Hi,

Let's say I control a Mettallic Mimic & an Arcane Adaptation and I named Merfolk for both. I play a non-Merfolk creature. What happens ?

Now, I know this creature will enter into the battlefield as a Merfolk and get an extra +1/+1 counter from the Mimic, due to recent change with Ixalan's release.

My question is probably weird but I would like to know if before this change, this creature would have also entered the battlefield with this counter ?

In this old article, we can read we had to ignore continous effect which didn't change the creature spell itself on the stack. But If I am not wrong Arcane Adaptation change the spell itself too. I know this change was made to apply also to continous effect which don't have an effect on the stack.

Sorry if my question is complex but I if you have clarification about it, it would be really appreciated. I would like to use this example to explain the philosophy beside this recent update.

Thanks a lot !

Jean-François

Edited Jean-François DURMONT (Oct. 12, 2017 11:29:52 AM)

Hi,

Thanks for your question. It used to be that when we looked ahead to how it would look on the battlefield,we ignored effects that already existed and would apply to the object on the battlefield; now we consider those effects. Before the rules change, that means we wouldn't take into account the effect of the Adaptation when looking ahead to see what it would look like on the battlefield, even though it's affecting the creature on the stack (hence why things were weird with interactions like Conspiracy and Bramblewood Paragon: it was a Warrior on the stack, and it's a Warrior on the battlefield, but due to the way the rules worked before, when looking ahead, we wouldn't take the effect of Conspiracy into account, and the creature wouldn't enter with a +1/+1 counter).

But, as a reminder: this is not how the rules work now. Now, it will enter with the counter, since we take into account the effect of the Adaptation when looking ahead.

Nathan Long
Magic Rules NetRep