Royal assasin and Blinding Mage
Asked by kaakkiz 14 years ago
If royal-assasin is about to destroy my tapped creature can tap him with my Blinding Mage ability before? (stack)
KrazyCaley says... #3
Yeah, I wrote a couple articles back in the day that might help to understand how this stuff works. Probably the most helpful one for you would be the one about priority and the stack:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-articles/rules-primer-priority-and-stack/
If you dig around you'll find a bunch more in the archives though. Good question!
KrazyCaley says... Accepted answer #1
No. The stack works like this:
Suppose that the person who has Royal Assassin has priority. To use the Assassin's activated ability, they pay the cost of tapping it. This puts an effect on the stack that says "Destroy target tapped creature." Only then does the person with Blinding Mage get a chance to respond, but by then it's too late: the effect is already on the stack and Royal Assassin is already tapped.
Contrariwise, if the person who owns Blinding Mage has priority, they can indeed target Royal Assassin by paying the cost of Blinding Mage 's activated ability (1 white mana and tap), which puts an effect on the stack that says "Tap Royal Assassin." BUT then the Assassin's controller gets priority, and may, in response, pay the cost of Royal Assassin 's ability and put the Assassin's effect on the stack. Then the effect resolve in reverse order; Assassin's ability goes off and destroys whatever the tapped creature is, and then Blinding Mage taps Royal Assassin, which has no effect because Royal Assassin is already tapped.
So basically, all you can do with that Blinding Mage is force Royal Assassin to activate during a particular time, or else be tapped, (perhaps during the upkeep, or at the end of your opponent's turn so that you can safely make an attack during your turn).
October 2, 2010 5:02 p.m.