Public Service Announcement:
In Magic, when a card is manifested, it is placed face-down on the table and is a 2/2 creature (which is reasonably small, but bigger than a 1/1) with no name, color, creature type, abilities, or mana cost. If a creature card is manifested in this way, it can be turned face-up for its normal mana cost at any time, even in the middle of combat. However, while it's face-down, there is absolutely no way to tell what the card might actually be- it could be a powerful creature like
Atarka, World Render; a wimpy creature like
Zurgo Bellstriker, or any kind of land or spell that could never be flipped up anyway without some help from some other kind of spell. It provides some mystery, and an incentive to deal with the unknown, as it could turn into something like Atarka and blow up in your face. Or, it might not... you don't know.
The flavor behind this is that the manifestation is magically disguised as a
blueish swirly thing that looks exactly like all the other blueish swirly things out there, so you can't tell what it actually is. Ugin actually taught the humanoids of Tarkir how to use this form of magic so the dragons running amok on the plane wouldn't eat them all and throw the entire ecosystem out of whack.
Anyhow, I tried to capture this mechanic as accurately as I could in this game. Since this form of magic originally cones from Ugin, it makes sense that Ugin should be the one to wield it. Since all manifested creatures are absolutely industinguishable (unless you have a Lens of Clarity), the closest I could come to not knowing what is under the swirly veil is not knowing who is actually there. I figure that the manifested people could run around and switch places with each other all the time in order to preserve their anonymity even if they go around all day claiming they're Pyure. The cleanest way I could think of to implement this was to make all abilities directed at manifested players be redirected to a random manifestation, with equal probability. ("I don't know who's inside this swirl, but I'm going to find out!" *stab*) However, when I was buffing Ugin and Bolas in one of the last revisions to the rolesheet to give them a little more durability, I decided it might be better to make abilities directed at manifestations always miss and hit somebody else. So, if Pyure is indeed a manifested Dragon, and Yasova said to me "I'mma try and snag Pyure tonight", Pyure would not be snagged. Whoever the other current manifestation is might, if they're a Dragon as well.
However, this does not answer the question of what happens when an alt is targeted. After a careful reading of the rules in their current state... I got nothing. This is the sort of thing that would've been best to answer before the game started, since "whatever I think feels right" will most likely be pro-village, because, deep down inside, I do kind of want the village to win, and I now know what sort of rule would most help do that in the current situation. So, in an attempt to remain as fair and unbiased as possible, all I can do is either look back through older versions of the rules and see what I thought back then, or take another look at the flavor and see what would fit that the best.
All these avenues actually seem to lead me down the same path:
- Before buffing Ugin, the actual manifestation hit by an attack was totally randomized.
- Also, at some point in the past, I vaguely remember writing or at least thinking the sentence "Any attacks directed at alts just get randomized"
- Having an ability not have any chance of hitting the actual target doesn't really match the flavor. If anything, it should not be redirected at all.
- Also, I could mix up the alts at any time if I wanted to, which would throw "Convert Muse Erato" off entirely.
- If Pyure gets converted tonight, it could seriously hurt the village.
As such, this is my official ruling in this matter:
Any abilities directed at al alt will be redirected to a random manifestation, which may or may not be the player controlled by the original target.
