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I have a question about a certain situation that I keep running into. It involves the stack and when abilities trigger.

Heres an example.

            I have Terra Stomper out and attacking my opponent. My opponent has Teysa, Orzhov Scion and three white 1/1 flying spirit tokens. My opponent says in response to me attacking he/she will sacrifice the three tokens and remove my Terra Stomper from game. I respond with Pongify and target his Teysa, Orzhov Scion. 

            Now here is my question. What happens? Does my Pongify go off before Teysa has a chance to trigger her ability? Or does her ability still happen and then she turns into a 3/3 ape??


Thanks for replying! 

Aug 14, 2011 -- 12:57AM, JaxsonBateman wrote:

Pongify
Teysa, Orzhov Scion
Terra Stomper

Ok, one key thing here is that the relevant abilities here (I'm guessing you're mainly concerned about the exile and the Pongify) aren't triggered; one is an activated ability, and the other is a spell.

Beyond that, the next key thing is that once on the stack, abilities are independent of their source. What this means is that if your opponent activates Teysa's exile ability, and you respond with Pognify, it won't matter - the exile ability will still resolve. In order to prevent an ability from resolving, you need to counter it - either with a spell , or via the game rules (ie. making your Terra Stomper an illegal target ). It won't get countered just by removing the source.

So what happens is your Pongify resolves first, and and 'replaces' Teysa with a 3/3 ape. Then Teysa's activated ability resolves, and exiles Terra Stomper.

ohhh. Thank you for clarifying this.

I have been playing casual magic for years and never ran into this until a friend of mine went to a few FNM and started doing this to me. I thought he was crazy.