Self-DestructSelf-Destruct | Art by Liiga Smilshkalne

Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas? This week, a longtime reader writes in!

This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"

I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email amithebolas@gmail.com with your story, a pseudonym you want to use, and of course, only include details you don't mind in the column! You might see your story below one day.

I'm Mike Carrozza and somebody ate my cookies!

This is what the reference is, right?

(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and then some.)

SUBMISSION

VERDICT

Thank you for writing and asking me to weigh in on your story. As I mention every week, if folks don't write to me, there's no column, so if you, the reader, want to send me a story, whether it's your own or one from Reddit or a friend's, please send it to amithebolas@gmail.com and I'll get to it here.

Thanks for writing in from the outskirts of the universe! What the heck is the lasagna dipped in? Weird!

Dip, as a longtime reader of the column, I think I can safely say you've probably seen versions of this story addressed in my column, whether on EDHREC or Commander's Herald. It's worth refreshing on certain topics and this is one I really like to talk about. Maybe we can get somewhere new with it this time around.

While you don't contextualize the whole game, I think there are enough context clues to say that even if you only named yourself and the Naya pilot, there was more game to be had after you'd been eliminated. This is important because if someone were to complain about not getting triggers from their game-winning move after they've won the game of killing me and their desired outcome was achieved, I think I'd have to ask them if everything is okay. You won, leave me alone! But in this case, it feels pretty clear that you were only one opponent eliminated to them of more.

I'm of two minds in this decision. In a broader sense, if someone is taking you out and you have resources to defend yourself, you should do it even if you'll be killed off. For example, if I'm being attacked for more than lethal and I have creatures to block with, I will absolutely try to take out their best stuff. This is part of the calculation that goes into making the decision to try to eliminate me from the game. If my opponent goes on to lose against another player because they came to kill me first and neglected to protect some pieces or predict that I had a few kills spells to lob their way, that's a miscalculation on their part. That said, sometimes it doesn't feel worth it to go whole hog and go after that player, so it's really context-dependent and subjective. There's no hard rule about doing anything to rob a player of a clean win. If you're going to kill me and I can blink a Ravenous ChupacabraRavenous Chupacabra, it depends on how I feel, but there's a chance it's happening and my killer will need to take that on the chin.

Because everything was legal in the way that you could have used your resources to kill yourself before the board wipe went off and you'd be denying your opponent of buff triggers, if this line had been declared before scooping up your things, I'd say it'd be difficult to argue with you. The trouble comes from the fact that you had begun to scoop your things up due to the board wipe essentially resolving. Look, we're not lawyers and cops at most tables, we're not following a procedure of priority with extreme precision, which means there's a lot of shortcutting in Magic. (The joke here is that lawyers and cops also don't follow procedure a lot of the time! Haha, got 'em!)

By picking up your things before you spotted your self-elimination line, I'd say that this is essentially shortcutting to the resolution of the board wipe and that your timing window here to take it back has passed. If you'd done it before beginning to pack it up, I'd say no chance you're the Bolas, but in this case, Dipped Lasagna, my friend, you're the Bolis. I've been pretty clear that anybody who scoops in order to deny a player triggers isn't getting my thumbs up. In fact, if anybody does this, we resolve the triggers as though the scooping player remained and chose no actions. The only time this is acceptable to pull off is if it's on board like you're at two life and tap your Ancient TombAncient Tomb or you're at ten and slam a Hidetsugu's Second RiteHidetsugu's Second Rite as your way out. Forfeiting to deny a player triggers when there's more game to be played is bad manners. However, you'd have been fine if you hadn't implicitly agreed to the resolution of the board wipe's effects as you had begun to scoop it up.

Thanks again for writing in!