How does Bone Miser work on an end step when discarding down to hand size?
Asked by Be_Jamin 5 months ago
Bone Miser is on the battlefield and my turn goes to the discard step where I have 8 cards in hand. I discard a noncreature nonland card which triggers Bone Miser's third ability causing me to draw another card. That then brings me to 8 cards in hand again. Does the discard step happen again since I have more than 7 cards in my hand or does it trigger the one time and the turn goes to the next player with my hand having 8 cards in it? If the discard step happens again can I repeatedly discard a noncreature nonland card triggering the third ability-drawing a card?
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #2
The game will start another cleanup step and you will have to discard again. This will keep going until the game doesn't need to start any additional cleanups.
If something happens during cleanup that causes abilities to trigger or state-based-actions to be checked, the game will go through the process of dealing with them and will start another cleanup after the current one is over.
514.3. Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception:
514.3a At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack (including those that trigger “at the beginning of the next cleanup step”). If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.
Decks built around The Gitrog Monster like to take advantage of this rules interaction. Bone Miser offers a similar opportunity.
November 12, 2023 11:18 p.m. Edited.
wallisface says... #3
Ahh yes Rhadamanthus is correct, and I'm wrong here. My sources for looking this up were completely off.
November 12, 2023 11:36 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
Be_Jamin: An answer to your question has been up for a while. Since there don't seem to be any more follow-ups or corrections that need to be made, I marked it as the "Accepted answer" so this topic can move out of the list of unanswered questions. In the future you can take care of this yourself using the "Mark as Answer" button on the response that you feel is the best answer to your question.
I try to avoid marking my own responses when I do this but in this case it was the only option.
wallisface says... #1
When you’re in the cleanup step you only discard down to 7 cards once. This will cause abilities to be put on the stack such as Bone Miser, which will resolve once you’ve finished discarding down to 7. There won’t be additional cleanups after this in the turn, so even though Bone Miser might draw you back up to 8-or-more cards when its ability resolves, you’ve already finished the forced-discard, and don’t do it again that turn.
November 12, 2023 8:31 p.m.