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CardName: Shadow Slay Cost: 1B Type: Instant Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Spellmorph {1}{B}{B} (You may play this card facedown as a 2/2 colourless creature for {3}. Turn it faceup at any time that you could legally cast it by paying its Spellmorph cost, then cast the spell. This then goes to the graveyard.) Destroy target non-black creature. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Shadowsun Common |
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. Turn it faceup at any time that you could legally cast it by paying its Spellmorph cost, then cast the spell. This then goes to the graveyard.)
A spellmorph Doom Blade.
I don't think spellmorph can work: at some point you end up with an instant or sorcery on the battlefield, which leads to bad things according to Mark Rosewater's column And the Rest.
To paraphrase Mark Gotleib, former rules manager, "This effect tries to put an instant into play. The keyword says to put it in play "as a creature." The rules say that if an instant would come into play, instead it doesn't. What wins here? Either this is OK ([spellmorph] changes the card's type before the rule's prohibition kicks in), or it isn't (the rule's prohibition kicks in before [spellmorph]'s type-changing effect even gets a chance to work), but I have no idea which."
I think it's fine. The instant is never on the battlefield except as in the middle of the Special Action consisting of unmorphing-then-casting the card. On the stack it's a face-down 2/2 creature spell, like any other morph. The Special Action rules 115 might even not need adjusting; all you'd need to adjust would be the rules for Morph, specifically 702.35d, to say "If the object is an instant or sorcery, its controller casts it without paying its mana cost" (and a couple of minor adjustments saying "morph cost or spellmorph cost").
I took my time to carefully go through the rules regarding morph and spells on the battlefield. It stops being an instant the moment you pay its Spellmorph cost so there is no issue with it entering the battlefield as at that point it is a creature.
When you trigger the spellmorph it goes "oh bugger I'm not supposed to be on the battlefield" and toodles off to the graveyard via the stack (as it is considered to be being cast - and no longer on the battlefield) like a good little spell.
I think Alex's reply is right. I may send this as a question to the Magic guys via twitter to see what they think.
What happens if it turns up while another player has Iona for black then?
In that case it would 'fizzle' and go straight to the graveyard.
Yep, sounds right to me. Same as if it got turned up with Break Open when there were no legal targets. (Okay, it wouldn't "fizzle", it'd never get cast in the first place, then it'd go to the graveyard as an SBA.)
Yeah it wouldn't actually "fizzle" probably just think to itself: [popping up off the battlefield & scratching its head whilst munching on a carrot]
"I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque!"