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Lets say I have a Myr Welder on the battlefield. Within graveyards, there happens to be aPrototype Portal and a Sol Ring. Across the next few turns, I Imprint both Prototype Portal and Sol Ring onto my Myr Welder. From there, I activate the Imprinted Prototype Portal ability. What happens?

My guess is that I must pay 5 mana and it will create a Prototype Portal AND a Sol Ring, but I know not the rulings that would lead to that conclusion. I have tried reading the page on Imprint and gatherer rulings for Myr Welder, but I did not fully understand what I was reading nor did I think I found the answer I needed.

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You cannot activate the ability from Prototype Portal because that ability is linked to Prototype Portal's first ability, so cards exiled in any other way don't count. Linked abilities in general are described in rules section 607, and the specific kind of abilities on Myr Welder and Prototype Portal are described in rule 607.2a:

If an object has an activated or triggered ability printed on it that instructs a player to exile one or more cards and an ability printed on it that refers either to “the exiled cards” or to cards “exiled with [this object],” these abilities are linked. The second ability refers only to cards in the exile zone that were put there as a result of an instruction to exile them in the first ability.

In addition, one of the Gatherer rulings on Mairsil, the Pretender addresses this situation:

If Mairsil gains an activated ability that’s normally linked to a non-activated ability of the card it came from, the ability Mairsil has isn’t linked to any ability. For example, if Mairsil exiles Prototype Portal, the activated ability creates no tokens at all; it doesn’t create Prototype Portal tokens.

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    Oh, I see. That is not articulated at all on cards with Imprint.
    – The Man
    Jun 1, 2021 at 19:29
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    That's why we have a separate rulebook. There is always information that won't fit on the card.
    – murgatroid99 ♦
    Jun 1, 2021 at 19:30
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    It's pretty unusual for cards to borrow abilities from other cards, so it's an issue that doesn't come up much.
    – Arcanist Lupus
    Jun 2, 2021 at 0:34
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You may not activate the Prototype Portal ability, since no card is exiled with it. From the rulings on gatherer:

You may not activate the second ability if no card has been exiled with Prototype Portal. In that case, the value of Variable Colorless is undefined and can’t be paid.

Note that Prototype Portal went from a graveyard to exile. At no point does it "remember" having been on the battlefield (assuming that it ever was).

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  • While that is true, when something is "borrowing" an ability, like how Myr Welder does, the words of Prototype Portal would be replaced with Myr Welder. And because Mry Welder itself does have cards imprinted onto it, I would think Myr Welder using its own prototype portal ability would do something.
    – The Man
    Jun 1, 2021 at 17:22

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