Summary of Special Actions

 

This week’s topic of special actions started off with us asking what exactly were all the special actions? Most players know about land drops, but there are 7 total; they are:

• Unmorphing (or manifest/megamorph)
• Playing Lands
• Rolling the Planar Die
• Ignoring an ability by paying a cost, ala Leonin Arbiter
• Suspending a card
• Ending a continuous effect or stopping a trigger by paying a cost, ala Quenchable Fire or Dominating Licid and ilk
• Revealing a Conspiracy with Hidden Agenda

You can use the handy acronym UPRISER to remember all of the things that count as special actions!

Now we know which actions are special, we need to know what makes them so special in the first place. Special actions are unique because they do not use the stack, and can not be responded to. They can still only be taken when a player has priority, but, with a few exceptions, are immune from any restrictions on using or activating abilities.

Once we established what special actions were, it was onto the questions to help illustrate how special actions work. First up, can you use a Willbender to redirect a Sudden Death targeting it?

• Mark Mason has our answer here, the short version of which is yes, that is legal. The long version is that, as a special action, Morph is immune to the Split Second timing restriction for activating abilities. And once the Willbender is face up, its ability triggers and, again, Split Second doesn’t stop triggered abilities so that is fine as well.

Question 2 dipped slightly into the IPG and MTR. We asked if Amy cracks a fetchland and then remembers her opponent’s Leonin Arbiter, can she still pay?

• This question was left a bit ambiguous because the investigation and actual wording of the players is important to how its handled.
• By common shortcut, players are assumed to be passing priority after adding to the stack unless they otherwise say so. So if Amy forgets long enough for her opponent to pass priority back, then the resolution happens and, despite being a special ability, Amy can not use Leonin Arbiter because to use a special action you still need priority.
• However, if Amy is quick about remembering before enough time passed that she is clearly passing priority to the opponent then we can safely give her the ability to pay.
• Keep in mind that this is all at Comp REL or above. At Regular you would basically never deny the ability. Props to Josh Olendorf and Mark Mason for answering with both sides of this one.

Question 3 involved every judge’s favorite card, Humility! We asked a simple question, can you morph up a face down card with a Humility in play?

• As it turns out this question isn’t so simple. Again, morph as a special action ignores normal restrictions, but in this case morph specifically checks if the card would have a morph cost if it were face up. So for creatures, they would not have a morph cost if face up and so can not be turned up.
• However, and shoutouts to Mark Mason again for this one, for cards like Zoetic Cavern and Whetstone, you can still morph them up under Humility because they aren’t creatures face up.

Question 4 is a scenario that has surely come up multiple times in the Modern format. We asked, can Adam cast a Lava Spike and then suspend a Rift Bolt while his opponent controls an Eidolon of Rhetoric?

• The answer turns out to be maybe! Suspend is a special action so it’s immune from restrictions on using abilities (as we have said numerous times). However, Suspend turns out to be a special case where in order to Suspend a card you must be normally able to cast it, even though it doesn’t count as casting the spell (Thanks, Phil Konkle for contributing this answer). So if Adam casts Lava Spike then Eidolon would stop him from suspending. However if he suspends first, he’s then free and clear to Spike away at his opponent.

Our final question was one of timing. We asked, if Anthony resolves Jace, the Mind Sculptor, then plays a Plains and taps it for mana to use Chromatic Sphere, then uses the +2 ability of Jace, is there any window where the opponent can use a Lightning Bolt to kill the Jace?

• Unfortunately for our red mage, Mark and Phil both told us that there is no such window. After Jace resolves, Anthony has priority again since it was his turn. Then because a land play is a special action it doesn’t use the stack and as such there is still no priority pass. Next we have the Sphere, which may look like it could be responded to, but is in fact a mana ability, which ALSO doesn’t use the stack. Finally, the +2 on Jace is a cost, which means the 2 loyalty counters are put on before the opponent can respond. So while at this point the opponent can finally Bolt, the Jace now has 5 loyalty and is safe.

That’s all we had for this week, thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion. For further reading see CR 115 which covers Special Actions in its entirety.

Further reading: CR 115 Special Actions
Related article: UPRISER-Special Actions