Using Evolving Wilds/T. Expanse with no lands in deck
Asked by Suchy 4 years ago
What happens when you use those lands if let's say you don't have any basic lands in your deck anymore? Can you even activate their ability?
So by way of explanation, then, if you use Demonic Tutor , you must select a card, but if you use Enlightened Tutor you can fail to find? (Making sure I'm clear on this one.)
November 16, 2019 12:06 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #3
That is correct. The relevant comprehensive rules are below.
701.18b If a player is searching a hidden zone for cards with a stated quality, such as a card with a certain card type or color, that player isn’t required to find some or all of those cards even if they’re present in that zone.
701.18d If a player is searching a hidden zone simply for a quantity of cards, such as “a card” or “three cards,” that player must find that many cards.
November 16, 2019 1 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #4
Aaaand just after I submitted that comment I thought of a deck abusing failing to find and how it may not be clear that the usage is perfectly acceptable via the rules.
Gifts Ungiven specifies a quality that the cards must have. They must all have different names. Even if there are more than four cards in your library you can find only one card if you wish. Intuition on the other hand only specifies "three cards" so if there are three cards in your library you have to find three.
(After typing this up I have noticed that the Modern Masters and newer Gifts Ungiven have been printed with errata that makes it "up to four cards" that you are searching for. This is not functional errata, it was probably just so that you didn't have to dive into the rules to know that what was going on was legal.)
November 16, 2019 1:15 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
Suchy: A correct answer to your question has been up for a while. I marked it as the "Accepted Answer" so that this thread can move out of the list of unanswered questions. Please remember to take care of this yourself in the future.
Gidgetimer says... Accepted answer #1
Please link all cards in your question using double brackets.
Terramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
If you don't have any basic lands in your library then you simply fail to find a land after the search and shuffle your library without putting any cards onto the battlefield. Because the contents of a library is hidden information there is no way to stop the ability from being activated. For the same reason you can decline to find a basic land even if you have one in the library. The same holds true for any search for specific characteristics you can "fail to find" even if there is something that matches the requirements in your deck. The only time that you have to find something is if you are simply searching for a "card" with no defining characteristic, because it is provable that you have cards in your library.
November 16, 2019 9:20 a.m.