Had this come up.

Controler Of Souls Response R Commit: After your opponet plays an Ability on a asset in thier staging area, cancel that ability

Seal R Destroy this Card: After and ability or action card is played, negate its effects.

Can Controler of Souls respond to Seal and cancel it? I have ruled no because the seal destroys itself as part of the cost of playing it, and Controler stops abilities on assets in staging areas. But I could see it ruler the other way depending on the timing.

Input from other scouts and rules mods would be apreciated.

Umigame

i see your point on the ruling, and iam enclined to agree with you on the technicallity, i hate it, because i feel that CoS should be able to negate the seal...

Seal's ability, whether it blows itself up or not is still an ability on an Asset, as such Controller of Souls can negate it.

ah but when controller ativates seal is no longer in the staging area, thus u cannot negate because of the wording

But on the other hand, they did "play an ability on an asset in their staging area." Because the SoC was in their staging area when they played it.

the ability on seal doesn't trigger till after its gone though right, cost is not an ability?? or am i wrong

You play an abillity. Your opponent has a SoC in their staging area. They choose to respond with it. They sack it as part of the cost.

You can react with Controller of Souls because the trigger of "your opponent playing an ability on an asset in their staging area" was triggered.

It should work, but could a mod please correct or stamp?

as a side, yay for anagrams... CoS vs SoC lol

"AFTER your opponent PLAYS an ability."

An ability is not played untill all costs are fully played. As part of the costs the seal is destroyed. Meaning the ability isnt PLAYED untill seal is no longer in the staging area. Controler of souls shouldnt be able to touch it.

Protoaddict said:

You cannot play an ability on a card unless that card is either an action, or it is in your staging area, or it is in your card pool and the card states that its ability may be played from the card pool, etc.

If you blow it up as part of the cost, the ability exists independant of its source. The ability is from a card in your staging area....that card may not be there anymore, but the source of that ability is a card in your staging area.

The trigger is looking for the asset after the ability is played. the card does not state an ability that was played from an asset in your staging area, its looking for one that way played from an asset that is in your staging area AFTER the ability is played, in which case SOC will not be thier. The ability does exist independently of the source, but SOC dosent care, it just looks for where the asset is AFTER the ability is played, not when it was played.

Protoaddict said:

If that's true then you cannot stop Lesser of Many Evils or End it All either, as both involve blowing themselves up asa cost.

Neither really apply to this situation because:

A) they arent assets

and

B) cards that are being used to stop them arent stopping them based on the critera that they came from the staging area.

I meant in regards to stuff such as Chester's Backing or Oral Dead.

I would assume that it is correct controller could not negate because seal is no longer in staging, chesters just says plays an ability on a foundation so I dunno what would happen here I don't play either card so it doesn't affect me too much but it would kind of be nice to know :-)

Bingo. Chesters only says after an ability is played from a foudnation, not from a foundation in the staging area. Same to oral dead. Even if those foundations were destroyed for cost, the effect still came from them. Since the effect does not care where they now are (it would say so if it did), they can cancel abilities.

As you can see controler very specifically limits what it can do. You can also derive the intent of the wording as if controler could cancel an ability played from an asset anywhere, that ability would still have to be comming from the staging area. This wording looks to be clearly deliberate.

Protoaddict said:

Until an arbitriter steps in im sticking with the ability was played from a foundation in the staging area.

You can't play abilities on foundations that are in your hand or the card pool.

I could see it going the othe way, but until a rules arbitriter says so i am going to stand by how i am interpreting it.

Someone has gotta be wrong, right? Im curious as well as if it does not stop seal it does also not stop reanimated on itself...

Can we get a ruling on this please?

B-Rad said:

No.

Not at this time.

I have how I *Want* to rule it. However Omar does not agree with me, and Tag is Awol.

Hata has asked us to hold off on bugging him about rules stuff until next week as he has a few deadlines to take care of.

My personal feelings are as follows:

They played an ability on an asset that was in their staging area.

While it isn't anymore, when it was played it was in the staging area. Therefore it meets the requirement of Controller of Souls.

That's my quick-off the cuff answer. Is it final? Not until we as a team have had a chance to speak about it, which won't be until next week.

So what do we do till then? I might be going to a regional this weekend and this is kind on important for my deck.

I think CoS can negate SoC.

Incidentally, the reverse holds true for sure.

JDub said:

If it's the Madison regional, Hata will be there.

Ask him.

If it's a different regional, contact the head judge to make a ruling. Abide by his ruling.

Is the same being ruled for things such as Oral Dead and Chester's Backing vs Lesser of Many Evils/End it All?

Errata Controller of Souls so it just says "on an asset" and get rid of the silly "in their staging area" line.

As intended, it's superfluous. When would someone be able to play an ability on an asset NOT in their staging area?

The answer is "Only when the asset destroys itself. On a technicality. Maybe. But that probably wasn't intended to count." (The other answer is, "On certain Legacy Cervantes assets, which function while in the momentum." But I don't think anyone would mind if those could be negated by Controller of Souls as well.)

Rip the line off the card, the card still works, it counters SoC (Bob knows we need more ways to counter SoC), and everyone's happy.

B-Rad said:

Oral Dead and Chesters just say "An ability on a foundation" they never reference "staging area" so its sort of a different case.

there is no confusion on chesters/oral dead.

That would maybe make some poeple think "well since the wording on CoS is different, there must be a reason" "therefore the asset must be in staging area at the time of the R:"

I agree with the first statement. The wording is different. There has got to be a reason. But i don't agree with the second. I think the reason is because a different person worked on the actual card text. CoS was developed with Hata, Oral/Chesters were before.

I personally agree with Anti's ruling. But if Tag/Omar/Hata come to a different ruling so be it. But either way it would be nice to have a concrete answer...

B-Rad said:

Absolutely. See Smazzy's detailed (and correct) response.