Gempalm Incinerator + Phantasmal

[Octopusman]

Can a player target a phantasmal bear (effectively killing it) with a gempalm incinerator cycle when they have no goblins in play?

I'm not certain if you need to have damage in order to successfully target something for "0".

Thanks!

[Koby]

Gempalm Incinerator
Phantasmal Bear

Since Gempalm Incinerator picks a target when you cycle, then checks for the # of goblins when it resolves, you get to target the Bear right away. The Bear sees it's been targetted and goes POOF, then the Incinerator's triggered ability gets countered from lack of targets.

Yes, you can kill it without any Goblins in play.

[Malchar]

You might be confused with cards like arc lightning. With arc lightning, since you have to divide damage, the rules say that you can't choose a target and assign zero damage to that target. This is basically just a weird exception, which makes it so that a single arc lightning cannot kill an infinite number of phantasmal creatures.

With spells/abilities that don't divide damage, you can kill a phantasmal even if it would deal zero damage. The spell/ability never even resolves, so you never really know how much damage it would actually do anyway.

[randomly.anonymous]

On that note, if the cycle ability gets countered due to no target, do you still draw a card?

[Malchar]

On that note, if the cycle ability gets countered due to no target, do you still draw a card?

There are actually two abilities.
The cycle ability is an activated ability which reads ":1::r:, Discard this card: Draw a card."
The "gempalm" ability is a triggered ability which reads "When you cycle Gempalm Incinerator, you may have it deal X damage to target creature, where X is the number of Goblins on the battlefield."

After you activate the cycling ability, the gempalm ability triggers and goes on the stack above the cycling ability. At this time, you choose a target. If there are no legal targets, the gempalm ability goes away, but the cycling ability is still on the stack. The cycling ability doesn't require any targets.

If the gempalm ability does find a target, but it becomes illegal before the abilities resolve (such as if the opponent uses mother of runes) then the gempalm ability is countered, but the cycling ability again is still on the stack and separate.

Reference: http://magiccards.info/evg/en/37.html

[ScatmanX]

Can I use this for another question?

Can I stack the Cycling trigger and the Dmg trigger so I can first draw a card, and then cause the damage?

thanks.

[cdr]

Can I use this for another question?

Can I stack the Cycling trigger and the Dmg trigger so I can first draw a card, and then cause the damage?

thanks.

As Malchar posted above, the damage trigger triggers on the cycling - so the "draw a card" ability is already on the stack.

[Malchar]

You only get to choose the order if they trigger at the same time (and you must control both). Of course, cycling isn't even triggered, it's activated.