Relentless Dead question

Asked by sparkyb 9 years ago

So I want to use the new card, Relentless Dead in a new zombie tribal I want to make for standard. However, I have a question about its ability. If I have 2 Relentless dead on the battlefield and one dies, can I used the second ability of the one that is still alive to bring back the one that died? I just want to know if it can target other Relentless Deads with that ability so I can bring them back for one mana.

AwesomeName says... #1

No, Relentless Dead's ability triggers on death. This means you can only activate it's abilities when that specific card itself dies. This means you can't use the one that is alive to return the one that died. You can however pay to return the Relentless Dead that just died to your hand.

Also this should be in Rules Q&A

April 2, 2016 1:14 p.m. Edited.

AwesomeName says... #2

Whoops, I meant to say "Relentless Dead's ability triggers only on it's own death." Hopefully that will help make what I said more clear.

April 2, 2016 1:25 p.m. Edited.

Yashagoro says... #3

But if you have a relentless dead already in the grave and if you have one on the field and it dies then you can use the second ability to return the one already in the grave

April 2, 2016 2:27 p.m.

Raging_Squiggle says... #4

No you can't. Whenever a card references its own name in an ability, it is specifically meaning "only this literal card this text is printed on".

When Relentless Dead dies, its abilities will trigger. You can "pay a to return this card to your hand", and/or "pay to return a different zombie to the battlefield..."

April 2, 2016 3:44 p.m.

Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #5

Looks like there's some confusion here.

Relentless Dead has two triggered abilities. Both of these abilities trigger when Relentless Dead dies. They're not activated abilities.

When Relentless Dead dies, you get to put each of those triggered abilities onto the stack. One of them will allow you to return the Relentless Dead that died to its owner's hand for . The other will allow you to return another target Zombie creature card to the battlefield for .

The second of these abilities (Relentless Dead's last ability) can target any Zombie card in your graveyard other than the Relentless Dead that is the source of that ability.

Let's say for the sake of example that you have one Relentless Dead (RD1) in your graveyard and a second one (RD2) on the field. When RD2 dies, you can use RD2's second ability (its first triggered ability) to return RD2 to your hand for , and you can use RD2's third ability (its second triggered ability) to return RD1 to the battlefield for .

April 2, 2016 4:01 p.m.