It is totally amazing that after 3 or so years that there is such a large gap between groups of players and their understanding of the rules, Enchantments are really a signature of Mage Wars, and it appears that there have been two distinct groups of player playing them totally different. By the way, I do see how this could interpreted your way.
Yeah. Although to be fair, the reason for that is probably that a lot of people understand the rules really well on an intuitive level but not as much from a precise technical level. Part of the problem is that it was never explicitly stated that the upkeep can't be interrupted. It is merely the only possibility that doesn't cause the rules to contradict themselves.
EDIT: Oh wow, good find sIKE. So the rules actually contradict themselves already...
Now that I think of it, I think most people know intuitively that adramelech's touch needs to be revealed BEFORE rolling blanks for burns, not after, in order to have an effect on those burns. When the burns roll blanks and adramelech's touch has not been revealed yet, the automation on octgn causes the burns to immediately disappear, and I've yet to see anyone argue that they should have been allowed to reveal touch and preserve the burns after the fact. If you ask them, "why didn't you wait until you saw the result before revealing adramelech's touch?" they probably won't know exactly why. They likely will say that they weren't thinking about it and just playing normally. And yet they will consistently play it that way every time until you point it out to them. Or at least every time I can recall someone using Adramelech's Touch, that was how they played it. I do not remember anyone waiting until they saw the result of the burn roll before revealing adramelech's touch and paying for the burns to stay.
In the previous rulebook and this one, all of the things you process through in the upkeep phase were referred to as events. So, previously you should have been able to reveal an enchantment during that phase as long as there was something to process.
None of this is to say that having things better defined isn't a good idea. And as I mentioned previously, I need Bryan to answer this, and he's traveling.
The word event isn't just poorly defined, it's not defined at all, and it isn't seen anywhere else at all. As far as I know, the word "event" is ONLY relevant to this particular case with the upkeep phase. If we play as Zuberi's saying, practically nothing about gameplay as it currently is will change. But if we play according to this ruling, all sorts of terrible corner cases will be unleashed that were never an issue before, and gameplay will likely change more significantly all around.
How long until Mr. Pope gets back from Germany then? I was hoping to play some mage wars on octgn tonight, but don't want to end up having arguments with my opponents because of a strange game-breaking ruling.
I think the best thing we can do at this point is to all agree to house rule it until he gets back.
The house rule I most recommend is that we follow the RAW and all rulings except this one and the one sIKE found until Mr. Pope has the chance to either rectify or clarify both Laddinfance's ruling and the ruling that sIKE found. To be clear, that would most likely mean that we would play as Zuberi said, with enchantments being revealable directly before or after the upkeep phase, since all upkeep effects occur simultaneously and enchantments can't interrupt anything that's already in progress. This house rule wouldn't change much of anything from how everyone already plays the game in real life anyways, and I do think that this interpretation is more fair. If a creature has an enemy death link and a friendly regrowth on them, I don't think they should die just because it's the opponent's initiative, since if it were a ghoul rot and not a death link the creature's controller would still get to choose the order and the creature wouldn't die!
All in favor, unless anyone has any better ideas?
