Pulmonic Sliver's second ability question regarding discard
Asked by timschil 8 years ago
If I have a Pulmonic Sliver on the board and an opponent plays a Thoughtseize and selects a sliver from my hand. Would I be able to put that sliver on top of my library or would the sliver have to leave the battlefield to trigger this ability?
Player3.14 says... #3
No. Pulmonic Sliver's oracle text is phrased "If this permanent is put into a graveyard, you may put it on top of your library instead. Only cards on the battlefield are permenants. The sliver in your hand never became a permenant; its status is simply a permenant card.
March 2, 2016 10:14 p.m.
Because the official wording on the card says "if this permanent", and only cards in play are permanents. The wording was changed due to the fact that the abilities were only suppose to effect slivers in play.
here is a link to the gatherer page
THe gatherer will always have the most current official wording.
March 2, 2016 10:29 p.m. Edited.
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #5
The actual reason isn't the "If this creature/permanent..." part. It's the "All Slivers have..." part. When a card's text refers to a permanent type or subtype without also saying "spell" or "card in a (zone)", then it only means permanents of that type or subtype on the battlefield. Because Pulmonic Sliver just says "Slivers", it only gives the abilities to Sliver permanents on the battlefield.
March 2, 2016 10:55 p.m.
What Rhadamanthus said. The use of the word permanent has no bearing on this question. It's just that when an ability doesn't use the word card, it has no bearing on cards in players' hands, libraries, graveyards, or exile. i.e. Slivers in your hand aren't Slivers, they're Sliver cards.
The change to using the word "permanent" was just a catch all in case a situation ever arose where a Sliver on the battlefield wasn't a creature (possible through use of the Tribal type).
pskinn01 says... #1
Nope, only slivers in play gain the ability.
March 2, 2016 10:10 p.m.