how does evolve work exactly?
Asked by abenz419 11 years ago
I had a situation come up at FNM last week and we went with the judge ruling but I'm still unsure if we played it right.
My opponent had an Experiment One with one +1/+1 counter on it (a 2/2) and played a Reverent Hunter . Would the evolve trigger? I thought the Reverent Hunter would enter as a 1/1 and it's ability would trigger and go on the stack (resulting in 2x +1/+1 counters making it a 3/3), because it entered as a 1/1 I didn't think evolve would trigger because it was a lower power and toughness and he'd end up with a 3/3 Reverent Hunter and a 2/2 Experiment One . The judge told us that evolve will trigger every time a creature enters and it only checks the power and toughness on resolution so since both trigger at the same time if he stacks them right then the counters will be added to the Reverent Hunter and then the evolve trigger resolves and checks P/T and adds a counter to the Experiment One . Both of them make perfect sense to me, depending on how evolve actually works. If it triggers every time a creature enters and only checks on resolution the we played it right by the judge. If it checks P/T when it triggers and on resolution then I was right and the Experiment One wouldn't evolve. So which is it and how does it work?
so the judge was wrong to say that evolve triggers when any creature enters the battlefield under your control...it only triggers when either its toughness or power is bigger than the creature with evolve.......I hope this helps...
April 21, 2014 9:37 p.m.
Ok thanks, The main reason I was questioning it is because i thought I had seen before in another answer that it checks it when it triggers and then checks again when it resolves. I wasn't going to argue over it with the judge at FNM and if you look at the reminder text of evolve it says "whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, if that creature...", because of that little comma separating the two parts I could see how that would would mean it triggered whenever a creature entered under your control and then only checked it's P/T during resolution.
April 21, 2014 9:53 p.m.
GoblinsInc says... #4
Normally triggered abilities don't recheck the trigger condition on resolution. Ones that including intervening if clauses like evolve does "X, if Y," check both when it triggers and when the ability resolves. But unless the trigger condition is met at the time of the triggering event, it won't trigger. If the creature entering isn't large enough, there's no original trigger event.
pskinn01 says... Accepted answer #1
from gatherer:
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, check its power and toughness against the power and toughness of the creature with evolve. If neither stat of the new creature is greater, evolve won't trigger at all.
since Reverent Hunter entered as a 1/1 then got bigger, the evolve would not trigger....if Reverent Hunter had an ability that stated that he entered with those counters, then it would trigger.
April 21, 2014 9:35 p.m.