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I was battling my brother recently. He had a purely green deck, and summoned Anthousa, Setessan Hero. I then used a Viper's Curse on Anthousa.

Anthousa has a heroic effect that allows it to turn lands into attackers whenever a spell targets it, but Viper's Curse prevents effects from being activated. So, does the heroic ability get activated or not?

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Viper Kiss only prevents activated abilities, ones that contain a :.

Anthousa, Setessan Hero has a triggered ability, since it contains "whenever", this is a different kind of ability and is thus not affected by Viper Kiss

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  • Wizards not supporting 's is really annoying.
    – Guvante
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 16:30
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    We could fix it on our end if we wanted to. It's stuck in status-deferred, unfortunately.
    – Alex P
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 16:58
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Assuming that you are casting Viper's Kiss on your opponent's Anthousa, the heroic ability will not trigger, but this has nothing to do with the effects of Viper's Kiss. Anthousa's ability begins "Whenever you cast a spell that targets Anthousa, Setessan Hero, ..." (emphasis added), where "you" refers only to Anthousa's controller*, which is not the player who is casting Viper's Kiss, and so Anthousa's ability won't trigger.

If, on the other hand, a player casts Viper's Kiss on his/her own Anthousa, heroic will trigger, but whether the Aura stops triggered abilities or not is moot; the triggered ability triggers while the Aura is still on the stack, and thus not affecting Anthousa yet, and so even if Viper's Kiss prevented triggered abilities from triggering (which it doesn't, and which I don't think any Aura does anyway), it would be too early to stop the heroics.

* From the Comprehensive Rules:

109.5. The words "you" and "your" on an object refer to the object's controller, its would-be controller (if a player is attempting to play, cast, or activate it), or its owner (if it has no controller). For a static ability, this is the current controller of the object it's on. For an activated ability, this is the player who activated the ability. For a triggered ability, this is the controller of the object when the ability triggered, unless it's a delayed triggered ability. To determine the controller of a delayed triggered ability, see rules 603.7d-f.

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  • The original question was asking whether the static ability on Viper's Kiss would stop Heroic from triggering, while you seem to be answering the question of whether Heroic would trigger on casting Viper's Kiss. You only answer the original question as an aside in your second paragraph.
    – murgatroid99 ♦
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 16:51

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