Since the Dominaria rules changes about spells being countered, do those spells resolve?
Asked by Yesterday 5 years ago
So apparently spells like Abrupt Decay are no longer 'countered' by the game when they go to resolve with no legal target. Does Abrupt Decay still resolve but have no practical function? Or does it just go away with no effect as though it had been countered, but now we're claiming it wasn't 'countered'?
So if a Mystic Melting has its only target removed and would previously have been countered by the game, will it now instead not get countered and result in the owner still getting the card draw?
Rhadamanthus says... #2
Though it's not considered "countered" the spell/ability still doesn't resolve. It's removed from the stack with no effect.
The situations where the rule change makes a functional difference for how a sequence of events plays out are so rare that they'll never actually come up for the vast majority of players. The real advantage is in card templating. Before, a spell with no targets could be printed with an ability that says "[this] can't be countered", but a spell with targets would have to say "[this] can't be countered by spells or abilities". Now they can both use the shorter version of the text.
November 28, 2018 9:49 a.m.
Please be sure to mark the above answer as accepted so this can be removed from the unanswered queue.
Neotrup says... Accepted answer #1
No. Spells and abilities which no longer have legal targets still fizzle and are removed from the stack without resolving, this is just no longer them being countered.
November 28, 2018 9:49 a.m.