John Paleologus' ability

Can John Paleologus use his ability multiple times during a single untap phase? It isn't strictly forbidden by the card text, but it feels somewhat strong if not restricted.

Bloodartist wrote:

Can John Paleologus use his ability multiple times during a single untap phase? It isn't strictly forbidden by the card text, but it feels somewhat strong if not restricted.

It is forbidden.

Rulebook - here's an archived link to the rulebook while the site is being rebuilt:
So anything that's phrased "during some phase or combat or something", etc. is restricted to once in the particular phase.

Thank you for response. In my opinion, if VTES ever returns to print in one form or another, this is something that should be explained more clearly in the card text. It doesn't take many words.

The reason why I think its important to have clear card text, is because of the golden rule: "1.4. Whenever the cards contradict the rules, the cards take precedence." So if theres any ambiguity between cards and rules, players would be anxious to use the actual card text.
Having clear card text will save new players a lot of confusion. Especially when learning the game offline, where access to comprehensive rules may be difficult.

I don't understand how people are supposed to learn a game without reading the rules. It's not in a comprehensive appendix, it's in the rulebook.

The most likely scenario which I suspect concerns most players of any collectible card game, is that someone taught you the game. In such circumstances it is in my opinion important that the card texts are intuititive, and the new player quickly grasps the concepts of gameplay looking at the cards only coupled with someone explaining how they work.

I am not implying people shouldn't read the rules. I am advocating removal of uncecessary sources of confusion by using simple, consistent card texts (in future publications that might or might not happen). All it would have taken in this case were words "once per turn". Or maybe "once during your untap phase".

However, while writing this response, I realized what the source of my confusion was originally. I didn't recognize the ability for the triggered ability what it was. My first thought was that its an activated ability that is only usable during untap phase. Problem being the word "during". And since VTES already makes the distinction in activated abilities that can be activated multiple times per turn, I sort of expected the same here. I don't see why John couldn't have been worded in same fashion as those vampires I linked.

Looking at the card database now, I can see how common the "during X, do Y" form is. Its also intuitive that triggered abilities trigger only once each time their condition is met. But "during something" sounds somewhat weird to me. It doesn't sound like a trigger, especially since you can arrange the order of things that happen during a phase differently?

Magic the gathering uses the wording "At the beginning of phase X, do Y". It feels a bit more intuitive to understand its a trigger, since beginning of a phase happens only once per turn and at a specific time.