Pestilence’s activated ability can be activated as many times as you wish, provided you can pay the full cost. Each activation deals one point of damage to everything. There are many ways to dodge the damage, or even simply not care about how low your life total gets.
Further, if you time the activations right, you can sweep the board (say, in your opponent’s end step), whereupon you have the whole of your turn to put a creature onto the battlefield and keep the Pestilence around.
<Uber M:tG geek mode ON> There ARE times when damage dealt from a single source in a single resolution DOES have an order. It’s used to determine things like what legal options do we have for handling the effect from a Harm’s Way, which mentions the “Next 2 damage”. If it all occurs at once then it doesn’t matter but if an event does damage in two or more batches, such as Branching Bolt targeting both a flying creature and a non-flying creature, you can only use the Harm’s Way to prevent/redirect damage from the damage event created first by the card(effectively to protect a flyer).
How do you tell if a card has more than one damage event or just one? The number of verbs in the effect. For example Pestilence only has the one verb, thus only one event and Harm’s Way can be used to prevent any individual point of damage because they’re coming all at once, so they’re all technically the “next” point. But Branching Bolt has two verbs, thus when it’s resolving they are done in batches. Not batches to the point where a player gets priority or state based effects are checked, but batches to the point where redirection and prevention effects which care about damage order can function.</M:tG uber geek mode OFF>
Man, how did this drool get all over my shirt?
Enjoy,
Steven
I recall this question, years back, and was told by Scrye and or Inquest that it works the way I thought it did. Later, much later, I was told that the rules were JUST changed to behave the way I was told they had been, all along. It gets at timing and death order.
How, exactly, does Lifeline work when Wrath of God hits the board?
If you read the rules notes on Lifeline, you will see the similar issue as to what Chronos asked.
Believe you me, it was frustrating, telling my opponent that I knew I was right, but I couldn’t explain it. Then again, in the life gain deck I had it in* I would probably argue against the combo as well. Angelic Chorus is a key part to the combo and deck as well.
*An updated version of that deck had me win a game 36,000+ life to 0. I could tell you guys about it, but its another thread, and frankly, another site, entirely. [Yes, I even swords to plowshared his 200+ / 200 + elf, just to be able to say that I did it.]
I am skimming the thread here*, but doesn’t Pestilence have its own timing clause, something to the effect of “At the time there are no creatures in play, sacrifice pestilence” ?
*Hey gang, this isn’t the Mafia game, so give me a break. [The word of the day is co-morbidity, can we say co-morbidity?
My experience was that neither source was terribly reliable. I never read an issue without spotting one or more errors.
When Wrath resolves, all creatures are simultaneously destroyed. if there are two or more creatures on the battlefield, Lifeline triggers for each one of them.
After finishing the resolution of Wrath of God and an SBA check, the player who controls the triggers (and they are all controlled by Lifeline’s controller, no matter who controlled the creatures) puts the triggers on the stack in any order he or she chooses.
As the triggers resolve, they set up a delayed triggered ability (again, under the control of the player who controls the triggered ability) that will fire at the end of the turn.
One by one, as the relevant delayed trigger resolves, each creature card put into the graveyard that way which has been continually in that graveyard is put onto the battlefield.
There hasn’t been any changes in that sequence since April 1999. The overall result hasn’t changed since Urza’s Saga was new. They had to issue errata to Lifeline to make it clear it worked on all creatures and not just it’s controller’s, but that’s it.
No, it doesn’t.
It [post=11466075]has a triggered ability that triggers at the beginning of the end step[/post].
Man, poison counters and “run your opponent out of cards” decks must have been the bane of your existence.
Beginning of the End is a new step for 2010. I wasn’t sure if we wanted to even get into that… [Might as well not, tell this thread that they got rid of Mana burn, and I’m not sure we want to go down that route.]
Well, obviously, I need the time to warm the deck up, in terms of pumping out the combos, but, most people humor me, at their peril, because I am playing life gain.
I think I have won a game due to poison ONCE. I think I was at 9 posion once myself.
Getting Decked? Yeah, that sucks, but, you know, it’s not as common anymore, and it seems that Battle Of Wits kinda, balanced it back out.
For what it’s worth, you can protect against decking with Island Sanctuary. Ordinarily, the not-drawing bit would be considered a cost to pay for getting the can’t-be-attacked benefit, but it could spell the difference between victory and defeat against a decking strategy.
And this is the first time I’ve ever seen Battle of Wits, but it looks to me like you’d still have to be crazy to use it, unless you have a heck of a lot of Tutor cards. For five mana, there are plenty of things that’ll probably grant you victory without needing to water down your deck that much.
It was big back when MTG Online first started. You saw an opponent with a 250 card library [The software posted the number in each library, on a constant basis] and you could pretty much bet what the deck was.
Then again, when you are making a 250 card deck, you don’t really have to weed the deck that much, or worry about having to splash a third color. 
Like most decks of the month, it worked, but its kinda obvious now, if you see a deck that is … substantial, you better save your disenchant for a certain blue card.
Yes, don’t remind me that they don’t make disenchant anymore. :mad:
What, Naturalize, Solemn Offering, and Demystify aren’t enough for you? 
The turn structure didn’t change at all for M10. The End Step remains happily unchanged.
The way they wrote triggered abilities that fire when the end step starts is what has changed. Previously, people got confused between triggered abilities that fired “at end of turn” and continuous effects which lasted “until end of turn.” Those two phrases got confused by many players who didn’t realise that “at end of turn” was shorthand for “At the beginning of the end step.” All other start-of-phase/step triggered abilities start “At the beginning of <step>.” So they changed the way things were written (but not the way they worked).
Two waves of triggers? I’ll have to look. Last time I checked I thought it only set up one delayed trigger which used last known information when it resolved. In 99.9% of the scenarios it’s the same, but I’m wondering about the .01% where you need a target for a Stifle in order to ramp up your Storm count if you can do it during the main phase or if you have to wait to target a Lifeline trigger until the End step. Does Lifeline put the triggers on the stack at the time a creature is destroyed(I can see a good argument for this, it does use “whenever”) or is it just set up a bunch of delayed triggers which will go on the stack at the beginning of the end step?
May be a good question for the rules list. “How many triggers does Lifeline put on the stack from the time a creature dies through the end of the turn.” Do you think that would capture the question accurately?
Enjoy,
Steven
I’m sure that there are two waves of triggers.
Consider; a triggered ability is indicated by a phrase beginning with “When,” “Whenever” or “At.” In the text of Lifeline’s ability, there are two such phrases. That indicates two separate triggers (to me, anyway) one of which “fires” when the event occurs, and on resolution sets up a delayed trigger.
You’re welcome to ask around though. Lifeline is one of the more complicated cards, after all.
I could go along with that, and wouldn’t put up a fuss if we were playing and the question came up. The real world difference is pretty much non-existent. It would be important in coding the card into a video game, but for 99.99% of gameplay situations, it doesn’t matter. The reason it struck me was because of the rulings regarding Lifeline still triggering if it went to the graveyard before EoT and Lifeline using Last Known Information when it triggers. If the characteristics of how many creatures were in play when the each creature died were locked in at the time of the creature’s death, in a precursor trigger, then looking backwards in the game state when the delayed trigger at EoT happens wouldn’t be necessary. No looking backward in the game state, no use of LKI.
Consider the following pseudo-spells based off of both behaviors.
First the two-trigger case. A creature dies, with another creature still in play, and a pseudo-spell is placed on the stack after all state based actions are cleared and just before a player would receive priority. These triggers don’t need the “if another creature was in play” language because that would need to reach back into LKI and we don’t need to do that with a game state which hasn’t advanced. Any creature which was in play when this trigger was created is still considered in play at the point the trigger was stacked. I realize this seems counterintuitive in the case of the Wrath of God we’ve just been talking about, but the mechanics of triggers and what they capture about the game state, and when they capture it, as opposed to when they become objects a player can interact with(i.e. get stacked), are digital constructs interacting with an analog world.
“At end of turn, if [dead creature] is in its owner’s graveyard, return [dead creature] to the battlefield under its owner’s control”
Then at the end of turn a second pseudo-spell, gets triggered and goes on the stack. It would say
“If [dead creature] is in its owner’s graveyard, return [dead creature] to the battlefield under its owner’s control.”
Now the case where there is only one trigger, per dead creature, which goes on the stack at EoT.
“If [dead creature] was put into its owner’s graveyard this turn and at least one other creature was still on the battlefield, return [dead creature] to the battlefield under its owner’s control.”
This version needs to be able to look backwards in the game state history(using LKI) because just because there were other creatures around when this one died, they may not be there at EoT. That wouldn’t prevent Lifeline from bringing them back. The rulings for Lifeline, as encapsulated before the 2010 update, could go either way. Here are the relevant ones from the Magiccards.info site.
* 10/4/2004: If more than one creature is in play and all the creatures in play go to the graveyard at once, then all of them are returned at end of turn. This is because all "leaves play" triggers that check the state of the game do so at the time right before the card left play.
* 10/4/2004: It checks to see if there are any creatures in play controlled by any player at the time the creature is put into the graveyard. If there are, it will put the creature back even if there are no creatures in play at the end of turn.
* 10/4/2004: The creature comes back even if Lifeline leaves play after triggering, but before it resolves.
* 10/4/2004: If multiple creatures are coming back, they come back one at a time, not all at once. This is because Lifeline triggered once for each creature and set up a separate "at end of turn" effect for each.
Supporting the 1 trigger case, in my reading, is the reference for needing to check the game state in the past, as referenced in the first ruling and the singular verbiage regarding triggering in the third ruling.
Supporting the two trigger case, in my reading, are the second and fourth rulings, specifically the present tense of the second ruling. If a trigger isn’t created at the time of the creature’s death, this should use the past tense. The fourth ruling supports the two triggers interpretation very strongly by saying each trigger sets up a separate effect for the return of the creature.
At this point I’m thinking you’re probably right MHaye, and my dreams of being able to Stifle a bunch of Lifeline triggers in order to up my Storm count for a huge Dragonstorm are alive and well.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’m insanely curious both on how you got 36k life and how the elf victim had 200/200.
36K life isn’t hard in a lifegain deck with an included infinite combo of some kind. I used Cloudstone Curio, Soul Warden, and Stormfront Riders to create an infinite lifegain deck once upon a time.
As to the massive Elf - hell, I had an Elf that big in the XBox Live version of MTG - Duels of the Planeswalkers. Finished that game by attacking my opponent for 1500+ damage, ending life totals were -1540 to 110.
I dunno… If it were a true infinite combo, I’d have just expected him to say “I continue the combo until I hit [del]One Million HP[/del] One hundred Billion HP”. I’m guessing that it was more likely an exponential growth (I know of a few ways to pull one of those off, in principle-- For instance, a Phyrexian Processor, with some means of sacrificing creatures to gain life that scales with the creature size, and some means of taking the Processor out of play and bringing it back every so often).
The NetRep on the Rules list said there are two triggers from Lifeline. One on creature death, and the second at EoT. He said the LKI references are in there because triggers which refer to creature death always capture the games state as the creature left play. This is the feature which allows a bunch of dying creatures to throw each other lifelines and all be able to crawl out of the graveyard at the end of the turn. Since they were all technically alive AS the other(s) were dying, they get to throw a Lifeline before they die themselves.
Enjoy,
Steven
Angelic Chorus.Phyrexian Processor. Noble Purpose. Congregate Wall Of Junk, Soul Warden Serra AvatarBottle Gnomes,Children of Korlis ((An Obvious Late Addition to my deck, but it was a VERY rare moment where I just KNEW that the card had to be in the deck)), Swords To Plowshares [I once Sworded my Serra Avatar.], False Prophet With Scapegoat.
At one time, the Deck had Lifeline, and Karn, Silver Golem in it as well.
I think I also have Suntail Hawks (Or a Virtually Identical creature)and Savannah Lions and Hound of Konda
I get out one Processor early enough, and pay a LOT of life for it, and then do as Chronos says with the Chrorus, Later, I get out a second Processor, and I Pay even more. From that point on, I don’t tap the first processor. So, in effect, it is exponential.
I got up to 404 and 700 with my second and third processors in that game (I believe my first one was at 20 or 25). As to why he had a 200 / 200 (I think it was 236 / 236 ) All I can say, was that it was an Elf deck, and he had the mana to pump into it. I let him do his thing, and he let me do mine, and well, my thing was a LOT better than his.