Methuselahs order of priority when the acting isn't involved

B>E>A>C>D

"Acting Minion in Combat">"Non-Acting Minion in Combat">Around the Pred-Prey Order.

The Sequencing Rules are quite clear that the acting Methuselah always goes first, as is LSJ's priority order (that you link):

LSJ wrote:

1) Acting
2) -Target/Blocker
3) Others (clockwise from Acting)

Rulebook wrote:

At every stage, the acting player always has the opportunity to play the next card or effect. ... Once she is finished, the opportunity passes to the defending Methuselah (in the cases of directed actions and combat), then to the rest of the Methuselahs in clockwise order from the acting Methuselah.

Of course, in 99% of combats, all that's going on is the two fighters going back and forth, so you only need to handle those (and the acting Methuselah is implicitly being skipped).

Strictly, though, the acting Methuselah still goes first.


You need to be careful about groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/9ArBwoYDquw/y-nmJqY3em0J , though.

LSJ wrote:

> I ruled that this should go clockwise from the acting minion's
> controller, since there is neither an acting minion, nor a blocker or
> target of a action in that combat, which would be the first two
> steps in ordering sequence of play.
>
> Was I correct?

Yes.

That's correct at the time (2007), but not strictly so now. (It implied A (usually skipped) > B > C (usually skipped) > D (usually skipped) > E.)

Keepers of Tradition (2008) changed the definition of action, so that TtCB is now a action.

So the order of priority is:

Acting Methuselah
Targets - and tie-break them where necessary
Other people

So if B is in combat with E, it looks like:

A (usually skipped) > B (target - tiebreak clockwise) > E (target) > C (clockwise, usually skipped) > D (clockwise, usually skipped)

which is pretty much the order of blocks for an undirected action.