Is the fact that white mana has been spent to cast Flash Conscription a copyable attribute, and does this feature prevent the card from being included in non-White Commander decks?
Asked by Yesterday 6 years ago
Would I be allowed to include a Flash Conscription in a Zada, Hedron Grinder Commander deck, following the regular deck-building rules for Commander?
Also, if I were to cast the spell on Zada and spend white mana to cast it, would the fact that I've spent white mana on the original spell be an attribute that would copy over to all of my other creatures and grant them all pseudo-Lifelink? Or is it like Converge in that... it doesn't?
Thanks landofMordor for the deck-building ruling, wasn't sure about that one. Though I know that casting Flash Conscription on your own Zada, Hedron Grinder isn't the wisest of moves, but what I'm after for now is just understanding the rulings on whether the copied spells still keep the secondary attribute, and from there I'll work on a deck. So let's say I were to cast a Flash Conscription on the Ink-Treader Nephilim instead, or just cast it on any old creature and then Twincast, would the copied spell result in lifegain on both stolen creatures if white mana was spent on the initial spell?
Thanks for the tip though, I'm having fun playing around with Zada deck ATM.
June 11, 2017 6:38 a.m.
landofMordor says... Accepted answer #3
Okay, I'm looking it up in the official rulebook.
You still can't include Flash Conscription in Zada, because color identity.
Here's part of Rule 608.2g. "If an effect requires information from the game (such as the number of creatures on the battlefield), the answer is determined only once, when the effect is applied." This is in the "resolving spells" subsection of rules, which is what your question is about. So let's run through some scenarios to flesh out this rule:
You copy Flash Conscription through Ink-Treader Nephilim. Each copy will determine whether W was paid for that copy before it resolves its effect. The answer will be "no", because you didn't pay any mana for the copies. No lifelink.
The same thing (sadly) applies to copies of Kicker spells like Blood Tribute.
Now, that rule does not apply to involuntary "As an additional cost...", because on spells like Lightning Axe, the spell can't legally be cast unless you pay that non-mana cost. If you were able to copy Lightning Axe a few times without paying its mana cost, you would still have to discard or pay the "additional cost" for each copy as you cast it, since that's an effect outside of the mana cost. Yep, it's depressing.
On the other hand, sometimes the answer to information obtained from the game will be "yes". You cast Go for the Throat on Ink-Treader Nephilim (don't ask me how, and don't ask me why). You also control a Arcbound Worker, a Mortician Beetle, and a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy Flip. The Worker stays alive, while everybody else dies, because each copy of Go for the Throat obtains information before it resolves. If you were able to flip Jace into a PW, he would also stay alive, since he left the battlefield and is now a "new" permanent. Same thing would happen if you used Liquimetal Coating on Jace before the spell resolved. That same reasoning would also apply to secondary effects on combat tricks, such as Fistful of Force -- if you win the clash each time, everybody gets big.
Now, let's say you control Harness the Storm and have a Flash Conscription in your grave, with 12 mana up (again, don't ask me how). You cast Flash Conscription from your hand, then also cast it from your grave using Harness's ability. Both copies would grant lifelink, since you paid W for each one.
Hope that helps! MtG has some notoriously confusing interactions, so I have asked many a question myself on this forum. Best of luck. Hit me up when you finish building and I'll be glad to look at your decklist.
June 11, 2017 7:36 a.m.
Mmkay. I'm not trying to second-guess you here, and I'm sorry if that's how it seems, it's just that this is something that I've had explained to me a few times but I keep misunderstanding.
Sometimes, you can cast spells without paying their mana costs. Cool.
If you cast a spell without paying its mana cost but it has an additional cost, like with Lightning Axe, you still have to pay its additional cost. That's cool too.
If you cast a copy of a spell without paying its mana cost, you still have to pay its additional costs if it has any. (Or, you have the option to in the case of spells like Flowstone Flood with optional additional costs). All right.
If you copy a spell (without casting a copy of that spell, like with Twincast), you don't have to pay additional costs. Also sometimes the copied spell retains attributes referred to by the original spell, including through additional costs of the original spell, and sometimes it doesn't, and apparently it's clearly defined and not arbitrary but I can't make heads or tails of it. As in, a copy that wasn't cast of Fling spell will still deal damage to a target creature equal to the power of the creature that was sacrificed for the initially cast Fling, even though no creature was sacrificed for the copied spell... but a copied Radiant Flames won't deal damage equal to the amounts of mana spent on the original spell, because there were no colours of mana spent to cast the copy.
I digress. I sort of understand, sort of.
I'll let you know when I have a deck I'm happy with. Take care!
June 11, 2017 8:35 a.m.
Additional costs, such as kicker, are always remembered by copies of spells, regardless of whether they are optional. The colors of mana spent, such as for spells like Flash Conscription and Radiant Flames aren't remembered by copies.
landofMordor says... #1
So, I don't think you can include Flash Conscription because its color identity is technically RW (it has a W mana symbol on the card that isn't reminder text).
But even if you did, it wouldn't help you because the game "checks" each instance of that spell before it resolves to make sure everything is still legal, which means only one spell would have W spent to cast it, which means you'd just gain control of all your own creatures.
If I were you, I'd put Zada in the 99 of a nasty Anax and Cymede deck, because Rally the Righteous only targets a single creature...
Hope that helps! I'm 90% sure I'm right, but I don't have the exact rules. Mention me if I can help!
June 11, 2017 6:08 a.m.