Mimic Vat Questions
Asked by Smuggy 14 years ago
I have two questions concerning Mimic Vat . The first it what happens when both you and your opponent have a Mimic Vat and you both want to imprint the same creature? They can't both exile the card, so who gets priority?
The second is this: I know that creatures that copy other creatures, like Cryptoplasm or Phyrexian Metamorph , adopt the CMC of the creature they copy. Do Mimic Vat 's Tokens do the same, or is their CMC 0?
doinitwrong says... #2
1) Active player's trigger would go on the stack first, then inactive player. The triggers then resolve in reverse order; first inactive player, then active player. The trick is that after the inactive player's trigger resolves, there's no more creature for the active player to imprint.
In short, inactive player gets the creature.
2) I believe that even though it's a token, it still takes the characteristics of the thing you're copying, including CMC.
May 16, 2011 10:22 p.m.
doinitwrong says... #3
Oracle ruling on Clone :
As a copy, the Clone copies all characteristics of the chosen creature. This includes name, color, power/toughness, abilities, and more. For example, a copy of an artifact creature is an artifact creature.
May 16, 2011 10:25 p.m.
I'm not sure what the first poster was trying to say, but all tokens have a CMC of 0.
see rule 202.1b: Some objects have no mana cost. This normally includes all land cards, any other cards that have no mana symbols where their mana cost would appear, tokens (unless the effect that creates them specifies otherwise), and nontraditional Magic cards.
May 16, 2011 10:40 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
Note that the rule you quote says "unless the effect that creates them specifies otherwise" for tokens. The rules about copy effects do specify mana cost:
706.2. When copying an object, the copy acquires the copiable values of the original object's characteristics and, for an object on the stack, choices made when casting or activating it (mode, targets, the value of X, whether it was kicked, how it will affect multiple targets, and so on). The "copiable values" are the values derived from the text printed on the object (that text being name, mana cost, card type, subtype, supertype, expansion symbol, rules text, power, toughness, and/or loyalty), as modified by other copy effects, by "as . . . enters the battlefield" and "as . . . is turned face up" abilities that set characteristics, and by abilities that caused the object to be face down. Other effects (including type-changing and text-changing effects), status, and counters are not copied.
May 16, 2011 11:26 p.m.
See, "effect that creates them specifies otherwise" kind of applies here. The tokens are created as copies of the imprinted card, so the copy effect will 'overrule' 202.1b
May 16, 2011 11:26 p.m.
MagnorCriol says... #7
Rhadamanthus and Siegfried are correct.
landot, you're right that a Vat's tokens don't have a CMC in general circumstances - and in a way, even the tokens spewed out by a Vat with a Clone or Phyrexian Metamorph have a CMC of zero, it's just that their "As this enters the battlefield" ability overwrites it the moment it comes into existence. There's never a moment where the game sees it as a 0 CMC token in the case of a Clone or Metamorph token.
May 17, 2011 2 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #8
@MagnorCriol, it's not accurate to say that Vat tokens "don't have a CMC in general circumstances". The only times a token generated by a Mimic Vat won't have a mana cost is if it somehow gets either a land or a Lotus Bloom imprinted on it. Every other time, the token has a mana cost, because it's an exact copy of the imprinted card (there's never a point during the resolution of the ability where the token is "blank", even in the case of a Clone , etc.).
May 17, 2011 9:50 a.m.
MagnorCriol says... #9
-facepalm- You're right. That's embarrassing. I wrote that last night when I was apparently too tired for my own good. It made sense at the time! =p
Soooyeah, disregard my last post. I need to remember to think through my stuff better...
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1
If multiple triggered abilities trigger at the same time, the active player puts all of his on the stack first, then the non-active players put theirs on the stack on top of that in turn order. So in a 2-person game where both players have Mimic Vat, the player whose turn it isn't gets the first choice, because the triggered ability he controls will resolve first.
A copy is everything written on the original, plus any copy effects the original is subject to. A token copy of a card with a mana cost will also have a mana cost.
May 16, 2011 10:14 p.m.