Pillar of Flame and Annihilating Fire are great for getting rid of creatures that you really don’t want to hit the graveyard, such as Gravecrawler or Geralf’s Messenger. When they would be put into a graveyard as part of being destroyed by lethal damage, the replacement effect kicks in and they get exiled instead. Anything that looks for a creature to “die” won’t trigger.

TL;DR: If you regenerate a creature, it won’t die and therefore won’t be exiled by Pillar of Flame or Annihilating Fire.

If that’s all you wanted to know, you can stop reading now, before I delve into mind-numbing detail about the intricacies of replacement effects. 🙂

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Still reading? Ok, take a deep breath!

Pillar of Flame has a replacement effect (indicated by the word “instead”). Regeneration is another kind of replacement effect. When a creature would be destroyed for any reason, instead it gets tapped, removed from combat, and has all damage marked on it removed. Destruction can happen from lethal damage or any effect that uses the word “destroy.”

Let’s say you cast Pillar of Flame on my Lotleth Troll, and I pay to regenerate it. Why can’t you just choose to apply Pillar’s effect first to exile the creature? Well for starters, when you have multiple replacement effects applying to a single event (in this case, the event is “destroy Lotleth Troll), the controller (or owner if there’s no controller) of the affected object gets to choose the order to apply them. After I choose which replacement effect to apply first, if any other replacement effects are still applicable, you must apply them as well. So technically, I can choose to apply Pillar’s replacement effect first, but the creature will still end up regenerating.

If I apply Pillar first, it wants to replace “is put into a graveyard as part of being destroyed” with “is exiled.” Since the creature still has to be destroyed by the lethal damage in order for that to happen, regeneration is still applicable, so it kicks in and replaces that destruction with “tap, remove from combat, remove all marked damage.” Regeneration wins, nothing is exiled.

If I just replace “destroy due to lethal damage” with “tap, remove from combat, remove all marked damage” in the first place, then the creature is no longer in a position where it would be put into a graveyard, and Pillar’s effect is no longer applicable. In this case, if my Troll would be put into a graveyard later this turn for any other reason, it will be exiled. That’s because Pillar’s effect was never applied this turn, and it will keep waiting around to apply once it has something to replace, or until the turn ends.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Josh Stansfield