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Published on 07/29/2013

I Need a Theros

I'm Holding Out for a Theros 'Till the End of the Night

By Eli Shiffrin, Carsten Haese, James Bennett, and Callum Milne
This Article from: Callum Milne

Cranial Translation
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Note: This article is over two years old. Information in this article may be out of date due to subsequent Oracle and/or rules changes. Proceed with caution.

So with the recent Magic panel at San Diego Comic Con we've gotten our first taste of Theros, this year's fall expansion, and it is glorious! Heroes! Monsters! Gods! Greek Myth! Minotaur Tribal! (And don't tell me that's not exciting—the list price of longtime dollar-rare Didgeridoo soared to $8 practically overnight.)

To celebrate, we're having a special Theros-themed edition of Cranial Insertion. Sadly Wizards wouldn't let us use actual Theros cards—something about spoilers not having started yet and "nondisclosure agreements" and "legal repercussions", blah, blah, blah. I don't get it, to be honest—you guys can keep a secret, right? Right?

...My, those crickets are loud, aren't they?

Well, never mind. We don't need to see any of the actual cards to talk about heroes and gods and monsters—Magic has plenty of those already. So let's get to it!

As always, if you have any monstrous rules questions, send them to the heroes at moko@cranialinsertion.com or tweet to @CranialTweet to get an answer. And if the gods smile upon you you might even get your question in a future article!

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Q: If my opponent uses Intrepid Hero's ability at the beginning of my turn, can I respond by attacking with the creature he or she targets? Don't I have the priority to do the first play? Or can my opponent play something before I have a chance to on my turn?

A: Well, you do have priority first and get the first chance to do things on your turn, but that won't actually help you here, because you can't just attack with your creature whenever you want to. The only time you can declare your creature as an attacker is at the start of the Declare Attackers step of your Combat Phase, and your opponent will have plenty of opportunities to use his Hero on your creature before that happens.

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Q: Because Wrath of God does not target, will it work if your opponent has Avacyn, Angel of Hope out? Or is the targeting issue only for cards with protection, hexproof, shroud etc?

A: An indestructible creature can't be destroyed; whether or not the thing that's trying to destroy it targets is completely irrelevant. Wrath of God won't be able to kill any of the creatures Avacyn's protecting, so casting it will only kill off your own creatures—probably not a good idea.

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Q: I attack with Lorthos, the Tidemaker and pay the to tap eight permanents. One of those permanents is my opponent's only Forest. Can he use that Forest to play Fog before I tap it?

A: Probably, yes. He can tap his Forest to produce mana in response to Lorthos's ability just fine, and he can use that mana to cast Fog.

The only thing he can't do is wait. You declare targets for Lorthos's ability when it triggers, but only decide whether or not to pay the mana when the ability resolves, so if your opponent wants to wait and see whether you're going to pay, by the time he knows what you're going to do and can do anything about it, the Forest will already be tapped.

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Q: Playing some of my friends today, one of them tried to play a Heroes' Reunion on a planeswalker to make it gain loyalty. He said the official rules say he can do that. Is that true?

A: No. Your friend is, to use the proper technical term, full of it. Lifegain effects like Heroes' Reunion don't interact with planeswalkers in any way.

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Q: If I have Godhead of Awe and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite on the field together what happens, and do I have to play one before the other?

A: Unless something else is boosting them somehow, all of your opponent's creatures will be -1/-1s and die for having less than 1 toughness. It doesn't matter what order Godhead and Elesh Norn enter the battlefield, because effects that set P/T are always applied before effects which add or subtract it.

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Q: I control Corpsejack Menace and my Vastwood Hydra with four +1/+1 counters on it dies. I distribute eight +1/+1 counters among my creatures, right?

A: Almost, but not quite. You get to distribute four counters, and those four counters are doubled. While there will be eight counters total being handed out, you can't split them among more than four creatures the way you could if you were actually distributing eight counters.

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Q: My opponent casts Crovax, Ascendant Hero, and I cast Essence Scatter to counter it. My opponent wants to use the pay 2 life ability to return Crovax to his hand to avoid it being Scattered. Does that work?

A: Not a chance. Crovax's ability only functions while he's on the battlefield. It can't be used while he's a spell on the stack, so your opponent can't use it to get around your Essence Scatter.

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Q: If a player has two Gift of the Deity out on different (green) creatures, which of them do opposing creatures have to block? Do both have to be blocked, or can defending creatures team up on one?

A: If more than one creature with a Gift of the Deity on it is attacking, the defending player's creatures are required to block both of them, but since that's impossible the defending player may split blockers up however they wish. Each of the defending player's creatures must block one of the two, but that can be whichever the defending player wants.

Note that if the blocking creature is something like a Palace Guard that can block both creatures, it must do so. And if for some reason one of the attackers has multiple Gift of the Deity on it, all the defending player's creatures are forced to block whichever attacker has the most Gifts.

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Q: I use Xathrid Gorgon to petrify a creature, which stops it from using activated abilities. That creature has an Aura on it that allows it to pay to pump up. Can the Aura still be activated?

A: That depends on the Aura. Some Auras (like Pursuit of Flight) work by giving the creature an activated ability, and those abilities will be shut down by the petrification, because they're part of the creature. But other Auras (like Blessing) work by having the player activate an ability of the Aura itself, which then boosts the creature. These kinds of abilities won't be shut down, because they're part of the Aura, not the creature.

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Q: On the battlefield I have Changeling Hero (1) which has championed a second Changeling Hero (2). Next I play a third Changeling Hero (3) and champion the first Hero. (1) leaves the battlefield and causes (2) to return, and I champion (3). (3) leaves the battlefield causing (1) to return, and I champions (2), causing (3) to return which again champions (1) and so on in a loop. Is it legal to do this to get a lot of enter the battlefield triggers?

A: Absolutely; you can do it as many times as you like. You'll eventually be forced to decide to break the loop by championing something else or not championing anything at all, but before then you can have them dance on and off the battlefield as much as you want.

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Q: Recently I heard that Demigod of Revenge cannot be countered. Something was explained about having his ability resolve after the counter, bringing back Demigod of Revenge. Can you help explain this?

A: Demigod of Revenge can be countered, but you just have to be very careful about how you do it, because if you do it wrong you might as well never have bothered trying. When Demigod of Revenge is cast, its ability triggers and goes onto the stack on top of the Demigod itself. When that ability resolves, it will return all cards named Demigod of Revenge from its controller's graveyard to the battlefield. If you respond to the triggered ability by countering the Demigod—putting it into the graveyard—then when the ability resolves the Demigod you just countered will be put onto the battlefield too.

The tricky part about countering Demigod of Revenge is that in general, if you say you're doing something you're generally assumed to be doing it at the first opportunity, and that's very bad here, because that means you'd be responding to the trigger. What you need to do is wait until the triggered ability has finished resolving, and then counter the original Demigod spell. That way the Demigod will stay dead. In order to do that, you need to specify that that's what you're doing.

Just be sure to clearly communicate to your opponent what your intentions are and when you're casting your counterspell, and you'll be fine.

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Q: When Xathrid Gorgon makes a red and white creature "become a colorless artifact in addition to its other types" does that mean that the creature is no longer red and white, or just that it's colorless as well?

A: The creature is no longer red or white; it's just colorless. "Colorless" means "having no color"—a creature that's colorless, by definition, can't be any color.

The "in addition to its other types" part just means that it doesn't lose any existing card types—it doesn't stop being a creature when it becomes an artifact.

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Q: I had Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile out and active. If an opponent attacks, how long does the window of opportunity stay open to use Brigid's effect? Can I wait and declare blockers or wait until damage is being dealt before zapping the attacking creatures, or are they only vulnerable during the "declare attackers" step?

A: Attacking creatures only stop being attacking creatures when the combat phase is over. Until the combat phase has actually ended, they're still attacking creatures, and thus can still be hit by Brigid's ability. So you can use it before blockers, after blockers before combat damage, in between first strike and regular combat damage, or after combat damage—whatever you like.

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Q: If someone casts Divinity of Pride in a Two-Headed Giant game, does it enter as an 8/8 flying lifelink for 5 mana given that the team hasn't lost any of their starting life of 30?

A: Yes. In a Two-Headed Giant game, something that asks what your life total is will get your team's life total as an answer. If your team's life total is 30, Divinity will get its bonus.

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Q: If you have a Khalni Hydra on the battlefield, and you cast another one from your hand, does it reduce the cost by 2 green mana for every green creature?

A: No; the Hydra on the battlefield won't affect the one you're casting in any way. Khalni Hydra's ability only affects itself, not other creatures that happen to have the same name. Compare the Hydra to something like Cylian Sunsinger, which actually does affect other Sunsingers.

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Q: Hero of Bladehold says that the tokens it creates are attacking. But they don't have haste, so aren't they summoning sick? How can they attack?

A: Because they're put onto the battlefield already attacking. Summoning sickness means that you aren't allowed to declare a creature as an attacker in the normal way as the Declare Attackers step of combat begins, but the Hero's ability sidesteps that problem by putting the tokens onto the battlefield already attacking. Since you're not declaring them as attackers, summoning sickness doesn't care.

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Q: If I have Deus of Calamity enchanted with the Runes of the Deus and my opponent blocks with Mirran Crusader I can only assign combat damage to it once correct? As in the Crusader can only be assigned 2 combat damage during the first strike step, then my opponent then takes the 8 damage from normal combat damage. Right?

A: Not quite, no. Your opponent will take 12 total damage, not 14. You need to assign damage to the Crusader on both strikes, because even though you assigned lethal damage to it during the first strike damage step, that damage was prevented and never dealt. So when the regular combat damage step rolls around, it sees a Mirran Crusader with no damage marked on it or assigned to it, and forces you to assign at least another 2 to it before being able to assign the rest to the player.

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Q: If I Fling a Nivix Cyclops, will I get an additional +3/+0 for more damage, or is the additional cost paid before the spell is 'cast'?

A: You don't get the +3/+0 boost for Fling, for a whole bunch of reasons, but the biggest of them is that costs are paid during the process of casting the spell, not after, so by the time you finish casting Fling, the Cyclops is already gone, so there's nothing to trigger.

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Q: How would Training Grounds work with Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero? For example, If I had two Grounds out, would I be able to retrieve a 4CMC or less rebel for just , or would I be able to retrieve a 5CMC or less one?

A: When you're activating an ability (or casting a spell) with in its cost, first you choose what you want the value of X to be, and then you determine what it would cost to have X be that amount.

So if you want to use Lin Sivvi to fetch something with CMC 4 with two Training Grounds on the battlefield, you would have to pay (=) - - = . (The second reduction is rather than because the Grounds says the effect can't reduce the cost to less than .)

If you instead wanted to fetch something with CMC 5, the cost would be (=) - - = .

I'd recommend fetching something with CMC 5 rather than 4, since it'll cost the same either way.

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Q: If I have Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in play and a friend casts Angel of Despair can he destroy Emrakul? What if I had Progenitus instead?

A: Yes if it's Emrakul, no if it's Progenitus.

Emrakul has protection from colored spells, but Angel of Despair stopped being a spell when it entered the battlefield, so its ability is coming from a permanent on the battlefield, not a spell. Thus, Emrakul's protection doesn't apply, and the Angel can target it just fine.

Progenitus, on the other hand, has protection from everything, and Angel of Despair is indeed a thing. So it can't be targeted by the Angel's ability.

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Well, that's all Theros^* for today; join us next week for an extra-special treat for Magic's twentieth anniversary!

- Callum Milne

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About the Author:
Callum Milne is a Level 2 judge from British Columbia, Canada. His home range is Vancouver Island, but he can be found in the wild throughout BC and also at GPs all along the west coast of North America.

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