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10 months ago ::
Aug 12, 2012 - 7:48PM
#31
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Date Joined:
May 15, 2010
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If cost text isn't parsed, how is the game supposed to know that the target of the fizzle ability is now illegal? But if cost text is parsed, how do we avoid either the Blinding Mage  problem or the Viscera Seer  problem?
Cost text is not parsed during 608.2c. It could be (not saying that it definitively is, but could be) parsed during other parts of resolving a spell or ability, specifically in 608.2b where targets are checked.
Rules Nut Advisor
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10 months ago ::
Aug 13, 2012 - 4:54AM
#32
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Date Joined:
Mar 16, 2004
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I'd just like to add to this silly discussion that there are things like Airdrop Condor  , Excavator  and so on which demonstrate that information can be obtained about the costs that were paid to activate an activated ability. I am amused by the amount of effort put into trying to figure out what would happen if a close-to-nonsensical rules text were ever printed, when everyone admits there's no way it would ever get printed. Now if this had come up in a game, of course, this'd be a different matter. I wonder if R&D's Secret Lair  can be invoked along with some old wording of some card that did happen to mistakenly use "target" for something that gets sacrificed/bounced as a cost?
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10 months ago ::
Aug 13, 2012 - 8:28AM
#33
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Date Joined:
Oct 15, 2009
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I find it worth noting that 608.2c says "The controller of the spell or ability follows its instructions in the order written." It does not say to read the entire text of the ability and treat every part of it as an instruction, no more than it specifies you should ignore the name, mana cost, etc. of a spell when resolving it.
Cost text is not parsed during 608.2c. It could be (not saying that it definitively is, but could be) parsed during other parts of resolving a spell or ability, specifically in 608.2b where targets are checked.
I think my argument lost track of my point. First, assuming that all the text is parsed always:
-If the game interprets everything as an instruction, how does it not stutter on Blinding Mage ? Answer: the game only interprets as an instruction only those things which clearly are instructions.
-If the cost of Viscera Seer 's ability appeared after the colon it would definitely be interpreted as an instruction. Why doesn't it interpret it that way when it appears before the colon? Answer: precisely that --- the relative placement of the colon.
-Conclusion: cost text isn't parsed during resolution, with regards to 608.2c.
-Noted fact: 608.2b is ambiguously silent as to whether or not cost text is parsed.
-Resonable extrapolation of previous conclusion: it light of the precedent set by 608.2c and in the absence of a rule stating otherwise, cost text isn't parsed during 608.2b.
I'd just like to add to this silly discussion that there are things like Airdrop Condor , Excavator and so on which demonstrate that information can be obtained about the costs that were paid to activate an activated ability?
But the game doesn't necessarily need to know that the ability's cost text contains the string "Sacrifice a Goblin" in order to figure out which object is "the Goblin that was sacrificed to pay this ability's costs".
Rules Advisor as of 03/01/2013 Zammm = Batman "Ability words are flavor text for Melvins." -- Fallingman
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