So Warp World is a pretty unique card. It puts a bunch of stuff on the battlefield, but waits to put noncreature nonartifact enchantments onto the battlefield after everything else. This may seem weird, but it’s because an Aura entering the battlefield can’t attach to something that wasn’t already on the field before it entered, meaning if it tried to enter at the same time as everything else, it would just stay in the library (unless it has “enchant player”). So that’s why Warp World has two separate actions, in case you’re ever in a trivia contest!

The discrete actions involved in resolving Warp World and what make Humility interact in a pretty strange way with it. Luckily, this never really happens outside of casual Commander/EDH games, but it’s fun to know anyway!

So once you’ve counted all the permanents and shuffled the libraries, you reveal some cards and put a bunch of creatures on the battlefield along with some lands and maybe artifacts. Among those creatures are some that have triggered abilities (because really, what creatures in Commander/EDH don’t have ETB abilities??). For our example, let’s use Solemn Simulacrum and Murderous Redcap as our creatures. This game event is now complete (put the not-enchantments onto the battlefield — one verb is one event in MtG), even though Warp World hasn’t finished resolving. Since there was a game event, the game checks for triggers, and sees two. Triggers can’t go on the stack until a player would get priority, so they just wait around. (Where, you ask? That’s a great question. Nobody really knows. It’s not a zone. Just call it “Limbo” if you want.)

Next, we put the noncreature nonartifact enchantments onto the battlefield. For our example, let’s use Humility and Ironclaw Curse. We put the Curse on Redcap. There are no new triggers. Finally, Warp World goes to the graveyard.

Now, we have two creatures with no abilities (thanks to Humility), but two abilities triggered a little while ago, back when they existed. Those triggers will go on the stack, but only after state-based actions are checked. Redcap is a 1/0 creature at this point, so it dies. The game checks for triggers when that happens, but since Redcap was under Humility’s influence when it died, it didn’t have persist and won’t be coming back. Ironclaw Curse also goes to the grave.

Ok, NOW we can put triggers on the stack! Solemn’s “find a land” trigger and Redcap’s “deal damage equal to its power” trigger go on. Let’s target Solemn with Redcap’s ability, for value. So Solemn’s controller searches for a land, and the dead Redcap checks last known information to know how much damage to deal. One damage is dealt to Sad Robot, and it dies without triggering (Humility is still around to remove that “draw a card” ability).

So there you have it! Easy, right? … Right?

Today’s Rules Tip written by Josh Stansfield