Targeting a creature which is then killed, and returned to the battlefield...
Asked by ThreeOhEight 4 years ago
Hello!
Let's say I have a Carrion Feeder and Relentless Dead in play, and my opponent casts a Path to Exile targeting my Carrion Feeder. I respond by sacrificing the Relentless Dead to the Carrion Feeder, which triggers Relentless Dead's two abilities. I hold priority and respond to those triggers by sacrificing the Carrion Feeder to itself. No one responds further, and the Carrion Feeder hits the graveyard. Then, Relentless Dead's abilities come off the stack, and I pay one colorless mana to return it to my hand, and a second black mana to return the Carrion Feeder from the graveyard to play. Now the Path to Exile resolves.
Does the Path to Exile fizzle because Carrion Feeder ceased being a valid target, and the game views the Carrion Feeder as a "new" creature that has entered from the Graveyard? Or does it remove my Carrion Feeder from the game, because that is technically the same creature and it is still a valid target when the Path to Exile resolves?
If the latter is true, then what if I had second copy of Carrion Feeder in my graveyard at the beginning of the sequence, and chose to bring that copy back instead of the one in my example from above?
I hope I explained adequately, and thanks very much for struggling through that long-winded explanation!
Gidgetimer says... Accepted answer #1
When a card leaves the battlefield and then returns it is a new game object with no memory of or relation to its former self.
How you explained this happening doesn't work though. Relentless Dead's second trigger targets. This means that the creature you want to return must be in the graveyard before Relentless Dead dies because you pick a target when the trigger goes on the stack.
March 6, 2020 6:28 a.m.