Knight of the Reliquary and removal
Asked by merubhanot 14 years ago
I've always wondered about the ordering of something like this.
If you have a Knight of the Reliquary in play, and you try to tap it to sack a land to get something else, when is it intelligent to respond with removal?
It seems that once you let them start searching their deck, you've let the ability resolve, but if you attempt to target the knight before that happens, won't it change what they fetch up?
I assume that if you Doom Blade the thing in reponse to them activating the ability, them fetching a Sejiri Steppe wouldn't save it because the Doom Blade would resolve first, but what if they were going to fetch up a fetchland and a land before you played doom blade, but then decide to fetch up a Raging Ravine once they know that the knight will die? Or am I getting this wrong, and if you doom blade it in response does it's ability never resolve at all?
This is always something i've vaguely understood, but never been fully clear on, so I'd love to hear if anyone understands it in full :-)
merubhanot says... #2
The first case of course makes sense, but in the latter case, what is the right time to cast the Doom Blade is it in response to them activating the ability? Is there no way to cast the Doom Blade without them knowing about it when the ability resolves?
September 5, 2010 1:23 a.m.
The best time to cast Doom Blade is when they trigger the effect to search for a land. Because Doom Blade will be on top of the stack and thus will resolve first before they can get the land.
September 5, 2010 1:41 a.m.
The Knight of the Reliquary 's ability will resolve even if it ends up in a graveyard because it's ability on the stack and paid for already. The effect doesn't target the knight itself so it can't be countered on the basis of the creature no longer being there.
So the opponent can still fetch up a land and put it into play.
The Tap of the knight and the sacrifice of the land is the payment part of the ability. The searching of the land is the resolution of the ability.
Ultimately the best time to hit a Knight is when it's tapped (regardless of whether or not the effect is on the stack to search out a land.) Say for example after it's declared as an attacker and before you declare defenders? :)
September 5, 2010 1:59 a.m.
merubhanot says... #5
Yep, I know that. I've played with Knight in Naya for months, but having never played against i never had to deal with when to play removal against it. Very few people seem to remove the knight in response to it tapping, but choose instead to kill it after it's ability has resolved. I was just curious how the response to ability situation worked.
Thanks for clearing it up :-)
cardcoin says... Accepted answer #1
[knight of the reliquary]] Is a beast of a card for a number of reasons...
In a typical enviroment, when you target the Knight of the Reliquary with a Doom Blade they could in response of it being on the stack activate the ability, and go fetch the sejuri-steppe this ability would resolve first and thus they could call black targetting the knight and counter the doom blade or what ever else the colour of the spell that is targetting it.
If you target it as the land ability is triggered, then they could basically fetch the land but by this stage the Doom Blade has resolved and thus the knight would be in the graveyard by the time the ability resolves. So the land choice to the user would be different depending on what else they have on the board.
Hope this helps to clarify.
September 5, 2010 1:08 a.m.