The new Card of the Month blog post on Solemnity was a fun read! But two points could use some clarification, if my rules reading is correct…

- It says that Vanishing isn't affected by Solemnity, but Vanishing is applying a replacement effect modifying how the permanent enters play, and Solemnity then says “that can't happen”; 614.12 then seems to tell us that we should ultimately be determining that the permanent will get zero time counters (and incidentally will remain in play indefinitely, since sacrificing a Vanishing permanent is a trigger on removing the last counter).

- Mycosynth Lattice's “everything is an artifact” is a continuous effect applied on Layer 4, while Planeswalkers initial loyalty counters are a replacement effect that applies as the permanent enters play; 614.12 again suggests that it won't see that it's going to be an artifact yet, so should receive starting loyalty, unless I've misread something. (The point about being unable to use +N loyalty abilities remains true, since the planeswalker is an artifact at that point.)

You are correct. Time counters can be put on many things in many different contexts, so they should not be generalized as “working” or “not working”. They will in fact be prevented from being put on a card with vanishing as it enters the battlefield.

You are also correct about Mycosynth Lattice and planeswalkers, though not for the right reason- the layers of continuous effects aren't relevant here, they apply at all times. The rule that matters for this situation is 614.16d.


One other error- Szadek, Lord of Secrets milling cards is not an effect- it's a turn-based action. Just because it replaced the normal result of the opponent losing life doesn't change that.

Thank you for the heads up, guys!

Originally posted by Isaac King:

You are correct. Time counters can be put on many things in many different contexts, so they should not be generalized as “working” or “not working”. They will in fact be prevented from being put on a card with vanishing as it enters the battlefield.

This is actually an oversight on my part when translating the article. I missed two new lines that were added after the article came back from reviewing in Spanish, and never noticed they were there. With the new two lines everything makes sense (and I've updated the current text because it had a blatant mistranslation that shouldn't been there).

Originally posted by Isaac King:

You are also correct about Mycosynth Lattice and planeswalkers, though not for the right reason- the layers of continuous effects aren't relevant here, they apply at all times. The rule that matters for this situation is 614.16d.

I've checked everything that there is to check (thanks to my great rules-guy Alfonso Chamorro from Spain) and the only logical conclussion is that you're right. I've updated the text to reflect this.

Originally posted by Isaac King:

One other error- Szadek, Lord of Secrets milling cards is not an effect- it's a turn-based action. Just because it replaced the normal result of the opponent losing life doesn't change that.

You see, this is an instance of using “effect” as the actual meaning of an “effect” as in “something that happens”, it was never my intention to say that the milling it's an “effect” in magic-ese. It has been fixed by… removing the word. That's it. It retains the meaning and avoids ambiguities. Thanks for that.

I've made the changes and submitted them to be updated ASAP on the blog.

Again, thank you very much, and sorry for the confusion. I guess I was… lost in translation :cool:

EDIT
The article has been updated with the corrections: https://blogs.magicjudges.org/playerexperience/2017/08/16/card-of-the-month-solemnity/

Thanks again!

Edited Miquel Àngel Moya (Aug. 17, 2017 04:20:27 PM)

I'm afraid you've replaced one error with another - if a Vanishing permanent enters play with zero time counters, you'll never have to sacrifice it. The sacrifice is a triggered ability when the last counter is removed.

Yup, I think you confused vanishing with fading. Fading makes you sacrifice it if you can't remove a counter. Vanishing was designed to be a more intuitive version of fading, it makes you sacrifice it when the last one is removed. If no counter was removed, it's never sacrificed.