No window to response with an instant
Hello,
I encountered what I believe to be a bug involving the card Traveling Chocobo. In my match, my opponent cast Traveling Chocobo, and I intended to destroy it immediately after it entered the battlefield—before its ability could be used—by playing another Chocobo along with a land.
However, the game did not provide me with a priority window to act at that point. Instead, it skipped directly to the moment when my opponent was able to play a land to trigger the ability. At that stage, even if I destroyed the Traveling Chocobo, the effect had already been triggered, and it was too late to stop it.
This effectively makes it impossible to respond with any instant-speed removal unless you have a counterspell, which means that if you are not playing blue, you cannot prevent the ability from resolving. This feels extremely unfair and inconsistent with the expected rules interaction, where instant-speed removal should be allowed before such a trigger occurs.
Could you please review this interaction? I believe the game is incorrectly skipping a priority pass between the Traveling Chocobo entering the battlefield and its controller playing a land.
Thank you for your attention.
Xifis#70422
shared this idea
-
Rezzahan#77802
commented
"When a permanent enters the battlefield, players must receive priority in the normal order ..."
And they do. But it is the active player who gets priority after any object on the stack resolves. And if it is that player's main phase, and the stack is empty now, they fulfil the conditions to play a land, or cast a sorcery timing spell. Without the opponent getting a chance to do anything yet. The special action of playing a land doesn't use the stack but happens immediately, so after playing the land, the active player AGAIN gets priority, the nonactive player STILL not getting priority to do anything. The active player then can cast a sorcery timing spell. After they are finished with that and passed priority, THAT is the first time the nonactive player gets priority after the Travelling Chocobo entered the battlefield.
Arena handles this correctly. You, otoh, should read up on timing and priority.
-
Xifis#70422
commented
Expected behavior When a permanent enters the battlefield, players must receive priority in the normal order so the non-active player can respond with instants or activated abilities before any further actions (for example, playing a land) occur. Only after both players pass priority in succession should the game proceed.
Observed behavior in Arena After Traveling Chocobo entered the battlefield, the game immediately allowed my opponent to play a land / continue without first passing priority to me. This let the opponent trigger the Chocobo’s effect; by the time I was able to cast my instant to kill the creature, the effect had already been triggered and could not be prevented.
Impact This behavior removes valid instant-speed interaction (other than counters) and forces non-blue decks into a situation where they cannot stop the triggered effect even though this should be possible under normal MTG priority/stack rules.
Request Please investigate and fix the priority/response timing so that the non-active player is given the opportunity to respond with instants after a creature enters the battlefield and before the opponent can play a land or otherwise continue.