Liliana Vess

Bande · Joined: 17 Nov 2006 Posts: 8

Opposing player has no cards in hand, you have a Liliana Vess Planeswalker in play. On your turn you target opponent trying to gain +1 loyalty counter to Liliana -- does that work because his having no cards does prevent Liliana from targetting him, or fail because the +1 is only added when he discards a card and since he cannot not, there is no +1?

lennin · Guest

yes u can make him discard a card if he doesnt have any

Lynolf · Joined: 25 Aug 2007 Posts: 241

To complete what lennin just said, the ability requires a "target player". It doesn't require a "target player with cards in hand". So it doesn't matter how many cards are in that player's hand.

Also you add 1 counter to activate the ability, not if the ability worked or not.

Acid_Christ · Joined: 28 Aug 2004 Posts: 470

At the pre-release I had Liliana out and activated her +1 when my opponent had no cards in hand. He complained saying I couldn't do that, so I called of the judge and he ruled in my favor. My opponent still didn't believe it.

Eldar · Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 346 Location: Rochester

Yes you can make them discard with an empty hand. It is the same principle I believe with nezumi shortfang if an opponent has no cards in hand you can activate his ability to flip him.

shabooty · Joined: 21 May 2005 Posts: 8

nope
short fang had to have the player discard to flip.
but the plains walker works

Hardtrack · Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 291

I'm sorry, where does Nezumi Shortfang say that your opponent has to actually discard a card?

You can target a player with an empty hand just fine. When the ability resolves, you ignore the 'discard a card' part, but that doesn't stop the 'Then if that player has no cards in hand, flip Nezumi Shortfang.' part from flipping it. All that cares about is that the hand is empty, not wether or not a card was discarded.

Gorbadoc · Joined: 29 Oct 2007 Posts: 56

Two nitpicky points:

"Ignore" only if you know it won't do anything. The discard still attempts to happen and is subject to replacement effects ("if you would discard a card...").

Graceful Antelope is a plainswalker. Liliana Vess is a Planeswalker.