Welcome to Personal Tutor, where we learn how to maximize our opportunities for education. Our goal is to transcend the basic answer to create an informative answer that the players will really remember and teaches them something about the rules, rather than just resolving this ruling. You may even find this process helps you come to a better understanding of the rules yourself.

Riki Hayashi contributed the scenario for this month's question.

The Scenario:
You're watching Abagnale and Natwarlal play at an RPTQ. Natwarlal controls an Illusory Gains that is currently enchanting Abagnale's Wandering Tombshell. Abagnale casts Sidisi, Undead Vizier. Abagnale announces the exploit trigger, and Natwarlal reminds him of the Illusory Gains trigger. Abagnale shrugs, hands over the Sidisi, takes back his turtle, then announces that he's sacrificing the Tombshell to the Exploit. He then picks up his library to start searching. Natwarlal stops him, saying, “Umm… is that how that works? Judge?”

The Basic Answer:
Abagnale doesn't currently control any creature that would let him search his library after exploiting a creature. Natwarlal gets to search.

We are looking for the actual words you would say aloud to the player, not a description of the type of information you would provide. (So, “Power and toughness always swap last,” not “I would tell them about the sublayers of 7.”) L1s and Judge Candidates, feel free to give your answers immediately. L2s, please wait a day to add your input. L3+, please wait two days.

“Because the card says ”when Sidisi exploits" the player who controls Sidisi gets the trigger and result even though the player who cast her gets to decide if she exploits or not


I actually had this come up in a draft with Vulturous Aven, guy used it to kill his opponent who was at 2 life

"Exploit works in two parts. The first part, being the actual Exploit ability, triggers when Sidisi enters the battlefield and her controller sacrifice's a creature if the ability resolves. The second part checks if a creature was sacrificed to the first ability. Whoever controls Sidisi when this resolves gets to search for a card.

As far as Abagnale searching their library… I'd issue a Warning for GPE - looking at extra cards and shuffle the deck, after checking if any parts were non-random (scry, etc). No penalty for Nat as he caught the mistake before any other action could be taken, including a card being chosen.

To Abagnale: "The way Exploit works, it uses two separate triggered abilities. The first is the actual ‘Exploit’ keyword ability (point to text on card) that gives you the choice of sacrificing a creature. The second (point to text on card) tells you what to do if you choose to sacrifice a creature, and it triggers when you actually make the sacrifice. In this situation your ‘Exploit’ (point) ability and Natwarlal's Illusory Gains ability trigger at the same time, and because it's your turn Natwarlal's trigger will be put onto the stack last and will end up resolving first. This means Natwarlal controls Sidisi at the time you make the choice to sacrifice something. If you do sacrifice something then that second ability (point) will end up triggering for him, not you."

As the person who suggested this scenario, I'm just going to point out that some of you have suggested calling attention to a triggered ability that a player may or may not be aware of, which is what makes this scenario so devilish.

I understand the point of Personal Tutor in educating the players, but I feel this is one of those times that it's best we save the education for after the match.

Effectively I would ask the player what exactly are they asking hoping for something along the lines of “Does A get to search their library” - at which point I can say “no”. Once that's occurred and they resolve (seeing if N chooses to search) I can say, if you would like me to explain further come to me after the match.

If they ask me “why not?” - I would answer “because A doesn't control Sidisi when the trigger resolves”. If that prompts N to ask “do I get to search?” then so be it (and I would answer in the affirmative).

I hope none of this would step across the realms of coaching (leading questions etc).

Edited Edward Bell (May 12, 2015 09:01:20 PM)

“Abagnale, since you don't control Sidisi when Exploit trigger resolves, you don't get her tutor trigger that would allow you to search your liblary.” And we proceed to apply proper penalty & fix.

Abagnale controls the exploit trigger when sidi enters the battlefield.
The illusory gains triggers, gaining control of sidisi, undead vizer.
The exploit trigger controller whom is Abagnale chooses whether to sacrifice a creature as the trigger resolves.
Natwarlal controls sidisi, undead vizer as illusory gains is attached Sidi.
So the second ability of sidisi triggers if abagnale chooses to sacrifice a creature when the exploit trigger resolves and Natwarlal searches the library.
If abagnale chooses not to sacrifice a creature, nothing will happen.

Edited Kwok Yang Neo (May 13, 2015 03:36:17 PM)

So the trick is to explain the interaction clearly, without making Natwarlal aware that he would get to search. I think I would say the following to Abagnale.

"If you read Sidisi, you'll see that she has two triggered abilities:
the exploit ability: when this creature enters the battlefield point at card
and the search ability: when Sidisi exploits a creature point at card.

The second triggered ability would trigger when you sacrifice a creature to the first trigger. However, when you sacrifice the Tombshell, you no longer control Sidisi, so you don't get a trigger and you don't get to search."

If Natwarlal is paying attention, he can deduct that he gets to search. However, by focusing my explanation on what happens to Abagnale, I can avoid mentioning this explicitly.

Originally posted by Michel Degenhardt:

So the trick is to explain the interaction clearly, without making Natwarlal aware that he would get to search. I think I would say the following to Abagnale.

"If you read Sidisi, you'll see that she has two triggered abilities:
the exploit ability: when this creature enters the battlefield point at card
and the search ability: when Sidisi exploits a creature point at card.

The second triggered ability would trigger when you sacrifice a creature to the first trigger. However, when you sacrifice the Tombshell, you no longer control Sidisi, so you don't get a trigger and you don't get to search."

If Natwarlal is paying attention, he can deduct that he gets to search. However, by focusing my explanation on what happens to Abagnale, I can avoid mentioning this explicitly.

I just want to point out that in this scenario it's Natwarlal that's called you to the table - seems a bit off to not speak to him directly.

I have a somewhat broader follow-up question relating to this situation.

Often, at events, players put a large number of abilities and/or spells on the stack and get confused with resolving them and call me over to help establish what exactly is supposed to happen. I've taken this as a desire from both players to avoid breaking game rules and ensuring that the outcome is what it is meant to be. In situations like this one, is it incorrect to state what abilities are on the stack and who controls them?

Sidisi has two triggered abilities, one that lets a player sacrifice a creature to exploit, and another that triggers once the first triggered ability resolves.

Since Sidisi's first trigger went onto the stack, but the Illusionary Gains' trigger resolved before Sidisi's first trigger resolved, NAP gained control of her before the turtle was actually sacrificed. When AP resolves the trigger and sacrifices the turtle, Sidisi is considered to have exploited a creature, she doesn't care who sacrificed a creature, just that one was sacrificed. Sidisi's search ability will now trigger but NAP, who now controls Sidisi, will get to tutor instead of AP.

Since this is a competitive REL event, and no illegal choices were made here, AP will not be allowed to take back their decision to sacrifice the late Turdle McDurdle and players will continue playing.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this month's Personal Tutor! We got a wide range of answers this month, and this question is a little trickier than it looks at first. Bartłomiej Wieszok provided a very concise answer, and Michel Degenhardt did an excellent job of helping the players understand that these are two seperate triggered abilities, not one “if you do…” ability as many players assume.

This question marks a first for Personal Tutor, as we're going to provide two answers. Riki suggests that it's possible that Natwarlal wasn't aware of the trigger allowing him to search. After polling a number of judges at GP Vegas, we found that a number of other judges agree with this interpretation, while others believe that the trigger has been acknowledged, just resolved incorrectly. We tend to agree with this second interpretation, but there's no hard-and-fast answer here.

With that, here's our response if we believe that the trigger could still be missed:

“Unfortunately for Abagnale, that's not how it works. After you sacrificed your Tombshell, you didn't control any creatures that let you search your library, so you wouldn't be able to do that. Sidisi needs to be on your side of the board at the time that you sacrifice the creature for her to tell you to search your library.”

And here's our response if we believe that the trigger has been acknowledged, just resolved incorrectly:

“Unfortunately for Abagnale, that's not how it works. Sidisi is looking for someone to exploit a creature for her trigger, and when she saw you do that, her second triggered ability fired for whoever currently controls her. So it's Natwarlal who gets to search his library, not Abagnale.”

We'll see you next week with a brand new scenario. In the meantime, carefully consider how you answer player questions - you want to help them understand why your answer is correct without giving away strategic information. If you'd like to join the Personal Tutor team, or if you encounter a scenario that you think would be a great opportunity for judges to improve their question-answering skills, please submit it to Josh Feingold.