New
Mirage Mirror question regarding stack position and instants:
Player A has 7 untapped lands (color not important), untapped
mirage mirror, untapped eternalized
adorned pouncer.
Player B has one untapped
swamp,
Retribution of the Ancients and an untapped Vebuild with five +1/+1 counters on it.
Player A taps 2 to activate ability of
Mirage Mirror to change it to a copy of
Adorned Pouncer. In response, Player B taps
swamp, activates ability of
Retribution of the ancients to remove four counters from Vebuild to give the ORIGINAL
Adorned Pouncer -4/-4. This kills
adorned pouncer by state-based action after ability of
Retribution of the Ancients resolves and before the mirror adtivation resolves.
Player A stipulates that Mirror did its targeting when cost was paid, 'took a picture' of the
adorned pouncer, so the fact that it is not there when mirror ability resolves does not prevent the copy from taking place.
Guys working at LGS are nice and knowledgeable and act as judges, and with a not very well explained resaoning, say yes, removing the
adorned pouncer before the mirror's ability resolves would not stop the mirror from changing.
The players went to the judges and agreed to accept whatever the ruling was - for this game.
Looking at the rules, it seems to me that spells or abilities are countered if a previously legal target does not exist when the spell or ability resolves. Is there anything special about the mirror's ability that makes the first bolded part not apply? Perhaps something about the mirror or ability is another section of the rules 608 (where I looked for targets of abilities). Is it because nothing in the mirror's ability is 'happening to' the target creature, but the mirror itself instead? Killing the target of a buff spell is pretty straightforward - the spell goes to resolve,
remembers what its target is and then cant buff a nonexistent creature. The closest I could find is maybe the judges were assumming it was like a
clone effect; however,
clone effects specifically avoid using the word "target", so it would have been an improper comparison if that was the judges' thought.
I want to get this right for the next time it comes up.
Also I believe Player A could have just retargeted the original
Adorned Pouncer for 2 more mana in response to Player B's ability going on the stack. It would have
gone on the stack ahead of the -4/-4, but Player A wasn't smart enough to think of it right then.