Royal Assassin Rift

[Alterloth]

Ok, so here is my problem...

I have an Alpha Royal Assassin (my prized possession). The ability text says "Tap to destroy any tapped creature". ANY TAPPED CREATURE. The new Royal Assassin says "Destroy TARGET tapped creature".

I was trying to destroy one of my friends' creatures that had shroud. We all know that creatures with shroud can't be the "target" of spells of effects. However, the text in my Royal Assassin doesn't say anything about targeting anything. Shroud creatures can't be targeted, this I know. We have played like this for awhile: if a card didn't say "target", then we were under the assumption it could affect a creature with shroud.

[seba1983]

alpha royal assasins cant kill creatures with shroud either. at least not by the rules. you could allow it as a house rule if everyone is ok with it. a card will allways be considerd to have the rules text on it that is the latest version. you can look that up in the gatherer if your not sure with some cards. an alpha zombie master for instance would also be a zombie and give regenerate / swampwalk only to other zombies too even though it reads diffrently on the card.

this happens to newer cards too sometimes but is mostly an issue of older cards when wizards did not have as clear wordings as today

[Arix]

Basically, the text you should go by for any card is the Oracle text. That's kind of the whole point of it.