Valgavoth, Terror Eater Rulings

Asked by builderboy7 1 month ago

I want to clarify if Valgavoth, Terror Eater is similar in rules to Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge where Valgavoth, Terror Eater won't be able to cast spells it's previously exiled when it was previously on the battlefield right?

Example: Player A controls Valgavoth, Terror Eater and it is the commander of Player A's deck. Player B casts Murder targeting Valgavoth, Terror Eater sacrificing 3 zombie tokens to the ward trigger. Player A elects to put Valgavoth, Terror Eater into the command zone and casts it on their next turn. Would Valgavoth, Terror Eater have access to cast Murder that would have been exiled earlier?

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

It does work similar to cards like Jeleva. You won't be able to access cards exiled by a previous instance of Valgavoth. There's an issue with the details of your example but we'll get to that later.

When a card uses its own name in its rules text without also saying something like "a card named [name]", then it only means "this object, right here". If Valgavoth leaves the battlefield and returns later, it's a different game object from when it was on the battlefield earlier. Valgavoth would need to track the objects some other way, like Mairsil, the Pretender for example, in order to access any card exiled by previous instances.

In your specific example, Murder won't be exiled. A resolving spell isn't put into the graveyard until after it's completely finished, meaning Valgavoth has already been destroyed and is no longer on the battlefield at the time Murder would move from the stack to the graveyard. An example with a damage-based spell like Blaze, however, would work differently, because in that case Valgavoth would be destroyed by the State-Based Action that checks for lethal damage. That SBA doesn't get checked until after Blaze has completely finished resolving, meaning it will get diverted to exile by Valgavoth's effect.

October 18, 2024 8:49 a.m.