Wars Toll, how does the all creatures attack part work?
Asked by CosmicFuzz 6 years ago
Everyone asks about the tapping all lands part of War's Toll but I have a question about all creatures must attack,.... When you declare an attack with one creature do all of your creatures immediately tap to attack or can you respond before and for instance tap a creature for an ability before this triggers. Just to be clear this after moving to the declare attackers phase and declaring an attack with a single creature.
Raging_Squiggle says... #2
From what I know about triggered ability and replacement effect wordings, to the best of my knowledge,
War's Toll
has two abilities: the top one is a triggered ability, the bottom one is a replacement effect.
The replacement effect applies to whenever an opponent declares one (or more) attacker(s). Instead of that opponent declaring just those creatures,
War's Toll
replaces the event with the opponent declaring all creatures that are able to attack.
Replacement effects do not use the stack, so if an opponent declares an attacker, they cannot respond to anything before being forced to declare everything else that is able.
March 19, 2019 11:30 p.m.
PlatinumOne says... #3
Raging_Squiggle: thanks for that. i knew there had to be some sort of classification for it, but somehow forgot about replacement effects.
March 20, 2019 1:59 a.m.
War's Toll 's second ability is not a replacement effect, though it looks similar to one as it starts with "If." It's a static ability that modifies the rules (a category many replacement effects also fall into). What it does is, when you declare an attack with a single creature and you have others that could attack, you check whether the attack is legal. War's Toll comes back and says, "No, not a legal attack as that other creature could attack," and you go back to choosing which which creatures attack so you can declare a legal attack. It's like if you tried to attack with just a Bonded Construct . Remember that all attackers are declared at the same time.
March 20, 2019 9:07 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #5
Neotrup has the most correct answer. It's not a replacement effect, it just changes the rules around what's considered a legal attack declaration.
March 21, 2019 1:57 p.m.
CosmicFuzz says... #6
Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply, it's how I thought it would work.
PlatinumOne says... #1
i'm pretty sure the second ability is not a "triggered" ability. triggered abilities start with "when", "whenever", or "at". so i think that ability doesn't use the stack, which would mean you can't respond to it. any tap abilities on creatures would have to be used before declaring attackers.
March 19, 2019 10:44 p.m.