Scenario: Albert activates a fetchland. While searching his library, he decides to cast a Panglacial Wurm that is in his library. As part of the ‘activating mana abilties’ portion of playing the spell, Albert activates and sacrifices a Chromatic Star. It later turns out that he does not in fact have enough mana to cast the spell, so we go to the Handling Illegal Actions part of the show.

Here's my (long-winded, sorry) question:

We know from 721.1 Handling Illegal Actions that one of the things that is done when undoing an illegal spell cast is giving players the option to reverse any legal mana abilities activated in the course of casting the spell. My understanding therefore is that you would un-sacrifice Chromatic Star and put it back on the battlefield, and the mana would leave your mana pool.

Now, if this were a Chromatic SPHERE, you could not actually undo that activation, since part of the resolution of the mana ability was drawing a card, which renders it immune to reversal (Same is true of Selvala for that reason)

“Players may not reverse actions that moved cards to a library, moved cards from a library to any zone other than the stack, caused a library to be shuffled, or caused cards from a library to be revealed.”

But Chromatic Star has only a regular mana ability, and then a second ability that triggers when Star hits the graveyard, but is waiting to go onto the stack until we're no longer in the middle of resolving the fetchland activation.

Where I run into confusion is this line from the Handling Illegal Actions section:

“No abilities trigger and no effects apply as a result of an undone action.”

This is ambiguous to me. I take it to mean that the -act of undoing actions- cannot cause abilities to trigger or effects to apply. I take THAT to mean that if you tapped a Creature for mana that had Inspired, when you undid tapping it, that act of untapping it does not trigger Inspired.

What I don't take it to mean is “When we undo an action we'll also go back and untrigger any abilities that triggered along the way” though there is a read of it that suggests it means that. I have trouble accepting it to mean -both- cases though which is the cause of my confusion.

So at its root the question is: When we reverse the activated mana ability of Chromatic Star, is there actually a rule that confirms that you -also- will un-trigger the triggered ability of Chromatic Star that has already triggered and is waiting to go on the stack?

In general, discussions of illegal action handling turn into somebody saying “You reverse the game” like you're hitting rewind on a remote control and everything spins back, but that is clearly not how it works, since we're actually undoing specific actions, giving people choices about whether to undo them or not, and leaving certain actions un-undone, and I can't really see an explicit statement in the CR that says Albert wouldn't still get to draw his card even with the Chromatic Star back on the battlefield.

Thanks in advance.

Edited Daniel Ruffolo (Jan. 21, 2019 02:38:57 PM)

Originally posted by Daniel Ruffolo:

if you tapped a Creature for mana that had Inspired, when you undid tapping it, that act of untapping it does not trigger Inspired.

Correct.

Originally posted by Daniel Ruffolo:

can't really see an explicit statement in the CR that says Albert wouldn't still get to draw his card even with the Chromatic Star back on the battlefield.

Well, we can't anticipate every dark corner that this amazing game allows us to wander into; if we tried, (a) we'd fail and (b) the documents would likely be several times longer than War & Peace (and just about as enjoyable).

However, if we undo an action that caused a trigger to fire, and that trigger didn't already resolve, then when we're done with all that rewinding, the trigger will no longer have fired.

We tend to think of triggers as happening when their event occurs, and in a way that's true - but they don't go on the stack until whatever effect we're currently resolving is completed. If we rewind the game to a point prior to when that trigger would have fired and then been put on the stack, it no longer fired, and it no longer goes on the stack.

Hopefully that makes sense. If you're waiting for the rules update that explicitly supports what I've said - well, don't hold your breath. :)

d:^D