What happens with Vizkopa Guildmage and various cards?
Asked by StormSky92 9 years ago
1 I have Vizkopa Guildmage 's second ability activated, with the enchantment Exquisite Blood on the battlefield. I play Soul Feast . I've read other places that this causes an infinite loop of life gain and loss until I would win. Is that true?
2 Same as above, except I have Sanguine Bond enchantment instead of Exquisite Blood. How does Sanguine Bond and Vizkopa Guildmage's second ability combine if I play Soul Feast?
3 (General Question) Can I activate Vizkopa Guildmage 's second ability after I play Soul Feast and still have have the life loss happen? The way I read it is that "Whenever you gain life this turn, each opponent loses that much life." means everything after you activate the ability. Like, you can't activate that ability at the end of the turn, and expect your opponent to lose the life, since it's the last thing that happens for the turn. (That's kind of a ramble, but I don't know how to explain it.) or am I wrong about that?
StormSky92 says... #2
I thought for #2, I would only gain 4 life. Soul Feast gains me 4, but I didn't think that Sanguine Bond and Vizkopa Guildmage actually cause me to gain any life. They all say basically, when you gain life, the opponent loses that much life. Wouldn't it be I only gain 4, but my opponent loses 12?
May 29, 2014 11:52 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #3
Don't put "#" at the beginning of lines. It screws with the autoformatting.
May 30, 2014 12:27 a.m.
@StormSky92: Ah, you are correct. I was mistaken because I had originally misread your question, and it seems I did not fix all the errors from what I had originally written my response as. My apologies.
Drilnoth says... Accepted answer #1
1) It creates an infinite loop which will end only when your opponent dies from loss of life. Basically, the Soul Feast causes you to gain life, which causes the Vizkopa Guildmage to make your opponents lose life, which causes Exquisite Blood to make you gain life, which causes the Guildmage to create life loss again, etc, etc. If something keeps them from dying due to life loss, such as Angel's Grace , this creates an infinite loop and the game will end in a draw if nobody can do anything about it.
2) If you have Vizkopa Guildmage active and a Sanguine Bond out, then Soul Feast will (unless there is another relevant card or effect) cause the following chain of events: As Soul Feast resolves, its target loses 4 life and you gain 4 life. Then, the Guildmage and Bond both trigger. The Guildmage will cause each opponent to lose 4 life, and the Bond will cause a target opponent to lose 4 life. So, in a two player, you would gain 8 and your opponent would lose 12.
Of note, Sanguine Bond combos with Exquisite Blood in a similar way to how Vizkopa Guildmage does.
3) It applies to all life you gain after the Vizkopa Guildmage 's ability resolves. If you use it after the Soul Feast resolves, it will not retroactively account for that life gain. It applies to life gained after it resolves, not life gained over the course of the entire turn.
All of these are just doing what the cards say... Magic rules text tends to be very literal.
May 29, 2014 10:48 p.m.