#speechbubblehead

Yes.

When you cast a spell with Kess, you’re not paying a set alternate cost, so you can choose any alternate costs the card might have. Any time you cast a spell with an optional additional cost, such as kicker or escalate, you always have the option to pay that cost.

The easiest way I can think of to explain it is that innate game actions always come first in a step or phase: You draw a card before anything else in your draw step. You declare attackers before anything else in your declare attackers step. etc. Teferi’s Puzzle Box DOES trigger at the beginning of your draw step, but that doesn’t happen until after the mandatory game actions have happened.

Here’s the video of the match in question.

Not quite.

Maze of Ith doesn’t remove the targeted creature from combat, so Master of Cruelties is still an attacking creature even after it untaps. Master of Cruelties’s trigger won’t trigger unless no creatures are declared as blockers against it, though and the defending player can still assign creatures to block it here. (Also, since its damage will be prevented, it’s much easier to block than normal.)

I don’t really because I only ever played against my sister and her bf, which was a terrible idea because 1) my sister is the Queen of Games, 2) her bf is the Prince Consort of Games, and 3) they’re hyper competitive but get sad/mad at each other if one attacks the other so I ALWAYS LOSE.