Ok so a previous post in here asked a question regarding gods and imposing sovereign.

The folowing situation occurs. Is Erebos coming into play tapped or not?

My opponent controls 2 Lifebane Zombie, I control Imposign Sovereign.

My opponent casts Erebos. Does it enter the battlefield tapped or not?

To which we got a response of

It enters the battlefield untapped.

As a permanent enters the battlefield, you have to determine which replacement effects affect it. For this, you look at how the permanent would look onto the battlefield and take into account:
1. continuous effects from sources that are already on the battlefield,
2. replacement effects generated by the new permanent that affect it specifically

While doing this the permanent isn't on the battlefield yet, so it can't influence the game state as you are evaluating this. In particular, your devotion to black is 4 while you are looking at the game state, so Erebos would not be a creature on the battlefield. In other words, you fix every variable and then consider how the permanent looks on the battlefield, so you evaluate the ability “as long as your devotion to black is less than five, Erebos isn't a creature” in the current context where your devotion is 4. It has nothing to do with what Erebos looks like after it enters the battlefield.

This seems contradictory to the theros release notes (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/faq/ths#2) where under gods there is the following point: “If a God enters the battlefield, your devotion to its color (including the mana symbols in the mana cost of the God itself) will determine if a creature entered the battlefield or not, for abilities that trigger whenever a creature enters the battlefield.”

In the above situation would you not have to consider erebos' devotion as well when it enters the battlefield, thus causing it to enter as a tapped creature in the above Imposing Sovereign scenario? Or is there something im missing

(I would have replied and asked that in the other thread but it seems to have been locked)

Edited Abeed Bendall (Nov. 3, 2013 09:52:22 AM)

The distinction - admittedly confusing - is that Imposing Sovereign modifies how the permanent enters the battlefield, before it does so, while the example you cite from the release notes refers to abilities that trigger when a creature enters the battlefield - which only trigger after the permanent has already entered the battlefield.

When Erebos is still on the stack, your devotion isn't sufficient for it to enter as a creature. However, as soon as it's on the battlefield - as a continuous effect - your devotion is enough that it is a creature. Abilities that trigger when a creature enters the battlefield will trigger; effects that modify the EtB event do so before that EtB event, and thus don't see the eventual increase in devotion.

Hopefully, that explanation helps?

d:^D