Archmage Ascension & Laboratory Maniac
Asked by Vaxel 9 years ago
Hi,
I was wondering, if you have Laboratory Maniac and Archmage Ascension on the battlefield with 6 counters, no cards in your library, and you use some form of card draw... Do you win?
Reason for asking is, I've seen a post here:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-questions/does-archmage-ascension-prevent-death-by-mill/
Which talks about preventing death by mill, but does that apply to the win with laboratory maniac?
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #2
If your library is currently empty then you can win with Laboratory Maniac .
Because both of the replacement effects could be applied to a "draw a card" event in this situation and you're the affected player, you get to decide which one gets applied first. If you apply Archmage Ascension first then nothing really happens, and Laboratory Maniac can't be applied anymore (because there's no draw). If you apply Laboratory Maniac first then you win, and the game ends.
July 15, 2014 9:40 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #3
I stand corrected. It somehow completely slipped my mind that Laboratory Maniac 's ability is a replacement effect.
July 15, 2014 9:44 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
So that Vaxel knows: you can tell a replacement effect by the way the ability is written. A replacement effect will always have some combination of "as", "with", "instead", or "prevent" in the rules text.
If more than one replacement effect could be modify how an event affects a player or object, then the affected player or controller of the affected object chooses which one to apply. It's possible that the modified event can then be affected by other replacement effects, maybe even one of the effects not chosen earlier. A replacement effect can only be applied to an event (or its modified versions) one time.
July 15, 2014 9:49 a.m.
I would also like to point out that Archmage Ascension has an optional replacement effect, not a mandatory one. You can just choose to ignore it, draw from the empty library and win.
Epochalyptik says... #1
No. You only lose (or win, in this situation) the game for drawing a card from an empty library. Drawing is a specific game action that involves the use of the word "draw." Archmage Ascension replaces draws with searches, which are not the same thing. Searching an empty library does not cause a game loss or win.
Archmage Ascension effectively shuts down all effects that would trigger as a result of drawing cards because you never draw those cards. In this case, it also changes the result of a state-based action.
July 15, 2014 8:18 a.m.