Can you “cheese” Planar Collapse?
Asked by Thetreymeister 4 months ago
Could you, for example, sacrifice Sakura-Tribe Elder to get a land with the Planar Collapse trigger on the stack? If so, would Planar Collapse still blow up with less than 4 creatures in play?
Rhadamanthus says... #2
Some additional detail: Planar Collapse's triggered ability is written with something called an "intervening 'if' clause". Like DreadKhan said, a trigger with an intervening "if" clause checks the condition both at the time it would trigger and when it starts resolving. If the condition isn't true at the time it would trigger then it doesn't trigger at all. If it does trigger but something changes such that the condition isn't true anymore when it starts to resolve (like in your example) then it does nothing.
DreadKhan says... Accepted answer #1
IIRC when you have a trigger like this, where you have a prerequisite for the trigger and a second check during resolution, both matter, meaning if you only have 3 creatures left when the trigger goes on the stack it should fail to resolve.
10/4/2004 This ability does not trigger at all if there are not 4 or more creatures on the battlefield. It also checks this at the start of resolution and does nothing if this is not still true.
December 2, 2023 10:48 a.m.