117 Timing and Priority

Rules by topic

The single most important subsection in the rules for understanding when things happen. Priority is the right to act: cast a spell, activate an ability, or take a special action such as playing a land (117.1). A player who doesn't want to act passes, and the next player gets the chance.

Plain-English version

• The active player (whose turn it is) gets priority first at the start of most steps, after turn-based actions such as the draw and after any triggered abilities are put on the stack (117.3a).
• After they pass priority, each other player gets it in turn order.
• If everyone passes in succession with the stack empty, the game moves to the next step.
• If everyone passes in succession with the stack non-empty, the top object on the stack resolves and priority returns to the active player.

Why it matters

Almost every rules question that starts with "when can I..." is a priority question. Cast a counterspell? Only when you have priority and the spell you want to counter is on the stack. Respond to combat damage? You can't: it's dealt without using the stack, and players get priority only after it's dealt (510.2, 510.3).

Edge cases

• Untap step -- nobody gets priority, so anything that triggers then waits until the next time a player would get it, usually in upkeep (502.4).
• Cleanup step -- normally nobody gets priority. If a state-based action happens or something triggers during cleanup, players do get priority, and once everyone passes with the stack empty, another cleanup step begins (514.3a).
• Mid-resolution -- nobody has priority while a spell or ability resolves (117.2e). You make the choices it asks for, and you can activate mana abilities if it asks you to pay mana (117.1d), but you can't cast spells or activate other abilities in the middle of it.