Will this combo work??

[Foxygrandpa]

There is a combo I thought about and wonder if it would work.  I would bring in a Knight of the white orchid, path of exile him, and cloud shift.  Assuming my opponent has more mana than me, 3 mana plus my mana drop for the turn.  Can I get 4 mana down with that combo?

[nfelix87]

There is a combo I thought about and wonder if it would work.  I would bring in a Knight of the white orchid, path of exile him, and cloud shift.  Assuming my opponent has more mana than me, 3 mana plus my mana drop for the turn.  Can I get 4 mana down with that combo?

Nope, your path to exile will not have a legal target if you play cloudshift on the knight as a response, thereby fizzling both clauses of the spell. The 2nd clause "It's controller may search...blah blah," is dependent on the target, so if you don't have a target, the land search will also not happen. Maybe someone can clarify this as well?

[Foxygrandpa]

Dang, that makes sense.  Guess I'll just stick to cloudshift alone haha

[AeroSigma]

Yep, that's right.  What happens when casting/resolving a spell that targets is that, when you cast it, it needs legal targets for every instance of the word "target" on the card.  When it's resolving, it needs at least one legal target, otherwise it fizzles.  Basically, if a card targets once or more, it needs at least one legal target and it will do everything that it has legal targets and everything that doesn't require targets, but will skip effects that no longer have targets. Does that make sense?

So Remand has "counter target spell", and "draw a card" as different effects.  Even though the draw effect doesn't target, the spell does, so the entire spell fizzles if it doesn't have at least one target (for the counter effect.)

For Path to Exile, the second clause is dependant as nfelix said, because it's part of the same effect. If it had another line saying "put a +1/+1 counter on target creature" and you targeted something else for the counter, but cloudshifted your knight, you would not get the land because that effect is invalid, but the spell wouldn't fizzle, and you'd still get the counter.

I hope that makes sense.

[jmcj810]

Could it not still resolve with "target not found"?....

[AeroSigma]

That's right J. A spell that targets needs at least one 'found' target in order to resolve.