Stifle and DotH

[SpikeyMikey]

Defense of the Heart and Stifle. If I have DotH and my opponent stifles it during my upkeep(assuming he has 3 creatures), does it get sacrificed? Can he stifle just the search or can he not stifle once the trigger has resolved and the sacrifice has taken place?

[Tacosnape]

A good rule of Stifle to remember is that you can only Stifle "When," "Whenever," "At," and ":". "If" does not represent a triggered or activated ability.

At the beginning of your upkeep, if an opponent controls three or more creatures, sacrifice Defense of the Heart. If you do, search your library for up to two creature cards and put those creatures into play. Then shuffle your library.

Therefore, the only thing to Stifle on this is the sacrifice part. If your DoTH is Stifles, you won't sacrifice it, because you're sacrificing it on resolution of the ability.

What's more, because of the "If you do" clause, since you didn't actually sacrifice Defense of the Heart (You were stopped by the Stifle), you won't get to go search.

So in short, The whole thing is Stifled, and it'll still be there to go off again next upkeep.

[SpikeyMikey]

That's what I thought, but I wanted to be certain. Thanks!

[Finn]

Im sure Akki will come to the rescue if I am mistaken, but I think that, while the card works essentially the way Mr. Tacosnape says, you are still Stifling a trigger. The trigger occurs "AT the beginning of your upkeep...". The "IF" he refers to is the intervening clause that checks whether or not the sacrifice, etc. etc. ability gets added to the (and in all likelihood creates a) stack in the first place. You are not stifling the sacrifice. You are stifling the check that occurs at the beginning of each of your upkeeps counting opponent creatures. The sacrifice would happen upon resolution, and the card never gets that far.

[cdr]

The entire ability is triggered, because it starts with "At". Nothing happens until the ability resolves, so if it's countered (with Stifle), no part of the effect happens.

What you are Stifling is the ability that went on the stack. Note that the ability will not trigger and go on the stack at all if the condition is not met.

The ", if ...," is an intervening if clause, a condition that's checked both when the ability would trigger and when it resolves. If it's not true when the ability would trigger, the ability does not trigger. If it's not true when the ability resolves, the ability does nothing.

The second "If ..." is just a simple condition, requiring that you actually sacrificed DotH to be able to search. This is to make Disenchant et al effective against it - otherwise destroying the DotH with the trigger on the stack would do nothing.