Re-code Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast’s -1 Ability

[ManaDrainThis]

I’m sure everyone who has played Vintage Cube has messed up Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast’s -1 ability, and accidentally destroyed their own artifact, instead of the opponent’s as they intended.

The current design, while accurately reflecting the card’s oracle text, is very unintuitive for the user, because the text of the card states “you may sacrifice an artifact” first. And following that with the phrase “if you do,” strongly implies that the sacrifice takes place BEFORE the destroying target artifact/creature part.

But the card’s ruling states “you choose the target artifact or creature as you activate the ability.” Really, WOTC should errata the text of the card’s second ability so that it doesn’t imply that the sacrifice takes place first.

But in practice on mtgo, this confuses almost everyone the first couple times they activate that ability, and it’s very feel bad to destroy your own artifact while -1’ing this PW and attempting to hit the opponent’s board.

 

[Mikey]

it is a bit strange that grist's ability is worded such that it does function that way on MTGO. It'd be nice if daretti worked the same way, I agree
but they could also add a confirmation dialogue like for other sacrifice activations that notify you when you're targeting the thing you're sacrificing. That would be plenty, I think

 

[ManaDrainThis]

Exactly. Functionally, Grist’s -2 ability is the same as Daretti’s -1. But Grist was implemented in an intuitive way on MTGO, so people don’t mess it up. It would just be great if Daretti was also fixed, because Daretti is an awesome card!

 

[dasrac]

I’m sure everyone who has played Vintage Cube has messed up Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast’s -1 ability, and accidentally destroyed their own artifact, instead of the opponent’s as they intended.

The current design, while accurately reflecting the card’s oracle text, is very unintuitive for the user, because the text of the card states “you may sacrifice an artifact” first. And following that with the phrase “if you do,” strongly implies that the sacrifice takes place BEFORE the destroying target artifact/creature part.

But the card’s ruling states “you choose the target artifact or creature as you activate the ability.” Really, WOTC should errata the text of the card’s second ability so that it doesn’t imply that the sacrifice takes place first.

But in practice on mtgo, this confuses almost everyone the first couple times they activate that ability, and it’s very feel bad to destroy your own artifact while -1’ing this PW and attempting to hit the opponent’s board.

I have never had an issue with this.

 

[MTGO_TonyM]

This would require an Oracle update from Wizards before we could implement it, as Grist uses a reflexive trigger approach while Daretti does not.

 

[ManaDrainThis]

This would require an Oracle update from Wizards before we could implement it, as Grist uses a reflexive trigger approach while Daretti does not.

Thanks for responding! Hopefully Wizards decides to do so eventually.