For Challenge # 078

Like Mugging, but using the non-canonical red bounce ability. It costs one more, but gives you more tempo advantage.

Hmm. I fear "If it survives" is really hard to write for damage. It's okay for kill spells or counters (Lapse of Certainty can change the destination for where the countered spell goes), but damage has to go via that pesky intervening step of state-based actions. So all sorts of things can happen in the meantime, such as the creature regenerating, the damage being removed by totem armour, or the creature being indestructible. The rules don't have a good way for a burn spell to hang a dangling clause on that can see what the end result of the damage is.

One of the closer approaches is to say "At end of turn, if that creature is on the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand." But that loses the whole "get a creature out of my way" that lets this feel red at all.

Hm, yes. What I really want to say is "Deal 2 damage to it. Check state-based effects. Return it to its owner's hand." Since any regeneration etc has to be set up in advance. And you shouldn't be able to respond to the trigger. So I think it's unambiguous, but I don't know if there's a good way of saying that in the rules.

I was thinking of Mugging, where the problem doesn't happen because "it can't block" just doesn't happen if it's already dead. But here, the "return to hand" would return it before it dies.

Oh, I guess it could just be "Deal 2 damage to target creature. You may return it to its owner's hand" and trust the player to do the sensible thing. But that loses some of the flavour and is also rather rules-fiddly.

Well, I figured out one way to do it. But my solution is far too difficult for the Magic players with less than two year's experience...

'~ deals two damage to target creature, then put a copy of a spell on the stack targeting that creature, which reads "Return target creature to its owner's hand."'

Just from reading the card, I can't tell whether the creature or Warning Shot goes back to its owner's hand. Terminology that almost does what you want (but is better in reminder text) would be lethal damage. "~ deals 2 damage to target creature. If that creature doesn't have lethal damage marked on it, return it to its owner's hand."

@jmg: Maybe "When the damage is dealt, if it survives,..."? Would that set up a triggered condition, having the same effect, but being less intrusive for people who don't want to think about it. Although it's still not quite the same, since you can respond to the trigger (eg. activating hexproof after the damage but before the bounce).

@dude Good point. I meant the creature, but if it's not obvious it should be reworded until it is.

I'm not sure about "dealt lethal damage". I considered it, and it's closer, but it's annoying that it (I think[1]) doesn't bounce regenerators. At least it would be fairly unambiguous.

[1] I think the exact wording for regeneration is something like "when the creature would be destroyed, instead...", so the sequence of events with that spell targeting a 1/1 which has had regeneration activated would be:

Deal 2 damage.
During the resolution of the same ability, check for lethal damage, so don't bounce.
Check state-based effects. The creature would be destroyed due to lethal damage, so instead is regenerated.

"When the damage is dealt, if..."

That is an interesting proposal, Jack. I couldn't think of a card that did that, so I did a Gatherer search of 'Instant and Sorceries, +when -cast' (since "when you cast" would be the most likely to appear. Evidently, I should have added -Recover as well.). That left me with 69 cards, but none of which approached messing with the timing of a creature being damage by establishing a 'when' trigger.

Still, it looks like a good workaround to me. It looks chunky. I get the impression that new players will like it less than "dealt lethal damage", while older players will like the trigger. Strange that.