Animate Dead

Asked by 1riv1 7 years ago

If I play Animate Dead and my opponent had Auriok Champion which states protection from black and from red, and it is there grave yard and I use Animate Dead to take control of it or not because Animate Dead is black.

nobu_the_bard says... Accepted answer #1

Technically, you can cast Animate Dead targeting Auriok Champion in your opponent's graveyard, because her Protection From Black does not work in a graveyard. Animate Dead only targets creatures in graveyards. She will come into play on the battlefield under your control with Animate Dead attached...

However, as soon as the spell is completed, states will be checked, and Animate Dead will be "rejected" or "fall off" of/by her and put into your graveyard. This happens because her Protection From Black will be active while in play, and she cannot have a black permanent attached to her (protection prevents equip/enchant and checks for this whenever states are checked). Because of how Animate Dead works, this will cause her to be sacrificed and put back into your opponent's graveyard.

So technically you can still cast it, but it would be an edge case where this would be a useful thing to do; maybe you just want to trigger Grave Pact or something.

January 23, 2017 11:17 a.m.

Rhadamanthus says... #2

One note of detail: Because of the way protection works, Animate Dead won't be attached at all. The rest happens as nobu_the_bard describes. This detail will only matter in the rarest of corner cases for this specific example, but it could matter more for other creatures, auras, and cards that interact with them.

January 23, 2017 11:21 a.m.

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