Can prison effects still track Commanders?
Asked by Yesterday 4 years ago
Specifically I'm talking about 'exile until' cards such as Prison Realm as opposed to cards like Fiend Hunter which have a separate trigger which returns 'the exiled card'.
If a player exiles my Commander with Prison Realm and I send my Commander to the Command Zone, then it doesn't change zones before Prison Realm is removed from the battlefield, it at least used to be the case that the Commander should return to the battlefield when Prison Realm gets removed.
I was playing the new Brawl mode on Arena and my Commander remained in the Command Zone in the above scenario instead. I assume this is a programming oversight on Arena, but figured I'd check if there's been a recent ruling change I missed.
Rhadamanthus says... #3
One note: Banishing Light , Prison Realm etc. can still find the card if the exile event is replaced by moving it to a public zone. If the card moves to someone's hand or library instead of exile then the "prison" effect will lose track of it. I can't think of any examples where this could happen, but there are some weird cards out there.
September 8, 2019 3:04 p.m.
Nor can I, but let's roll with that for a moment. If an opponent has a Telepathy in play, is my hand still considered a public zone while it's revealed?
September 8, 2019 3:11 p.m.
- 400.2. Public zones are zones in which all players can see the cards’ faces, except for those cards that some rule or effect specifically allow to be face down. Graveyard, battlefield, stack, exile, ante, and command are public zones. Hidden zones are zones in which not all players can be expected to see the cards’ faces. Library and hand are hidden zones, even if all the cards in one such zone happen to be revealed.
The hand is a hidden zone, even if a card like Telepathy makes all the cards visible to someone.
Kogarashi says... Accepted answer #1
This would seem to be an Arena oversight. MTGO appears to have the same problem with cards like Banishing Light.
As long as your commander doesn't change zones after you send it to the command zone instead of exile, then the "return to battlefield" clause should return it.
Fiend Hunter and Oblivion Ring have linked abilities that are specifically looking for the cards you exiled in the exile zone and nowhere else. Banishing Light, Prison Realm, etc. instead state a duration, but can find the targeted card wherever it actually goes if the exile event is replaced by something else (such as moving to the command zone). As long as that object doesn't change zones again (which would make it a new object with no memory of its previous existence), the rest of Prison Realm's effect can find and return it.
This would probably be worth reporting on Arena.
September 8, 2019 2:02 p.m.