Milling creatures that can't be milled
Asked by Crothselm 13 years ago
If a player is milling cards, and say an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is revealed half way through the mill, what happens? I was told once that the mill immediately stops, Emrakul shuffles the graveyard back in, and then the rest of the mill finishes, but that doesn't seem right at all to me. I was pretty sure the mill occurred all at once, and at no point would any ability stop halfway through resolving. In the same vein, Emrakul's ability to shuffle into the deck goes on the stack and can be responded to just like anything else, right?
BrightGreenLine says... #2
landot is right. Nothing here will happen 'instantenously' though, and there is time to respond to Emrakul's trigger before the whole pile gets shuffled back in.
So first, milling cards. When you resolve any spell or effect, the first thing to remember is: Nothing else can happen until the spell or effect finishes resolving. This means literally nothing: If a creature gets its toughness reduced to 0 while you're resolving a spell, it doesn't die immediately; if its toughness returns above 0 it'll still be alive afterwards. This is why Aeon Chronicler doesn't die when Barbed Shocker deal damage, for example.
Instead, once Emrakul is milled you will wait until the current milling effect is finished, and then put Emrakul's trigger on top of the stack. If you're resolving a Traumatize then congratulations, move on to the next step: Responding to and resolving the eldrazi "Shuffle graveyard" trigger. If, instead, you were resolving a stack of mill effects (Such as a Halimar Excavator trigger), you will have to stop and deal with the Emrakul trigger before you continue milling.
Again, to summarize and repeat landot before I go into a different situation that will break Emrakul, you were right initially: You will finish resolving whatever mill effect first before your opponent shuffles Emrakul.
Now, there's at least one mill in standard that Emrakul doesn't immediately break: Mindcrank and Bloodchief Ascension . There's a bit of a trick to this though: You'll still have to deal with the Emrakul reshuffle trigger, but depending on when the Mindcrank combo goes off you can actually ignore it until they are completely milled. If you start the Bloodcrank on your turn, as soon as Emrakul is put into the graveyard 2 things will happen: Your Bloodchief will trigger, and his Emrakul will trigger. Triggers are put on the stack in APNAP order, so your Bloodchief trigger will go on the stack, followed by Emrakul who will resolve first. The simple way to make this combo work is to wait until your opponent's turn, preferably their upkeep. Then when you mill Emrakul the triggers will go in reverse order, since your opponent is the active player. Bloodchief will make them lose 2 life, the 2 life lost will mill 2 more cards, which will trigger the Bloodchief twice, and so on. Then, you just have to wait until their entire library is milled (with a handful of extra Bloodchief triggers sitting on the stack ahead of Emrakul) and blow their graveyard away with Nihil Spellbomb or take out the Emrakul with Suffer the Past, and the game is yours.
May 27, 2011 8:37 p.m.
brianguymtg says... #3
@BrightGreenLine: You probably wouldn't care about emrakul's reshuffle trigger when combining Bloodchief Ascension with Mindcrank , because you can outright take all their life away like that. But you are also correct, that would cause a full mill without reshuffle, but Leyline of the Void is probably a must in a deck around that combo.
May 27, 2011 11:09 p.m.
BrightGreenLine says... #4
Leyline of the Void would actually break the combo, as nothing would go to the graveyard for Bloodchief to trigger. I did ignore the very likely outcome that your opponent would die to the life lost from the Bloodchief mill though. Just in case they're playing some kind of lifegain deck, Bloodcrank + Nihil Spellbomb /Suffer the Past will rain on their parade.
May 27, 2011 11:15 p.m.
Ravenous Trap has turned out to be really useful anti-Eldrazi tech for mill decks, when I've played them at least.
landot says... Accepted answer #1
If an effect asks you to mill 10 cards, and one of those 10 is emrakul, then all 10 go to the graveyard, then the entire graveyard is re-shuffled into the library. This is because you can't interrupt the resolution of an effect on the stack. (In magic rules lingo, there is no time after an effect begins to resolve that any player has priority until after that effect has resolved completly. This means that no new effects may be placed on the stack and state-based triggers and events will not occur, because these only happen when a player could have priority.)
Once the ability that caused the mill starts resolving -- by taking cards from top of library to graveyard -- it finishes resolving completely before worrying about whether its resolution caused any new triggers to be placed on the stack.
In short: you're right.
I don't have a comp. rules reference for this, but I could find one if it was necessary.
Note: I am a rules advisor, but only a rules advisor -- if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will let us both know.
May 27, 2011 7:12 p.m.