Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Layers & Licids

Dominating Licid doesn't work

No big surprise, you may say - this kind of esoteric behaviour is basically par for the course for such an obtuse creature type. But really, think about that: you may read the card's oracle text and think you know what it does, but it doesn't actually work.

The reason why is sort of weird, but it boils down to this: the "you control enchanted creature" effect tries to take place before the "this is an enchantment" effect, and the rules say that "enchanted creature" on a card isn't an enchantment doesn't refer to anything. So it winds up being a creature enchantment that does... nothing. All the other licids work, since they provide abilities that are added after the type-changing effect of a licid. That said, everybody is going to play Dominating Licid with the intended effect anyway, whether they know this piece of minutiae or not, and let's be real - the rules manager doesn't feel like figuring out how to reword it since it would be clunky as hell.