A question about using an ability in response multiple times
Asked by The_Kazekyo 9 years ago
This happened in a casual game i was watching, one guy had 32 elf tokens on the battlefield and also an Altar of Dementia since the tokens didn't had haste he passed the turn so his opponent then cast a Wrath of God the guy with the elves then activated the altar multiple times in response but the other guy argued he could only activate it once then priority would be passed and his wrath would resolve, what actually happens? is the guy with the elves right or is the one who used wrath right?
nighthawk101 says... #2
Elves is correct.
A player can hold priority after they cast a spell/activate an ability and cast another spell/activate another ability.
However, Elves could also have activated Altar of Dementia once and passed priority. Once everyone else passes priority, Altar of Dementia's ability would resolve. The key here is that there is another round of priority after a spell or ability resolves- Wrath's Wrath of God doesn't automatically resolve. Elves could use the new round of priority to activate Altar of Dementia's ability again, pass priority to let it resolve, and continue until he was out of creatures.
Either of those situations results in Elves being able to activate Altar of Dementia's ability multiple times before Wrath's Wrath of God resolves.
January 18, 2015 7:42 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #3
Objects on the stack resolve one at a time so the 3 scenarios that could be possible would be:
Elf player activates Altar of Dementia as many times as he has creatures without passing priority as he wanted to.
Elf player activates Altar of Dementia and lets it resolve as many times as he has creatures never allowing the Wrath to resolve but allowing his own triggers to resolve.
Elf player activates Altar of Dementia once allows it to resolve and then for some god forsaken reason allows the wrath to resolve even though he doesn't have to.
Drilnoth says... Accepted answer #1
Multiple times is perfectly possible. Whenever a spell or ability is added to the stack, there is a round of priority. So, Wrath of God gets cast. There's a round of priority before it resolves. The Altar gets activated (sacrificing a creature). Because an ability has just been activated, there is another round of priority before the Altar ability even resolves, in which another creature can be sacrificed, and so on.
In addition, whenever a spell or ability resolves there is a round of priority before the next object on the stack resolves. That means that they could even sacrifice a token, have the Altar's ability resolve (assuming no other responses), and then sacrifice another token, still before the Wrath of God happens.
January 18, 2015 7:39 p.m.