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Couple things. 'round here we still try to rock it old school, even though a lot of times we end up being wrong wrong wrong. So, a few technical inquiries --

Back in the day, it was taken for granted that you could wait for your opponent's discard phase, at which point, you could play fast effects that your opponent could not respond to, because on his discard phase all he could do was discard, while, you know, other people could play fast effects. This, then, was the phase where everyone tapped their Tim to do a point of damage, or used their Rod of Ruin , or played their Unsummon or Lightning Bolt , or did the ol' Icy Manipulator / Royal Assassin combo (yes, I'm from that long gone era of the ancients, when every red deck had 4 Lightning Bolts in it, when every black deck had a Demonic Tutor and a Royal Assassin and 4 Dark Ritual s, when Prodigal Sorcerer and Rod of Ruin were the only permanents that you could tap to do one point of damage to any target... good God, Magic was a simpler game back then).

So, lately, we're not sure if this is still the case, as, with The Stack, it would seem like there really is no point in anyone's turn where a fast effect could be played with impunity. Also, there is this one guy I play with who keeps trying to insist that "you can always back up one phase" -- in other words, if he draws a card and forgot to pay his echo cost, he can back up to his upkeep phase and do it. If you try to play a fast effect on his discard phase, he can always 'back up' to his main phase and play a response. Etc.

I don't think he's correct -- I'm pretty sure his idea that you 'can always back up one phase' comes from how a player is allowed to play a fast effect to tap or otherwise render inoperative a creature before the combat phase begins. This isn't actually 'backing up a phase', it is simply correcting a very frequent mistake players make when they simply tap creatures to attack, when instead, they should say "I am declaring an attack" and then wait for a response.

But, anyway -- can you still play fast effects on an opponent's discard phase, and, if you can, can your opponent respond to them? That's my first question.

Second, I recall that back in the day, token creatures were considered to go to the graveyard briefly, if only to trigger effects that had that sort of activation trigger. Is this still true? In other words, if I put Reins of the Vinesteed on a Citizen token, and my Citizen token gets whacked, do I get to return Reins of the Vinesteed to play on another critter, or does the Citizen token just kind of evaporate into the very ether and my Reins goes along with it?

Thanks to all and sundry for whatever help may be rendered to this foolish and unworthy one.

A

The short answer is that almost everything in the game must wait for both players before continuing. If a spell is on the stack, all players must say, in succession, "I pass without doing anything else" before that spell resolves. The same thing applies to activated and triggered abilities resolving, as well as moving from one phase/step to the next. You can't start combat until all players, in the main phase, say "Ok, I have nothing I want to play now", and you can't start declaring attackers until all players decide they don't want to play any spells/abilities, and so on. If you get to the end-of-turn step, the turn will not end until each player passes, including the active player. If you decide you want to play a flurry of spells/abilities at the end of your opponent's turn, he/she is free to respond with a flurry of his/her own. And once that flurry resolves, you're back to the same situation, where every player must once again say, in succession, that they choose not to play anything else.

As you can imagine, games would take forever if everyone had to formally announce "I pass" at the end of every step, and so a lot of it is just shortcutted in an actual game (you play a spell, pause for a moment, then it's usually safe to assume there is no response). And so often a player will start to do something, and then get interrupted by another player yelling "COUNTERSPELL" or something similar, and you need to informally "back up" the game in order to make sure everything happens in the proper order. But you can't REALLY back up the game that way, thus allowing you to draw a card first and THEN pay your upkeep costs. It just doesn't work that way. In your informal games it's probably more fun for everyone if you forgive little mistakes like that and not punish players too much for forgetfulness. But in a serious game where rules must be followed to the letter, there's no room for error. If you forget to pay an Echo cost before drawing a card, then sorry, your creature just got sacrificed (or sorry, you just lost the game ). You're free to play by house rules, like backing up the game for forgetfulness or because someone rushed ahead too fast, but just remember that no such rule exists in the rulebook, and if/when you get more serious with your games you'll get a bit more disciplined with those kinds of things.