Is it possible to pause the stack while you do something?

[Althuna]

Hi all,

I had this cool deck I used to play, and with the new cards I can make it again! But I'm not sure how to make it work. The key card is Mangara of Corondor. You tap it and it exiles a permanent and then exiles itself, but if you use cards like Puppeteer, you can untap the Mangara and have it exile another permanent, and do it again and again, until you have no more Puppeteers left and then you just let it continue and it exiles all those cards. Or you can even do a Momentary Blink right at the end to save the Mangara.

But in Manalink I can't work out how to pause the stack so you can keep untapping and then activating the card. Is this possible?

[RanDomino]

Probably not. Before 6th edition the stack would resolve all at once, with no opportunity to add new things after it started resolving. The Microprose game uses those rules (hence interrupts). Here's a flowchart from Duelist #9 showing how it used to work http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/arcana/130

[Althuna]

Ahhhh ok nevermind. Thanks for the info!

[Sonic]

You tap it and it exiles a permanent and then exiles itself, but if you use cards like Puppeteer, you can untap the Mangara and have it exile another permanent, and do it again and again, until you have no more Puppeteers left and then you just let it continue and it exiles all those cards.

Er... the card reads : Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.

The exile normally takes effect immediately after the triggers the effect, and resolves with both cards being exiled simultaneously.
If the effect fails to resolve by Mangara of Corondor being untapped before it's exiled, both cards stay on the battlefield.

This specifically stops you from exiling multiple target permanent with Mangara of Corondor as the triggers the effect, and if the effect resolves Mangara of Corondor, and the target permanent, will be exiled before you get the chance to untap it.

[KrNeki]

It is possible to exile multiple permanents with Mangara of Corondor by untapping it while the first ability is still on stack and using it again.
Even if Mangara is not on the battlefield when its ability resolves it will still exile permanents.
This is of course true in rl. I think the stack in this game does not quite support it. (similar problem with counterbalance, sadly)

[Althuna]

You tap it and it exiles a permanent and then exiles itself, but if you use cards like Puppeteer, you can untap the Mangara and have it exile another permanent, and do it again and again, until you have no more Puppeteers left and then you just let it continue and it exiles all those cards.

Er... the card reads : Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.

The exile normally takes effect immediately after the triggers the effect, and resolves with both cards being exiled simultaneously.
If the effect fails to resolve by Mangara of Corondor being untapped before it's exiled, both cards stay on the battlefield.

This specifically stops you from exiling multiple target permanent with Mangara of Corondor as the triggers the effect, and if the effect resolves Mangara of Corondor, and the target permanent, will be exiled before you get the chance to untap it.

It works in Magic The Gathering Online.

[Sonic]

You tap it and it exiles a permanent and then exiles itself, but if you use cards like Puppeteer, you can untap the Mangara and have it exile another permanent, and do it again and again, until you have no more Puppeteers left and then you just let it continue and it exiles all those cards.

Er... the card reads : Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.

The exile normally takes effect immediately after the triggers the effect, and resolves with both cards being exiled simultaneously.
If the effect fails to resolve by Mangara of Corondor being untapped before it's exiled, both cards stay on the battlefield.

This specifically stops you from exiling multiple target permanent with Mangara of Corondor as the triggers the effect, and if the effect resolves Mangara of Corondor, and the target permanent, will be exiled before you get the chance to untap it.

It works in Magic The Gathering Online.

Very strange. It's still a mystery to me how you can exile the same Mangara of Corondor card more than once on the stack.

: Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.
Untap
: Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.
Untap
: Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.
Untap....

[Aswan jaguar]

That makes 2 of us,Sonic.

[porphyre]

A couple of reasons....

First, because Wizards says so:
9/25/2006 If Mangara of Corondor leaves the battlefield before the ability resolves, the targeted permanent will still be exiled.

Second, because it's a effect of the ability, not a cost.

Look at Mangara:
: Exile Mangara of Corondor and target permanent.

vs

Polluted Delta:
, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice Polluted Delta: Search your library for an Island or Swamp card and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.

It's all about the position of the colon. The land, you have to sacrifice it as part of the activation. Part of the cost. Mangara, the only cost is .

If Polluted Delta was written this way:
, Pay 1 life: Sacrifice Polluted Delta and search your library for an Island or Swamp card and put it onto the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.

Then you could tap and untap Polluted Delta, pay life and get lands. The first one off the stack would sac the Delta... the rest would just get lands.

This follows nicely with the second ruling Wizards made on Mangara:
9/25/2006 If the target permanent becomes an illegal target, the ability will be countered and Mangara will remain on the battlefield.

Exiling Mangara is not targeted, so being unable to do it does not fizzle the effect. But the second half of the effect IS targeted, so losing that target fizzles the effect.

Kind of sounds like it's been mis-coded for Manalink.

[stassy]

From what I see ingame, it's rather a limitation of the game following the old 6th rule like RanDomino said because after you chain the interrupt, clicking the Done button will make them resolve at once.

As you said, the only effect that save Mangara is to blink it with an interrupt, in that case both effect resolve but not the Mangara exile (because I might suspect that exile is targeted and as Mangara is blinked, the target is made illegal and fizzle).

[porphyre]

I guess that's why I'm confused. Why would it be coded as an interrupt? Swords to Plowshares is an instant. There are ways to set a "remove from game" vs "send to graveyard" flag (Disintegrate). It could be coded to : StP target creature + (Flag Mangara to RFG + do 256 damage to Mangara).

I think the card could be made to work using the 6th ed framework.

[stassy]

If I remember well Disintegrate code was surprisingly tough to copy when trying to code Incinerate, also seems to be you can't easily copy paste some advanced effect because of hardcoded stuff, see Spreading Seas example...

[CirothUngol]

... because it's a effect of the ability, not a cost.

That's the reason why it works at all.

The reason it can't work under the old Rules (i.e. in Manalink) is because it requires the Puppeteer effect to resolve (so that Mangara of Corondor is untapped) before you can use it again... and once the last effect on the stack resolves, they all resolve.

...you can't easily copy paste some advanced effect because of hardcoded stuff

Amen, bother! ^_^
One should never expect a simple, thought-out manner to be used in the Microprose executable. They were under a production deadline, and since Disintegrate was the only effect that removed creatures from the game when it dealt damage, it's quite likely that they squeezed it into the code in a rather haphazard manner. Spreading Seas is an excellent example of this... being based on Evil Presence it always produces a Swamp, never an Island (although I've often wondered if Phantasmal Terrain would do a better job).

[stassy]

The issue with Phantasmal Terrain is probably the "can only enchant basic land" part, so copying that would rule out all xland (painland, bi/tri/artifactland...)

[KrNeki]

Since we touched on the instant/interrupt debate, I would like to ask if it would be possible to code all instants and instant abilities as interrupts and interrupt abilities respectively? That way, the game would play more like in rl (rules nowdays). Also some cards interactions might work (counterbalance/top). Thoughts anyone?