Blood operative and surveil
Asked by Boza 5 years ago
Blood Operative's gatherer entry states:
"If you surveil and put Blood Operative into your graveyard as you do so, its ability triggers once you’ve finished surveilling. "
This seems incredibly counterintuitive. Can someone explain why this works?
Nifty, thank you, should read the full gatherer entry, still unintuitive, but at least I understand why it does work. Follow-up question though:
Does it work the same for say drawing cards? If I cast Divination with Niv-Mizzet, Parun on the field, does the ability trigger during the resolution of Divination and wait to be put on the stack after divinition has resolved?
October 22, 2018 10:42 a.m.
I would think yes. It seems the clarification for surveil is specific to that ability, since it's relevant for Blood Operative. With Divination and Niv-Mizzet, Parun, the ability would trigger the moment you draw cards (during the resolution of Divination).
"116.2a Triggered abilities can trigger at any time, including while a spell is being cast, an ability is being activated, or a spell or ability is resolving. (See rule 603, “Handling Triggered Abilities.”) However, nothing actually happens at the time an ability triggers. Each time a player would receive priority, each ability that has triggered but hasn’t yet been put on the stack is put on the stack. See rule 116.5."
So while the ability triggers during the resolution of Divination, it doesn't go on the stack until players would receive priority afterward.
For surveil, my assumption would be that they had to decide at which point the game should check that you've surveilled for the purposes of abilities that trigger off of surveilling. Unlike scry, surveil can affect the graveyard, and abilities have been known to trigger from the graveyard before, so they decided that you aren't considered to have met the condition for "whenever you surveil" until the surveil action is complete...at which point cards are now in your graveyard that may trigger off of it. But that's just from my years of reading up on the thought process behind design decisions, and thus my best guess for why this works the way it does in this instance.
October 22, 2018 11:23 a.m.
That sounds very reasonable, thank you for going in depth on this one!
October 22, 2018 1:48 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
The key thing here is that triggered abilities trigger after the event happens, not as it starts to happen or while it's still happening. The game uses information about the game state right after the event to determine if anything should have triggered, except for leaves-the-battlefield triggers, which use information from the last moment the object changing zones was on the battlefield. In this example, Blood Operative is in the graveyard at the time the game checks to see if anything should have triggered from the surveil event.
October 22, 2018 3:52 p.m.
And there's the clarification I couldn't find. Thanks!
Kogarashi says... Accepted answer #1
Also from the Gatherer rulings: "An ability that triggers “whenever you surveil” triggers after you’re done surveilling, even if you have fewer cards in your library than the number of cards you’re instructed to surveil. It even triggers if you have no cards in your library."
This is part of the surveil mechanic itself.
So even though there's an "if" in the middle, and one might think it would trigger when you start surveilling, not when you finish, that ruling states that those "whenever you surveil" abilities only trigger when you're done. So if you cast Notion Rain and one of the cards you see when you surveil is Blood Operative, you can choose to put it in your graveyard. Then any abilities that trigger "whenever you surveil" will trigger, including the newly-binned Blood Operative.
October 22, 2018 10:32 a.m.