Tuesday 5 November 2019

It Happened Again

I was watching a stream the other day and people were talking about triggered mana abilities for some reason. Honestly I can't remember what card interaction it was that made this a conversation, but it all reminded me of my own observation about the problems with deciding whether a triggered ability was a mana ability. You can read the full post here, but suffice it to say the problem deals with
Quicksilver Elemental
copying the abilities of a
Witch Engine
,
Cytoshaped
into a
Dryad Arbor
with a
Caged Sun
in play.

Anyway, I was going to relate this little story to chat, but before I did I thought I'd check my facts, and I was astonished to see I was wrong. That is, I was wrong during that stream. I had been right at the time.

In that post I quote the comprehensive rules as saying:
605.1b A triggered ability without a target that triggers from activating a mana ability and could put mana into a player's mana pool when it resolves is a mana ability.
But today they say:
605.1b A triggered ability is a mana ability if it meets all of the following criteria: it doesn’t require a target (see rule 115.6), it triggers from the resolution of an activated mana ability (see rule 605.1a) or from mana being added to a player’s mana pool, and it could add mana to a player’s mana pool when it resolves. 
Now the triggered ability from Caged Sun is safely a mana ability because it actually triggers from the mana being added to your pool, not from the activated ability that adds the mana to your pool. That distinction wasn't meaningful when everything involved was a mana ability because mana abilities resolve immediately, but when the activated ability goes on the stack there is a big difference between triggering from the ability vs. from the mana being added.

Obviously I can't say for sure that I'm responsible for this change, but this is the second time in my life I've written to the Magic rules team with a question and had them end up changing the rules to avoid the confusion that the actual answer to my question would create.

I am a Magic rules genius. It's almost like Wizards should hire me; to fix the Oracle wording of old cards if nothing else.