Undying vs. Toughness Reduction

Asked by thar_b_dragons 2 months ago

If I have Young Wolf on the table with. +1/+1 counter on it due to it previously being destroyed, and I cast Black Sun's Zenith with X=2, will the toughness reduction take the + counter off, causing Undying to trigger a second time and the Young Wolf to come back? Or will the toughness reduction apply only to base toughness (and power) in the first place, causing it to become 1/1 until end of turn due to the counter and then "heal"? Or is it some other scenario I haven't thought of that will cause the Young Wolf to go to the 'yard and stay? Thanks.

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

There are a few things going on here with some fiddly details but the result is that Young Wolf doesn't get brought back to the battlefield.

A creature dying for having 0 or less toughness and +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters removing each other are both handled by the game's "State Based Actions" (SBAs). Right before each time a player would get priority to take another action, the game checks for and performs any needed SBAs simultaneously, so this means Young Wolf dies at the same time its +1/+1 counter and one of the -1/-1 counters remove each other. However, "leaves the battlefield" triggers like Undying (a "dies" trigger is a special kind of "leaves the battlefield trigger") use information from the last moment an object was on the battlefield to determine what happens. At the last moment Young Wolf was still on the battlefield before it died, it still had a +1/+1 counter, so Undying won't return it from the graveyard.

The result from applying a -X/-X effect that doesn't use counters (like Languish, etc.) is of course the same.

February 26, 2024 10:53 a.m.