Activated Abilities and the Stack
Asked by MartinEMcArthur 1 week ago
So last night I was playing against my buddy who was running Phenax, God of Deception and he tried to make me mill a bunch of cards by activating the ability Phenax gives to his creatures. In response to that, I played Starfall Invocation because I had a creature out that gave it flash and my thought process was that I could put that on the stack to kill his creatures before his mill ability went off. But then he questioned why it would stop the activated ability if he already activated it. I figured he was probably right, so I just went ahead and killed the cards afterwards. Could I have prevented the milling by playing the board wipe maybe before he activated the ability, or was this just a doomed situation for me lol?
Because the ability does look at what the toughness was when the creature was last on the battlefield, rather than when it was activated, this line would avoid having you mill if you also had a Soul-Scar Mage in play, since the creatures would receive -1/-1 counters instead of damage and die due to having 0 or less toughness.
February 7, 2025 3:02 p.m.
As a note, Neotrup's addition is incorrect and not relevant to the present circumstance. Starfall Invocation "destroys" a creature--it does not do any damage. As such, even if you had Soul-Scar Mage on the battlefield, the replacement effect on Soul-Scar Mage would not be implicated. Thus, the creatures will still die with whatever toughness is printed on their card and the Phenax ability would look back in time to their toughness at the time of death.
For Soul-Scar Mage to be relevant, one would have to use an effect that does damage to the opponent's creatures, such as Blasphemous Act. However, that would be a drastic change to the hypothetical and goes beyond what OP is actually asking.
February 8, 2025 2:19 a.m.
My apologies, I failed to mouse over the card and was thinking Starstorm. Which as that's an instant I should have realized was incorrect with the mention of giving it flash.
Caerwyn says... Accepted answer #1
Once an ability goes on the stack, that ability exists separate from the creature that caused it. Even if the underlying creature is removed, the ability remains. As such, your friend is right - you might have destroyed all the creatures, but the abilities would resolve and each would resolve.
The fact that the creatures are dead also does not matter for the "equal to toughness" part of the Phenax-granted ability--they might not exist, but the game rules will look back in time to see what their toughness was. So, while their toughness might not exist on the battlefield, it does exist by operation of rule when deciding how the ability resolves.
If you cast the Starfall Invocation first, you still would have been in trouble. Activated abilities can be activated at instant speed. In response to your Starfall Invocation, he could activate the Phanax-granted ability while Starfall was still on the stack. So, Starfall would be on the stack, he would activate all the creatures he wanted, those would resolve, then Starfall would resolve after.
February 7, 2025 2:29 p.m.