I know that this forum is only for rules problems that actually happen, but I swear, a less-simple version of this happened at commander night last week.

Andrew controls a Bear Cub, a Grey Ogre, and a Wild Defiance. Andrew casts Jump targeting Bear Cub. He then casts Wild Ricochet targeting Jump. Andrew chooses to change the target of Jump to Grey Ogre, then chooses to choose Bear Cub as a new target for the copy of Jump. How many times has Wild Defiance triggered this turn, and what is each creature's power and toughness?

Edited Darcy Alemany (Sept. 15, 2015 07:48:59 AM)

Rule 608.2c explains that when resolving spells and abilities, it's possible for later text to modify the meaning of earlier text, the classic example being something like “Destroy target creature. It can’t be regenerated”, where trying to apply each sentence one by one in order would result in weird, nonsensical outcomes. In these cases, you instead need to apply the rules of English to make sense of the text as a whole. Copying a spell (or ability) and choosing new targets for it is one of these cases. Choosing new targets for the copy is not a separate action performed after the copy has been created–instead, it's part of the process of putting the copy onto the stack, and the copy is created with those new target(s) already in place.

As such, Wild Defiance triggers a total of three times in this scenario: once for Bear Cub upon the initial casting of Jump, once for Gray Ogre upon changing the target of the original Jump, and once for Bear Cub again upon the creation of a copy that targets it.

Once everything on the stack has resolved, Bear Cub will be an 8/8 and Gray Ogre will be a 5/5.