Welcome to Personal Tutor, where we discuss how to maximize our opportunities for player education. Our goal is to transcend the basic answer to create an informative answer that the player will really remember. You may even find this process helps you come to a better understanding of the rules yourself.

The Scenario:
Anklet and Necklace are playing in Standard Sealed event at a game convention when Anklet calls you over to the table. "Necklace had Illusionist's Bracers on her Cinder Elemental. She just sacrificed it to fireball me for 5. We were trying to figure out if she gets an extra copy or not, but we weren't sure, so we called you.“

The Basic Answer:
”Nope. No copy."

This month we are looking at regular old confusing rules. How can we explain why no copy of the ability is created? What is the underlying rule at work? How can we make our explanation of the relevant rule clear, concise, and memorable so that Anklet and Necklace will be able to correctly resolve similar questions on their own in the future?

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.

At the time that the ability activates, Illusionist's Bracers is no longer equipped to the Cinder Elemental–since sacrificing is part of the cost, the creature isn't on the battlefield to be considered an equipped creature.

Whenever something happens we check to see if it triggered something. The question is if the bracers trigger from Cinder Elemental's ability being activated. When abilities are activated you determine the value of x, name targets then pay costs, this is where Cinder Elemental is sacrificed since it comes before the colon. At this point the ability is activated. We check to see if the creature attached to the bracers activated an ability and find that there is no creature attached to Illusionist bracers.

If the equipped creature is no longer equipped at the end of paying costs this ability will not trigger.

My attempt at expressing this at the player-at-a-convention level:

The Bracers work for abilities of any creature they are currently equipped to. Unfortunately, you sacrifice the creature itself in order to pay for this particular activated ability. The things before the “:” have to happen ever so slightly before the activated ability's effect can happen. Since the creature is now dead and in your graveyard, the Bracers are not equipped to that dead creature any longer and thus the Bracer ability does not trigger. If you want to use the Bracers, you would probably most enjoy them on creatures that don't need to sacrifice themselves in order to pay for their abilities.

In short, you need it to stay alive in order to thrive.

Edited Zach Robinson (June 12, 2014 07:52:32 PM)

“The bracers' ability will only trigger if it is attached to the creature when the ability is put onto the stack.
The ability will only be put onto the stack once all of the costs have been paid.
Sacrificing the Elemental is a cost to play the ability.
So, once you pay the costs, the Elemental will be in the graveyard, and will not have the bracers attached when the ability is put on the stack, and so the copy ability will not trigger.”

Basically I am trying to break down that there are multiple steps to playing an ability, and they have to happen in order, and that the bracers can only trigger at the end, if the conditions are met. From there is should be clear (I hope) that the ability can't trigger.

Here's how I would explain it on a forum (where I have the luxury of time to optimize my reply), to a player that isn't familiar with rules jargon:

“The game rules specify a certain order in which these things have to happen. Sacrificing the creature is one of the first things to happen, and checking the bracers is one of the last. That means that the creature goes to your graveyard before it's time to check the bracers. Then the bracers are no longer equipped to a creature, so they can't do their thing.”

Or to a more savvy player:

“You pay costs before you check for triggers. That means the elemental is already in your graveyard before the bracers would trigger. So they can't, because by that time they don't have an ‘equipped creature’ anymore.”

“Activating an ability is an action that involves a few steps. You choose X, you choose targets, you pay costs, and so on. The ability counts as ”activated“ when all of those steps are dealt with, not before.”

“Necklace, by the time you finished activating the Elemental's ability, it was already in the graveyard. The Bracers were left behind and didn't have an equipped creature to look for anymore. So the Bracers can't see anything to copy.”

Originally posted by Sam McKoy:

“The bracers' ability will only trigger if it is attached to the creature when the ability is put onto the stack.
The ability will only be put onto the stack once all of the costs have been paid.
Sacrificing the Elemental is a cost to play the ability.
So, once you pay the costs, the Elemental will be in the graveyard, and will not have the bracers attached when the ability is put on the stack, and so the copy ability will not trigger.”

Be careful here: We don't want to give misinformation in an attempt to make things more intuitive. The ability is put on the stack as the *first* step of activating it, not the last step.

“An activated ability counts as ‘activated’ when the player is completely finished putting it on the stack, making all the choices, and paying all the costs. At that point, Cinder Elemental is gone and in the graveyard, so Illusionist's Bracers isn't equipped to anything. The Bracers can't trigger in this situation.”

We have some good responses, but I think there is still room for improvement here. Anyone else want to take a crack at building on what's been said?

I used to have trouble with timing just like this, and once I sorted out that “when X is cast” means “when x is finished being cast”, and “you can't do X” generally means “you can't begin to do X”, it started making more sense to me. So that's the confusion point that really jumps out to me in that interaction.

The other thing in the back of my head when reading this is “do we use LKI? The Elemental was equipped when it was last on the field… but we're not resolving the ability yet, so that doesn't apply. What is the thing actually being checked?

”No, you don't get a copy. Something that triggers when an ability is activated actually triggers when that ability FINISHES being activated, after all the steps are done, including paying the costs. Now that the ability is done being activated, any on-activation triggers would fire. The bracers check to see if they're equipped to the creature whose ability was activated, and see they're not equipped to anything, so they don't trigger."

“A spell or ability hasn't been fully ‘cast’ or ‘activated’ until all the steps have been completed - like choosing a target, and more importantly, costs have been paid. Cindy's cost here requires you to sacrifice it, so when that cost is actually paid, it's no longer on the battlefield and of course not equipped. So the Bracers don't trigger.”

We had quite a few good responses this time around. Many people keyed in on the fact that the order is “do all the stuff” then “ability is activated,” which answers the question and educates about when something is considered “cast” or “activated.” This is an excellent thing to do.

One problem several of you had was that in order to make your answers sound more intuitive, you fudged the details to the point where they were no longer technically correct. This is dangerous. While players won't remember everything you tell them, you never know when they might remember something that isn't accurate and draw mistaken conclusions as a result.

Further, glossing over the details at too high a level is not utilizing this opportunity as fully as it could be. You have players who are fundamentally asking about the process of casting and activation. And we can take this opportunity to educate them in this respect.

Illusionist's Bracers says ‘whenever an ability of equipped creature is activated.’ So we need to figure out if the creature is still equipped when the ability is officially activated.

We usually fudge it, but the process of casting spells and activating abilities actually works in a very specific way. First you say what spell or ability you're going to use. Then you pick stuff like modes and values of X: 5 in this case. Then you pick targets: Anklet, that's you. Then you determine the cost: 5R and sac the creature. Then you can make mana. Then you pay the cost: right here in the process is where you sacrifice Cinder Elemental.

Now, only after all the costs are paid, is when the ability is considered ‘activated.’ But at that point Cinder Elemental is already dead, so there is no ‘equipped creature.’ So no copy is made.

This answer runs a little longer than those I usually like to recommend. However, I think it is justified in this instance for a few reasons. First and foremost, if a player is genuinely interested, you have offered him or her a lot more value with this answer than with a less detailed one. Second, breaking down the steps will really help reenforce the idea that a sequence of distinct steps exists even if the player forgets what those steps are, whereas a higher level version of the explanation where you just say that everything is done before the ability is considered activated may fail to deliver this (sometimes important) lesson. Finally, this is a fairly unintuitive ruling. Showing that you know in detail what it is going on will help bolster your credibility. And, of course, this explanation still takes only 30 seconds to deliver. You are hardly going to hold up the tournament with it.

Thanks to everyone who participated. The quality of answers people post on these topics seems to go up every month. If you would like to contribute a scenario for discussion, suggest an area of rules or policy about which you would like to see a scenario, or become a member of the Personal Tutor team, please send me a forum message. Thanks, and Personal Tutor will be back next month with another scenario to turn into an educational opportunity.

Edited Joshua Feingold (June 23, 2014 06:22:54 PM)