Priority as life total reaches 0
Asked by cavacinig 3 years ago
Hi,
I’m having a hard time precisely phrasing my question so I figured I’d explain the situation to clarify. My gaming group came across a specific scenario tonight and I’m looking to verify how it played out. I was one of three players and myself and another player both had a copy of Syr Konrad, the Grim in play. I also had a viscera seer on my board and a bunch of 1/1 fodders. With my life total at the time the situation was that if I sacrificed enough 1/1s the third player would die to the two Syr Konrad in play, but I had less life than the other player with the Syr Konrad.
So my question is would I be able to kill the second player as well if I stacked enough 1/1 sacrifices to the viscera seer or would my life total reach 0 before enough of those sacrifice stacks resolved and I be eliminated? I think the answer depends if priority passes to anyone as the sacrifices resolve, as I thought I had read if a players life is 0 when anyone gains priority they are eliminated. Sorry if I phrased the question in a manner more complicated than it needed to be. Thanks for any insight provided.
the answer is actually irrelevant to priority. when a player reaches 0 life, they lose immediately as a state based action.
January 5, 2021 12:10 a.m.
Thanks for the tip Keqing420; I’ve never posted links before but I’ll be sure to look it up for next time to help with clarification.
So you’re saying that since viscera seer requires creatures to be sacrificed one by one for its trigger to work, and therefore to trigger Syr Konrad (and I’m unable to sacrifice an X amount of creatures at once) i would kill myself before the other player, right?
January 5, 2021 12:17 a.m.
When a creature dies, both Syr Konrad, the Grims trigger. Once one resolves, before the other does, you can sacrifice another creature to Viscera Seer to repeat the process. So if your Syr Konrad's ability was the one that resolved, your opponents will be losing life and you won't be, but there will be a number of abilities piling up to make you lose life, so you'll want to eliminate the controller of those abilities before they have a chance to resolve.
So the question becomes, can you make your Syr Konrad's ability be the one to resolve rather than the other player's? This depends on who's turn it is. When a creature dies, both trigger, and player's add the abilities to the stack in Active Player Non-Active Player (APNAP) order. If it's your turn, you'll put yours on the stack, then your opponent will. The stack resolves top down, so your opponent's will resolve first, making sure you die. If it's their turn, the opposite happens and you can hopefully kill them. If it's the other player's turn, whoever's next in turn order adds their ability to the stack first, so it's the same situation as being that player's turn.
If you did need a to bleed the third player a little more (if they have the most life) you could let a few instances of your opponent's Syr Konrad's ability resolve, just as long as you don't allow enough to kill you.
January 5, 2021 1:23 a.m.
thats not what i'm saying. you can activate it as many times as you want (it is not a triggered ability) before letting any of them resolve, but even if you activated it enough times to kill the other opponent in theory, it wouldn't work because you would lose first. you would lose before the rest of the stack resolved.
January 5, 2021 1:55 a.m.
Neotrup is correct. If you do this on your turn, you lose. If you do it on other Syr Konrad player's turn, you can survive if you have enough triggers to kill them, because if a player loses everything they own is immediately exiled including spells and abilities on the stack. Whether or not player 3 dies to that sequence, you can at least not die yourself if you sequence it right.
To make it work, you have to activate Viscera Seer when they'll put triggers on the stack first. Their Syr Konrad trigger goes on the stack, then yours. Let your trigger resolve, then sacrifice your next creature and repeat. This will ensure that your triggers all resolve before your opponent ever gets resolve one to deal damage to you.
Keqing420 says... #1
you should link the cards in question so people can know what you are talking about.
Syr Konrad, the Grim
Viscera Seer
January 5, 2021 12:08 a.m.