{"id":5415,"date":"2015-08-24T09:49:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T16:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=5415"},"modified":"2015-08-24T09:49:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T16:49:32","slug":"you-should-kill-polukranos-before-it-becomes-monstrous-not-in-response-to-the-trigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2015\/08\/you-should-kill-polukranos-before-it-becomes-monstrous-not-in-response-to-the-trigger\/","title":{"rendered":"You should kill Polukranos before it becomes monstrous, not in response to the trigger."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p><img  style='float:left'  class='lems-mtg-cardimg' src='http:\/\/gatherer.wizards.com\/Handlers\/Image.ashx?size=small&type=card&name=Polukranos, World Eater'><\/p>Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Rules Tip Blog. Today, we&#8217;re going to talk about <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Polukranos%2C+World+Eater&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Polukranos, World Eater<\/a>. Specifically, when you want to kill Polukranos to prevent your creatures from being dealt damage.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of players seem to think that Polukranos has a single ability: pay XXG, add some counters to Polukranos, and deal some damage. But Polukranos actually has two abilities: one activated ability that makes Polukranos monstrous and adds X +1\/+1 counters on it, and a second triggered ability that triggers when Polukranos becomes monstrous. While most players will shortcut this process (&#8220;I&#8217;ll monstrous Polukranos with X=2, and kill your two 1\/1 tokens&#8221;), you can interrupt their shortcut.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re holding a <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>, and your opponent tries this, you can back them up to having the monstrosity activated ability on the stack. Then you cast Murder on Polukranos. Your Murder resolves first, and Polukranos is destroyed. Then the monstrosity ability resolves, but it doesn&#8217;t do anything since Polukranos is no longer on the battlefield. Since Polukranos did not become monstrous, Polukranos&#8217; second ability won&#8217;t trigger and your creatures won&#8217;t take any damage. Just be sure to communicate clearly with your opponent, to clarify that you want to respond with the activated ability on the stack, not the triggered ability.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all I have for today. I&#8217;ll see you tomorrow!<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polukranos has an activated ability that makes it monstrous, and a triggered ability that triggers when it becomes monstrous. Kill it before you get to the second part to avoid having it deal damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[108,29,8],"tags":[1259],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-5415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activatedabilities","category-casting-playing-a-spell-ability","category-triggeredabilities","tag-polukranos-world-eater","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5416,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions\/5416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=5415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}