something else, just like being flipped or transformed. I would probably also add monstrosity's comp-rules text for completeness.

Quick recommendation: don't conflate tapped, flipped, etc. with monstrous - these are not the same thing, though they are both not copiable values. Just term it as “monstrous is not a copiable value, so it doesn't get overwritten when you copy again…” and you both stay more technically correct, while cluing the players into WHY it doesn't change (“copiable value” attaches pretty well to “copying”, after all).

Sorry, I thought it was a for-real status. Double checking the CR, I see it's called a “condition”. Weird stuff.

Edited Michael Shiver (Dec. 6, 2013 04:13:18 PM)

“Could you clarify, what you mean by ‘pumping’?” and then a follow-up explanation of “A card stays monstrous, even if it becomes a copy of a different card.”

I might want to argue that by stating “so it can attack”, she might have implied that she meant the monstrous ability of the colossus. Especially since she actually mentioned the previous monstrous activation of her Artisan of Forms. Which in turn means that we could explain “A monstrous creature stays monstrous, even if it becomes a copy of a different card.” without necessarily having to ask for the clarification question.

Question: Why is “Ambition” a female name? :)

It's a female name because Artisan of Forms has a picture of a lady, and the scenario is mostly about that card. I had no better reason than that.

I'd start from the question (“can I pump it?”)

“Pump with what?”

“The monstrosity ability”

“Once a creature is monstrous it can't lose it's monstrous condition unless you make it exit the battlefield in some way, so, no, ctivating it won't pump it as it is already monstrous.”

“If a creature is monstrous, you can't make it monstrous again.”

“What do you mean by pump it?”

“Will it get more counters if I use its monstrous ability?”

“No, because it is still monstrous from the first time you activated Monstrosity as a copy of Sealock Monster. The only way to have a permanent lose monstrous is for it to leave the battlefield and become an entirely new object.”

Since it is competitive I would leave it at that. I thought about adding “Also, when you copy a permanent, you are only copying the text and values actually printed on the card and not any other effects or conditions that may apply to the card at that time.” However, I think this could be borderline coaching since she didn't ask anything about copying and may affect her decision of what to copy next.

As we go into the last couple days of discussion for this question, please consider what rules questions or misunderstandings are implicit in the question as originally posed. By my count, there are three distinct rules that are potentially important to explain to the player.

Most of the answers posted so far have addressed one or two of these questions.

Whether you have posted an answer already or not, what do you think the player doesn't know or correctly understand? How does your answer cover each of these topics? Or, if it doesn't cover one or more topics, why have you chosen to omit that information?

To be perfectly honest, I'm unclear how you're counting the rules that Ambition is theoretically unclear on. As I see it, she seems to be confused as to whether or not her creature is Monstrous - asking us if she can “pump it” implies she believes she has doubts its monstrous, but “so it can attack” implies she's confident it wouldn't be able to without activating the ability, suggesting she either believes it is definitely not monstrous, or doesn't understand how the Colossus works.

Given an ideal answer, I think we should straighten up the following things for her:
1) Monstrous doesn't go away when you copy something, since Monstrous isn't a copiable value.
2) Colossus of Akros can attack so long as it is Monstrous, whether it became so from its own Monstrousity effect or not.

Anything beyond this is extra information Ambition hasn't asked for, and isn't necessary for her to continue playing the game. It seems like it begins to stray into the realm of coaching.

Edited Talia Parkinson (Dec. 10, 2013 08:27:06 PM)

I feel like some of the questions stray into leading someone on/coaching via the socratic method. I would explain about monstrous, how it works, and how it stays. I would consider ending it with “Yes, you may pump your creature, but not with monstrosity” - not sure about this.

Originally posted by Olivier Jansen:

I feel like some of the questions stray into leading someone on/coaching via the socratic method.

Does that really qualify as coaching?

The intent of the questions in the above posts is to clarify what the player means by their words. “What do you mean by pump?” is simply asking for clarity on the vernacular, so you can be certain that you and the player are speaking about the same terms. “Do you believe X will happen?” gives us the ability to clarify where the confusion the player has truly lies, so we can figure out what we properly need to answer about the question.

If the player is able to use these questions to clarify the rules in their head, and suddenly realizes “oh, that's how it works!”, as long as we confirm with them that the interaction works the way they now believe it works, all that means is we were able to answer their question. I'm not seeing the problem.

It's time to wrap up this month's installment of Personal Tutor.

We started this scenario with a flawed question: “Can I still pump it as a Colossus so it can attack?”

Let's break down the implications of this question:

1. Ambition knows that Monstrosity abilities can normally only be used once.
   
2. She doesn't know either that Artisan is still Monstrous after resolving the copy effect…
   
3. or she thinks Monstrosity is tied to the specific Monstrous ability of that creature.
   
4. She doesn't know that Artisan can currently attack as though it didn't have defender.
   

We can actually tackle all three of these problems with succinct answer. However, we don't want to just tell Ambition that she can attack because that is analyzing the game state in a way we have not been directly asked to do. What we have actually been asked about is what happens when the Monstrosity ability of the Artisan is activated.

“If Artisan became Monstrous before, it's still Monstrous. Copying a new creature only grabs the things that are actually physically printed on the card that matter to the game: name, cost, color, types, abilities, power, and toughness. (Pointing at the parts of the card as you go through the list is nice.) Anything other than that, it keeps from before it was a copy.
When you activate a Monstrosity ability, it checks on resolution to see if the creature is already Monstrous - regardless of which ability made it that way. If it isn't, it becomes Monstrous and gets however many counters. If it already is, it just stays Monstrous and the ability does nothing.”

We have the opportunity to explain not only Monstrosity, but also copiable characteristics. And we should actually take that opportunity so players don't have to ask the same question about a different ability in the future. Remember, 10 seconds of education here is likely to save a heck of a lot more time than that down the road.

We are actually expecting a follow-up question to that explanation, which is “So if it's already Monstrous, that means I can attack with it?” At which point, it's fine to just say “Yes.” A one-word answer here is entirely sufficient because we've already given Ambition the tools she needs to reach the right conclusion on her own, and we are just reinforcing her understanding.

Thanks to everybody who participated! We had a lot of good discussion and iterative improvement upon previous answers, which is what Personal Tutor strives to foster.

Personal Tutor will be back next month with a new scenario. If you would like to contribute a discussion topic to Personal Tutor or become a member of the Personal Tutor team, send me a message on the forums.