A few days ago, two employees from Upper Deck, Robert Smith and Ian Estrin, posted on my topic on the boards. They claimed that this combo was illegal. Of course, as you might expect, there was a massive uprising about it, because we were all pretty angry about it. This all changed today, however, with one simple e-mail:

 

From: "Smith, Robert" (e-mail censored for confidentiality)
To: (nickwhiz1@buckeye-express.com)
Subject: MST v. Mirage of Nightmare
Date: Monday, August 04, 2003 2:13 PM

Well. I just spoke with Kevin Tewart and Konami of Japan myself this morning. After my mentioning the dispute on MST v. Mirage of Nightmare everyone finally has come to an agreeance on the ruling. So here it is. This should make EVERYONE happy.

Quick-play magic cards may be played from your hand at ANY time during your turn. (As stated in the Japanese rulebook).

This means that the Drop-Off ruling is CORRECT. So you can chain with the Quick-Play that you just drew and the effect will disappear.

It also means that you can activate MST in the Draw Phase to destroy Mirage of Nightmare.

But remember if you activate MST in the Standby Phase the effect will still happen because it immediately triggers the moment you enter into the Standby Phase.

Note: The Prima Strategy guide which was just released in North America has the incorrect ruling as well.

Also you should remember that any rulings we are given are given directly from Konami of Japan. Even if they are a wrong ruling.

Quick-play magic cards still take on the activation properties of a Trap card once Set on the field.


Robert Smith
Upper Deck Entertainment

 

In other words, this does indeed mean that this combo is 100% LEGAL. However, you do have to activate MST in your draw phase in order for this to work. After looking at it a while, it makes perfect sense. In fact, it makes much more sense than the whole Standby business.

Just for clarification, you can activate it before or after you draw in your Draw Phase, as long as you do it before you declare the beginning of your Standby Phase.

I'm glad that we can finally put this topic to rest.

Now you can all stop sending e-mails to me on this topic. We have an official ruling, which was the main goal of this endeavor, and now that we have it, everything is cut and dry.

Expect another column within a week or so, either before Worlds or after Worlds. I'm personally not going, but I'm still going to have opinions on it (like everyone else probably will). Also, I would like to wish good luck to our own Dawn Yoshi, which will be one of the 5 North American participants in Sunday's main tourney. Show everyone who's boss!