Hello!

I know this has been done and re-done on reddit with Hakkon, but I wanted to look for clarification here.

I've reviewed the relevant rules, and am not sure if playing a land as a special action does or does not allow you to use Zoetic Cavern's Morph ability from the GY with a Crucible of Worlds (or Ramunap Excavator) in play.

The same could be asked of Zoetic Cavern and Courser of Kruphix. Can I play Zoetic Cavern from the top of my library as a morph? Does this situation differ in any way from the GY example above? I don't believe so.

Additionally, if you chose to play Zoetic Cavern as a morph from a zone that isn't your hand, I believe it does not count towards your 1 land per turn.

FWIW, you can play Zoetic Cavern as a morph in both situations on MTGO and they do not count towards your 1land per turn limit. I know many judges hate that saying but thought it was relevant to add here.

To see whether or not you're able to cast a morph card as a morph (and this applies to any morph card, not just Zoetic Cavern), first imagine if that card was already face-down–as a 2/2 with no name, color, creature types, etc.–in the zone it's already in. Would you be permitted to cast that card? If so, then you can put it onto the stack face-down and continue casting it as a morph. If not, then you can't. It's really that simple.

So no, Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator, and Courser of Kruphix do not allow you to cast Zoetic Cavern as a morph from your graveyard or library, because these cards only allow you to play lands, and the 2/2 morph creature is not a land.


Casting a morph creature doesn't count towards your one land per turn limit, because it's not playing a land–it doesn't matter what's on the front face of the card.

I was initially going to add a line to my ruling expanding a bit on the interaction as it pertains to other cards that do similar things as Crucible, Courser, and company, but ended up leaving it out for the sake of avoiding tangents. It's come to my attention that that particular digression might be useful for the sake of clarity, so I'll add it now.

As mentioned, Crucible of Worlds, Courser of Kruphix, and similar cards do not allow you to cast a face-down Zoetic Cavern from your graveyard or library, because the first step of figuring out whether or not you can cast a morph is figuring out if you would have permission to cast that card if it was already face-down.

For this same reason, Garruk's Horde, Karador, Ghost Chieftain, and similar cards will allow you to cast Zoetic Cavern and other noncreature morph cards face-down as morph creatures from your library or graveyard (as appropriate), because those cards' abilities mean you could cast the Cavern (et al) if it was a face-down 2/2 creature. So you can.