What happens with a mutated Tenacious Dead?
Asked by Legendxp 4 years ago
Lets say I play a Tenacious Dead and then mutate it with a Regal Leosaur; What happens when the creature dies?
Do I get one trigger or two? (Do I pay 2 mana or 4?)
I assume they come back into play as separate creatures?
Tylord2894 says... #2
I've been giving this addendum on all the Ikoria questions that were not answered specifically addressed in the release notes; the new comp. rules are not out, so this might not be correct.
That said, my understanding is that you get a trigger for each creature in a mutation pile. So in your example above, you would get two triggers. So, you would pay 4 mana to get them back. They come back as two different creatures.
April 14, 2020 6:49 p.m.
Yes, as Tylord2894 said, we won't know for sure until the new comprehensive rules come out with further clarification. Best to wait and see for sure.
April 14, 2020 6:53 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
There's only one trigger, but I think whether you can only get Tenacious Dead back to the battlefield or the entire pile still needs to be cleared up.
"Dies" triggers and other leaves-the-battlefield triggers use information from the moment the object was last on the battlefield to determine if and how they trigger. At the last moment your merged creature was on the battlefield, it was only one creature. This is backed up by the following statement from the release notes: "If a merged creature leaves the battlefield, one object leaves the battlefield and each card is put into the appropriate zone. For example, if a merged creature containing three cards dies, one creature died and three cards were put into a player's graveyard."
As the rules stand right now, a zone-change trigger from an object in one zone can find the object it becomes in the zone it moved to. I feel like we still need more clarification to know whether Tenacious Dead's ability can only find the single Tenacious Dead object in the graveyard or all of the objects that the merged creature became after it died.
April 14, 2020 9:20 p.m.
Tylord2894 says... Accepted answer #5
Ok, a question like this got brought up in one of my judge chats. They got clarifications for Eli Shiffrin (rules manager at WotC). When a mutation pile has an ability that says something like "when [this creature] dies", there is a single trigger; however, the effects from that trigger apply to all the creatures that were in the mutation pile.
So for the example here, when the proposed creature pile dies, there is one trigger. You can choose to pay . If you do, both creatures will return to the battlefield.
There are some notable exceptions. Any creatures that didn't stay in the graveyard don't return. This might be either because they never reached the grave like Blightsteel Colossus or because they moved due to an effect like Scavenging Ooze.
Lastly, this is only for triggers on a creature that references its own death. There are more exceptions for other death triggers like Nightmare Shepherd. Since that is not what this thread is about, I will not go into those.
Hope this helps clear things up.
Kogarashi says... #1
Only one creature "died," (was put into the graveyard from the battlefield), so you only get one trigger. However, since it splits into its component parts when put into the graveyard, unless someone has rules clarification regarding this, the trigger should still apply to all the component parts, which would indeed be put into the battlefield as separate objects.
Seems kind of strong if this is the case, but I can't find any further information.
April 14, 2020 6:48 p.m.