Does the rules of discarding for Bomat Courier apply to opponent with Raiders' Wake?
Asked by beast_of_war 8 years ago
I recently asked a question: If you have no cards in hand, can you still activate Bomat Courier (discarding my hand and sacking, blah). The answer I was given was yes because I always have a hand even if is 0. My question is: With Raiders' Wake, does my opponent have to have cards in hand to discard in order for the damage to go through, or do they have the same "0 hand" stipulation? Thanks!
Rhadamanthus says... #2
When you're given an instruction to do something to a zone ("discard your hand", "exile target player's graveyard", etc.), it's shorthand for telling you to perform that action on each object in the zone. Bomat Courier tells you to discard each card in your hand as part of the cost to activate the ability. If your hand is empty then you'll end up performing the action on 0 cards. Raiders' Wake only triggers when your opponent actually discards a card, and nothing will happen if they discard 0.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... Accepted answer #1
So the thing is, there's a difference between discarding your hand, and discarding a card. You always have a hand, but you don't always have cards in it. If a player is instructed to discard a card while they have no cards in their hand, they can't. So they won't lose two life from discarding a card because they didn't discard any cards. In fact, even if they discard their entire hand of 0 cards, they still didn't discard any cards.
October 20, 2017 3:16 p.m.