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Preview season has arrived, and so with it a whole bunch of cool looking Eldrazi cards. Join James, Graham and Cam this week and they dive into Battle for Zendikar.

One (probably intentional) thing with Winnie the Eldrazi is that, instead of being countered, even-costed spells can't be cast, which means that even the 'on-cast' triggers don't go off.

The Martini wrote:One (probably intentional) thing with Winnie the Eldrazi is that, instead of being countered, even-costed spells can't be cast, which means that even the 'on-cast' triggers don't go off.

So that counts with even costed spells currenly on stack? Because I'd steal this for a Riku game breaker deck.

But I like the name Tango Lands (sorry, just fulfilling my obligation here)

Does Herald of Kozilek make Hangerback Walker an odd casting cost, thereby getting past Void Winnower?

Nope. The cost reduction happens after you check whether a spell that is put on the stack can be cast.
As per comprehensive rules you
1) put Hangarback walker on the stack (601.2a)
2) give a value for X (601.2b)
3) Because the CMC is even, the game returns to the state before 1) (601.2e, 601.2 and 717)

The cost reduction from the Herald would occur as 601.2f, so its effect applies too late to allow the Hangarback walker to be cast.

The duel land nickname will likely just settle based on what some popular Wikia page goes with.

In order to quash any doubts about zero being an even number, I present the following Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parity_of_zero

JBRedPhoenix wrote:So that counts with even costed spells currenly on stack? Because I'd steal this for a Riku game breaker deck.

No. Void Winnower stops them from being cast, but doesn't stop them from resolving. Typically, there's no difference, but it means that flashing him in has no effect on things already on the stack.

Dedwrekka wrote:Does Herald of Kozilek make Hangerback Walker an odd casting cost, thereby getting past Void Winnower?

Void Winnower doesn't care about what you actually pay to cast the spell, just what the cmc is. Helm of Awakening and Sphere of Resistance have no effect on what Void Winnower vetoes, Force of Will can still be cast even if you're using its alt-cost to cast it for zero, and Cobra Trap can't be cast, even for its trap cost.

BenMarc wrote:Void Winnower doesn't care about what you actually pay to cast the spell, just what the cmc is.

Yeah, if I am not mistaken it is correct that Hangarback Walker has an even cmc but not because it has two x's in its cost but because in order to calculate the cmc of a "x-spell" you take the value of x to be zero, therefor Hangarback Walker has a cmc of zero which is even.

Also regarding Void Winnowers second ability; preventing even cmc creatures from blocking is very nice if your opponent has a ton of tokens to block with since their cmc will also be zero and therefor even...seems useful with all those scions running around !!

Dothar Vahlin wrote:Yeah, if I am not mistaken it is correct that Hangarback Walker has an even cmc but not because it has two x's in its cost but because in order to calculate the cmc of a "x-spell" you take the value of x to be zero, therefor Hangarback Walker has a cmc of zero which is even.

That is correct anywhere but on the stack. HBW has a CMC of 0 while in hand, it gets put on the stack and still has a CMC of 0. Then you pick a value for X and it gets a CMC of 2*X. At this point the legality of play is checked and Void Winnower makes it illegal. If there is no Void Winnower in play this check is passed and only then do cost reduction affects apply and they do not change the CMC, but you only have to pay 2*X-1.

susu.exp wrote:That is correct anywhere but on the stack. HBW has a CMC of 0 while in hand, it gets put on the stack and still has a CMC of 0. Then you pick a value for X and it gets a CMC of 2*X. At this point the legality of play is checked and Void Winnower makes it illegal. If there is no Void Winnower in play this check is passed and only then do cost reduction affects apply and they do not change the CMC, but you only have to pay 2*X-1.

Well I am not much of a rules guy, and that sounds just like the kind of shenanigans I wouldn't know about, so thanks for the explanation! But I just had to check the comp. rules on the "anywhere else" part (which confirmed it) because when I read your reply I thought of the following: if my opponent has a Void Winnower in play, I could still cast an Endless One for an odd value (since it's cmc would be odd on the stack) however I could not block with it because it's cmc will be zero in play.

Luckily that's a rare and mythic rare interaction but I think that if I were to explain that to a new player they would probably think I was full of it. Heck, I would have probably thought that, screamed "Judge!" and then marveled at the wonderful world of the magic rules in total disbelief if someone where to tell me that in a game. "So you're saying this thing is odd in one place and even in the other? If I think that's odd can I still block with it then? "

We could go with 'easy lands', because you know... they're as easy as one, two, three... <____<