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Describe the Bug:

Abzan Ascendancy's ETB effect of giving +1/+1 counters to your critters can be thwarted by the opponent responding to AA's activation with an instant. In which case the counters do not happen.

This bug reminds me of a Hornet Queen ETB issue I reported:

viewtopic.php?f=86&t=30015&p=245523#p245523

In the savegame I attached you have Abzan Ascendancy in hand and the AI has a Siren's Call it will usually insert into your effect chain.

Which card behaved improperly?

Abzan Ascendancy

Which update are you using? (date, name)Which type? (duel, gauntlet, sealed deck)
version 10-2020 1.1 ee04575f - gauntlet


What exactly should be the correct behavior/interaction?

+1/+1 counter on each creature you control

Are any other cards possibly affected by this bug?

No

The issue is different in this case. AI in your savegame or any player can cast a destruction spell like Sundering Growth in response to Abzan Ascendancy ETB trigger and destroy Abzan Ascendancy. The destruction takes place before the trigger resolves so no counter to your creatures.

Possibly the work to counter trigger abilities or the work on redirection effects or both are responsible for this. I hope this can be fixed in functions level as otherwise thousands of ETB cards have to be recoded to use a different legacy for the trigger.

Oh I see why this happens. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop on Stifling and it seems that this is it. Good news is it is easy to reverse the system I've put in place. Very carefully going through put_card_or_activation_onto_stack() et al. to see if this can be resolved there. I think what it will take is making triggered abilities act more like activated abilities. We'll see.

[EDIT] *If* the entire activation_card system is handled outside of exe, I think I can probably shoehorn triggered abilities into it. I figure it would take me about a week to get everything right, including the functions & cards that interact with them.

Thanks, guys. I'm confused by our different experience on this one.

In the game where I noticed the bug, the AI opponent responded to my Abzan Ascendancy with Siren's Call, fizzling the effect. I mentioned so in my bug report. The enchantment, Abzan Ascendancy, was not destroyed and remained in play throughout the turn. The instant that the AI cast in response to the activation of Abzan Ascendancy was Siren's Call - for sure.

After reading your responses I did reload the game and I indeed see what you saw; the AI opponent casts Sundering Growth, destroying Abzan Ascendancy, and in fact has no Siren's Call in hand! Sheesh.

Can the loaded result of a savegame change across versions? With drool66's Halloween release and then the bugfix release to same, I did update versions a couple of times this weekend.

I'm attaching another savegame to this post. I think this save demonstrates the original report. The AI has no Sundering Growth or enchantment destruction in hand.

Sorry for the mess and thank you for all your work!

I confirm this bug (original one),too with Siren's Call I tried with couple other instants and no bug happened. Your savegame mess gave us one more bug which seems to be more serious than your original, so it is one of those rare cases where a messed situation can be good.

Yes, as Aswan jaguar said - as reported, like you said it's the same as the Hornet Queen bug, which I just fixed. The bigger problem is triggering cards put themselves on the stack instead of an effect card like activated abilities do, so destroying triggering cards kills the trigger as well. This is fine as long as you don't allow any response to triggered abilities, but I've opened that up and this is a huge complication. I'm working on it, but phew...

Hardest bug I've ever squashed.
Fixed, uncommitted