Can Confront the Unknown retroactively pump creatures?
Asked by mykei93 7 years ago
Lets say i have 4 1/1 goblin tokens and i cast 4 Confront the Unknown, one on each of them.
Do they all get +4/+4 or the first gets +1/1 and the second gets +2/+2 etc?
Nothing in Magic does anything retroactively, and certainly not spells and abilities. The way the stack works is that you cast spells or activate abilities, they're put on the stack, then resolve from the top down. The topmost one will give you a Clue token and +1/+1 (assuming you have only the one token), the second gives you a second token and +2/+2 (assuming you have only the two tokens), and so on.
It's different for Characteristic-Defining Abilities, such as on Dungrove Elder, which change constantly and are updated with the respective game object (in this case the amount of Forests you control). Confront the Unknown only provides a static buff, which's power is decided on resolution of each individual copy.
Assuming that anything else would be true would result in situations such as "I cast a Confront the Unknown, so now I get my fifth Clue token. My creature that died last round actually didn't die, as it had gotten +5/+5 - we just didn't know it at the time!" - it just doesn't work out.
Raging_Squiggle says... Accepted answer #1
They each get incremental buffs: +1/+1, +2/+2, +3/+3, and +4/+4.
At the time of resolution for each spell, it sees how many Clue Tokens you have and gives the appropriate buff. They don't all make the clue token and then buff the creatures, that's not how it works.
September 4, 2016 6:46 p.m.