Boon Satyr

Boon Satyr, much like Thassa, God of the Sea, has two card types — Creature and Enchantment. This means that such card has the properties of both types. Pretty much like a candidate for the “driver chef” position is supposed to have knowledge and skills in two professional fields.

It’s nothing unusual. Let us remember cards that exist from the very first release of Magic cards — Artifact Creature. Artifact and Creature are two entirely independent card types, just as Enchantment Creature which we encounter a lot in Theros block. You don’t experience cognitive dissonance when you see Bronze Sable being destroyed with either Naturalize or Hero’s Downfall, do you?

Thus, a card with Bestow is both an Enchantment and a Creature in any zone except the stack and the battlefield. This means that:

It’s different on the stack and on the battlefield. A card with Bestow can change its type and subtype. But before we set to analyze Bestow as such, Capt’n Obvious sends word here:

From: Your Cap

Subject: Dear friend, NOT EACH ENCHANTMENT IS AN AURA

Message: There are just Enchantments (a card type), like, for example, Leylines of all sorts. There are Enchantment — Auras such as Rancor. Aura is a subtype of Enchantment. Enchantments that have such a subtype feature notorious behavior. If you happen to not know what it is notorious for, or you have forgotten some details, I recommend switching to the article on auras immediately and reading it carefully. When you get back, we will continue with Bestow.

Bestow

What does all that mean?

One of Bestow’s abilities allows paying an alternative cost. We announce our wish to pay the alternative cost of a spell right after placing it on the stack. This unavoidably means that:

• If there are effects that currently influence playing cards with Creture or Enchantment types, they will affect this spell. Usually they are permitting or forbidding effects.

• It doesn’t matter from which zone you are casting a card with Bestow:

Boon Satyr has the Flash static ability which allows casting it any time you have priority.

After you place the card on the stack, you have the opportunity to announce your wish to pay an alternative cost. The moment you do that, fun things happen: the spell turns into Enchantment — Aura, it forgets about having been a creature. This is a type- and subtype-changing effect, and the most important thing to remember here is that such effects override all existing types:

As soon as your enchantment spell gains the Aura subtype, it becomes targeted. It requires you to choose a legal target.

What an aura can enchant is defined by its Enchant static ability, as you already know. Our newly-fledged aura gains “Enchant creature”. Thus, a creature (one that can be targeted by your spell) must be chosen as a target. In this case it is irrelevant who controls that creature.

Now we need to define the total cost of the spell. For this purpose we take the Bestow cost (in case of Boon Satyr, it is {3GG}), then apply all effects increasing the cost, then those decreasing it, and finally, the effect of Trinisphere, should it be present.

Finally, when the total cost is paid, the spell is considered cast.

After the spell has been cast, the cunning opponent may attempt to counter it. A countered spell goes to its owner’s graveyard.

If the cunning opponent manages to make the target of your Bestow spell illegal, or to remove it completely, the spell will not fizzle on resolution, because there is a special rule for this case:

The type- and subtype-changing effect ends. The spell goes back to its original state, an Enchantment Creature (without the Aura subtype). Such a spell doesn’t target, thus, it resolves safely and enters the battlefield just as it would normally do, had you chosen to cast it for its regular mana cost. If that happens, the fact that you have played it for its Bestow cost doesn’t matter anymore.

If everything is alright on resolution, the card enters the battlefield attached to target creature just as any other aura.

As an Aura, Boon Satyr gives the enchanted creature +4/+2.

If, for any reason, our aura stops being attached to an object it used to enchant (the creature left the battlefield; the creature stopped being a creature; the creature gained protection from a characteristic that aura has etc.), unlike regular auras, the card with Bestow remains on the battlefield as a creature. This is provided by the Bestow ability itself which ends the type- and subtype-changing effect upon the object getting unattached. It is impossible to revert it to being an aura again past this event.

The resulting creature, as all creatures without Haste, may not attack and use activated abilities with tap/untap symbol in its cost unless you have controlled it continuously since the beginning of your most recent turn. The so called “summoning sickness” does not question how long the object was or was not a creature, only controlling the object matters.

If a permanent with Bestow enters the battlefield in any way other than in process of being cast, it will be an Enchantment creature. There is no way to pay the Bestow cost and make it an Aura.

Regardless of how you have cast the Boon Satyr, it is an enchantment on the battlefield. It is a creature only if:

a) it was cast without using Bestow;

b) the type-changing effect of Bestow ability has ended.

Roughly speaking: a card with Bestow is always an Enchantment. But it is always either an Aura, or a Creature, not both.

How does Boon Satyr work?

One more thing about changing zones:

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1. ⇑ Every well-mannered planeswalker has to know that a spell checks the legality of its target twice: upon casting and upon resolving. Between these two moments, the target may undergo all sorts of things, but that doesn’t influence the spell on the stack in any way.

Translated by Witas Spasovski