Does Fanatical Devotion need a a target?
Asked by SpiderGilligan 5 years ago
Say I have Safehold Elite and Ivy Lane Denizen on the field. Could I cast Fanatical Devotion as a sac outlet to constantly bring back the Safehold Elite without having to regenerate a creature?
Yes, any spell or ability that says target requires a target. The rules for spells and activated abilities are done in a certain order per the rules. The last step is to pay the cost. So you can announce you are activating , Fanatical Devotion targeting Safehold Elite and then sacrifice the Safehold Elite as the cost. The ability would then not do anything as it would not have a target anymore, but it is a valid thing per the rules.
March 23, 2019 11:04 a.m.
Gidgetimer says... #3
I think that the important part that you may be missing is that "regenerate target creature" doesn't require the creature to be about to be destroyed. It simply creates a replacement effect that will apply if the creature ever is destroyed in the same turn. As the others have said, you can stack an infinite number of these effects on Ivy Lane Denizen or even target Safehold Elite because of the way activating an ability works.
March 24, 2019 10:45 a.m.
Additionally, because sacrificing is not destruction, the regeneration replacement effect won't keep your Safehold Elite from being sacrificed, the same way an indestructible creature can still be sacrificed.
March 25, 2019 6:19 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
SpiderGilligan: Correct answers to this question have been up for a while. I chose one to mark as the "Accepted Answer" so that this thread can be moved out of the unanswered questions queue. Please remember to take care of this yourself in the future.
Kogarashi says... Accepted answer #1
In order to use the ability on Fanatical Devotion , you will need to target a creature for regeneration. You can't activate it without one.
However, you can target Ivy Lane Denizen or Safehold Elite with the regeneration ability, as you choose targets before costs are paid. If you choose the Elite as the target, then when the regeneration ability goes to resolve it will just fizzle due to its target no longer being valid, but that doesn't undo sacrificing the Elite to activate the ability.
I assume you're using the Denizen's +1/+1 counter to cancel the -1/-1 counter from persist.
March 19, 2019 1:23 a.m.