Can I sack Scribe of the Mindful to prevent Lay Claim

Asked by Rilikb 6 years ago

Alright so I was playing a match yesterday with my friend. He decided to play Lay Claim, I had 2 answers to this, a Cancel or the sac option.

I tried to go with the sac option, pay 1 colorless tap and sac to search graveyard.

He called me out on it and I tried to explain how since this was basically like a combat trick I.E - Merciless Eternal, Pay 1Black 2 colorless discard and get +2/+2 till end of turn (declare blocker then pump) via the " : " Symbol acknowledging this is a Instant cast (unless I am wrong here as well and if I am please correct me.) That this would put the Lay Claim in his graveyard keeping his lands tapped and I get card advantage.

Please help! I couldn't find any rulings for either Scribe or Merciless when it came to these Activated Abilities and timings for them. He's been a real stickler about "Knowing the rules" and just about denies nearly any time I seemingly pull something out of my arse and causes him to mess up a combo of his own.

BlueScope says... Accepted answer #1

Please link all cards relevant to your question: Scribe of the Mindful, Lay Claim, Cancel, Merciless Eternal

Your play works, and prevents your opponent from taking control over your creature.

What you're doing involves a lot of rules, so I'm not going to quote them all. Instead, I'll give you a rundown of what's happening:

• your opponent casts Lay Claim, choosing your Scribe as a target. After the pay the costs, the Lay Claim enters the stack as a spell. Now each player, starting with the player who just cast a spell, may act "in response"
• you choose to activate your Scribe's activated ability in response. This is legal because activating activated abilities is instant-speed, meaning you can activate them even though there's a spell on the stack, or when it's not your turn
• as part of activating the ability, you have to choose a legal target for it, meaning an instant or sorcery in your graveyard. If you don't have one, you're not allowed to activate the ability
• as part of the costs of activating the ability, the Scribe is sacrificed. The ability is eventually put on the stack.
• if noone else does anything, your ability - being the topmost object of the stack - will resolve, and return the chosen card to your hand
• then, Lay Claim will try to resolve. However, because it's only target is illegal by the time it would have resolved, it's countered by the game rules, and put into its owner's graveyard instead of on the battlefield.

The rule for the last one is probably the most important one, so I'll quote that one:

608.2b If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that's no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. (...) The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word "target," are now illegal. (...)

In case that the missing word "target" is the cause for any confusion - auras always require a target as part of casting them, which has to obey the "Enchant [...]" requirement.

July 19, 2017 8:59 a.m.

Rilikb says... #2

Thank you so much for your answer! This will help me out the next time we play.

Sorry about not linking the cards, still new to the site and still don't have all the link commands figured out, on the Answer Box down below it gives the options so I could link them from there.

July 19, 2017 9:09 a.m.

Neotrup says... #3

A minor thing, after your ability resolves, each player, starting with the player who's turn it is gets another chance to respond before Lay Claim does. Letting the top spell or ability resolve is not the same as letting all the spells/abilities underneath resolve.

July 19, 2017 10:51 a.m.