Control Changing with Roil Elemental & Willbreaker

Asked by lil_cheez 4 years ago

Hello everyone!

Let's say I control Roil Elemental and Willbreaker .

I play a land, wich will trigger Roil Elemental's ability. Then I target a creature with that and Willbreaker will trigger.

I will end up taking control of that creature, but I don't understand what will happen if any of the control-changing creatures die.

I have to choose what effect will apply?

If Roil Elemental dies, Willbreaker effect will go on? And vice versa? Or vice versa?

Thanks in advance!!

Rhadamanthus says... #1

This works out pretty well for you and you don't have to do anything unusual to manage it. If you apply both control-changing effects in your example to a single creature then you'll only lose control of it if both Roil Elemental and Willbreaker go away. This is because if the control-changing effect from one of them ends, the effect from the other still exists.

Though you can choose not to apply the effect from Roil Elemental (since it says "you may") there's really no benefit to doing it that way for this interaction.

January 10, 2020 11:15 a.m.

Boza says... Accepted answer #2

The control changing effects are applied in timestamp order, with the newest being the one in effect. In your case, playing a land results in:

• Triggers Roil Elemental , which in turn triggers Willbreaker .
• Willbreaker resolves first and takes control of the creature.
• Afterwards, Roil resolves and takes control of the creature.

So what happens if an effect ends:

• If Willbreaker leaves the battlefield, Roil's control effect is next in line, so control will default to Roil, but since you control both effects, nothing will change.
• If Roil leaves but Willbreak still remains, it does not matter, since Roil was not applying its control effect at the time.
• If both cards leave, control defaults to the opponent who last controlled the creature.

January 10, 2020 11:16 a.m.