Marchesa, the Black Rose considering new death trigger ruling.

Asked by NugsandHugs 3 years ago

This question was brought up in my play group because of the recent ruling change to commander death triggers. This change is along the lines of: If your commander has a "when [this creature] dies" trigger and, on death, you choose to return it to your command zone its effect will still trigger.

That being said, consider the following situation. My commander is Marchesa, the Black Rose who currently has a +1/+1 counter. An opponent takes control of her and while under the opponents control she is killed. I choose to return her to my command zone.

Will she return to my opponents field because of her death trigger?

Tylord2894 says... Accepted answer #1

Your opponent will not get her back. While the official update to the CR won't be released until the M21 update, Eliot of the RC released the outline for the new rules here.

TL;DR, the new "return to the command zone" rules are now split into two cases. The replacement effect as we know it is still there but only affects when your commander is shuffled away or put into your hand. If you're commander goes to the graveyard or is exiled, it stays there until state-based actions are checked. If it is there, you can choose to put it back in the command zone. This is very similar to how tokens work.

As it pertains to your question, when a creature dies/is exiled the game considers that a new object in the game. The trigger from Marchesa, the Black Rose will look for the game object that was created when she died. When you decide to move your commander from the graveyard to the command zone, that creates yet another new object. So, when the Marchesa trigger resolves, it would be able to find the object it's looking for.

Hope this helps!!

June 7, 2020 11:32 p.m.

Rhadamanthus says... #2

NugsandHugs: Since an answer to this question has been up for a while and there don't seem to be any follow-ups or corrections to be made, I've marked it as the "Accepted answer" so that this topic can move out of the list of unanswered questions. In the future, you can take care of this yourself by using the green "Mark as Answer" button after you feel you've gotten an acceptable response to your question.

June 15, 2020 12:28 p.m.

Please login to comment