A Quick Question

Does anyone know when you would use the word “each” and when you use “all” in a card?

Comments

  • @tookie1
    I get confused by this as well. What I tend to do is look up cards with the most similar wording to whatever I am working on and go with that.
  • edited January 2020
    @Faiths_Guide Thanks a lot for the help.
  • I just checked on Gatherer. It didn't load any cards that have the phrase "all", say for ones that had all as part of another word or as a title.

    Each is the way to go.
  • To my knowledge, and someone tell me if this is wrong, "all" is really only used on board wipes and cards with other similar effects that affects everything of one quality at the same time. "Each" is mostly used as reference, like "for each artifact you control...", or if there is an order to it still, like "each player...", if that makes any sense.
  • Yeah. I’ve only seen “all” on boardwipes.
  • edited January 2020
    In written language, "all" is often a redundancy. Example: "All apples are fruits" is the same as "Apples are fruits."
    The word all was invented though. So when do we use it?

    In french, tout la terre means all the world.. Which is a way to specify "The world and all its contents" as opposed to saying just "la terre", "the world".

    So,

    In magic, I find that we use "all" to describe an effect that effects something and all or some of the contents of that something.

    Whereas we would say "each player loses 1 life," for an effect that only impacts the player, we would say "All players sacrifice all lands they control and discard all cards in their hand," because it impacts the player and "some or all" of those players' contents.
  • @jpastor That’s helpful. Thank you
  • I think. I dunno. Im just never going to favorite any card that has "all" or "each" in it...
  • I'm pretty sure it's All when it affects just straight up every single creature, like "destroy all creatures" or "all creatures have haste." But when it's specific like "destroy each creature with power 4 or greater" or "tap each creature you don't control", it's each.
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