Can you purposely sacrifice a creature (see situation below)
Asked by Randomgold 8 years ago
My brother has this card called Tortured Existence. It is an enchantment that costs one swamp to blow. It's ability is: Swamp: Choose and discard a creature card: Return a creature card in your graveyard to your hand.
Recently, he has been using it to get rid of creature cards in my hand so that I can't play them. (all of my creatures are 4 mana or more) However, the card requires that he bring back a creature, so he wants to purposely sacrifice a creature on the battlefield so he can use this ability. Is this allowed?
Please link all cards in your question, like so:
[[Tortured Existence]]
You and your brother are making a couple misplays... Okay, only your brother is. First, a player can only Discard a card from his own hand, so your brother cannot use Tortured Existence to discard your creatures.
Now, to answer your actual question, no, he cannot just randomly sacrifice a creature. If he has a 'sac outlet', like Nantuko Husk, then he can sac creatures to the Husk to put them in the grave.
May 24, 2016 9:13 p.m.
And because noone else has said it: 
is the symbol for black mana, not "Swamp mana".
May 25, 2016 2:13 a.m.
In general if a card like Tortured Existence has and activated ability everything before the colon is a cost that must be paid by the controller of the card and everything after a colon is the effect. Always remember to check the Oracle text on your older cards too.
May 25, 2016 2:59 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #5
Normally a card that requires you to Sacrifice a creature means you must sacrifice something YOU control, and by "control" we mean "on the Battlefield".
What it's asking him to do is to sacrifice a creature HE controls that is currently on the battlefield. Then, he may return something from the graveyard.
Because the sacrifice must be made first as part of the payment, he could theoretically and technically sacrifice a creature like Avenger of Zendikar, only to bring it back out. By sacrificing it, it immediately enters the graveyard. Once the creature is legally sacrificed (all mechanics check out, there isn't an Instant of "return target creature to owner's hand" lingering somewhere, for example), Avenger goes to the graveyard.
Once there, the second half kicks in. Since Avenger is legally in the graveyard, he could bring him back out. A nasty way to get double the Plant Tokens, especially if he plays a land AFTER he brings Avenger out.
- Green white Token Lifegain that I run
- Suture Priest
- Save up for Avenger of Zendikar
- Get X 0/1 tokens
- Play Jeskai Barricade
- Return Avenger of Zendikar
- Get X more 0/1 tokens
- Play Evolving Wilds
- Laughter ensues
Just the other day I did a nasty string of combos that landed me nine lands in one turn. Brought an army of 9/10 plant tokens out of nowhere. Shit was so cash.
May 25, 2016 3:01 p.m.
But Tortured Existence, the card in question, doesn't talk about sacrificing.
May 25, 2016 3:27 p.m.
Minotaur
Nope. All of that up there is based on a false understanding of the rules and does nothing to further the understanding of the card in question.
Section 114.1. And section 601 and 602 in the comprehensive rules tell us that targets are chosen before the ability is put on the stack and many steps before any costs are paid. Therefore it is impossible for the same ability that sacrifices a permanent as a cost to target that permanent in another zone.
May 25, 2016 8:02 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #8
@MinotaurtheMatador: In addition to what Tortlewar said, note that putting a permanent into the graveyard as a result of a sacrifice happens immediately and does not in any way depend on triggered abilities that would trigger when the object moves to the graveyard (these abilities mechanically can't happen until that permanent moves to the graveyard) or responses that people would make (the sacrifice happens immediately, and you can't respond to costs).
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
Link all cards in your question.
Tortured Existence
I really don't understand how your brother is playing this card.
Tortured Existence has an activated ability. The cost to activate this ability is "
, Discard a creature card." This means that your brother has to pay 
and discard a creature card in order to activate the ability. Note that you can only discard a card that's in your hand. You don't discard from the battlefield. Nothing about this ability involves sacrificing.
The ability's effect is to return a target creature card from your graveyard to your hand ("you" refers to the player who controls the ability).
If your brother controls Tortured Existence, then he has to discard a creature and pay
to activate its ability. Nothing about the situation involves you discarding anything.
Note also that players cannot sacrifice permanents unless a cost or effect instructs them to. If your brother has no creatures in his graveyard (unlikely if he's discarding them so often), then he will have to find some way to kill one or discard one.
May 24, 2016 9:10 p.m.