Baleful Doll

Greets!

It is kind of suprising how I haven't been able to find anything on Baleful Doll, but here is the question: Can I time the untapping of my cards during my untap phase in order to use Baleful Doll and have the bearer untapped?

Baleful Doll
[FN:C2]
Cardtype: Equipment
Cost: 1 blood
Discipline: Necromancy
Unique equipment.
[nec] Choose a vampire controlled by your prey. The bearer may tap himself or herself and burn the Baleful Doll during his or her untap phase to cause the chosen vampire to burn 3 blood.
[NEC] As above, but choose a vampire controlled by any Methuselah.

Thank you in advance!

ui.: *How have I not been able to?
*How I have not been able to?

Which one is correct? Sorry, it's off but English lessons were attended a long time ago

I would say the answer is NO.
Using the Baleful Doll is clearly intended to have you start your minion phase tapped; otherwise the text has no meaning.

Also the rule book is quite clear: 'At the beginning of your untap phase, you must untap all of your cards', so you can not use the card effect before the untapping.

Non-existant user wrote:

. At the beginning of your untap phase, you must untap all of your cards (except your infernal cards, see section 11). Any cards or effects that require or allow you to do something during your untap phase take effect after you have untapped your cards. You may choose the order in which these effects take place.

Pascal wrote:

Non-existant user wrote:

. At the beginning of your untap phase, you must untap all of your cards (except your infernal cards, see section 11). Any cards or effects that require or allow you to do something during your untap phase take effect after you have untapped your cards. You may choose the order in which these effects take place.

Malachy wrote:

Can I time the untapping of my cards during my untap phase in order to use Baleful Doll and have the bearer untapped?

No. Untapping your cards comes first.

Note that, if the vampire with baleful doll is subject to some "does not untap as normal, but can do X to untap" effect (is Infernal, inferior Nightmare Curse, etc), then, since the "Do X to untap" clause is an untap effect, you can order the things to allow using the Doll and untapping afterwards. This will require that the vampire be untapped before the start of your untap phase, Baleful Doll uses the "Tap X to do Y" wording, which means you can't use it with a tapped vampire and you can't use the same effect to untap a minion multiple times during your untap phase.


For example, if Valerius Maior (infernal with ) has the Baleful Doll, then, if he starts your turn untapped, you can tap him and burn the doll and then untap him using his Infernal text.

If Valerius was tapped, you could untap him and then use the doll, but you would be unable to untap him again (since the infernal penalty uses the "During X, do Y" template).

Whether including this is a good idea is a different question, though.

I have a Baleful Doll deck designed to get around this issue, but I haven't played it yet so can't say how successful it is.

The only way I could think of making it work well was to use NEC/THAUM with ( Rutor's Hand ) or NEC/PRO with ( Homunculus ) in order to burn the doll and then untap for normal actions (it is assumed that the "During any Methuselah's untap phase" for Homunculus includes your own - please let me know if this assumption is erroneous).

I went with PRO because you need only basic Protean as opposed to superior Thaumaturgy to use the untap ability (although long term it costs more), and I could try out some G5 Giovanni as well ( Giovanni del Georgio looks interesting).

The intention is to empty my prey's vampires, intercept their hunts through Divine Signs , smack them with Potence and/or NEC/PRO agg damage cards to torpor them, then loot their minions with Graverobbing . Any blocks are backed up with Call of the Hungry Dead but Form of Mist is possible for those with superior Protean. There's a few Vessels to further cripple the prey, while Procurers, Coolers, Tastes and hunting recover blood to my minions.

Hope that's useful.