How exactly does the newest Bolas interact with Jace, the cunning Castaway's Ult?
Asked by LotusCrown100 5 years ago
My friend and I are unsure how exactly this works, does the new Nicol Bolas Dragon-God make copies of himself or Jace when he uses Jace's Ult?
The exact wording of the new Bolas card's static ability is "Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God has all loyalty abilities of all other planeswalkers on the battlefield."
As mentioned, any instance of a card's name in its abilities should be read as "This Object" when another object gains that ability. The same applies to Gideon Jura 's 0 ability, for example.
Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God's copy of Jace, Cunning Castaway 's third ability will make copies of Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God, not Jace.
April 2, 2019 8:26 p.m.
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nobu_the_bard says... Accepted answer #1
Please link your cards when you ask; it makes things easier. However the new Bolas might not be in the database yet so let's see.
Jace, Cunning Castaway
The new Bolas basically says something like "this planeswalker has the activated loyalty abilities of all planeswalkers on the battlefield". (*that's not an actual quote, I haven't seen the spoiler)
The last ability for Jace reads "−5: Create two tokens that are copies of Jace, Cunning Castaway, except they’re not legendary." but whenever a card refers to itself by name, it means "this card" or "this spell" or "this permanent" as contextually appropriate. So what it could be read as is "−5: Create two tokens that are copies of THIS PERMANENT, except they’re not legendary."
That, as you see, would work just fine. The actual rule from the Comprehensive Rules currently is as so:
201.4. Text that refers to the object it's on by name means just that particular object and not any other objects with that name, regardless of any name changes caused by game effects.
April 2, 2019 6:39 p.m.