Undying Evil and persist
Asked by swkelly89 8 years ago
i understand that undying and persist cancel each other out. but say i cast Undying Evil on Puppeteer Clique and i sac Puppeteer Clique, he comes back and counters cancel out. will it continue to have both undying and persist or is it considered a new creature and not have undying anymore?
Rhadamanthus says... #2
When a card changes zones, it becomes a new game object with no relation to what it was before (minus a few exceptions that are needed to make certain effects work properly). What this means is that the creature that gets returned by the Undying granted by Undying Evil no longer has undying.
There's something else going on here, though. Both Undying and Persist are triggered abilities, and both will trigger when the creature dies if it had no +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters on it. Since you control both of the triggers trying to go onto the stack at the same time you get to decide what order to put them onto the stack. Whichever one you put on top will resolve first and will return the creature before the other trigger has started to resolve. This means the other trigger will fail to do anything as it resolves since the creature is no longer in the graveyard.
You can still use Undying Evil and Persist to your advantage if a creature with Persist has already died and come back with a -1/-1 counter. If you give it Undying and it dies again then only Undying will trigger (because it doesn't have any +1/+1 counters) and will bring it back with a +1/+1 counter. If it dies again then its own Persist will trigger (because it doesn't have any -1/-1 counters) and will bring it back with a -1/-1 counter.
acbooster says... Accepted answer #1
The way you would get the two abilities to cancel out is a bit different than how you think they do. If a creature has both Undying and Persist, you put both abilities on the stack when it dies. Then, whichever one is on top resolves and the other one has no target anymore. If you wanted them to cancel out, you'd have to cast Undying Evil on the Clique after it already had a -1/-1 counter on it.
Whenever an object changes zones, it holds no memory of its previous iterations. Once the Clique comes back after having Undying Evil cast on it, it won't have Undying anymore because it's considered a new object to the game.
June 29, 2015 8:41 p.m.