{"id":3754,"date":"2013-09-25T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=3754"},"modified":"2015-02-05T15:52:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T23:52:30","slug":"heroic-triggers-resolve-before-the-spell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2013\/09\/heroic-triggers-resolve-before-the-spell\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroic Triggers Resolve Before the Spell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/gatherer.wizards.com\/Handlers\/Image.ashx?multiverseid=373530&amp;type=card\" width=\"223\" height=\"310\" \/>We&#8217;re continuing with the Theros mechanic theme this week, and today we&#8217;re covering Heroic (or at least one aspect of it!). The Heroic mechanic is a lot like Batallion, Landfall, Threshold, Morbid, etc. All of these things aren&#8217;t actually keywords like Flying and Trample; they have no actual inherent rules meaning. In fact, if you look at the cards, you&#8217;ll see <em>Heroic-<\/em> It&#8217;s in italics, just like reminder text and flavor text. Those of you who have some rules-knowledge already may know what that means: &#8216;this has no rules meaning&#8217;! These are what we call &#8220;ability words&#8221;. They exist to thematically link similar abilities. For example, Morbid worked differently on different cards; some had abilities that couldn&#8217;t be activated at all until you had Morbid going (like <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Skirsdag+High+Priest&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Skirsdag High Priest<\/a>). Some simply did additional or better things if you had Morbid (like B<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=rimstone+Volley&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">rimstone Volley<\/a>). With Metalcraft, we even had a spell that cost less if you had 3 artifacts out. The only thing linking all the Morbid abilities is that they care whether or not a creature died, somehow. The only thing linking all the Metalcraft abilities is that they care whether or not you have 3 artifacts, somehow. The only thing linking the Heroic abilities is that they care whether or not you&#8217;ve cast a spell targeting your creature with Heroic, etc.<\/p>\n<p>So, onto the actual mechanic itself. As I said, the one common link between all the Heroic cards is that all of them trigger when you cast a spell that targets them. It doesn&#8217;t have to be a beneficial spell (but it MUST be a spell! Abilities won&#8217;t trigger Heroic), either; you could use <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Murder&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Murder<\/a> on your own <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Agent+of+the+Fates&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Agent of the Fates<\/a> to make your opponent sacrifice their indestructible creature, for example. Or you could use <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Spark+Jolt&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Spark Jolt<\/a> on your <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Anax+and+Cymede&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Anax and Cymede<\/a> to trigger their Heroic ability to boost your team and give them trample. But a question I heard a lot of: &#8220;What resolves first? The spell, or Heroic?&#8221;. The answer is fairly simple: Heroic! It&#8217;s a trigger that doesn&#8217;t try to go onto the stack until the spell that targeted your creature has been fully cast and is on the stack. What that means is when you put your <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Anax+and+Cymede&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Anax and Cymede<\/a> or your <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Agent+of+the+Fates&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Agent of the Fates<\/a> or your whatever-hero-in-question trigger onto the stack, it&#8217;ll go onto the stack ABOVE the spell that triggered it. It&#8217;ll resolve first, and then the spell resolves. If you&#8217;ve used a spell to target multiple heroes at once (for example, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Coordinated+Assault&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Coordinated Assault<\/a>), you&#8217;ll put those multiple Heroic triggers onto the stack in whatever order you like, but they&#8217;ll all resolve before the spell that triggered them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re continuing with the Theros mechanic theme this week, and today we&#8217;re covering Heroic (or at least one aspect of it!). The Heroic mechanic is a lot like Batallion, Landfall, Threshold, Morbid, etc. All of these things aren&#8217;t actually keywords like Flying and Trample; they have no actual inherent rules meaning. In fact, if you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[148,29,15,8],"tags":[1018,1017],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-3754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abilities","category-casting-playing-a-spell-ability","category-resolving-spells-and-abilities","category-triggeredabilities","tag-agent-of-the-fates","tag-anax-and-cymede","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3755,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754\/revisions\/3755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3754"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=3754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}