Hello friends,

So, I was watching a Jim Davis stream where he was playing a Construct deck which has Winding Constrictor and Metallic Mimic. In one game, he played his Metallic Mimic naming Snake, and later on he played Winding Constrictor. MTGO gave his Winding Constrictor 2 counters, and the crowd goes wild on chat, once and a while mentioning that the Gatherer says (and it's true) Winding Constrictor effect doesn't affect itself upon entering the battlefield. I felt curious and gone to check again for the CR 614.12, recently changed on Ixalan release (I often call that the “Blood Moon replacement effect change” for obvious reasons). And then I noticed that (full CR below):

614.12. Some replacement effects modify how a permanent enters the battlefield. (See rules 614.1c–d.) Such effects may come from the permanent itself if they affect only that permanent (as opposed to a general subset of permanents that includes it). They may also come from other sources. To determine which replacement effects apply and how they apply, check the characteristics of the permanent as it would exist on the battlefield, taking into account replacement effects that have already modified how it enters the battlefield (see rule 616.1), continuous effects from the permanent’s own static abilities that would apply to it once it’s on the battlefield, and continuous effects that already exist and would apply to the permanent.

The two sentences I bolded above felt contradicting (or maybe I'm failing to interpret that correctly). That's the main reason I'm here to check: is the Gatherer right? Will the Winding Constrictor enter with one or two counters on it? Before the “Blood Moon Change”, I would say 1, but after, I could guess that's 2 counters. Can I get an ? :B

Cheers,
Leonardo da Luz

Gatherer is correct; the ability of a Winding Constrictor entering the battlefield in this situation will not apply to the Constrictor itself, and therefore Winding Constrictor should only receive one counter.

To see why, let's dive into 614.12 a bit; I've bolded and colored the important bits:

614.12. Some replacement effects modify how a permanent enters the battlefield. (See rules 614.1c–d.) Such effects may come from the permanent itself if they affect only that permanent (as opposed to a general subset of permanents that includes it). They may also come from other sources. To determine which replacement effects apply and how they apply, check the characteristics of the permanent as it would exist on the battlefield, taking into account replacement effects that have already modified how it enters the battlefield (see rule 616.1), continuous effects from the permanent’s own static abilities that would apply to it once it’s on the battlefield, and continuous effects that already exist and would apply to the permanent.

So in this bolded section, 614.12 is explicitly defining the set of replacement effects that modify how a permanent enters the battlefield, and it does so by listing two basic classes of such replacements: Replacements from that permanent that affect only that permanent (Colored red), and replacements from sources other than that permanent. (Colored blue).

The rest of 614.12 is then a bunch of further detail about how to determine which replacements from within these basic classes should be applied, but none of that detail matters here, because we already know enough to know that Winding Constrictor's ability should not be applied, because it does not fall into either of these basic classes. It doesn't fall into the red class, because it affects a general subset of permanents, and it cannot fall into the blue class, because its source is the Constrictor itself. Therefore, it does not apply.