#kalitas

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[ares-zine]

The wonderful LongJenSilver, or @ruinthief, is one of our writers. We're so excited to present their work to you, my kin, and you can find more of it here on their Ao3!

[magicjudge]

If I control both Patron of the Vein and Kalitas, Traitorof Ghet & a creature an opponent controls dies, are there rules for determining which effect happens, or can I choose?

Kalitas wins here. His ability is a replacement effect whereas Patron of the Vein's third ability is a triggered ability. 

When a creature an opponent controls would die, Kalitas's ability replaces that creature dying with it being exiled and creating a zombie token instead. The creature doesn't actually die, so Patron of the Vein doesn't trigger here.

Shame on you, Kalitas. Hoarding all that blood for yourself while all the other vampires go hungry? Rude.

Also, note that Kalitas’s replacement effect only applies to nontoken creatures, so when an opponent’s token dies, Patron of the Vein will be able to exile it since Kalitas doesn’t care about it.

[mtgaltered]

Finally got my hands on kalitas! I think he turned out well. If you would like me to put him up on eBay let me know. Lord of strife alters

[magicjudge]

Weird Card Interaction Alert: Kalitas & Anointed Procession

I’m sure you’re all looking at the title of this post with confusion. “What do you mean it’s a weird interaction? I just get two zombies from Kalitas instead of one now, right?” Well... sometimes you do. And sometimes you don’t. It’s complicated...

The complication here comes from the wording of Anointed Procession, specifically the fact that it’s watching for an effect to create tokens. When a card like Anointed Procession refers to an effect, it means something that happens as the result of a spell or ability resolving.

“But isn’t Kalitas’s second ability an effect? It’s a replacement effect, right?” Yes, it’s a replacement effect, but a replacement effect isn’t the kind of effect that Anointed Procession means. Replacement effects modify things that happen in the game, so sometimes the thing that’s modified is an effect and sometimes it’s not. (In this way, the name “replacement effect” is definitely misleading.)

Enough beating around the bush, let’s get to the point.

When will Kalitas + Anointed Procession give me two tokens? You’ll get two tokens when your opponent’s nontoken creature would die as a result of a spell or ability resolving. This includes normal destroy effects like Fatal Push as well as effects that make your opponent sacrifice the creature, like on Trial of Ambition.

When will Kalitas + Anointed Procession give me only one token? You’ll get only one token when your opponent’s nontoken creature would die as a result of anything that’s not the result of a spell or ability resolving. The most common example of this is dying from lethal damage, be it combat damage or damage from a spell or ability or from a fight. In all of these cases, it’s the game rules that are causing the creature to die, and the game rules aren’t an effect. The other main case that’s not an effect is when the creature is sacrificed as a cost to cast a spell or activate an ability.

So yeah, it’s a bit weird and convoluted, but that’s what you get from weird templating on two cards clashing. Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed that Anointed Procession uses the “effect” wording, since the last new card of this type (Primal Vigor) uses the “if you would create” wording instead, which works a lot more cleanly and avoids all of these wrinkles.

Follow-up: Read more about how Replacement Effects work here: http://magicjudge.tumblr.com/post/160504484909/how-do-replacement-effects-even-work

[magicjudge]

How do Replacement Effects even work?

So there seems to be a lot of confusion in the comments on the whole Kalitas/Anointed Procession post because it can be hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that Kalitas isn’t what’s actually creating the zombies. I’m going to try to explain how this is.

Replacement effects modify other actions and events in the game. They look for something specific to try to happen and then they cause a modified event to happen instead. The modified event can include the orginal event still or it can be something totally different. For example, Words of Worship and Thought Reflection can replace a card being drawn. Words of Worship replaces the draw with gaining life instead. Thought Reflection replaces the draw with two draws instead.

What’s important to grasp here is that it’s not Words of Worship or Thought Reflection that’s actually causing those modified events to occur, rather they’re caused by the original (now modified) event. 

If one of these effects applied to the card I would draw from cycling a card, then it’s the cycling ability causing me to gain life or the cycling ability causing me to draw two cards.

But let’s get back to Kalitas. Kalitas’s replacement effect is especially weird because part of the modification it makes is creating a token at the same time as it’s changing where the dying creature goes, but that’s all part of the replacement effect.

Let’s think of it in terms of a trolley problem, since they’ve been all the rage lately... If the trolley is whatever is causing the creature to die, be it a Doom Blade or state-based actions, then Kalitas is the person who flips the switch and makes the trolley go onto track B instead of onto track A.

Kalitas isn’t the one driving the trolley, that’s still whatever effect was causing the creature to die. Kalitas is just changing which track that trolley ends up going down. Kalitas can stand around flipping switches all day, but the guy on the “go to exile and create a zombie” track isn’t going to come to any harm until a trolley actually comes along and actually carries out the modified event.

TL;DR: In Magic, it doesn’t matter what’s flipping the switches, what matters is what’s driving the trolley.

Analogy isn’t my strong suit, but I hope that this post clears up some of the confusion. As always, feel free to send me any follow up questions you might have.

[magicjudge]

if i have kalitas traitor of ghet in play and i resolve a living end, do all of my opponents creatures get exiled and i get 2/2 zombies? Are the zombies sacrificed?

Yes, the creatures your opponents sacrifice to Living End will end up exiled and you’ll get that many zombies. Since you’ve already sacrificed your own creatures by then, you’ll get to keep your zombie tokens in addition to the creatures returned to the battlefield by Living End.