How does Havengul Lich work?
Asked by psychoza 11 years ago
I just want to make sure I am understanding Havengul Lich correctly.
So, I have the lich in my EDH deck along with cards like Rooftop Storm and Phyrexian Altar .
There is a ruling on Gatherer that says "Havengul Lich 's activated ability creates a delayed triggered ability that triggers when you cast the creature card. This triggered ability will go on the stack on top of the creature spell and will resolve before the creature spell will."
My question is can I pay 1 color to activate the lich's ability to target a creature, cast that creature, sacrifice it, and then repeat this process over and over (assuming I have the mana) or do I need to pay 1 and use the lich's ability for each time I go to cast the creature. My reading of Gather leads me to believe it is the latter.
I think your right about it being the latter, but all that means is you need something that gives you 2 mana whenever you sacrifice a creature, that way you could use 1 to activate the lich's ability and add an infinite amount of mana to your pool (assuming you had Rooftop Storm and were bringing a zombie from your graveyard so you could pay 0 colorless to cast it)
November 25, 2013 4:56 p.m.
TheLameSauce says... #3
Ashes of the Fallen with Rooftop Storm would be a great way to break Havengul Lich
November 25, 2013 5:01 p.m.
I'm really not understanding the question (and I don't think anyone else here is either). Both situations appear to be identical to me.
November 25, 2013 7:40 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #5
@Siyanor: The wording isn't great, but I assume the first scenario would be activating the ability once, then casting that card several times, and the second scenario would be activating the ability once for each cast.
November 25, 2013 7:57 p.m.
Oh, I see... I was thrown off by the "assuming I have the mana." I read that as "assuming I have the mana to activate Havengul Lich 's ability," not "assuming I have the mana to cast something that's probably free anyway seeing as I mentioned Rooftop Storm ."
November 25, 2013 9 p.m.
it's also an edh deck, so its not like they can rely on Rooftop Storm being in play or a zombie being in the graveyard. I just figured they were just covering all their bases
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
Havengul Lich 's ability targets a specific creature card in a graveyard. Once you cast that card, it isn't in a graveyard anymore. Even if that same physical card moves back to a graveyard, it will be a new object and therefore not the same card you targeted.
tl;dr: You need to pay 1 every time.
November 25, 2013 4:54 p.m.