Food chain and goblin warchief

Asked by zukimaten 11 years ago

On the table I've got [Food Chain] and [Goblin Warchief]. I've read that if I remove Warchief for food chain I can play, say [Siege-Gang Commander], where i both use the reduction of the mana cost from Warchief and the mana from food chain. Is this correct? How does it work?

Now say someone [lightning bolt]'s my Warchief and I remove it as response, it is correct that I will not be able to use that trick, right?

zukimaten says... #1

Okay sorry, stupid mistake, I tried to make them links but horribly failed. There should be an edit function.

October 17, 2013 6:45 a.m.

Absinthman says... Accepted answer #2

It works because paying the costs of the spell is the last part of the casting process. First you announce the spell you are casting. If you have Goblin Warchief on the battlefield at that moment, the cost you will need to pay for Siege-Gang Commander is reduced by one. Then you pay for the spell using the mana in your mana pool. At this time you may use mana abilities of all sources you possess. This means you can also activate Food Chain because its ability is a mana ability and doesn't use the stack. Normally, you can't activate any abilities during the casting process, but mana abilities are an exception as per this rule:

605.3. Activating an activated mana ability follows the rules for activating any other activated ability (see rule 602.2), with the following exceptions:

- 605.3a A player may activate an activated mana ability whenever he or she has priority, whenever he or she is casting a spell or activating an ability that requires a mana payment, or whenever a rule or effect asks for a mana payment, even if its in the middle of casting or resolving a spell or activating or resolving an ability.

Due to this, the cost of your goblin will be reduced by the Warchief and you then get to exile it to generate mana for your payment.

October 17, 2013 6:57 a.m.

Gidgetimer says... #3

To answer the second question, in most cases you can't do the trick if somebody bolted the Goblin Warchief because you can not cast a creature when there are spells on the stack. The exception to this is if the creature has flash or if something is letting you cast the creature as if it had flash.

October 17, 2013 10:40 a.m.

Absinthman says... #4

I completely overlooked the second part of the question. Thanks for filling in, Gidgetimer.

October 17, 2013 10:49 a.m.