Does Night of Souls' Betrayal 'trigger' before my creature explores?
Asked by GerryAvalanche 4 years ago
Say a Night of Souls' Betrayal is already in play and I were to play a Jadelight Ranger. Would the creature die before it could explore?
GerryAvalanche says... #2
Yeah that's kind of what I expected, that's why I put 'triggered' that way, I didn't know the right term for that though.
Thanks a lot!
Kogarashi says... Accepted answer #1
Your creature would die before it could explore, but the exploration still happens.
First important note, Night of Souls' Betrayal has a static ability. It doesn't "trigger" at all. It always affects creatures that are on the battlefield.
Jadelight Ranger has a triggered ability (begins with "when," "whenever," or "at") that triggers when it enters the battlefield. Triggers always go on the stack when a player would next receive priority, but state-based actions are checked before they can resolve.
What happens is your Ranger enters the battlefield, triggering its explore ability. The trigger goes on the stack when a player next receives priority, but that's also when state-based actions are checked. SBAs see that your Ranger is receiving -1/-1 from Betrayal, giving it a toughness of 0, and your Ranger is sent to the graveyard. Then the Ranger's trigger resolves, and you complete the explore actions twice. If you reveal a nonland, you won't put a +1/+1 counter on anything, but you can still put it into your graveyard or back on your library. Anything that triggers "whenever a creature you control explores" still triggers from this, even though the Ranger is in the graveyard.
March 31, 2020 3:10 p.m.