Carnage Tyrant Fight Spell vs Opponent's Ward {2} Creature
In the finals of a Regional Championship Qualifier (RCQ), Player A has Carnage Tyrant on the battlefield ("This spell can't be countered. Trample, hexproof"). Player B controls a creature with "Ward {2}". Player A casts Bushwhack targeting Carnage Tyrant and Player B's creature to fight. Player A is tapped out. Player B demands {2} mana, claiming that because Player A cannot pay, the fight spell is countered. Player A refuses, arguing that Carnage Tyrant says "This spell can't be countered", so the fight cannot be stopped by Ward.
“Player A argues: "Carnage Tyrant explicitly says 'This spell can't be countered'. The fight is conducted by Carnage Tyrant, so Ward's counter instruction fails under Golden Rule CR 101.2!"”
“Player B insists: "CR 604.3a & CR 702.21a: Carnage Tyrant's 'can't be countered' is a static ability that applies only while Carnage Tyrant is a spell on the stack! On the battlefield, Bushwhack is an independent spell. Because you can't pay {2}, Ward counters Bushwhack!"”
references($ruleId) • Transport: Streamable JSON-RPCUpheld for Player B
Player A Overruled · Game State Remediated
❌ Naive LLM Answer (Hallucinated): "Player A is correct because Carnage Tyrant has the text 'This spell can't be countered', which protects it from opponent counter abilities like Ward."
* Fails because keyword embeddings match “cannot be countered” without checking stack vs permanent zone boundaries (CR 604.3a).
CR 702.21a: Official WotC Oracle Update & CR 604.3a / CR 702.21a officially dereferenced. Correct ruling delivered with authoritative lineage.
Hash: sha256-mtg-cr604-3a-ward-cert