Does Mazirek + Aerie Ouphes = Infinite Sacrifice?
Asked by Crayfish 8 years ago
Does Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest + Aerie Ouphes mean infinite sacrifices? I would love to know for my budget golgari deck, Hyper-Budget: Golgari Power Sacrifice.
Can't you just let the "damage to target flyer" effect fizzle with no legal targets?
November 15, 2015 2:11 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #3
You can't activate an ability or cast a spell unless you can declare a sufficient number of legal targets for it. Aerie Ouphes's ability requires a target creature with flying, so you need a legal target in order to activate the ability.
Assuming you do have a legal target, you can activate Aerie Ouphes's ability targeting that creature. Both persist and Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest's ability will trigger. You choose the order in which these abilities are placed onto the stack. If you place Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest's ability onto the stack first, then place Aerie Ouphes's ability onto the stack above it, persist will resolve and return Aerie Ouphes to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it, then Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest's ability will resolve, putting a +1/+1 counter on Aerie Ouphes. The +1/+1 counter and -1/-1 counter will cancel out as a state-based action, allowing you to safely reactivate Aerie Ouphes's ability again in response to the instance that's still on the stack.
November 15, 2015 2:40 p.m.
Raging_Squiggle says... Accepted answer #4
No. In order for an ability or spell to be cast or activated, any instances of the word "Target" must have a legal target. If there is no creature with flying on the battlefield as you attempt to activate Aerie Ouphes' ability, the game will back up to the point before you activated it because you have no legal target.
If you stacked the abilites right, you could get infinite sacrifices.
1) sacrifice Aerie Ouphes to target a Storm Crow.
2) Both Persist and Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest trigger simultaneously (and go on the stack on top of Aerie Ouphes' ability) and you choose in what order they resolve
3) persist resolves first, bringing the creature back to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter.
4) Mazirek's ability resolves, putting a +1/+1 counter on Aerie Ouphes, negating the -1/-1 counter.
5) as long as you keep the actual sacrifice abilities from Aerie Ouphes on the stack, you can repeat steps 1-4 as many times as you wish.
November 15, 2015 2:40 p.m.
Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest is itself flying so it is infinite 2-card combo. You just need something else to actually win.
November 17, 2015 4:10 p.m.
Raging_Squiggle says... #6
@ Omut perhaps an Extractor Demon for crazy mill?
Tunde says... #1
Because of the fact that Aerie Ouphes has to have a target flyer in order for you to sacrifice it, this would NOT be an infinite combo. That is unless of course you continuously sacrifice it letting all the other abilities resolve before the flyer is actually killed. You can then have a combo that works until you stop assuming there is a flier on board when you start and nobody removes it as you are sacrificing.
BTW a true infinite combo is one that causes a draw or ends the game because you cannot stop it.
November 15, 2015 2:03 p.m.