answered
2013-02-28 11:33:23 -0500
awall 3494 ● 4 ● 17 If you want to be extremely careful, you can ask him whether he wants to do something each and every time he would have priority. In practice, this is very slow, so it's only really worth doing when you intend to actually do something (or are trying to bluff that you might).
In this particular case, you mentioned, your opponent has a few chances to interact. Let's go through them.
- You declare that you're entering your combat step. Your opponent can respond here, so if you're worried that he might make a decision and don't want to give him information about what creatures you intend to attack with, ask him if he would like to do anything before you declare attackers.
- You attack with your equipped creature. Afterward, there are several steps in which your opponent has the chance to do something. However, since you don't intend to do anything, you can actually make this easier on yourself by indicating that you'd like to pass priority until the combat damage step, usually by asking something like, "You take 6 damage?" If he adjusts his life total to reflect this, that is sufficient acknowledgement by him that you've entered the combat damage step and it's too late for him to go back and do anything.
- Let's say for sake of example that he blocks somebody (but not the sword-wielder). Now, you don't want to assume that you're in the combat damage step quite yet, because he might have something to do after blocking (technically, he could do something here even if he didn't declare blockers, so if all your opponent says is, "No blockers," you're still here rather than at the combat damage step). At this point, you should indicate that you're not doing anything here, either by saying something like, "No effects," or by prompting him to take the damage again ("Okay, you blocked my 2/2 but not my equipped creature. You take 4?"). He could explicitly announce that he's not doing anything. However, if he adjusts his life total to reflect the damage, then it is assumed that he didn't do anything and you're now in the combat damage step.
- Your Sword triggers immediately upon entering the combat damage step, so there's no way for your opponent to prevent that. Furthermore, you have priority first and your opponent can't react to you tapping lands. So at this point, you can just say, "I put the Sword's trigger on the stack and tap all of my lands in response." Technically your opponent can respond to the Sword's trigger right here, although it's unlikely that he would do so (perhaps if he only had one card in hand and he wanted to play it to avoid discarding it to the other half of the Sword's effect). If you want to be super-pedantic, you can ask him for a response here. However, since the Sword's effect itself calls for him to make a choice, the easier way to do it is probably simply to say, "Okay, discard a card because of the Sword," and wait for him to discard. If he discards, it's a signal that he's not responding to the Sword's effect so you can untap your lands. If he wants to respond, he'll need to do so before then.
- At this point, you have priority and all of your lands are untapped. Go ahead and cast your Revelation, giving your opponent a chance to respond before you grab a pile of cards off of the top of your library.
This may seem long, but in practice, it's very quick. Every time you want to do something and you want to ensure that your opponent doesn't have a response, you can simply announce where you think you are ("I'm entering my combat step," or "I resolve the trigger from so-and-so card," or "I take 3 damage from your attackers.") If your opponent verbally confirms what you said, that's generally taken as agreement that you're at the game state that you think you are and it's too late for him to go back and change his mind.
