Narcomoeba, Gaea's Blessing

[iOWN]

Okay, I have two questions.

1. In the situation of Narcomoeba's lib-to-grave ability triggering, and player two activating Crypt in response, which of these would be correct?

- Narcomoeba is removed from the game, then its trigger resolves, putting it into play (regardless of what zone it's in).

- Narcomoeba is removed from the game, then its trigger resolves and checks the corresponding zone (graveyard) for Narcomoeba. 'Moeb isn't there and the ability does nothing.


2. This is just a question that never really got answered on the Narcomoeba thread. If you have the ability to mill infinitely, card by card, and have a Gaea's Blessing in your library, what can you do?

- Say "I mill X times" and just do it once, assuming it to be that number of times, or

- Say "Mill myself until <these> cards are in my graveyard."

[3eowulf]

Okay, I have two questions.

1. In the situation of Narcomoeba's lib-to-grave ability triggering, and player two activating Crypt in response, which of these would be correct?

- Narcomoeba is removed from the game, then its trigger resolves and checks the corresponding zone (graveyard) for Narcomoeba. 'Moeb isn't there and the ability does nothing.

The 'moeba is rfg and stays there.



2. This is just a question that never really got answered on the Narcomoeba thread. If you have the ability to mill infinitely, card by card, and have a Gaea's Blessing in your library, what can you do?

- Say "I mill X times" and just do it once, assuming it to be that number of times, or

- Say "Mill myself until <these> cards are in my graveyard."
They should work both.

[cdr]

1) Once the Narcomeba changes zones from where it triggered, the game loses track of it. Even if it went GY->somewhere else->back to GY before the trigger resolved, the game wouldn't be able to find it.

2) You can't shortcut Gaea's Blessing since it involves something random - shuffling your deck. You can quickly mill until you hit Blessing, but then you have to shuffle and repeat the process. You can't do it for very many times until you run into Slow Play penalties, unfortunately.

[iOWN]

1) Once the Narcomeba changes zones from where it triggered, the game loses track of it. Even if it went GY->somewhere else->back to GY before the trigger resolved, the game wouldn't be able to find it.

Does this also mean that if you sacrifice three creatures to flashback Dread Returns with a Bridge from Below in your graveyard, mill into Blessing before the trigger resolves, and mill back out Bridge, that the 2/2 tokens will not be created?

[3eowulf]

Does this also mean that if you sacrifice three creatures to flashback Dread Returns with a Bridge from Below in your graveyard, mill into Blessing before the trigger resolves, and mill back out Bridge, that the 2/2 tokens will not be created?


Whenever a nontoken creature is put into your graveyard from play, if Bridge from Below is in your graveyard, put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token into play.
When a creature is put into an opponent's graveyard from play, if Bridge from Below is in your graveyard, remove Bridge from Below from the game.
So, no, the tokens won't be created. But if there wasn't the intervenig clause, the tokens would have been created.

Narcomoebas are a different matter since you are not only removing the source of the ability (like in BFB case, which won't stop the ability), but you are moving them in a different zone, where the triggered will lose track of them.

@ akki: I was pretty sure about shortcutting Gaea's Blessing, from a previous discussion (solidarity maybe?), looks like I'm remebering it wrong.

[cdr]

Does this also mean that if you sacrifice three creatures to flashback Dread Returns with a Bridge from Below in your graveyard, mill into Blessing before the trigger resolves, and mill back out Bridge, that the 2/2 tokens will not be created?

This only applies when the effect checks information about the object when it resolves ("Where is it?") or tries to do something to the object ("Move it to zone"). The common example is Firemane Angel - if you put the upkeep trigger on the stack while it's in your graveyard and then return it to play, you won't gain the life when the ability resolves because the Angel in play is treated as a completely different object than the Angel that was in your graveyard.

Spells/abilities that don't need information about an object are not affected.

Bridge has an intervening-if clause, as 3eowulf pointed out, which is what makes it not work if it leaves the GY - the clause makes the effect check on resolution where the Bridge is, and will have lost track of it if it has left the graveyard. If it didn't have the intervening-if, the effect would work fine because it would never care where the Bridge was.


@ akki: I was pretty sure about shortcutting Gaea's Blessing, from a previous discussion (solidarity maybe?), looks like I'm remebering it wrong.

I can't find the old thread, it's probably in the archives.

I didn't really want to get into it, but the general answer is no. Loops in Magic are only valid with regular, deterministic actions.

Milling Gaea's Blessing is non-deterministic - you can't say that your library will be in state X after milling Y times. You can approach a very high probability for certain states, but you can never say for certain that you will be able to reach a particular state after any number of iterations, even approaching infinitity.

The only possible exception which was brought up when the judge list discussed it involves: a) coming up with an appropriate statistical model b) actually understanding the model c) being able to explain the model to the judge at the tournament and having him be ok with it.