This came up in a game of judge stack the other day (I'm slightly adjusting it so it fits normal magic rules. No communal graveyard, mainly).

Adam has a Morphling in his graveyard. He casts Animate Dead targeting the Morphling. In response to the ETB trigger of Animate Dead, Naomi casts Stifle. The stack resolves, so we have an animate dead enchanting Morphling per “enchant creature card in a graveyard.”
The question is, does the Morphling in the graveyard get -1/-0, making it a legal target for a subsequent swing of Alesha, Who Smiles at Death.
I'm inclined to say no, as Animate Dead says “enchanted creature” with no provisions for “creature card” but I'm not entirely certain.

Thanks,
Greg

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your question. No, the creature card in the graveyard will not get -1/-0. That's because Animate Dead says “Enchanted creature gets -1/-0”, and there's no enchanted creature in this case - there's a creature *card* in the graveyard, but that's not a creature (creatures only exist on the battlefield: on the stack, they're creature spells, and anywhere else, they're creature cards). The Dead will not give the enchanted creature card in the graveyard -1/-0, so the Morphling in the graveyard would not be a legal target for Alesha's trigger.

Nathan Long
Magic Rules NetRep